Meeting Julie

[Note: if you are reading this on Facebook and it doesn't look quite right, the original entry can be found at http://peaceofferings.blogspot.com/.]

Introduction: when I first started contemplating this blog entry, I never anticipated that the relationship would end before I posted it. My relationship with Julie, so soon after beginning so well, is over as I type these words. Part of my way of dealing with grief is writing about it, and there is nothing I wrote here that is not still true, so I post this as part of my blog, which is, after all, “a journal of my journey with God”. Part of my reasoning isn't just that in some way it's an expression of my current grief, but it contains some good writing (I think) and is funny (I hope) , so I hope you can read it that way. I have not edited the original entry except for adding this short into.

I have been writing about change and possibility for the past few entries of this blog. Sometimes, change catches one unawares. So it is with what I now write.

“ You rang?” I was driving back to Topeka on a Saturday afternoon. Terry had been on vacation, so I'd been driving solo all that week. I was tired. I was thinking of all the things I had to get done when I got home. I was annoyed because my phone, which I had previously baptized in a truck stop bathroom , was not working right. I had just recently been to Georgia when Deb, a cousin whom I loved dearly, had passed away. (I wrote about Deb here .)

I had set up my old phone so that it let me know I had a message by emitting a sound like the gong they used on The Addams Family to call Lurch. Lots of times when I would hear that gong sound, I'd say, “You rang?”, trying to imitate Lurch. I know, I know, but if you know me, that won't surprise you that much.

So, anyway, on that Saturday I was almost to Salina, Kansas, when my phone gonged. I said, “You rang?” to the silence in the truck, and when I stopped in Salina, I looked at my phone, thinking I had a text from Terry or my sister probably.

It was not.

It was a message saying someone had sent me en e-mail on Match.com, an online dating site that I'd signed up for in January, but that never went anywhere. I had intended to let my subscription expire, and had largely forgotten about it. And here was a message from someone. Oh, well. Probably spam.

It was not spam. It was a message from someone in Emporia, Kansas (of all places), named Julie.

That first message basically said that she liked my sense of humor and that my profile had made her laugh. I answered her e-mail, and a few hours later, we were talking on the phone for the first time. We talked an hour and twenty minutes, laughing for much of that time. From the very first time we talked, I felt comfortable with her. I wondered if that would translate if we ever met in person.

We talked and texted quite a bit every day after that first day, and we soon decided that we would go out on our first date on Saturday, April 2 ^nd.

“ What day is it?” Things were going well. The day before we were to meet for the first time was April 1 ^st , which is a day I love because it's an excuse to play jokes on people.

I was driving nights, and all that previous night, I was thinking and planning about possible jokes and people to try to fool. Honestly, my list has grown rather short in recent years because I've pulled stuff on my family for so long, they are on to me most of the time.

I knew I was going to try to get Terry. But who else? How about Julie?

I could see the clouds of potential disaster on my horizon. We hadn't even met yet, and we were supposed to go out the next day. Would I risk it all just to play a joke?

Yes.

I had considered several scenarios and had discarded most because I didn't want to traumatize her too much. I wasn't sure how she would respond, even though I knew she had a good sense of humor. Finally, I settled on a possible scenario.

It was about 6:00 am, and Terry had started driving. Julie was at work. I composed a text and just before hitting “send”, I told Terry, “Watch this. My phone will ring in about 15 seconds.”

I sent the text, something like this: “I know you are at work, but I heard something disturbing last night I need to talk to you about. Call me when you can. Have a good day.”

Literally, 10 seconds later, my phone rings. It's Julie. I started cracking up before I even answered.

“ Hello.”

“ What? ”

“ Oh, hey Julie. Well, last night I was at the warehouse in Topeka, and I saw another driver there who lives in Emporia, Earl Crumbley. [Of course, I know no one else from Emporia, and no one named Earl Crumbley. Ain't I mean?] We were just shooting the breeze, and I mentioned that I was about to go out with a woman from Emporia. He asked who you were, and I ended up showing him your picture.”

By now, I can hear Julie's breathing start to get heavier. She is hooked.

“ Well, he saw your picture, and he said he didn't know you personally, but said everyone down there knows who you are. He said about two years ago, you were arrested and convicted for embezzling funds and got off on a technicality, but that you were guilty.”

I could literally feel the tension through the phone as the breathing got even heavier and more rapid.

Finally, she couldn't stand it. “ You can do a background check on me! I haven't ever been in the paper for anything like that!”

“ Julie, do you know what today is?”

“ It's Friday.” An exasperated pause. “Are you messing with me?”

“ Happy April Fool's Day!”

A short silence as I heard her breath catch, followed by some declarations I won't quote here.

Then we both laughed and I knew everything was okay.

But she did vow revenge.

“ The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.” I swear it was an accident. Sort of.

You see, we were on our first date. We had gone to Longhorn Steakhouse in Topeka for a late lunch. We laughed, talked, and started getting to know one another better. It was all going so well.

One of the things that happened is that when Julie excused herself, I called her cell phone right away, hoping she had taken it with her, and that I could cause a little excitement or consternation in stall number 2. Well, she had left her phone in her purse in her seat, and when it went to voicemail, I started leaving her a message and then saw her coming back. I then started acting like I was talking to Terry (all the while still on her voicemail), acting like he was saying we had a surprise load and I would have to leave right away, that kind of thing.

