I had one job. To get my grandchildren to school on time this morning. The careful list of instructions left by my daughter spelled it out clearly.

“Leave the house by 7:15 am.”

I am clever. I remember the ordeal a simple task of loading the car can be. We stepped out the door at 7 am sharp with the idea fifteen minutes to load would be ample. Silly me. It’s been too long. I should have started at 3 am.

The Boston Terrier escaped when the door opened, which was no big deal because she self-potties and runs back to the door. Unless there is a raccoon in the yard. She took off like a bat out of hell and disappeared into the woods.

First the children went in hot pursuit— but to no avail. They were impressed how their skittish dog penetrated the forest with no reserve. Then it was my turn. Into the woods I went.

Looking up, I spotted Olive’s obsession in the branch over my head. Leash in hand, eventually I corralled our domesticated crazed beast and coaxed her out of the brush and back into civilization. Enough adventure for one day— these kids must get to school!

Buckled back in, I press the ignition.

“Key fob not found.”

I am holding the fob in my hand. This is a push button ignition. Ugh!!! Ok, there is an emergency manual key hidden in every fob — I extract it and look for the insertion slot.

Dashboard. No. Under the cup holder. No. In the storage bay. No. Dash again. No. By my knees. No. Ugh!!! My grandson Brave mentions the penalties levied against him for arriving late.

Ugh.

Quick thinking, my beloved searches google “Mazda Fob Reset” and gets the vehicle to respond to the fob. Off we go! Thank you, Grandpa!

I do not know my way around Nashville. But I am quick with my GPS and equipped with the address pre-loaded. Only upon arriving at the first spaghetti junction, the options the program presented me did not match the road signs. Each road may have 4 names, but only a local can supply the names not present on the sign overhead. And I am no local.

Pulling off in heavy traffic, I switch programs and the alternate app chooses a route actually represented by signage. How was I to know it was a fifteen minute diversion to make a loop back around? And loop we did.

I prayed for a miracle- a teleportation wonder where somehow we pull into car line right on time. That miracle did not happen. My grandchildren were late to school this morning, my first day behind the wheel of their parenting, entrusted with their precious lives.

But a miracle had taken place, over a number of years actually. The miracle of being able to remain calm under pressure, the miracle of not accepting the shame offered me after failure. The miracle of seeing the humor in circumstances real time, even when the outcome feels like it makes me look bad. The miracle of being present and loving life and being connected to the God of the universe who is smiling at me as I navigate loving well in the midst of stress.
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Rescue comes in the form of a Person— through Divine camaraderie and empowerment. Today, in the midst of your own story, receive His provision and watch the same miracles unfold.

It is vacation time, for what we could muster in a state hopping with COVID and our personal losses mounting on several fronts. To complement the restorative glory of our seaside rental, our daughter and grans joined us for two weeks.

I dropped my girl and the kids off at the Orlando airport last night. Headed back to the condo I passed through a log jam caused by five fire trucks and one of the most horrible wrecks I have ever seen. On a darkened stage pelted by rain, there were 10-15 emergency personnel gathered in a circle, holding hands with heads bowed. Not a single fireman was working the wreck.

Sacred. And deeply moving.

Someone died. Perhaps a whole family. And someone else got that horrible news last night.

Horrible news is becoming the norm in a way that threatens to shake us to our core. I do not welcome death and loss, but I do welcome the unseating of everything in my life masquerading as security in a world where true Security can only be found in the Person of Jesus Christ. I am inviting God to use global and exclusive plights to spotlight this truth for me with greater clarity, to refresh my God orientation with Him in His rightful place.

Everyday life’s demands attempt to take Jesus off center-stage. To replace Him with urgencies, plans for reconfigurations to win back homeostasis in our lives, to coronate a false security that looks more like control and predictability than yieldedness to our wild God.

We need Jesus now more than ever. In Jesus there is peace. In Jesus we endure losses knowing there is coming a glorious restoration of all things. In Jesus there is healing and Hope.

Because of Christ, in a time of great pain, we have comfort to give others. (II Corinthians 1:4) ​With so much bad news, we have Good News to share. (I Corinthians 15:1)

I am in the middle of a bathroom remodel project, the kind of vast under-taking that guts a room and slowly rebuilds it into a place of beauty. I contracted out most of the work, like the shower demolition, re-tiling, and custom wood butcher-block counters. But I have professional-level painting skills. 

For days I have sanded cabinets, primed, and painted. Yesterday I finally finished prepping the walls and ceiling and began the arduous task of painting the room. By the time I am ready to clean my equipment and brushes, typically in the middle of the night, I am utterly exhausted. You know how projects go. 

If a quality paintbrush is not cleaned properly, it dries stiff and hard and becomes useless. It takes time to clean it properly. A thorough cleaning requires copious amounts of running water— a stagnant bucket of water will not do. A painter then uses a dual-sided tool; a metal, sharp-pronged comb on one side, paired with a metal brush similar to a barbecue grill brush on the other side. 

