On the First Wednesday

The squirrels are running with impunity in my yard.

This is the first Wednesday night I've had to face since my beloved lab, Coach, died last week. To put it in perspective, this is the first Wednesday night I've ever spent in this house without him, and I've lived here over a decade. I hate it. My wife and girls are doing their Wednesday night thing - the weekly gathering for elementary kids at our church. I'm doing mine - cleaning up the kitchen, taking care of the dishes, keeping the house somewhat organized. But I'm doing it alone tonight. For the first time. There was no one to look askance at my choice of 90's rap for dish-doing motivation. There will be no one attempting to steal a chin scratch or bait me into a wrestling match while doing planks in my upcoming workout. When I swept the kitchen floor, I found the unthinkable: dropped cereal from the breakfast table. Much is amiss in the Dykstra household now that one of our members is gone. And I've decided to face it. Tonight. Right now. It must be done. And it must be done here.

I've got to get this down right, because it's my one chance to do it. If I wait it will be gone, all the half-sentences and broken thoughts and stray emotions that only become tangible through writing. Already I feel the reality of it slipping away, behind a mask of smiles, losing it's grasp on the fingertips of my consciousness as I feed distractions and distortions to my burdened soul. Am I capable of pausing, of staring it straight in the face, of naming it and claiming it as my own? Even now I am scared, knowing that at the keys and the screen of my laptop is a mirror, and it's one that won't let me change the channel or turn up the noise. Breathless, fearful, I type on. Not one to advertise weakness or pain, I know this writing session won't be much fun.

Typically, I write to figure out the world, to make sense of it, to bring clarity to the news and notes, the literature and liaisons of my daily life. I write to discover. I write to understand. That's why I began this blog; sharing is secondary in the quest. If you find understanding alongside me in my journey, so be it. Good for both of us. But I am here selfishly.

I write to understand, but there is nothing to understand here. There is no knowledge to be gained, no mysteries to sort out and pry through with a scalpel or a shovel, one clause or catalog at a time. It's really quite simple; we want to make death and loss complicated, but it rarely is. No, what I need isn't understanding. What I need is to merely feel better. And I've written enough words to know that writing can't do that for me.

Or at least I don't think it can. I've never really tried it. I had another option. Now I don't. The one thing I could count on to make me feel better, every part of every day, in every room of my house, regardless of how bad the hurt, is now gone. Even now, as I type that sentence and feel my heart drop and let out a heaving sigh across my dining room and into the Wednesday evening darkness, I know he would have heard that, felt that, recognized that, and arisen unsolicited from his half nap to run his nose below my fingers.

The missing energy of a bounding hundred pounds of lab reminding you to smile is a clanging, discordant silence.

One line from a book I read this summer and saved to write about until I had something to say came from Karen Swallow Prior's Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me. In this memoir connecting her life with classic literary texts, Swallow writes about about one particularly troubling experience from her teenage years, saying, "I"m sure plenty had gone through a great deal more, but I hadn't." I have wanted to apologize all week for being this scarred by the memory of a dog. Millions of people have lost dogs before. This is not special. It is not significant. And he's just a dog, after all. While I've been mired in grief, people around the world lost their homes, families, and lives in a punishing hurricane and crippling earthquake. Cancer still lords its sovereignty over helpless victims. I can't even claim this was the worst thing to happen in my own extended family this week.

But Swallow is right. Others may have experienced a similar loss, but I haven't. Not this dog. The tragedies surrounding all of us, while offering perspective, have no power to make me less sad. I've decided, then, to not apologize, and to not hide. I have been hurt over this, and I still hurt, and I say that out loud and without remorse.

For this loss was the loss of my companion in everything good. There is nowhere to go to escape that reality. So much of our family's routine, the best parts of what we do, seem a little less crowded right now. And I don't like the extra room. Every book read in our recliner, he was there. Whether it was the gentle and mindless back and forth of my fingers on his head, interrupted only by a sip of coffee or a page turn when he found me there alone, or the strategically placed full-body collapse he used to receive the methodical strokes from my foot when I had children in my lap, he made his presence known. Every weekday evening or Sunday afternoon walk, full of laughter and conversations between members of our family, was strategically planned to maximize his room to run and opportunities to splash. Every guest greeted, every strange dog warned, every dropped chip devoured in our yard and dining room. First in the morning, last in the evening to smile and greet and remind: I am here, I am happy, and you matter to me.