When she discovered what I had done, we both laughed for a long time. It was a good beginning. Until afterward.

We finished our meal, finished tormenting the poor server dude, and we walked outside, still laughing and joking around.

Suddenly, I knew it was coming. You know how you know it's gonna happen, but you're not sure just how serious or loud it's going to be? I thought I knew myself pretty well in this regard. Not nearly as well as I should, it turns out.

I thought it was going to be silent. Honest to the Lord, I did.

The moment finally came to launch or abort, and I felt confident that it would pass unremarked since Julie was a safe enough distance away. Past the point of no return now.

When an older couple walking across the parking lot at Olive Garden hundreds of feet away turned around to see what the noise was, I knew I had grossly miscalculated. And it was too late. It was one of the loudest and longest of my career, and in the right setting, it would have been a proud moment.

The right setting was not a first date.

Julie heard the offensive cacophony, and started running away quickly.

“ Nice icebreaker, Allan!”

There was a moment of awkward silence as the aftershocks of the blast subsided, and then we both started laughing.

At that moment, I knew I could fall in love with this woman.

And I have.

There is much more to this story, but that is enough for now. Our journey together so far has been one of the greatest joys of my life.

Until next time . . . remember that there is a time and place for everything . . .

Allan

"Constantly Changing"

[If you are reading this blog entry on Facebook and the formatting is messed up like it has been lately, you can go to http://blog.allanmills.com to read it with the correct formatting. Sorry for the inconvenience but FB doesn't always play nice when it pulls them over. Thanks for your company wherever you're reading this.]

“ Constantly Changing”. I borrowed the title of this blog entry from one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands, Jerusalem. The song “Constantly Changing” is from their 1981 album, Warrior. I was surprised just doing a by-chance-just-in-case search on Youtube that there is a great video of this song here from the 1980's (and you can tell it's from then but for fans of Jerusalem, it's great). Lyrics to the song are here.

I first heard the phrase “change is the only constant” when I was working at Charles Schwab back in the 1990's, as a reference to the company's continual evolution and innovation to meet the needs of our customers.

Because so many things seem to be changing for me personally right now, and that force of change is echoed in the larger world in significant ways, it seemed a good theme for this blog entry. I don't know for sure where it's going to go yet, but I hope you will stick around for the trip.

Leaving OZ – wait a minute, not so fast! From the time I came to Topeka in January, 2010, I have been focused on leaving at the right time. At first, I thought I would meet my obligation to be here for a year (which I committed to in order to qualify for the sign-on bonus that was my primary motivation for coming here in the first place), and would then go back on the road but be based in Dallas.

That year has come and gone, and I'm still here.

I wrote a couple of entries ago about the “ Possibility” that seemed to characterize the work going on in my heart at the beginning of this year. Included in that mix was an openness in my heart to relationship once more for the first time in years.

In January, I began talking to a very nice woman here in Kansas, and thought that might lead to something substantial, and would therefore anchor me more firmly in Kansas – potentially the rest of my life. As it happened, things didn't progress very far before we both lost heart for its potential.

(I heard that! What do you mean, “ Well that's one area that doesn't seem to be changing”? Who said that anyway? Don't make me call Blog Security to this entry! Well, anyway . . .)

Then I thought that since Terry is engaged to be married, I would leave Kansas when we no longer shared an apartment – but I was having thoughts of being based in Georgia again instead of Dallas for now. I had actually decided to leave when our apartment lease is up at the end of April, and even started preparing for that change, talking to my family and friends about it.

But the week after I'd decided to leave, Terry and I had a long talk on the road, and for various reasons, it seemed the only right thing to do was to stay here a little longer than I had anticipated. In some ways, I feel like Dorothy must have felt when the Wiz is in the balloon on his way back to Kansas, and she misses it, and is stuck in OZ. Of course, I was trying to get away from Kansas, but that's a minor technicality, isn't it?

Ironically, days after I decided to stay in Kansas after all, some things happened with Jon and his family that caused my connection to them to be even more significant, and that confirmed for my own heart that I had made the right decision. How often have I wished to have those confirmations before the fact – or at least a little hint? (Oh, now that's just going too far – so you don't think I could take a hint even if it was given, huh? [You guys see what I have to put up with here?]) – but that's not how things work generally in my experience. And, as I have said so many times in this blog over the past year: the important thing is not where we are or what we are doing but the condition of our hearts at any given time.

And, along with staying in Kansas, I've also gotten a car after a year of Terry letting me use his truck, and I'll be getting a new roommate, a guy Terry and I work with named Ernie – a good guy.

So the sum of the situation is this: in the middle of all the change, it turns out that the main thing supposed to change (in my mind) is remaining the same after all.

Will I ever leave Kansas? Anyone have any heels I can click?

Until next time . . . celebrate “ constantly changing” . . . blessings and love to you all!

Allan

"And Now You": Remembering Deb

[My cousin, Deb Wilson, passed away today – February 18, 2011 – her birthday. We all process our grief in different ways – one of the ways I express grief is by writing. If you knew Deb, I hope this encourages you to think about your own special memories of Deb. I love you, Deb.]

Hey Deb . . .

I just found out that you have left us, and I wanted to write this to help me think about all the special memories I have of you.

