What I Defy Part 2

So, as i said in my last post, i will spend my entire life defying the culture we live in - suspect by now you are getting that... But there were 2 other reasons for choosing the word defy for the tattoo on my left arm. The first was expected when i got the tattoo and the 2nd has been pretty profoundly affecting me in the past several months. The second thing i intend to defy in my life is a little more complicated than the first. You see, i grew up in 2 churches for almost my entire life before i left home. I was kinda a loner of a kid, in spite of wanting desperately to have friends and be loved. i would always get excited when someone new moved into town, hoping that they would be the person who would be my friend. I dreamed of moving away and starting out new with friends and good times. I looked for attention and love wherever i could find it. But i did not find it in church. I learned about this Jesus in church - the one who loved the little children and included those who were cast out - and yet what i saw in church was hurt, exclusive and mean cliques, harsh and painful words, hypocrisy (like parents allowing other peoples' kids to do things at their houses that they knew the parents would not allow), gossip and boredom. I hated church so much that i would arrive with my parents, find a back stairwell that no one used, and sit there until everything was over and then come out and meet up with them again to head home. It was easier to run away than to battle. I determined at that time of my life that i did not want anything to do with a God whose people were this way and so i rebelled (there were other reasons too, but not for this post). What i saw at home was better, but not all the way - i saw parents who clearly loved me, but struggled a ton with loving each other. I saw a father who was consumed with making money, motivated out of love and desire to not leave us destitute should he die (which i think he expected at any moment), but nevertheless his focus on money was undeniable - sitting in church and writing on the tithe envelopes what his finances and savings looked like... I saw a mother who would run away from him and problems when she couldn't handle them. I heard tons about the rules i should follow, the damnation i would face if i died and was not living right (felt like i needed to live perfect, although i am not sure that was the intent), and felt the weakness of my life in trying to do what God wanted. For years i prayed nightly before i went to sleep that God would please forgive my sins as i was convinced that i was heading straight to hell. We did not attack the problems of our lives together with prayer. We did not speak of the wonderful grace of God and the joys of living for Him. We did not talk about freedom and hope and life and goodness. Mostly we were dominated by life and its problems. We lived in fear of death, of disease, of problems, of conflict, of money. It felt like a defeated life a lot of the time - we seemed to be getting by, waiting to live at best and at worst living to survive in fear and anger. I realized that my parents had once been very different; that they claimed to have met God and to have had their lives changed by Him. I realized that they had had profound effects on lots of people over the years for God, but i could not figure out why and i certainly did not see anything good in the church. I went my way in life - determined to do better, but not sure how. Then i hit my own rock bottom. Only 22 years old, i realized that i had no idea how to live life. I was broken inside - terribly - see the Sanctus Real song titled I'm not all right. In those times, i reached out to God, as did my new wife. We found Him. But I found Him in a strange way - personal, yet hard to believe in completely because of the distortions of my past. Then we found this really cool group of people that we loved and who loved us - we loved their kids and the kids loved us - calling us JasonandMelissa - as if there was only one of us, because we were always together. We learned from a grammy winning musician turned pastor (now a musician again)who understood God's love and grace so well. We hung out, did life, had lots of Oklahoma Mexican food and learned that maybe what i had seen as a kid was not all there was to God. But, at the same time i was encountering people at school who had this image of God and His people that was much the same as what i had seen growing up. They saw hurtfulness, judgement, harm, non-acceptance. They were talking about how hard it is to believe in God with all this suffering in the world. They talk about the God of child molesting priests and slaughtering crusades and Spanish inquisitions. It was strange to now be seeing the new and the old. I did not know what to do with it all at this part of my life, but was enjoying being accepted and loved for one of the first times in my life. I finished med school and went on to residency and there i encountered much the same. Residents who had little interest in God