I find myself talking to him, of course. Or wanting to talk to him. To tell him what? I don't know. Whatever I told him on all those still moonlit winter walks we shared to keep me sane during the basketball season. Whatever I'm feeling, unfiltered, unabashed, no matter how ridiculous, goofy, or confused. Whatever I said to him in the times of wordless grief over the past ten years, whatever he knowingly heard that made him slow down and calmly and patiently rest his nose unobtrusively on my knee, his weight softly leaning against me, offering comfort.

It will be okay. Some time. But not now. Not this night. Tonight I mourn, receiving no trite answers, receiving no furry comfort. And so it must be.

But in the mourning I recognize that if he was a part of every good thing for this family, in this home, in this town, then I have much to be thankful for. Because I am reminded of him, by his absence in the good that we have, about eleven billion times a day.

Farewell, old friend.

Preparing for the Season

After a one season hiatus, I return to coaching basketball in three short weeks. While I wasn't sure I'd ever be back, and I appreciated many aspects of a toned-down winter schedule, I know that for me there is no way to do this job half speed. If I'm in, I'm in all the way, heart and mind, emotions and time, committed to the process. In short, I am signing on and accepting responsibility for another busy season in life.

Some people are able to live a somewhat consistent, predictable, stable way of life. I am not. I have seasons, and I love seasons. I can go hard teaching for nine months, with all the work and energy that entails, knowing I have a three month season of relative relaxation. And just as summer turns to fall, and the earlier sunsets indicate a renewed sense of commitment; so also when the snow flies, I feel a call to add a few more hours, a few more smiles, and a few more stressors to each work day, on top of the English teaching reading and paper load. 'Tis the season, after all.

It is easy to get stressed in the busy seasons. So much has to go right to fit everything in. Every unplanned obstacle becomes an emergency. Rather than a nuisance, illnesses become crippling. Just as any problem in heavy traffic turns into a traffic jam, every inconvenience in a busy season ratchets up the rage and affects every other activity on my personal road.

This busy, though, I am choosing. As I indicated above, I am responsible for it. I am claiming it and the way it affects every priority in my life.

A common piece of advice, and a wise one I'm sure, is to not let your busyness affect your priorities. For me, that advice essentially means don't be too tired to be Dad. Don't be too invested that you neglect to invest in your wife. Don't be too busy to pray. And that's all good advice.

But this season I think I'm going another way. I'm flipping the advice. Rather than not let my busyness affect my priorities, I want to make sure my priorities affect my busyness.

Instead of worrying about my basketball schedule getting in the way, I will be more conscious of carrying my core priorities around with me. I will remember that I am a father who treasures his daughters, and that will fuel a respect for the time of my players and their families. My intense love for my wife, and my desire to make her proud of the work I do, will walk alongside me and remind me that every decision, every word, every effort I make matters to far more people than me. Instead of worrying about basketball decreasing my worship to the God I trust and humbly rely on, I will make what I do in my busy hours a worthy offering of praise.

At an English teaching conference I went to recently, one speaker sought to clarify the definition of non-fiction, with I think is sorely needed. For too long, students have been told that fiction is fake and non-fiction is real. It can be trusted. Not so, said the speaker. What we need to communicate to readers of all ages is that the definition of non-fiction is a text that "enters your world and purports to tell us something about it." Rather than being less work, non-fiction is more. It requires a response. With non-fiction, the reader has a responsibility to understand the text, its inherent biases and preconceived positions, and see if it fits into or is strong enough to change his or her worldview.

The sacred texts of our lives, whether they be actual texts (like my precious Bible) or the volumes containing the priorities that stand as the pillars marking all we hold dear, must be read with as much attention, with as much of a demand for a response. But rather than seeing if we have room for what our sacred texts purport to tell us about our world, we must check our world and all the activities therein, and see if our actions fit those sacred texts.

Busy can be an obstacle, or it can be an opportunity to extend all that we love and believe in to further corners of the world. But only for a season. My priorities in this busy season, and I hope in many busy seasons to come, will not be something I save energy for. I will not carve out time to remember them. They will not get my leftovers. Rather, in the heat of the schedule, in all the deeds I enjoy and in the ones that are mere necessities, I will carry them with me everywhere I go.