I know it might be a while before you get around to reading this, because I know you are enjoying a special reunion with everyone there – your Mama and Daddy, Harold, David, Jimmy, B.J., and so many others. Lord, sometimes it seems like I have more family there than here – and now you. Please tell everyone there I love and miss them – especially my Boe.

Don't worry about trying to answer this letter – I'd probably end up like Nanny said she'd be with Boe. You remember that don't you? You, Nanny and me were at her house one Saturday night sittin' in the kitchen. I had just made the regular Saturday trip to Zaxby's to get us all something to eat, and we were just visiting.

I don't remember how it came up, but Nanny started talking about this cousin (I don't remember who it was, but I think it was a cousin on the Rice side of the family) whose husband passed away. Well, she was telling Nanny how she felt like her husband was still with her, went everywhere with her in the car, and how she would just talk to him and he talked to her. Nanny said she'd always say something like, “we went to the store, we went here or we did this.”

I was living in Florida back then when Nanny was talking to this cousin, and Nanny was wanting to come down and see Charlotte and me. Well, this cousin mentioned that she was going to Florida (she said it like “we are going to Florida”), and invited Nanny to ride down with them. Nanny said she told her she wouldn't ride with her across the street if her dead husband was in the car. “No sir,” she said, “I ain't goin' nowhere with you, and you can mark that down.”

I remember you and I both just cracked up. Then I said, “Well, what if Boe came here to talk to you?”

She said, “If Boe Mills ever comes here to talk to me, he'll be talkin' to his-self, 'cause I'll be gone. You know, I'll take off runnin'.”

Another thing I remember when I'm thinking about all the times we shared together is the time back in 1988, when I was in Rome for the summer. One Thursday night, we were all – you, your Mama, Mary, Nanny and me – just sittin' in Nanny's kitchen talking and playing dice. Somebody mentioned how they'd love to go to the mountains and Nanny said, “Well, let's go. They ain't nothin' tying me down.”

That settled it. We were goin' to the mountains that next morning.

Well, you and Phoebe went home to get packed, and way up in the night – Lord, it must've been after midnight, me and Nanny were sittin' around the kitchen table, and Nanny said, “Lord, I don't think I'm gone be able to sleep a wink, shore 'nuf. Why don't we just leave now?”

Of course, Mary had gone to bed and wasn't planning to get up at midnight to leave for the mountains, so when Nanny went in there to get her up, Lord, you shoulda heard Mary! I can't even write what all she said seein' where this letter is goin' and all. But you know Mary, so you know what I'm talkin' about.

Well, then she called up to your house, woke you and Aunt Phoebe up, and told you we were leaving right then, to gather up your things, and get down there. And I can hear your Mama saying, “Well, Eula!” just as plain as anything.

But, we got all packed up, and we all piled in that little white car Nanny had. I reckon it musta been 1 or 2 o'clock when we pulled out of the driveway. I drove, and here we went up to Cherokee.

Well, we pulled into Cherokee about 6 or 6:30 that morning, and of course by the time we got there all any of us wanted to do was sleep. So here we go a-lookin' for a motel room. Well, every last place in Cherokee, North Carolina, was full – I mean, we couldn't find nothin'. 'Course, Mary let Nanny know what she thought of her idea to leave in the middle of the night to come up to the mountains. I remember we were all pretty ill.

We had to just wait at one of those motels til somebody checked out around 9 or 10 o'clock, and they let us have the room as soon as it was clean. And I remember we all just slept the whole day away just about.

You know, that was one of the funnest trips I've ever been on. We had so much fun! I remember when we drove over the mountain to Gatlinburg one day on that trip. Nanny's car started overheating, and here we go tryin' to pull over on the side of the road going up this mountain., and there wasn't hardly any room before the road just fell away down the side of the mountain – no guard rail or anything. I remember Nanny and your Mama were as nervous as if we had dynamite in the trunk of that car. Of course, Mary got so irritated with them, she was fit to be tied – but she wasn't worried about fallin' off the mountain. And you didn't say a word.

But we did okay, and everything after went smooth as far as I remember. I know we all had the best time.

I will always treasure the time I lived in Rome a few years ago and you and I were next door neighbors and friends. I never felt closer to you than that time. And one of the things I remember about that time is the Sunday morning you called me to tell me something was wrong with Patches. I remember us all going over to the vet out in Armuchee, and him telling us there was nothing he could do, so he put Patches to sleep. One of the hardest things I've ever had to do was carry Patches out in the back yard at your house, dig the hole, and bury her with you standing there. I think we both cried all day that day.

I remember the times you and I went to Alabama to see different folks and the times me, you and Mama went out to eat.

I remember calling you every week when I was on the road. I don't think I ever called you without trying to mess with you on the phone. There was Mr. Sassafras telling you that you needed to come over to the Walmart in Lindale (and they don't even have a Walmart, do they?) and work a double shift to fill in for somebody on vacation. There was Rev. Mac Fleetwood calling you about $5 that was taken out of the offering plate at a revival when you were about 11 or 12 and asking for it back. There was attorney Bruce Shenanigan calling you investigating you for stealing some rich lady's identity up on Saddle Mountain and goin' on a spending spree.

You always just laughed and said “Allan, what are you doin'?” or you'd say, “Allan I know that's you.”

Well, I know you've got forever, but I don't want it to take you forever to read this, so I will end this here, and just say that I love you and miss you and I can't wait to see you and everyone else.