because of what they saw in the church and church people around them and other residents who were quick to exclude anyone who did not follow their list of rules. I saw despair in more forms than i can tell. Pain and heartache and loss and burden. I wrestled with God and tried to figure out who i was in the face of all this. The hurt in me was so big and so overwhelming at times i did not know what to do with it. Then we moved here - to Lafayette - and i began to truly journey with God - more and more deeply encountering Him as i tackled the pain of my past, grieved things i had never known i needed to, wept and prayed and hurt and also felt new freedom and peace and joy and then even goodness flowing from me and love for people and gentleness and patience and kindness within me - things that i am not sure i had ever really known before unless they were self-serving. i began to see people around me as wonderful and started loving them so much. Thing is, i went to church and saw many of the same things i had seen my whole life in church. I tried church leadership and boards and committees and i saw more of the same. Domination by rules in some churches, judgement and harshness and hurtfulness and in others feel good teaching that did not engage with the real cancers and death and pain that i see every day in the office. It was hard. Plus, i kept seeing people that had had the same kind of experiences that i had had in church growing up and many of them were saying to me that they would never go to church again. Some of them refused to even believe in God anymore because of it and some of them believed in God a ton, and talked to Him a lot, even read their Bibles, but they would NOT go to church. I had talks with gay folks who i cared about so much and listened to their feelings of hatred and betrayal at the church who would not love them. Their jeer was to quote the church saying, "Love the sinner, hate the sin," to me and then ask me who was loving them... Yet, at the same time i was meeting up with and loving people within the church who are kind, loving, accepting, tender, wise, gentle and generous. They inspire me. I now know preachers who love people more than their doctrine or their success. I have seen church people care for the people around them and graciously extend love even when it is hard. In short, i have seen church people who look a whole lot like Jesus - the real Jesus i know. So... I will defy the kind of distorted, mankind-dominated, self-focused, prideful, harsh, judgmental, mean-spirited, exclusive, messed-up kind of religion that has hurt so many people over the years, including me. I will intentionally spend a lot of my time trying to be divisive to any religiousness that is counter to the Truth of this wonderful God i serve. I will fly in the face of their rules when they are not founded on God. I will live "all in" for God and my love (only a gift from God) will defy their judgmentalism. I will forgive and not judge them either(only a gift from God too), but will love in the midst of their distortion - always always always pointing the way back to the God who has rescued me from the pit of despair i was in before i encountered Him. I will serve and sacrifice my entire life, everything (again only by His ability within me), for this amazing God of goodness and i will live this in the midst of the church, in the face of the church - with the intent to show them the wonder of this amazing God. And i will do it with a symbol of my defiance on my left upper arm. You see, i will simultaneously stand for all the judged people that have a tattoo in the world and for the wonderful love of the amazing God who established the church in the first place. My intent is to live out my life loving God and people and have church people ask me why i have a tattoo and then have the chance to tell them about this amazing God in my life...maybe in a way they never expected. And, my intent is to have some awesome conversations with some people i love dearly who have tattoos, who have no idea how much i love God, but who like the ink on my arm. We will have conversations about a God who loves people with tattoos as much as people without them. And how the people who judge them because of their tattoos or their long hair or the color of their skin or whatever superficialness they are being judged by do not well represent the God who i serve - the God who, when He walked on this earth, was accused of being a drunkard and hung out with the cast-offs of the society. Why did He? Because He loved them. He loved them. He loved them. He believed they had a beautiful future ahead of them. He believed they mattered! And so do i. (By the way, while i got the tattoo, me & the tattoo artists - now my friends - had a fantastic conversation about God...they are great guys who really struggle with how hurtful people are to them because of their skin) My hope is to be part of a church that loves people the way God does - in the meantime, i will defy anything that is contrary to the Goodness of God.