The Nineteenth Time

It is not courageous to have convictions.

Convictions are easy. Convictions are quick. Convictions speak of who we are at our best, or who we see our best can be, or who the world sees when the lights are on and we are most aware and most vocal.

I believe in writing. I believe in the power of prayer. I believe in all-the-time honesty, all-the-time integrity, and all-the-time service. I believe books change lives, and I believe the television wastes them. I believe in the Bible as my personal foundation, as the foundation of my family, and as the ultimate and true source of wisdom and feasting for my soul. But none of this makes me courageous.

I came to these convictions in many ways. Some I experienced. Some I was taught. Some I am reminded of regularly by excited, excitable, like-minded people who make it easy to stay convinced. All of them I can state, rather easily, in casual coffee conversation or in deep debate.

But it requires nothing of me to have convictions. Yet it has become trendy to place on a pedestal those who verbalize their convictions, as if that were the hardest part. We place a premium on what people say, or post, or tweet, showering them with praise and likes for their courage of conviction if the words they are using mirror the thoughts of our own hearts. But to have convictions, to speak or type or share them, costs little.

Courage, rather, is standing for your convictions and priorities when its hard. Courage is re-upping and relearning a truth worthy of devotion after violating it, again, more passionately and more firmly each time. Courage is acting on the light when you're in the dark.

And you don't display courage because you already have it. I don't believe anyone is innately courageous. Rather, the courageous create courage. They begin, petrified or exhausted or beaten, and they make a small decision on behalf of their convictions anyway because they're tired of being less than who they want to be, tired of disappointing themselves. Then they feed that little shoot of courage, growing it, stretching it, because it might not need to be stronger the second and third time around, but certainly it will be tested the nineteenth and twentieth when it's no longer exciting and no longer popular and there's no one left to impress.

To remain full of courage, the courageous focus on their convictions. They stare at the truth. They repeat the truth. They find people in their lives who will speak the truth to them as well. Someone far stronger, far more experienced, who has lived the truth. Someone younger, energetic, who isn't too tired or cynical to believe it. Someone with great fervor; someone with great calm.

Feelings and excitement will fade. The conference or pep rally will end. Sunday morning's sermon will turn into Monday morning's challenges. You will say good night after the first date, or after the first anniversary. The angelic and pure newborn will become a loquacious, confrontational 3-year old. You will say amen, leaving the eternal to face the immediate. The crowd, the like-minded, will go home. But the truth you found in those feelings won't be any less true.

Can you keep it? Can you act on it? Through sickness and health? Through fatigue and loneliness? Through boredom? Through busyness? Will you still act on the convictions you speak?

That, I find, is courage. Those are the brave. And I want to be one of them.

The Extra That Plagues Us

In our adult Sunday School group this week, the opening discussion question was to describe a trait in one of your parents or grandparents that you admire and wish to emulate. The answers to the question dominated the discussion for the rest of our meeting. Across fourteen group members, there were two commonalities.

One was just how "other-centric" the previous two generations have been. They not only had a heart for others, they also had a mind for them. They planned service. They sought service, looking for opportunities in the likeliest of places instead of waiting until a need arose to respond. They prayed for and spoke about their love for their neighbors, both known and unknown.

The other characteristic that prevailed was a certain stoicism among them. They did what needed to be done. They worked long, hard hours for their families at work that wasn't fun or easy. They sacrificed. They endured. And through it all, they didn't complain. They faced the tasks and duties in front of them and saw them for what they were: necessary obstacles that would only be removed if they removed them themselves. Talking about their displeasure or discomfort was futile, and therefore absent.

After hearing all that everyone had to say, and recognizing the unscripted connections across our parents and grandparents, we sat back and asked what had become of us.

The group was full of individuals I would describe as wise, loving, passionate Christians. And yet nearly all of us agreed that we lacked the characteristics described. We are too quick to be frustrated, too ready to voice our complaints, and more often than not too self-focused to anticipate others' needs before they occur. What happened? What was in our way? Or more accurately, what was causing us to put ourselves in our own way so much?