Allan

Possibility: Christmas and Matters of the Heart

Christmas 2010: Possibility. From the most familiar version of the Christmas story found in the gospels, Luke 2, there is this recorded announcement by angels to shepherds in verses 13 and 14 (NIV):

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
   and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

With the advent of God into the world he created in the person of his son, Jesus, God anticipates the life, death, burial and resurrection of the Christ (the Messiah, the anointed one) – in short, what I will refer to as the finished work of Jesus Christ – and announces the fact that he is at peace with man (and, through man, all of creation), that his favor and good-will extend to all of us.

Because Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose, the possibility for entering into real, vital, personal relationship with God exists. A relationship of parent-child; God as father, me as his son.

Before Jesus, a covenant based in law, with its commands, requirements, obligations, impossible demands, doomed to fail from the beginning, ruled, resulting in a religious system based on performance and resulting only in condemnation and failure.

The advent of Jesus and all that followed abolished performance-based religion and law forever (the NIV in Hebrews uses the accurate rendering “once and for all” when it speaks about this), and made possible true relationship with God, not based on performance or some kind of rule-keeping tally, but simply based on trust.

God's object from the very beginning has been relationship with us. And God's motivation, character, goal has been love. Nothing else.

And because of Jesus and all that he did, that relationship with God is possible.

Sadly, this good news has been co-opted into a religion based on performance and rule-keeping that shackles many people who want relationship, and alienates many others who might otherwise seek it out.

So, here is the message of Christmas, distilled into just a few statements that I would say is the good news – the gospel:

• God loves you and desires relationship with you;
• Because of the life and finished work of Jesus God is absolutely at peace with you; he is not angry with you;
• God's desire is not to get you to behave in a certain way, to “live right”, to do certain things and not others; God's desire is to make you whole in your heart (where your life is centered and out of which all else, good and bad proceeds), and out of that wholeness to live eternally in relationship with you as your father;
• There is nothing between you and God at this moment – no sin, no failure, no action, word or attitude – there is nothing between you and God except your ignorance or unbelief of that fact. All that stands between you and relationship with God is your trust in that fact – that God really is at peace with you and loves you – no strings attached – and desires nothing from you but relationship to him.
• Repent (change your mind), believe this good news, and embrace God with your heart. That's all there is to it.

If you want to read another approach to this idea, you can read my blog entry, “ Stop Trying to Please God”.

Matters of the Heart: Possibility. Now, I will get personal; this part is mostly, for me, more of a journal entry than part of a blog entry. But feel free to peek over my shoulder. I hope you will – you know, I enjoy your company on these little visits.

This blog began as the result of my return to faith, my return to relationship with God, after years of anger, denial, mistrust, hurt, wounding, and wandering. A return to possibility.

From last December until about April, I went through a process of healing in my heart (coming into more wholeness of heart, to cast it in terms I used in the section about Christmas). I was reconnected to many things that I thought were dead, gone, lost forever. I was put back in touch with possibility.

You can read about this journey, if you are interested, in what I call The Vision Cycle , outlining a dream and vision for ministry as I conceived of it earlier this year.

Sometime in May, and continuing until very recently, I've gone through a time of feeling growing disconnection from those things, or my idea of those things and how they were supposed to work themselves out. When I felt the reconnection to possibility, to dreams and ideas I thought had perished from my heart forever, I began to try to figure things out, schedule how things were supposed to happen, to help God work this out.

Of course, it didn't happen like I thought it would. It didn't look like God was moving at all the way I thought he would – and should.

Then, over a period of several months, most of this year, something else occurred that took me by surprise and touched an area of my heart which I also thought was long dead, gone, lost, and – for my part – willingly left behind as something I didn't want or need, something that only complicated all the other possibility that God had opened my heart to earlier this year.

For most of my life, I desired relationship. In my earliest journal, from 1976, when I was only 11 years old, the most common topic is just that: my desire for relationship, for a wife, for marriage. At the time, that desire focused itself on a 9-year-old friend of my sister's. The earliest book I wrote about reading in those days (even though I read much more, as I always have) was a book about dating and marriage.

Even after I became committed to ministry as the focus and priority of my life at age 14, I envisioned that eventually that ministry would have as one component a relationship out of which that ministry would proceed.

When I married Charlotte, I thought that was the relationship I had been longing for; and, indeed, in many ways for most of our marriage, it was exactly that. I loved completely and deeply, with abandon; in short, as I have written elsewhere, “in those ten years, I loved for a lifetime.”

When that relationship ended, the hurt, wounding, and grief was just as complete and deep, just as with abandon, as our love had been. Part of my heart died, and I thought it was beyond reviving.

Well, over the course of much of this year, through some innocent circumstances, and without my even suspecting it, my heart has been touched, revived to possibility, in this area. Maybe I could love again; maybe I want to love again.

After years of denying it, of proclaiming to those who voiced their thought, especially that they were praying for me about this, that “the last thing I need or want is a relationship. Never again. Not for me. Save those prayers – you're wasting your time,” I find myself open to this possibility.

Of course, there is a context for this opening of my heart to possibility. Suddenly, quickly, and totally surprisingly to me, it wasn't just a general, ephemeral idea, but it was the possibility of relationship with a particular person, whom I knew only casually through other circumstances which had resulted in some level of friendship.