Why Defy?

Well, many of you know that a few months ago i got a tattoo. This is on left uppr arm and it says simply "defy" I thought and prayed for many months before deciding to finally go and get it done - the idea of something so permanent on my skin was not something to be entered into lightly and i knew it. Yet, the more i prayed, the more i felt certain that it was the right thing to do. Since having it done, i have been praying and thinking about how to tell the story of why it is so important to me. There are many people in my life who do not and will not agree with me doing it. In fact, i was raised to basically believe, either being told this or having the general idea portrayed, that tattoos are wrong and that people with tattoos are probably sinful, bad people, people to be feared. But then again, i was also raised to believe the Baptists were wrong and Catholics were more wrong, that going to movies was wrong and that dancing was wrong, so i will let you judge where all that goes... i have decided to tell the story in 2 parts - the first being this one: Why Defy? and then the second being: Why a Tattoo? Why Defy? There are basically 3 things that I intend to live my life defying, 2 were very clear to me and partly were the reason for the tattoo in the first place and then there was a 3rd reason that came up after the tattoo was placed, and actually has been more significant to me than the other 2 up to this point. The first, and most important, thing that I intend to defy in my life is the culture around me. I intend to fight against it with every breath that I have, with every ounce of energy, with every drop of my blood - I know it sounds dramatic, but let me explain. Every day I go to my office, to care for people that I have grown to love, and I see that they spend the far majority of their time working their hearts out for bosses that don't care at all about them, in companies that will downsize them in a second if they can save a buck. I see that we live in neighborhoods where the people are more interested in their own rights and keeping their lawns neat or their privacy in place or whatever and in towns where politicians are more interested in their income and the perks than the people they serve. I see that we live in a culture where marriages split and kids are left to fend for themselves as often or more often than they succeed, where affairs are commonplace and to be shared with your doctor but not with your spouse. Where working hard is intended at best to provide for your family so the kids can get better jobs than us and therefore make more money to buy things that won't make them any more happy than the things we have bought ourselves and at worst it is to gratify our every desire, running up our credit card debts to the max so that we can have houses full of things that only distract us from our emptiness. I know far more families that are in turmoil than those that uplift and support each other and it is always about me, me, me. We talk and talk and talk about values and family values and stuff like that but we do not live it. Giving to help our fellow man or woman is buying girl scout cookies or boy scout popcorn, and most dedicated and giving people we know spend a week a year on a mission trip. I see people literally shredding each other - after years of marriage, chucked aside - treated as inhuman because of our faith or our skin color or the tattoo's on our skin - we search for the differences between us not to celebrate our diversity but to judge and exclude. We say our companies are about serving the people we serve but they are not, they are about making money, and we all know it. I am disgusted by this culture. I feel literally nauseated when I see people who have been destroyed by their own greed - sitting there in front of me after a lifetime of following after what the culture tells them they should be doing - getting what they can - with no one who cares for them in their old age - children who hate them because they have treated them so badly for years, spouses who have left them because there was not enough attention paid to them after the work day was done. I sit with them day after day - "there must be something more" is the phrase I hear over and over again - "I feel empty inside" This is the end result of our culture - driven by greed - driven to destroy - like a parasite. My answer to the culture? I will defy it! I will live my life differently and try my best to encourage as many people as possible to come with me. I will live for other people. I will give my money away and serve in my own town, day after day, week after week, year after year. I will throw aside the idea of stuff as king and will do everything I can to love those around me - making them my focus - no matter how frustrating, difficult, and painful. I will live a life in the face of the culture and I will live it with joy and peace and meaning and purpose and I will keep going as long as I have blood in my veins and breath in my lungs. I will teach my children from the time they are little that people are the most important thing, not stuff or winning or succeeding. I will honor my wife and grow my relationship with her and together we will form a team diving into the darkness of the world to shine as much light as we can. I will give my gifts to the world around me, mentoring and teaching and doctoring. I will give tons of care and life and goodness away - always with the mission to spread the defiance of the culture and help other people see that there is a better way. I will disregard the tightness of my schedule when people are involved and serve the person who needs me most, even if it means inconveniencing me or the person after them on the schedule. I will defy the pressure to hurry hurry hurry and instead will stop and notice, pay attention to the awe and wonder around me and savor the moments of my day. I will resist the urge to be more and more involved and instead will only involve myself in things that meet with the mission of cultural defiance and valuing people, with few, if any, exceptions. But I will aggressively involve myself in all areas that come up that meet those goals, involving my family in that as much as possible. My life will not be ordinary. In short, I will live every second of my life in defiance of the culture - I will defy. This is my mission - I am not perfect at it, but I am giving it everything I have and I will continue to. I will defy. I will continue this soon - next will be the other 2 things I intend to defy - it'll be interesting to hear what you think... If you happen to find this appealing - all this defiance in a positive direction, you should consider joining us at More than more - we will be hanging out tomorrow night, the 3rd of October, Thursday, from 6:45-8:00pm at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette. As always there will be free childcare. Hope to see you there!

Did you Notice?

