parade fail

Be gracious with yourself. Take your screw-ups in stride.

I once participated in an Independence Day parade-I was 16 years old. My simple task was to sit in the back of a pickup truck and toss candy to roadside parade watchers. The parade kept a manic pace; sometimes we'd idle for a few minutes. Other times, our truck would have to zip along to catch up.

A few blocks into our route, I spotted this girl I knew from school (she was watching the parade). It would be fair to say I was interested in getting to know her better. Maybe I was also interested in asking her out on a date at some point.

'Ah ... here's my chance to make a glorious impression,' I thought. My quickly-concocted plan: I could hop off the side of the truck, say hi and give her candy, and then keep moving with the parade ('Gotta run; I'll call you later!!'). Then, I could indeed call her later, continue chatting ... and perhaps ask her out on a date.

Seldom do plans this good come together this effortlessly.

'Let's roll,' I said to myself, swinging my legs over to hop off the side of the idling truck.

At that same moment, it lurched forward to keep with the parade pace.

It's quite astounding how, in an instant, good plans turn to rot. Instead of hopping off this truck, I was now falling off this truck.

Thankfully, I did not hit the road face-first. Instead, I sorta ... belly-flopped onto the street, about five feet in front of this girl (and her friends who were all watching with her).

Until I fell out from nowhere, she hadn't noticed my participation in this parade. She for sure noticed now. The sting on my chest from hitting the pavement mirrored the sting of mortification I felt because I'd just wiped out before her very eyes.

It suddenly no longer seemed like the ideal time to chat. I'd just fallen off the back of a truck in front of her, and the parade continued moving. So I gasped out, 'Hey ... [lands on roadway] Oww!! ... Well, good to see you! Here's some candy -- gotta go!', and hurriedly shuffle-limped off.

Smooth. 

At that time, I felt unfathomably embarrassed.

At that time, I hoped no one witnessed what had just happened. At that time, I felt like I'd just socially kicked myself right in the teeth.

Perhaps, as you're reading this story, you're also remembering a time when you endured a similar embarrassment. Those moments stick in the memory bank. 

But at this time? It's one of my favorite stories to tell on myself.

If I'd face-planted out of a truck in front of my best friends, we would have laughed, and kept on laughing until we cried.

Slowly but steadily, I've come to learn that I can't totally trust my gut feelings about myself. I often overreact to my own screw-ups, and assume the worst fallout. In the moment, I seldom extend the grace to myself that I eventually will settle into later. I've learned that a lot of the time, my dear friends have a clearer view of me and my worth than I do.

Screwing up is a part of life. It happens to me. It happens to you.

Anyway, blessings on your day today. 

Perhaps you can reflect on some of your past screw-ups. Your perspective could be kinder now than it was before. That's the wiser posture to hold. Try to laugh at yourself when you can, and as your friends would laugh, from a place of love and warmth -- that's where much of grace resides.

satellites connect us

Sometimes in life, some event scatters a cluster of friends outward from a shared space and common timeline.

-High school graduation.

-A church youth group slowly ages out -- going its separate ways, ending up worlds apart.

-A team finishes a season.

-Last night of summer camp.

-A best friend from elementary or middle school moves away in the summer.

-The final night of a play, after striking the stage.

-End of a spring semester of college.

-College graduation.

 

Like an exploding star of memories and matter, what seemed like one friend nucleus becomes multiple paths, spreading outward ... and away.

 

"You don't have to go home, 

but you can't stay here" -Semisonic, 'Closing Time'

There's an excitement to these new paths. 

 

There's a poignancy to stepping off the old paths.

Maintaining these ties to our once-clustered loved ones takes intentionality that it didn't once require.

 

"Nothing gold can stay," the poet reminds us. "A time to keep, a time to cast away," the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us.

The proximity we shared (and sometimes took for granted, though honestly, we didn't mean to) wasn't meant for forever. Goodbyes come at some point. Our times together become scattered.

"I guess this is growing up" -Blink 182, 'Dammit'

But: we're not without some hope. The metaphor of you and your friends scattering like an exploding star--forever outward and away--thankfully isn't the most accurate metaphor. It just can't be.

Why: because, Lord willing, there will be times to reconvene. There will be times to re-gather. There will be times to mourn together, to be together, and to laugh together, in a shared physical time and place again.

My vote for a more accurate metaphor is this: maybe we're more like a satellites orbiting a moon.

 

Times will come when our links to our friends gets tenuous. They disappear to the dark side of the moon (so to speak), and our signal contact gets interrupted. From other people's perspectives, we go around that side of the moon as well. But they (and we) can come back around. Our signal contact gets restored.