So, as things happen, I decided (after much debate and discussion with myself, God and others – mostly Terry, my great friend and confidante in things great and small) to see if this wonderful woman would be interested in going out, to explore possibility, to get to know one another better in that context.

As it happened, I did go on a date, much to my surprise and delight, something I thought I'd never even desire to do again.

Also, as it happened, while we remain friends, it was clear that she was not in the same place as me with the idea of possibility where I was concerned. In short, she said very nicely and gently, that even if she were interested in that possibility (for serious relationship), it would not be me that she would be interested in. Say that however you want, but the result is the same: I am not her type, I'm not a person she is or could be attracted to.

So, just as before when I felt reconnected to possibility in areas of ministry and purpose, so now I am reconnected to possibility as to relationship only to be firmly disconnected from my idea of how that possibility might work itself out in fact.

And, on this Christmas day, 2010, here I sit: my heart open to possibility of things that I thought were long dead, gone, vanished, never to return, but feeling very disconnected from my idea of how those things would unfold in my life, choices and circumstances.

I sit on the cusp of possibility, but with no idea how those things are to work themselves out in my heart. I am clueless. And I hate that.

But, that is exactly where God wants me. God's priority in my life (and in yours, my dear reader) isn't whether I'm in ministry or driving a truck; in a relationship or single; his priority is, as it always has been and always will be, bringing me into wholeness of heart out of which I can relate to him in the fullness he desires for all his children.

And, to be quite honest with you, for me and for you, God cares little (relative to other things) exactly what circumstances that wholeness takes place in. He does place desires in our hearts, and I believe he does have purposes and plans for us; but those are secondary to his primary goal of reaching my heart, your heart, and bringing us more fully into relationship with himself.

So, what am I to do with this desire for ministry, and now, this surprising desire for relationship? I do not know. And, when my heart is open to God's love and influence, I do not care.

In those moments, I only want to be in this place where God has me, this place of possibility, this place of becoming whole in heart, of coming more fully into relationship with him. In this place of possibility, if I allow this work of healing toward wholeness proceed, the rest of it will work itself out, and I will have the wisdom I need at the time I need it.

My prayer for this coming year is that I would keep my heart in this place of possibility, of openness to God and whatever he has for me, no matter what that is. And, that's my prayer for you, too.

Cast Away. In this context, I will mention that, as I do every year near Christmas, I recently watched one of my favorite movies, Cast Away, again. Toward the end of the movie, Tom Hanks talks about this idea of possibility in the context of what has happened to his character in the movie.

I link to this Youtube video which contains that monologue: Cast Away.

“ You never know what the tide will bring in.”

Until next time . . . live in possibility . . .

Allan

Links in A Wonderful Chain of Circumstance

If you have read either of my blogs very much at all over the past several years, you know that I love and make much of those seemingly unrelated circumstances in which one thing leads to another, and ends up making a beautiful pattern upon one's life. So it is in this entry.

This American Life:  “Going Big”.  For several years, after being introduced to it by Terry when we first started teaming in the spring of 2007, I have listened to the weekly public radio program This American Life on XM Radio. It is by far my favorite program of any kind on radio or TV. For the past couple of years, I have downloaded the weekly podcast of the show. I usually put several shows on a memory card, and Terry and I listen to the show when we are both up and awake on the road.

Several weeks ago, during one of our TAL marathons, we heard an episode that originally aired in 2008, “ Going Big”. The first segment in that program is about the work of Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone.

I was riveted to my seat as I listened about the pioneering work being done with children and families in Harlem, and I immediately began to assimilate ideas from what they were doing with what I eventually want to do with Our House, as well as in my current work with Jon through Big Brothers.

The segment on TAL was based on a book written by Paul Tough . . .

Whatever It Takes.The book of that title tells the story of the work of Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone. I found it and checked it out from the library the next time we were home.

One of the most life-altering parts of this story was a section in the book in which Paul Tough does a survey of various views and studies from the past 40 or 50 years looking at the causes and possible solutions to endemic poverty, especially in urban settings. Some of the more recent work focused on children and how and why some children perform better in school than others, including in standardized testing used to gauge progress of children across the country.

What these studies reveal, and one of the core focuses of the work of Harlem Children's Zone, is that the primary determining factor for how well children will eventually do in school, and, typically, in later life, is the verbal stimulation or lack of it and the type of verbal and personal interaction children are exposed to in the first three years of their lives.

Let that sink in: the words a child hears, the kinds of words they hear, and the level and type of direct interaction a child has with his parents before that child turns three in large measure determines the chances that child has for the rest of his life.

There are many reasons for this, perhaps, but one of the most interesting elements of how all this works is the fact that during those formative years, a young child's brain is still literally growing and developing, creating the neural pathways in the brain that will be the foundation for the rest of that person's life. And a primary driver of how many and what kind of connections the brain forms are literally words – the amount and the kind of words.

As a Christian who believes that the Bible speaks a great deal about the importance of words and their power to create and destroy, this information took on even greater significance for me, especially as I think about the work I have done and want to do with children and families – the work I'm doing with Jon right now.

It makes the importance and responsibility of being a parent or other influence in a young child's life take on even more significance than I had imagined. And a primary driver of what direction that influence and parenting will take is based on something we rarely even think about: words, verbal interactions, reading, and all else associated with those things.