I painted a picture for you today. Did you notice? Friday night my husband and I had our first date night in what felt like forever. It was simple shared dinner from one of my favorite restaurants. Thank goodness for couponsJ. Anyways we were lucky to be seated next to a nice couple and struck up a conversation about the weather. Sky was super dark out the windows on one side of building and clear out the other side. We could hear the rumbling thunder and caught a few quick glimpses of bright lightening bolts as they burst from the sky. The couple had just been to a wedding and said right after it started massively pouring and no one wanted to leave the church. For the newly wed I hope it is not a sign of bad luck as you probably have heard before. We enjoyed the end of our meals- shared a coupon with them and both went on our way without getting caught in the rain. Although I know it rained because I heard it ping ping on the metal roof. I love that sound!! Want a metal roof so bad. See I love storms. I love the sounds, the smell, and the puddle to splash in after, love the rainbows, love the coziness of our home when it storms outside. Yet I hate the storms of life inside our home and inside my heart. Funny how that works. Anyways on our drive home the sky was just absolutely gorgeous. Breathtaking does not even begin to describe. I made Matt pull over so we could take a picture. Sorry camera on phone not high quality. No matter what I did I just could not capture the beauty of it. Seriously the clouds stood so still that off in the distance they appeared to paint a landscape of trees. The colors were so radiant and varied from dark blue to bright pink and purple. It just stunned me. All I could think was - God painted me this picture today! He painted beauty in the storm. He painted a reminder to notice the amazing love He has for us even in our dark moments. But the story does not end there. As we stood in awe at his work our phone kept dinging from texts from a friend who was in the middle of a huge storm. He hurried on our way to meet him in his struggle and remind him the truth. We loved him in his frustrations, loved him thru his thunder, and loved him thru his rain. Because that is what God does with us! He sees our brokenness, He feels it with us, He hears our cries, and He embraces us in it. He does not abandon us. He does not run for shelter from our storm- HE IS our shelter in the storm. He takes the dark moments and reminds us to see the beauty in them. He reminds us to notice. Perhaps the rain after the wedding was a reminder to stay with him during the storms. Maybe you are in a storm right now. Maybe feel hopeless, feel alone, feel stuck, frustrated, scared, confused, or a tornado of emotions. Maybe not- but I’m guessing if you are not in one now- you either have been or will be at some point. I cannot make the storm go away, nor can More than More. But we can help you notice Him in it. We will meet you in your storm, endure it with you, and eventually rejoice as we splash in the puddles with you. Notice with us. We will be hanging out on the 19th of September, 6:45-8:00PM, free childcare, as always. We meet at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafyette.

Tonight

More than more will be hanging out tonight (September 5th) at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, 6:45-8:00.  It will be a restful time, a time to see the world a little differently - hope you can join us!

Don't Forget Tomorrow Night

Hey everyone!  Wanted to take a second and remind you that More than more will be hanging out tomorrow night, the 22nd of August, 6:45-8:00PM, at McAllister Recreation Center, which is just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette. 

I wonder if many of you have thought many times about coming and haven't, for whatever reason...well let me tell you something.  If you are sick of life as usual in this world and would like to be around some people who genuinely care, you will never find a group of people more accepting.  Please also don't be confused that we somehow are all holding hands and stuff the whole time - mostly when we get together we laugh, share some stories and then try to catch a glimpse of a better way to be living this life - we call it noticing.

Anyone, any age, any past, any anything, is welcome.

Plus we have some of the best childcare anywhere, for free!

Would love to see you there

An Outreach...and a Mathematician

Hello again everyone.  I have been longing to write, but the days are filled...and my computers and server at home have been psycho - allowing me no access to pics that i really wanted to include in this post, but am unable.  So, here i am with a moment to write - and i will wait no longer!

2 things to write about in More than more's journey:

First, we had the very distinct pleasure a couple wks ago to serve a neighbor.  We spent the evening cleaning out weeds, trimming bushes and cutting out stumps.  Some of us were even given some remembrances of this outreach for a couple wks after it was done, as there was some poison ivy the size of alaska that we were trimming (and some of us thought we could not get it...in spite of being warned!).  It was awesome fun to work hard, side by side, to help someone who needed some loving in the form of sweat and hard work and yes...even rashes.  We totally shared the evening, cared with our muscles, and made a difference in the life of one lady.  See, we particularly love these times!  It is one thing to talk and talk and talk about the hurt in our world, the issues and problems that people face.  But it is quite another to give yourself fully to bringing a slice of healing to those hurts and some solutions (even though they are small and partial) to the issues and problems.  We are sick of talking about caring - we are ready to care - actively!  I hope to have some pics to share soon - especially one of Jason riding down the road on his riding mower, pulling his cart, hat turned to the side like he was some kind of hoodlum!