It's something exceptional when you and your people reconnect. The most unexpected tears of joy I let out on my wedding day was in our receiving line, seeing my dear college friend Vicki greet me and my wife. I knew she'd be there, so her presence wasn't a surprise. A vital, lovely, loyal friend from such a formative time of my life, traveling such a long way to witness a life milestone of mine. We once saw each other every day, but those days are gone. Seeing her there mattered the world to me. I'll never forget it.

The orbits can align again, for a time. 

We do get some say in where our orbits steer us.

So hold tightly to each other while you're here, and you're together. Enjoy the now. Don't worry that it feels like it's slipping away too fast; you can't help that.

It's doesn't have to be the beginning of the end. But perhaps, it's actually the end of some beginning. 

Different can still be good, but it'll rarely be the same sort of good. It'll be a new, usually unanticipated sort of good. Prepare to make effort to stay in touch. Don't let sporadic contact dishearten you for long. Send a text. Write the note. Make the drive. Book the travel. Walk together. Tell them when something makes you smile because it reminds you of them. Send a text again.

There's just nothing like old friends.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end" -Semisonic, 'Closing Time'

McMadness meets Lent, meets me

My most formative memory of the annual Lenten season, oddly enough, has nothing to do with a church. It has no association with ashes, with penitence, or with Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness.

 

It has to do with fish.

 

Specifically, fried fish. Between a toasted bun. With one squirt of tartar sauce on the top part of the bun. And half a piece of cheese on the bottom part of the bun.

 

My first job was slinging burgers, salting fries, mopping floors, and forging memories at the Golden Arches itself-McDonald's. I first trained on the front counter registers (taking orders), but within a few months, I moved into the back grill area, to help prepare food.

 

The Filet-O-Fish sandwich was never a top-selling sandwich.

Sure, it had its fans. We always sold some of them. But it played a supporting role to the perennially popular Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and the Big Mac, or the McNuggets.

Because I worked while a high school student, I kept my availability limited during the school year. Monday evenings. Saturday, all day. And Friday nights, a 5-9:30PM shift.

 

It was one Friday evening in early March when I sauntered into work. "Busier than usual," I noticed. 

 

Multiple minivans in the lot. A line of minivans in our drive-thru line. Kids, so many kids in the lobby with their moms and dads. The kitchen staff looked bedraggled. They wearily greeted me as they welcomed the additional help. I tossed an apron over my purple polo work shirt, and surveyed the scene.

 

A large TV screen in the grill area showed the drive-thru orders coming through. Every order, weirdly enough, included our Filet-O-Fish sandwich. But not just one. 

 

Five Filet-O-Fish in one order. 

 

Four fish sandwiches for the next order. 

 

EIGHT Filet-O-Fish with the following order!

 

We could only fry 12 fish patties at a time. From frozen solid, to ready to serve, took about four minutes. When we need 17 Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, but we can only fry 12 fish patties at once, urgency and disbelief sets in immediately.

 

Flecks of tartar sauce splattered the walls. Globs of it dotted the floor. The kitchen looked like a mayonnaise and dill-inspired graffiti crime scene. The chaos. The carnage.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WITH ALL THESE FILET ORDERS?!?" I shouted to my manager. Unfortunately, my shouting coincided with a brief absence of conversational noise. Everyone heard me. Kids stopped sucking their straws to fix me with their gaze. Moms didn't look happy about what I'd just said in front of their offspring. 

 

My manager first tersely asked me to watch my language in front of the families, and then she told me. "It's Lent, and Catholics can't eat meat on Fridays."

 

At this point, I did faintly recall a large Roman Catholic parish less than two minutes driving distance away from our restaurant. So many young families attended there. "And we started a promotion until Easter -- the fish sandwiches are 2 for $2," my manager said.

We had no time to analyze the dogfight we found ourselves in. The scene grimly showed our uphill battle for that dinner rush. Minivan ... after minivan ... after minivan ... after minivan, all teeming with suburban families, carrying multiple children, all with appetites.

 

They all swarmed. They all wanted that fish sandwich. Many fish sandwiches. 

 

2 for $2!

 

Anytime we thought we could maybe start catching up, a bustling family lumbered through the door, five or six school uniformed kids in tow, ready to decimate our freshly fried fish catch.

 

Our tartar sauce dispensed from a caulk-gun inspired sauce gun that squirted a predetermined amount of sauce onto each sandwich. Those sauce canisters emptied fast. They dropped into the trash like shell casings from a cannon just fired. 

 

From 5-7:25PM, filet-scented bedlam plowed through our humble store that night. At some point, I transcended the chaos before me and entered some sort of Zen-like mental state of soldiering on, too numb to care, too disgusted by the tartar sauce splatter to notice much else. God help us.