The easy answer is technology, and primarily Facebook. Social media asks us to advertise ourselves, to brand ourselves and make our pictures, our vacations, our political views, and our parenting techniques front and center for the world to see. It's difficult to think of others when the opportunities to scream, "Look at me! Look at me! Like me! Agree with me!" dominate our day.

But it's not Facebook's fault. Not Twitter or Instagram's either. Those common whipping posts are merely tools of the time, used or misused according to the inclinations of the user. Facebook can be used to learn about the needs and desires of others, to celebrate and support their lives (or the virtual ones they are willing to offer). Twitter can be used to widen a worldview, to stay informed and challenged and growing and connected. If we are using them improperly, it is our own sickly hearts to blame.

So what are the causes? I don't know for sure. Too much money, probably. Too much leisure. Too many activities. Too many channels. Too many things to do and not enough of them really worth doing. We have more of everything, and we seem to be less personally satisfied and less altruistic. That should probably tell us something.

But I also believe that the two qualities described in our predecessors go hand in hand. With one comes the other. Whatever the root causes, when we are self-focused, we have more to complain about. The more we complain, the more we see and talk about and worry about ourselves. And then we're too busy cleaning up our own messes to be of any use to others.

Therein lies the solution, perhaps. Choose one quality, and the other will follow. If I commit to complaining less and stoically facing the day regardless of random odious tasks, perhaps I will shut up enough to listen to others, recognize their needs, and realize the opportunity for service and real joy. Or if I commit to seeking my neighbor's good and planning for ways to serve those in need, I will have realized that I really have little that's worth complaining about.

The extra that plagues us with the temptation to chase empty living isn't going anywhere. If we seek to matter in our homes and in our work, and matter in a way that causes us to be remembered decades later in a gathering of friends, we must purposefully follow in the memorable steps of those before us. They certainly made mistakes that we will wish to avoid as well. My glasses aren't permanently rose-colored. But they got these two qualities right. And we would do well to take notice.

On Quotations and Tweets and Headlines. . .

I've always been a quote guy.

I love inspirational quotes. In my classroom I often use them as writing prompts. When reading a novel like The Great Gatsby or Pride and Prejudice, I'll pull out single sentences or phrases to present to the class in order to dissect in terms of meaning and value. We often started basketball practice by giving a player a quote related to basketball or life or both and asked them to comment on its application for our team. I collect quotes on reading and writing and Christianity and leadership, tucked away in random notebooks and computer files to find, or not find, some day. Several quotation collections stand ready on my bookshelf in my living room, or in my office collection, or in my desk drawer at school.

When I write, I use quotes. Several of my blog posts will begin with a quote from this book or that Bible verse or some news article. Quotations will occasionally color my sermons, shining wit and wisdom onto the audience from the projector screen above.

Twitter has revolutionized our thinking in many ways, and I must confess to adding to the social media noise. What can be said in 140 characters? A lot, apparently. Because everyone is finding a way to say it. Anything too long need not apply. Multiple clauses beware: we have neither the time, nor the inclination, to tolerate your complexities. Jubilation, inspiration, degradation, and emulation abound, requesting a favorite or retweet of approval, a personal public claim of tribe and creed and philosophy.

Roy Peter Clark writes in his book How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times this blog-worthy (and tweet worthy) quote: "Americans love to be inspired by two-minute blasts of good writing." I couldn't agree more. I am one of them. Give me a succinct snippet of truth over my lunch hour any day. I just question our willingness to hang in there for a full two minutes.

Brief quotes, verse of the day apps, and book jacket excerpts are all well and good. I refuse to disparage them here. I preach concise writing. Foundational statements that can be quickly recited are necessary bones on which to build a company, a community, or a life. But we are tempted to believe life is as simple as those brief quotes, or those 140 character thoughts, or those 30-second news clips or talking-head diatribes, or even headlines. We want that to tell the entire story. We want it to be that simple. But it's so much more complicated than that.

These short bursts will not carry us through or address reality. If we are not careful, if we are as intellectually lazy as we are tempted to be, they will instead mask reality, serving as barriers to both speaker and listener, keeping questions and complexities at bay. They will inspire us for a moment without changing us for a day. They will confirm our assumptions and question nothing. They will tell us all we want to know - just enough to be confident, not enough to require more of us. The motivation will last as long as the source.