Waiting for Superman.  So, while I'm reading, thinking about, meditating on, and praying about what I've digested in Whatever It Takes, last weekend after my time with Jon, I decided I might like to go to a movie. I got online and was thinking about going to see The Social Network, so I was checking showtimes for that.

I glanced down and saw a movie I'd never heard of:  Waiting for Superman. The description said it was a documentary focusing on educational reform. It was produced by the same folks who made the documentary (which I haven't seen) An Inconvenient Truth.  Since all this stuff from the book was still on my mind so strongly, I decided to see what they had to say in this movie.

I couldn't believe it when the documentary first started: the first voice and face I saw was Geoffrey Canada, who was one of the major focuses of the movie's discussion of pioneers and reformers who are leading the way in transforming the education of young children. Talk about getting my attention!

The documentary was excellent and it continued the process I had begun with that episode of TAL in focusing my thinking and ideas around this issue, and what I eventually would like to do with Our House.

A Chance for Application.  I've heard many times, mostly in the context of biblical truth for Christians, but it's equally applicable to other contexts as well, that “it's not the truth you know but the truth you apply that changes your life.” In other words, it's not enough to get information and knowledge, but what you do with it, how you incorporate it into how you live your life, that makes the difference.

Another way I've heard it expressed is the difference between simply having information in your head and a living understanding in your heart. Until something gets into your heart, where the rest of your life is centered and from which all else proceeds, good or bad, it makes no real difference.

So I've got all this information and it's challenging my thinking and has huge implications for the way I will approach the work of Our House one day. But what am I going to do about it now, what difference is it really going to make in my life right now?

Enter Jon. Ironically, at just the time I'm encountering all this, Jon's grandmother tells me that the one area he needs help in especially in school this year is reading, vocabulary, verbal skills. Anyone who is around me even a little while knows that reading is one of the passions of my life, as is writing; well, anything to do with words.

So the stage is set to put some of these things into practice in the small scale work I'm doing with Jon here in Topeka. It will be a classroom for both of us. I will keep you posted.

The Power of Influence.  I include this in a separate section because, even though it involves Jon, it doesn't have anything to do directly with what I've been talking about in that very cool chain of circumstance, and took place a while before I heard the program on TAL that started that process.

A few weeks ago, Jon was having some problems in school, both behavioral and academic. One day when I went by Jon's house for our regular time together, his grandmother told me about what was going on, and she told me she was at a loss about what to do, and she asked me for my help. She gave me copies of all the daily progress reports from this school year so far in order that I could see exactly what, according to his teachers, he was having difficulties with.

Jon and I hung out at the house for part of the day, and while we were working on other things, I had a chance to read through all those reports. And I was left wondering just how I thought I could make a difference in this situation. I mean, I'm not around during the week when Jon's in school, so tutoring him in a traditional sense was not an option. And we're only around each other a few hours a week on the weekend, and a few minutes on the phone during the week.

Then, that brought to my mind the even larger questions about how much influence on Jon's life I could really expect to have. I mean, he loves me, respects me, and he enjoys the time we spend together each week as much as he enjoys anything else in his young life. But, against the backdrop of all the other influences in his life, how could I imagine I could make even a ripple on the surface of his life for the long-term, and especially in something so central as his education?

My thoughts had taken a rather negative turn, as you can tell, and I was frankly discouraged, and felt really helpless and powerless. That in spite of the fact that over the past twenty-five years working with kids and their families, I know first-hand the power of influence one can have for good or ill on other lives.

So, as I was sitting there reading all this stuff, every once in a while glancing up at Jon who was working on some kind of art project with glitter glue, I prayed, asked God for ideas and wisdom for this situation, and trusted that he would somehow influence me so that I could influence Jon.

I finished reading all these reports, sighed, closed the folder, and looked over at Jon. I called him over and had him sit down across from me, and we were knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye, face-to-face. I told him I'd just read over all the things from his teacher (he was there when his grandmother was talking to me about all this, so he was aware of this).

We talked about the difficulties he was having, and about different ways of handling frustration, anger and disappointment. I encouraged him to ask for help before it got to the point that all his emotions fought their way out in acting out or other behaviors.

I told Jon that I would be keeping up with how things were going at school. I told him that I knew he could do his best – and that all he needed to do was the best he could do. (One of the problems he was having was caused by frustration in feeling like he was falling behind the other kids, and he would just get to the point of giving up and quitting altogether.) I encouraged him to not compare himself with the other kids and how he thought they were doing, but to do the best he could do, ask for help, and that would be good enough.

I told him that if he could do his best, and could try the different ways to deal with anger and frustration that we had talked about (we even role-played a little bit), over the next few weeks, at the end of that time, if he had shown some progress, we would do something special that we wouldn't ordinarily do. I didn't have a clue what that would be, but I thought I would have time to figure it out.

All that was just sort of a shot in the dark. I didn't know how much, if anything, would even be in Jon's awareness come Monday morning when school started.

The next Sunday, when I went by his house, I pulled up and Jon came running out the door yelling, “ Allan! Allan! I had a good week in school!”

So it began. I hugged him and told him how proud I was of him. That was over a month ago. Since that time, he has not had one negative report from school, he's been doing his work, making progress, and asking for help. Every time we talk on the phone or see one another, the first thing he tells me is that he's had a good week that week at school. All confirmed by his grandparents and teachers.