 

For one Lenten season, you know what cruelly added to the frenzy? Those over-hyped Beanie Babies, also available along with the Filet-O-Fish deal for a limited time.

 

Thankfully, that's all behind me. 

 

It's been years since a flashback to those withering work nights woke me up in a sweat, swearing I could hear the beep of the fries that were finished cooking. Or the filet patties, ready to be put together and hurriedly given to some minivan stuffed with people.

 

The chaos. The carnage. 

where we belong

What becomes home? 

One of my favorite lyrics from any Bob Dylan song comes in 'Mississippi', a tune he wrote later in his career (Sheryl Crow also did a great cover). The song shambles and shuffles along, jammed full of evocative imagery. But then it drops this line: "You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way"

I love that lyric. Profound brevity. It captures an entire truth in 13 words.

The entire truth is this: some eras and places in life get so intertwined into us -- who we were when we were there, and whenever we resided there -- that when we leave, it's as though a bell rings and something changes, never to change back.

And of course, no one can unring a bell. 

What we call 'home' will change. 

Pragmatically speaking, I can still walk the halls of my high school. But of course, it wouldn't be the same as when I -- as a teen -- hustled from my locker to class, or to lunch, or to the bus. It was a home for me then, but that time is long time gone. I can always come back, but I can't come back all the way.

Where becomes home? We feel at home sometimes in life, uprooted during other times. If we stand in any place for enough time, we can't help but allow home roots to creep into the soil beneath us. We instinctively want to make a home out of wherever we are.

Depending on who, how, and where we were before college, college can quickly feel like a home -- where we can be ourselves (or a prototype of us), a foretaste of what's ahead. We find places. We live eras. We bond with people who love us as we are, even when we don't know who we are. We catch glimpses of what adulting can bring.

While senior year usually marks the peak high school experience, I'm convinced the college peak version of this is the junior undergrad year.

College senior year feels something like a concert encore: it's beautiful and often fun, and a joy. But everyone's also reaching for their car keys, thinking about getting out of the venue, and what's next. The show's almost over. 

By senior year, people get reasonably distracted by the array and approaching deadlines of possible next steps: graduation, looking for a job, figuring out a relationship, graduate school, year of service, marriage, now what?, maybe moving to a new city. It's not to say senior year can't be marvelous. It certainly can be! It just takes a lot of time to live in the moment. The senior year seldom affords that kind of time. But junior year -- that's a sweeter spot.

So to those who aren't sure where home is since coming to college, that's not just you. Home can be hard to find, and that's normal. The feeling of exile spreads through more human hearts than we might think. College tastes like that bizarre appetizer of some what comes next. Parts of the appetizer will make you believe you've arrived home. You may not be home, but you could be stealing glances of your future. How invigorating!

Home can be where you're from. It can also be more than that. It's a refreshingly elastic term. You don't always need the clear sense of where home is. Sometimes home finds you.

Your hometown could be called a home (if that's what you want). Yet while you're in college, going back to that place will feel like you somehow can't go back all the way. It'll be missing people and the faces of your peers. Something's different.

Can't unring the bell.

"So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight." -2 Corinthians 5:6-7

Songs About Home 

reflections on Heather's passing

As a kid, I presumed that people I went to school with, we'd all grow old to some agreed-upon ancient age -- an uninterrupted timeline.

Heather and I performed together in many plays through junior high and high school. That's how we met, and became friends. She handled a variety of roles: farcical invisible person in one play -- coming-of-age newlywed named Emily in 'Our Town' -- prophetess in another short story. 

Heather oozed an easy clarity and simplicity on the stage. Offstage, she was friendly, cheerful, buoyant. A warm, welcoming presence in the high school hallways. She volunteered as a manager for the varsity football team. She spoke at graduation.

As they always seem to say, her future shone brightly. I lost track of her after graduating.

Two years later: I was at college. My high school friend Anne lived in the same res hall I did. She called one Tuesday evening. She asked if I'd heard any news from home. I said I had not. She told me to come up to her room right away.

When I got there, I saw Anne's facial expression as flat -- though she knew she had to share something horrible -- and forced.

Heather. Our friend Heather was dead.

Dead from a highway car accident while driving home from college. A truck driver had fallen asleep, crossed the median, and hit her car.

Anne's voice sounded to me like she was talking while underwater -- this extra ambient noise flooded my ears while my eyes welled with tears. The news made me feel sad, tired, cranky, like I didn't want to eat -- and incredulous with disbelief. "What? How??!? Who -- OUR Heather? Are you sure?!? WHAT??!?" We sat there, crying, running out of what to say without repeating ourselves. 

Heather was the first person I knew who'd died this young.