Can you describe yourself appropriately in one sentence?

Perhaps, then, prayer and Republicans and Muslims and joy and parenting and perseverance go a little deeper as well.

I remain a quotes guy who thinks they matter. I will continue to advocate for succinct writing and saying more with less. But those two minute blasts that Clark was talking about only really matter as a glimmer of the whole. Fitzgerald's final line pointing our boats against the current carries the most depth to those who have read of Gatsby's exploits. John 3:16 means a whole lot more in the context of the entire gospel message. The tweets of professional athletes are much deeper if. . . well maybe that's as deep as they go. Strike that.

To be responsible citizens, to be personally growth-minded, and most importantly to see truth and God more clearly, the headlines and tweets and storehouse of Google search results must only serve as reminders, as pictures of the mountain, not the mountain air itself. And I've never breathed in mountain air that wasn't worth the journey.

And Now, The Hard Part

I have done a lot of thinking this summer.

Summer is a time for thinking, for there is time. Alarm clocks do not exist for those of us in the teaching class. The best of days are the unscheduled ones. In those hours unclaimed, the mind speaks - in the quiet of the hike; in the shadows of an evening bike ride on a seldom used blacktop; or in the silent perfection I find in my recliner, book in hand, fresh cup of coffee next to me, and my lab's chin resting gently on my lap before anyone in the house stirs.

I've done a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of speaking the past couple of months. I gave two sermons. I offered advice and challenges. I jabbered through a thousand ideas and wine-inspired goals around a table, around a fire, through letters. But I haven't done a lot of doing.

I haven't had to. It's been vacation, after all. But the summer is over now, and now is the time for doing. It is time for action.

Many people claim to not want to think too hard or too deeply about things; but trust me, thinking is the easy part. Thinking is inspiring. Thinking assumes the best about you and your future. Thinking is full of idealism, and that idealism becomes real in the thinking. Oh, the brilliant teaching ideas I've had! The writing prompts! The acts of friendship! The goals for living and parenting! They all boldly spoke of a wise man living a wise life.

But at some point, then, I've got to get out of the chair. I've got to get off the bike, or put the mower away, or put the cup of coffee down. I've got to clean up the dishes, put the fire out, and get up the next morning. Turning thinking into reality, then, seems possible for another day. Any day but today. And then it is gone.

I do some of my best thinking on Sunday mornings. I typically have time to read the paper. I get great conversation from Sunday School and church relationships. I sit quietly, challenged from the pulpit, inspired by the Good Book during the service. When I walk out of that church door at noon, I'm ready to set the day on fire and then save my little corner of the world all week long. The thinking has been sweet. By some Wednesdays, it's hard to even recognize some of those 4-day-old thoughts as my own.

Stephen Mansfield writes in his book, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men, this quote form Frederick W. Robertson:

Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feelings pass; resolves and thoughts pass; opinions change. What you have done lasts - lasts in you. Through the ages, through eternity, what you have done for Christ - that, and only that, your are.

So what good has my thinking been this summer? What action will I live?

I thought and wrote and preached on submitting to one's earthly master in the form of our bosses. How will I now behave in meetings I don't like, following directives I don't agree with, on the days I feel mired in fatigue and complaints? Will my thinking prevail? Will I continue to pray for my bosses, as I so confidently challenged my audience to do? Will I be different in my daily work, noticeably and distinctly different, humble and servant-hearted and Christ-like?

I preached on standing firm to the truth of Scriptures, despite cultural trends. On loving those with whom I disagree, praying for them and serving them, while not apologizing for the Bible. How will I handle those conversations? In what ways will I serve those with whom I vehemently disagree?

I taught on injecting constant truth into life so that we can overcome deceitful feeling. I taught on not allowing a busy schedule to keep us from speaking and reading truth to each other in our households. So what will I do, now that I've written down into my calendar the soccer practices and games, the AWANA meetings, the basketball season, the piano lessons? Will I write my daughter notes for her lunchbox? Will I read and speak Scripture with them?

And the myriad teaching ideas, scribbled in this book, in that margin, on that notebook, in this file? What of those? What of my attempts to be better, to broaden my knowledge, to know more so that I can teach more? Optimism and high-mindedness drips from my plans. Will my actions?

