Promises

What's Grace?

People sing about it...

I have a tattoo on my chest that celebrates my fall into it.

Michelle and I were beginning to start a church for people in recovery named "Gracefall."

That's all great... what's it mean?

An over simplistic definition of grace is: "getting better than you deserve." People ask me every day, "How ya doin'?" and I respond, "Better than I deserve...better than I deserve."

My life's journey blessed me to live in a rehab house for 35 days where even the drug addicts across the street looked down their noses at the fourteen of us. We were the real sicko's... You can talk about alcoholism and AA in a grocery store and people will look at you and give an encouraging word. Not so with my disease.

These days it is easy to forget, I'm one of the untouchables. Everyday I get more than I deserve. I don't deserve my life; all I've been given. I don't deserve any of it. Every single breath is a gift.

Every computer glitch is an opportunity to trust or get angry. Every idiotic driver is a blessing and gives me the chance to live in grace or under law. Every act of thoughtless act of selfishness by my children is an opportunity to give what I've been given rather than satisfy justice. Every disappointed sigh from my wife gives me the chance to move toward her rather than back away. Every time one of my bosses lies to me (a daily occurrence in the car business -- they don't call it lying) gives an opportunity to offer loving truth in return. Ever time a customer lets me down (if we treated customers the way they treat us, we'd be out of business in two weeks) I have an opportunity to spew hate or offer love. I choose love, because love chose me first.

Sometimes I live in grace. Sometimes I want justice. I flip flop doing both. I want to live in grace. Because I know I if I got what I deserved it wouldn't be a pretty picture. I know what's on the inside of me. I know what Jesus has to look at every day, and I know he loves me anyway. I want to give that grace away.

I've been loved much and so I want to love much. I receive so much grace everyday, why wouldn't I want to give it away? I don't do it well... This I know. If I did, I wouldn't need as much grace as I do...

 

CD Liner notes: Prayers for My Children

I wanted to burn a CD for my kids and call it “My Prayers for You”

Here are the songs and the

A Follow Up to "A Wonderful Win"

This morning I wrote about my son's football team and how the coaches got in the way of a fantastic won over the league power. This afternoon I confronted the head coach. I was grateful and surprised by his response.

He was not the coach that swore at the refs. He has already addressed the coach who did swear at the referees and agreed that it was not an appropriate response by a coach. He said the throwing of the clipboard and the hat were just how he coached. I let that go informing him that if I was a ref I wouldn't put up with it.

I also asked him about the player not getting back into the game. He said it was a heat of the moment mistake. He talked about the difficulties with this particular player and I told him it didn't matter he needed to get him in and that if I had been this player's parent I would have had a cow. I informed him it wasn't merely this player's fault. He didn't get it at first till I went down the list of people that didn't get their jobs done. I told him that he could have replaced my son at tight end... anything to get him back in the game so he didn't get the message that it was all his fault.

I do not know if we reached any good conclusion on this. I do know that I appreciated the coach's ability to hear me and respond with grace. It was a good conversation. We'll see what the outcome is.

Rethinking a Wonderful Win

On Saturday night under the lights of Parkrose High school field, the Parkrose Colts, a fifth and sixth grade football team

knocked off the league power Alberta Park Panthers in overtime 12 -6.

It was, perhaps, the team's best game of the season and kept them a perfect 4-0. Robin Richmond ran roughshod over the Panthers proving to be an unstoppable force.

For hours after the game I forgot something I saw during the game that disturbed me, and then talking to another friend who was at the game, I became even more disturbed.

During Alberta Park's first possession of the game, their quarterback who has a magnificent arm through out to the left flat after sucking in the Colt defense. The cornerback for the Colts who was abandoned to one on one coverage missed the play and the Panthers advanced to the 2 yard line before scoring their only touchdown of the game. It is unremarkable except for the fact that the Colt coaches didn't play that cornerback the rest of the game. He was blamed for the play and he had to sit the rest of the game for his mistake.

These are 10 & 11 year olds learning about their own bodies and what they are capable of at the same time they are learning a violent sport with all its intricacies. Sure #80 made a mistake but he wasn't the only one and yet you single him out because you left him out there on an island to defend a player far faster then he? You don't let him play in the rest of the most important game of the season because he missed a play? What sort of message are you sending?

Later in the game the officials called a pass interference call when a Colt's defender stuck up his hand knocking the ball away with out turning his head. The head coach for the Colts threw his clipboard on the field and cursed the refs in front of his kids.

This game was not about the kids. It was about the coach. After the game he stood in front of his team and announced, "In five years I have not beaten that team, you are the first team that got me the win. Thank you. You played a hell of a game." remember these are 10 and 11 year olds.