So today, we did our special thing: we went to Kansas City to Dave and Buster's and spent the whole afternoon playing video games, having fun, laughing and celebrating.

Never underestimate the power of influence and how much of a difference you can make in another person's life.

That's it for now. Until next time . . .

Allan

Ugh! Duh! Aah!

Ugh! Or, how I became my own object lesson. I begin this entry with a recent post from Facebook:

Ugh! Wednesday - is that all? 3rd load aft vacation and it feels like the 50th. My sign that this account has served its purpose? Pray for me ... and thanks.

I had just come back from a wonderful week in Georgia ( some photos on Facebook), visiting family and some friends. I woke up and the day just started off with some small frustrations, even before I began driving. I thought, “I just got back from vacation, and I already feel like I need another one after two days at work!”

Have you ever felt like that?

I thought maybe so.

This Facebook outburst was the cumulative result of several months of frustration, discouragement, and just feeling disconnected from so many things I felt like God was reconnecting me to over the past year or so.

I had moved to Topeka to take this job, which I thought would propel me toward paying off my debt so that I could (1) move back to Dallas; (2) get off the road; and (3) follow my heart's desire to work in ministry again. I hoped that my year's commitment here in Topeka would bring me to that point.

However, things haven't sped up quite as fast on my financial situation as I'd hoped (warning: gross understatement in last sentence).

I began to be discouraged and frustrated because things weren't happening the way I wanted or as fast I wanted them to. I began to feel disconnected, all alone in this place I like well enough, but have virtually no connections in.

I began to focus on my circumstances, alone-ness, and frustrations with work, which was beginning to feel more like a job than something I've always loved doing. My thoughts turned away from focusing on positive things and turned inward.

That was the general context for the Facebook entry I quoted above. You get the picture.

Duh! Or, it's all about the heart. A few hours after that first Facebook post, I posted this:

After my earlier post today I spent abt 150 miles gnawing on the bone of discontent before realizing (Duh!) that perhaps it would help to refocus my energies on my blessings. (Ya think?) So to that end, I'm thankful for: God's love and mercy in my life even when I'm stubbornly hard-headed; family & friends; I have a job; my ministry w/Jon. Hmm... I feel better already. What are you thankful for?

I have written before in this blog about the primacy of the heart as it affects and determines everything else about our lives, especially here.

I was focusing on my circumstances, living in my emotions, and when that happens, it influences your thoughts, your beliefs, and, ultimately, your choices. I began to get sucked into the illusion that my problems were all out there somewhere – if only my circumstances would change, if only those idiots would change what they are doing (aside: have you ever done that in a relationship? Thought that if only that other person would change it would make things better, and you'd be okay?), if this, if that.

Allowing those things to be the focus of my attention closed my heart from the influence of God, his love, and his purpose to bring me into wholeness, health, singleness of heart. He was there, he was speaking, reaching out to me in love and compassion, but I had closed my heart to him and his influence in my life in these things.

Okay, so I'm driving down the road toward Denver through western Kansas and then eastern Colorado, “gnawing on the bone of discontent” as I said in my Facebook post. At some point, I just had this thought: “It's not really about all this stuff you're focusing on, you know. It's not about stuff out there somewhere. It's all about your heart. The problem, if there is one, is in your heart, not in all these things you are so frustrated about.”

Hmm. I turned that thought over for a few minutes. Finally, I thought, y ou know, that's right.

“ Well,DUH!” Smack on the forehead time. I've discovered fire, reinvented the wheel. Some kind of Einstein. I've only been exposed to this truth about the heart in different ways for the past 15 years or so. I've only been around this mountain about a million times before.

Does that ever happen to you? Do you go through different versions of the same struggle, have to learn and re-learn (seemingly) the same lessons?

Okay, a little sidetrack here. I'll come back to the point in a little bit. This is one reason why focusing only on your performance, on your external behavior, on what you do and don't do never leads to real victory or change, and it is the primary weakness of performance-based religion. If you are trapped on a legalistic treadmill where your relationship to God, and how you evaluate your life is simply based on how much you read your Bible this week, how much you prayed, whether you went to church, gave in the offering, the clothes you wear, you will always be focused on the external, trying to force change on your heart from the outside. And it never, ever works.

When I was a teenager, and then into my 20's, that kind of thing was my focus. I did all the right things, learned all the right things, said all the right things. And, yes, I did have a real heart-relationship with God, like many people under the tyranny of performance-based religion.

But, because my focus was on how things looked, what other people perceived about me, I began to fall into this trap that I could never be vulnerable, could never let other people see me struggling, could never allow others to see that I didn't have it together, that I wasn't really the star of the youth group, and later, the mighty man of God with the successful ministry.

I hid my struggles, my failures, my weakness. I was following the example of Arthur Dimmesdale even before I had read the book. All because I focused primarily on the external instead of my heart.

I carried this into my marriage to Charlotte, and because we both hid our struggles to preserve the illusion of peace, were so concerned about what the other thought, it contributed to the end of our marriage. Because if you start that way, when things get to a certain point, you will begin to blame that other person for the things that are wrong, try to change them, manipulate them so that you will feel a certain way or be happy.

And that can lead to disaster.

Okay. We can go back to what we were talking about before. I'm through with that.