I use the metal brush to repetitively scratch the exterior of the paintbrush’s ferrule stroking down the bristles under a running sink facet until the brush looks clean. But a mere squeeze reveals my brush is still full of paint! The efficient way to rid the brush of the paint is to use the sharp prongs of the metal comb to pierce the brush starting at the heel, splaying the bristles, and raking repetitively through the belly and toe of the brush, all the while under the gushing spigot. This method exposes the interior bristles to the cleansing flow until the brush is squeezed and the emerging water runs clear. Last night while rinsing my brushes, I accidentally pierced my finger with the sharp prongs of the cleaning comb, commingling my blood with the freshly flowing water and fading paint. 

​Can you see where I am going with this description? We can be raked and pierced by life’s assaults all day long and not benefit in the slightest. But God has a divine purpose behind the hardships we face in this life. With the spigot running continuously, He restores us during the transformation process if we position ourselves in Him. 

I want the fruit of my remodeled lavatory, but I do not look forward to the chaos of dismantling existing structures or to cleaning my brushes. I cannot have a new room without enduring the chaos and the cleaning. Our lives are the same way. I want my life and character to be transformed by God, becoming beautiful. But the project is one of demolition and yielding to a thorough cleaning for me to emerge as hoped. 

My life and yours too require copious amounts of free-flowing Water, running constantly, to cleanse the compacted strands of our life stories  — both the washing of the water of the Word and abiding in the Spirit immersed in the River of Life. A bucket of water captured in a quick morning devotion will just not suffice. The flow of His presence must be constant. The more Water, the better! 

And it takes a good piercing under that flow to expose what is hidden. Prayers to abort the process do not yield a life usable in the hands of the Master Painter. Instead, apply more Water and benefit fully from the raking, embracing God's divine purpose and provision. Visualize the brush with each squeeze of the bristles in your Master's hand! 

Drawing blood last night created in my mind’s eye what really has to happen. It is the piercing of Jesus Christ, His blood, His cleansing flow applied to my life that leaves me restored, supple for use. And the bathroom? It is still a work in progress, but it is coming along beautifully!

​I remember the rush of bitterness washing over me in the bowling alley. I was less than ten years old, spending my Sunday afternoon along with my siblings being entertained by our father. It was our weekly visitation day, after the divorce, the day we got to represent our mother’s righteous demand for child support before a man who valued other things above his family.  As an adult I have far more grace for the brokenness behind failure. But when Holy Spirit returns such memories, there is a reason. 

The memory was triggered as I hiked a familiar trail alone in the isolation of the COVID-19 mandate to stay cloistered. Families are out in droves, staying in their cocooned clusters of “just us”. Stepping aside for a wife, toddler, and infant strapped to his daddy’s back, the memory flooded back to me in a flash. 

As a jaded child, I thought to myself looking around that bowling alley full of fathers and children, “If you had been there for your family when they needed you, you wouldn’t have to be here now in this meaningless ritual,” judging every sans-mother father there assigned a lane with his brood represented what our grouping did. Abandonment. Divorce. Feigned connection. 

My first response now is to invite Holy Spirit into this memory, into this pain that is still trigger-able for a reason. A wound unrecognized and therefore untended. 

What memories is this current crisis triggering for you in this time of unpredictability and even chaos? What are you feeling? 

The temptation is to quickly sweep the discomfort to the side, to walk past without addressing the underlying wound or even the fresh gouging of new assaults against your heart. But there is an invitation in the pain, a wooing into communion with the Great Physician, the Counselor, the One Who bears our grief. God brings beauty straight out of the charred remains of ashes. 

Come Holy Spirit. Lead us into all truth. We invite the healing Balm of Gilead into our most hidden places of wounding, in Jesus’ name.

I've never lost a child. I have no idea what it feels like to be the parent of a child who has committed suicide, to grapple with devastating loss compounded by coming up short during inevitable brutal introspection.

We have all made mistakes parenting, but not all must come to peace with those mistakes in the face of tragic loss which screams condemnation that pours salt into gaping wounds. 

I've never lost my spouse. I came close in February 2015 when in the midst of a snowstorm I insisted, by the grace of God, that he let me take him to the ER when his chest pain escalated. It was pulmonary emboli, like buck shot through both lungs with the destruction of an entire lobe. (In celebration of his life, we used the green tubing from months of oxygen therapy as garland on our Christmas tree this year. Ha!)

So, I've been reflecting on loss and pain and what God offers our hearts in the midst of it all.

​This week I've been reading through Proverbs and pulling out the portion of verses that speak of the blessings of the righteous in order to pray declarative prayers.

"Righteous". 

That's how God sees those who embrace the cleansing work of the cross of Christ. God incarnate, God who came in the flesh to make me upright and to clear my name of all those things I've said, been, or done that I've struggled to forgive myself for. 

Proverbs 11:7 (BBE) says that "At the death of an upright man his hope does not come to an end...". 

What a promise.

Hope I can count on. No matter what.