We wonder what has gone wrong with sports. We need to start looking at who is coaching our youth and the messages they are sending. Wrong lessons are learned too early and what should have been a fantastic win left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

Icecream Theology

Saturday we needed our kids help as we tried to move out of The big family house into a temporary rental. Thomas asked if they could get ice cream after. I told him that it depended on how well they did. Both Maggie and thomas worked, but Maggie took some breaks and didn't quite work to the level that her brother did. On the way to icecream I informed them that Thomas had earned a medium (a rare treat) and Maggie would get the small. Maggie had a fit. It wasn't fair. I explained why and told her that it wasn't favoritism but wages earned. I explained that the harder one works the bigger the reward. She wanted no part of it. Despite her meltdown in the dairy Queen, screaming that she didn't want anything, I got her a small sundae.

What struck me was Thomas' response. When we got home to our new rental, I gave both kids the freedom to do whatever they wanted. Thomas though, in a show of gratitude said, "No, I want to help..."

This is how it is supposed to be with God. We respond to his grace by surrendering completely to him. We don't surrender to him to achieve his grace. We obey cause He loves. We respond in kind to the love that he gives us.

Michelle and Abraham

I didn’t understand; there was no way I could understand. Shell had heard from God and He hadn’t told me what he told her. It didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t make sense to her, but she did what she was told. The cost is immeasurable; the faith required, obscene.  And Shell is “Standing fast”.

Tomorrow we fly home to Portland without Sam. He is staying with his Dad, a non-recovering, self admitted bi-polar addict. It was Sam’s choice to move to his Dad’s Michelle merely made possible what he wanted. I’m not sure I have the faith to do what she is doing. It takes nearly all of mine to simply love her in the midst of the struggle in which she is engaged. Her current story reminds me of an old story I grew up hearing:

A long time ago, a man was given a promise. He was going to father a great nation. It seemed impossible to him because both he and his wife were too old to have kids… she’d gone through menopause. But God made the promise. He and his wife tried to make god’s promise into reality. His wife, in an act of love that is far beyond my understanding, told him to sleep with her servant so the servant could bear him a son. He did, and she did, but the child born wasn’t who God had in mind to be the promised seed. As a matter of fact, in the years since he and his wife took matters into their own hands the servant’s child and his offspring caused a great deal of problems for the son God did have in mind. God wanted this man’s post menopausal wife to bear him a son. He would be a truly miraculous baby.  And she did, and he was.

That was cool until one day, God told the aging man to take his son and offer him up to God as a human sacrifice. (Sometimes I don’t get God.) But God spoke and the old guy listened and took his son on a three mile back pack trip to the mountains so that he could offer his son as commanded. He bound his son, laid him on the altar, and had a knife ready to kill him when God stopped him and told him that there was another sacrifice waiting to be offered. His son went onto to have a couple of sons and then the younger of those sons had twelve sons. They too had lots of kids and the nation of Israel was born, born of obedience and faith.

My wife has that kind of faith. She heard God, she listened, and now, she is offering her son – not unto death – but to a life of challenges and roadblocks. Still she is trusting. I wonder what God has in mind for Shell and Sam.

Football for Fifth Graders

    Thomas is trying football this year. He is playing for a good team that has been established and has long time coaches that generally are concerned for the kids and their growth as humans. TL and I have had multiple conversations about his playing. He is trying it out to see if he likes it.

    I let him know that I had concerns about the swagger and the pride that go with football. I let him know that the whole anger thing worried me and wondered out loud if he was angry enough to be successful long term. I let him know that I was concerned about the price his body would play if he played football long term. I also let him know that if he was going to play he was going to have to get mean and explode through people.

    I didn't let him know that many football coaches have god complexes and that there is a machismo that goes with football that is almost grotesque at a fifth grade level. I left his practice today disgusted by one older coach in particular who really seems to want the kids to view him as God. 

    I want Thomas to succeed. I am trying to find ways to help him succeed. I want to get a pad for his sore right wrist and get to practice early enough to tape it. I want to explain that football is a game of intimidation and hurting people and he can shoose either to be the one intimidated or the intimidator. I want to spend some time with him helping him learn how to explode through his opponents. I want to teach him to slide his head and shoulder to the correct side depending on the direction of the play. I want to help him get better, and I want him to figure out early on that he shouldn't respect coaches that demand worship. I want him to be strong enough to say. I need water, I am going to get some now, even if the coaches don't agree.

    In short I want him to be a good human before a good football player... and what I saw today makes me think the two are not completely compatible. That is sad.

Coaching

I'm coaching my son's U10 soccer team. The gift to me is watching kids get it, and succeed. For one the success is simply not allowing himself to be knocked over. For another it is not stopping after kicking the ball. Another has to get over a self image that tells him his whole family is made up of nerds. They are learning to play. We are 5 - 2 on the season. But that matters far less than the joy on a boys face after he makes a play he could never have made at the beginning of the season. It is all a gift...

Teaching Our Children to Lie

My daughter went to a friend's birthday party. They went to Ka Nee ta on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation and had a great time. It wasn't until a couple of weeks after the fact that I heard the Mom of the birthday girl asked the girls (all of whom were 11 & 12 to lie and say that they were 10 so that she would only have to pay $5 for their passes to the resort. What a great lesson for my daughter to learn from a parent of a friend. It breaks my heart and I am still wondering how to cope with it.

The Black Sox