One may think a number of things. But the thinking is nothing. The thinking flees and changes, darting from one wind-blown intention to another, mangled, mangled, mangled until its ashes return, unrecognizable. One is known by their actions. My actions will reach far greater audiences than this blog or my sermons.

The freedom to think remains. But the demand to act is real, offering safe passage for those thoughts here, to the land of the living.

The Best Part of Every Book

After our family got back from our ten day vacation through Nebraska and Colorado, we did what most families do: we looked back at our pictures. This was the first vacation for Elise, our seven year old, to have a fully functioning digital camera. Therefore we had two cameras worth of pictures to go back through, along with a full CD of pictures from our whitewater rafting experience. Going back through the pictures allowed us to relive the vacation, one day at a time. We obviously couldn't see whole days, but we felt them. We remembered the places and smells and joy and trepidation associated with each. They told our story to us one more time, one highlight at time, in a way that only we who had experience the whole trip could really understand.

Despite the hard time I give my wife about the sheer volume of pictures our family takes, she knows I appreciate having the story. And in many ways, this is the same way I like to read books.

The best part of every book is walking back through, after reading the book in it's entirety, and copying down every passage that I've highlighted or every note that I've jotted in the margin. I gave myself the liberty to read my books with a pen in hand several years ago, and it's one of the best things I've ever done as a reader. The freedom to take my pen and make the text my own, circling and underlining and connecting and commenting, dirtying the clean page with my mess, allows me to breathe a second life into the book - my own. These books were the authors'; now they are ours together.

When I deface the page with pen, I don't spend a lot of time there. I hover, I ponder, I appreciate, and then I move on. I don't want to disrupt the rhythm. The author has established a cadence so that this sentence, the one that has grabbed me in some way, has both a sentence before and a sentence after, and they inform each other and demand that I feel and think a certain way, one clause at a time, as I come across the content.

But there is a time to spend with those pieces. I used to be depressed when I came to the end of a great book. It was not a sense of accomplishment; it was a loss. No longer. After the final period, I wait a day. Or a week. I go back to page one and flip one page at a time, looking for ink. And then I get to relive the text all over again. But it's not only an experience of reading my favorite passages all over; it's also a reliving of each day of reading the book again, of the feelings associated with those days, of the events, of the settings.

I recently went back through and typed out my notes for Shauna Niequist's Bread and Wine, a book I read both at home and on vacation. As I jogged through the last half of the book, I smelled the mountain air of Colorado all over again. I felt the comfortable satisfaction of reading on the porch of our bunkhouse at Garden of the Gods Campground. I remembered the hikes, the swimming, the boundless energy of children on vacation, and whatever else was going on the day I read those pages. Before that, there was the passage that caused me to relive sitting in my recliner at home on a quiet morning before anyone else was up, breathless, as her writing conjured up the emotions and fears of miscarriage, ones that I had long ago attempted to bury. Or the one I read right after a run, in which she describes her marathon experience, and I could see and hear and feel mile 15 with her with the half-baked idea to do it all over again. The best of the best, the most intense, the most thought-provoking, the most condemning sentences - my personal highlight reel of reading Bread and Wine, all played before my eyes.

I'm finding the same experience in my Bible reading as well. Reading back through a chapter, or an entire book of the Bible, reviewing my notes and highlights, ties all of the reading back into a threaded web. What is most interesting is when I'm using my old NIV, the one I got back in the 4th grade, and I can see all that I've ever highlighted or written in the margins. I can tell the season of life by pen color, sometimes even the other books I had been reading at the time based on my scribbled notes. I can see my growth. Unfortunately, I can see my intended growth as well. In the margins is the history of a man, at least the history of when that man was humble enough to read his Bible.

You can't get than in an app. You can't get that in a verse of the day, or quote of the day. Those tools are fine. They have a purpose, and anything that gets us more Bible and more literature and more sentences into our head are tools to be used. And I use them. But they do not communicate experience. They do not tell time.

Tonight I begin a new book. I just got Roy Peter Clark's most recent text on writing. I love Clark's work. I can't wait to start. But I know the best is a long way off, not until after the final page. I look forward to the journey.