Aah. Or, how I opened my heart. So, now I'm a genius and I've realized what's going on in this whole process. {insert pat on back here}

Now, how do I reverse the process, let my heart open up to God, his influence, his truth, his perspective? How do I go from looking at the external, with all its limitations and negativity, to looking at things the way I know God has for me – by faith? How do I un-goof-up my heart?

There are many avenues that God can use to gain access to our hearts, some of them the very things that you do if you are living life trying to measure up, get (or keep) God's approval or avoid his wrathful anger. Reading the Bible, praying, fellowshipping with others.

You see, beloved reader, it's not about what you do so much as why you do it . And I'm not talking about motivation here – or only motivation – when I was living my life regulated by all the things I had to do in order to be a “real” Christian, when I was striving for God's approval, and cringing from his disapproval, my motivation was just what it is now: I wanted to love God and serve him.

The difference, though – or one difference – is that when I do those things not to gain God's approval for what I do or don't do but because I am approved, loved and accepted through the finished work of Jesus Christ and my trust in that alone – only , then instead of trying to force change from the outside-in, God has access to my heart and change can come from the inside-out.

Okay, back on topic now. As I'm driving down the road thinking about all this stuff, it occurs to me that one avenue God has to influence my heart, and effect real change in my heart (which, don't forget, is the source of all else in my life, for good or ill – and yours, too), is thanksgiving.

So, pretty timidly at first, I start shifting my focus from all the things about my life that really, absolutely just suck right now, all the things I'm frustrated about or disappointed by, to the things I have to be thankful for, the blessings in my life. And I listed some of those things in the Facebook post.

It only took a little while, and it was like waking up to a different world. Instead of thinking about all the things that weren't working out the way I wanted, I'm thinking about how God isn't limited to what I can see, that his purposes go beyond the circumstances of this moment I live in. Suddenly, instead of a world of limitations, I can only see possibilities. And I realize, for various reasons, you know what, in spite of all these other things out there , I'm exactly where God wants me doing exactly what he wants me to do this moment.

None of those things I was so focused on before changed; but I had . And that always makes the difference.

So that's the Ugh Duh Aah saga. And not only do I go through the struggle, but then I write about it on Facebook, and then, even more publicly, here. Run out and grab the Scarlet Letter from Hester, and tatoo it to my chest for everyone to see.

God has a sense of humor. Learning a lesson and then serving as my own object lesson, and then screaming to the world, “Hey y'all! Look over here!” Great. Thanks, Lord.

Okay, you've all laughed just about enough. I think we can safely move on from this little lesson, don't you?

Please tell me you can relate to at least some of this.

Laughing in Nanny's Kitchen. A few years ago, I thought it would be a good idea to start collecting some of the stories my Nanny (what I call my grandmother) had told all my life about our family. So, as opportunity afforded, I began to record Nanny telling some of my favorite stories.

At the time, I put up a simple web site with those stories for any of our family that was interested. Then, when I changed web hosts, and got sick, and then started driving a truck living on the road, my old web pages just sort of grew weeds around them, links grew rusty, and technology left me in its dust. I always intended to start working on them again, updating them, but never got around to it.

However, one result of my visit to Georgia was that as some of us were talking about some of those stories, I thought about updating that site a little at least to get it working again now that I had the time and opportunity.

So, it's there again. And it's here if you're interested. Nothin' fancy, but you can hear the stories again. The audio quality isn't great, but, hey, at least it's something. LOL

Little bits of musical goodness, served up fresh. This is the part of my blog entry when I could write about books, movies, computers, my Little Bro Jon, or lots of other things. But, today, I feel like writing about music for some reason. It's been a while. (Well, it's been a while since I've written anything here.)

I love serendipity, and how many times otherwise disconnected things lead to something wonderfully unexpected. That's what's happened with all the things I'll write about here relating to music.

Who is that singing that song? While I was in Georgia, my brother-in-law, Shane, had this worship CD with music from various artists. I was familiar with some of it, but then I heard someone I'd never heard before.

“ Who's that ?” Answer: “ Kari Jobe.”

My favorite song from the music I heard is simply called “ Healer.” Follow the link to the Youtube video (one of several if you search, but I like this one). Lyrics here.

I didn't know when I asked about her that she was from Dallas, Texas. But, I'm not surprised.

“ Where Roses Grow.” Anyone who knows me well knows that for many years, I have loved the music of Christian rock band Resurrection Band, and I lived and worked in the ministry they are part of for several years in Chicago (and is where I met my wife Charlotte), JPUSA.

Well, just for kicks a few months ago, I did a search for REZ on Youtube. Among many other treasures I found was a live performance of my favorite REZ song (and one of my favorite songs period), “ Where Roses Grow.” It's pure blues, well done by any standard (secular or Christian), and the lyrics are powerful.

Other REZ goodness. Just some other links I found in that same Youtube romp and some following to some of my favorite songs from that concert (which I was there for when it was recorded in 1992), including the awesome sermon at the end by Glenn.

“ Shadows.”m Lyrics here.

“ In Your Arms.” Lyrics here.

“ Players.”  Lyrics here.

“ Alienated.” Lyrics here.

Can't leave out the signature “ Military Man.” Lyrics here.

I know, I know, why don't I just link to all the songs.

One last one, acoustic blues: “ I Will Do My Last Singing.” Lyrics here.

Glenn's sermon here.

Well, that about does it for this trip, folks. Thanks for coming along. I appreciate you sharing this time with me.

Love and blessings to you all . . .

Allan