Of course, we share connection to the people  from our high schools, our elementary schools, our middle schools. That common bond means something different for everyone, but it means something.

It's an awkward sort of grace to muck through the shared struggle of growing up. It helps to do so around others. We grow accustomed to the faces that comprise this backdrop, these months and years spent hustling to and from our lockers, forever speed-walking to get to our next class, or to lunch, or to practice, before the bell rang.

A part of me  hoped the world should at least slow down a bit -- as a small gesture of respect -- to honor this awesome person now gone from our sight. The world did no such thing.

My school assignments never stopped. Deadlines still loomed. Laundry kept piling up. We all still moved through the days of life too fast, not cherishing enough all the blessings before us.

Friends of mine said awkward stuff, trying to console me. I'm sure many of you have experienced this. At the time, I remember feeling supremely frustrated with their fumbling ineptitude. In retrospect, I not near as frustrated. They were trying.

Young, familiar faces filled the funeral service, which was at our high school. I wanted to be there, and also wanted to be anywhere else.

These years later, it still feels unfair.

It feels unfair that Heather's smile doesn't get to gradually collect the creases of age and life that we see in each other's faces at reunions. Sure, it still pains to be reminded of her absence, but it hurts differently than before. I also smile at recalling those slapdash plays we performed in so long ago. Good times, and some cool memories. Some pain remains, but the memories bring some grace too.

My pastor often says that to be sad is an act of sanity. It's proportional to feel sad about sad things. This makes sense to me, and relieves me. I haven't found a way to get over the sadness of losing Heather. And yet, we've had to unhurriedly learn to live with it.

To this day, a memorial marker for her stands at the entrance to my high school's football field. 

Heather's unfairly forever 19 years old.

mood :: mixtape

 "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." -Proverbs 16:9

 

Moving from one life stage to the next life stage should have clearer boundaries than it does. If I had my way, it'd be like the silence between two songs on a well-crafted mixtape.

But that's not how it usually goes.

Changing of life stages seems more like listening to the radio or Spotify playlist. Songs sort of crossfade together, but the songs rarely share the same key, tempo, or backbeat. So the crossfade sounds clunky, jarring, disjointed.

In my younger years, I'd craft many a mixtape for friends, crushes, acquaintances. If I included a song recorded from the radio, I wanted the entire song without a radio person's voice (a similar annoyance is when the GPS voice talks over your favorite part of a song to inform you of your next turn in two miles).

So for crafting a song running order, that brief space of silence did my mixtapes much good. No voice intrusions, no crossfade.

A tiny bit of silent space to demarcate life stages would also do some good. But that's not usually how it goes.

-Before graduating from high school, most seniors have figured out post-high school plans -- which is a crossfading one life stage with another.

-If you're shopping for new clothes at a store in public, you're required (by law) to shop while wearing clothes you already own. No one shows up to the store in their birthday suit (what else can be said about this?? -- some life crossfades are a net benefit for EVERYONE).

-You never know (at the time) when is the first time you make conversation with a lifelong friend. 

-When graduating college, the crossfade can start so early. What's the next step? Landing a job, graduate school, internship, year or two of volunteering. Something. The ceremony almost feels anticlimactic; a blast of dissonant trumpets amidst the crossfade of the rest of life.

And with each stage, the paths of beloved friends, which for many years have walked side-by-side, now chart different courses ... oh so gradually. It can be a mixture of excitement at what's coming next, and slow-motion heartache at the good that slowly fades out of sight.

There's many ways to look at how life moves from one season to the next. One way is that you're forever fashioning for yourself a mixtape, quite the playlist ... and you're doing so while living your daily, ordinary life.

Sometimes the transitions from one song to the next glide so seamlessly, and you think 'wow, that was smooth ... I am awesome. I've got life figured out.' Sometimes the crossfade between songs sounds raw, messy and abrupt, because that's also life, and you're going through it.

Some songs get added to the mixtape by someone else ... because it's a collaborative sorta endeavor, after all. 

Some songs will always break a piece of your heart.

Many songs cycle back though the playlist again, finding new energy in different life stages. 

Some songs only sound good when you hear them alone, driving at night in the summertime. 

Some songs will revive your spirit, again and again.

Many songs will appear once on your playlist, and they stick to that one life stage: a marker forever frozen to a time, a place, a person, an event.

Some songs you'll forget even made it onto the list. 

Many songs you'll never forget, but until you hear them again after a long time, you'll forget how good they really sound.

Some songs endure, and age well with you.

Hmmm ... maybe just maybe, as much as it annoys me at times, crossfades help.

Maybe just maybe -- as much as I'd wish to have all my life mixtape songs tidy, easily labeled and crisply demarcated -- that's just not how it usually plays out.