Second, ~10days or so ago, we had the joy of having James Gilmore, our resident Math teacher, come and visit with us.  He told us the story of a math guy who started putting plastic cubes together with rubber bands and made a math puzzle.  His name?  Rubik.  Yes, he invented a cube.  It is one of the hardest puzzles to solve in the world.  So, our friend James passed out one cube (or some kind of puzzle) to all of us  - he even had cubes with princesses for some of us! - and talked to us about them.

Well in order to grasp what we noticed that was particularly cool, we have to talk a little about something else and will tie it all together.  There are some people you see, who think that this world, all of it, including us, happened by accident.  That millions of years ago this mix of chemicals came together and got a shock of lightening and made amino acids (which are the building block of proteins - there are 20 of these, from simple to complex).

Now, back to the Rubik's cube - if you have one, go get it, preferably all messed up - it turns out they have got all these statistics on this cube...and on the whole amino acid thing.  Get this:

   It is more likely that a BLIND person, with no training, can pick up a Rubik's cube and solve it spontaneously on the first try (before you hurry past that, stop and think, how would they see the colors to solve it?), than it is that a current of lightening could make even 1 amino acid, the most simple one to make.  This would still leave 19 more amino acids, much less form them into proteins to make life, etc, etc, etc.

   In other words - it is so far fetched to believe that all of life came accidentally!  much moreso that to believe that there is an amazing, beyond intelligent, loving, caring creator who made life.

So, the next time you feel abandoned, hurt, lost.  The next time you feel so alone you feel as if you might be a cosmic accident.  Grab that thought, go get your Rubik's cube and remember that there is a fantastic God who loves you very much.  He made this world with so much complexity and so much care that He gave us green grass and a million flowers and hugs and smiles.  I know there are also tears and pains and all kinds of difficulties too - am not denying that at all.  I am just saying that maybe, He will help you through.  Maybe there is More to Notice than you have.

If you are sick of seeing only what the rest of the world sees, we would love to have you join us this Thursday, the 8th of August, from 6:45-8:00PM at McAllister Recreation Center - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette.  There will be free, wonderful, childcare as always.  We are determined to live life differently, even if it means playing some games sometimes!

You Just Don't Understand

When i was in med school, it didn't take me long to learn that it is a bad idea to say to a woman anything on the order of, "i understand" when she is getting a mammogram, pap smear, or in childbirth.  In fact, in medicine you learn pretty quickly that you will never be able to understand most of the people's pain and problems that you care for, male, female, young, old - there are just too many pains and too many people.

But every once in a while you get an appreciation, a taste, of the pain of others have felt and in those moments you find yourself grateful for your own life.  I am not suggesting that in these "taste" moments that you truly understand all the layers and facets of someone's pain, but maybe just a hint of it - i am about to write about something that is giving me a taste tonight and i want to put this disclaimer at the top of this post - I am not claiming to understand - that is kinda the point - i don't understand - never will - but i feel this strange pain tonight and wanted to share a new appreciation with you - so bear with me, or, if you don't want to find out what i have tasted, please stop reading now.  Really, i am so overwhelmed sometimes by the pain of the people around me that it is not unusual for me to be exhausted by the end of the day, in spite of the fact that i hardly have a vigorous job!  The pain and heartache is huge in this world.  But, rather than running from the pain, i would rather acknowledge it, own it (at least mine and the people i love), and try to honestly deal with life from there.  that is what i am trying to do here, join me if you want.

In the past 18 months i have tasted what it might be like to lose a child.  I flew to meet my wife and daughter, what seemed like 24 hours (it wasn't), all the while not sure if my daughter would be alive when i got there and then arrived to hear the doctors tell us that leukemia was one of the possibilities and looking at her labs, i was thankful we had her right then but was not sure she would be with us in 2013 - thankfully she is with us, but the taste of losing her - the idea of it being in my mind and my wife's, was horrific.   I cannot begin to fathom the devastation of losing a child.  I am so thankful for the life of my 14 year old. 

Now this may sound silly to many of you, but tonight i miss my wife.  You must understand, we got married when i was 21 and she was 19.  I had only lived in dorms and my childhood home prior to living with her.  The longest we have been apart before this year (btw we will be married 20years this month) was 3days for girls weekends and a couple solitude retreats i have taken.  She was gone all last week and was back for all of about 18hrs and then she left again.  I have to tell you - i miss everything.  I miss her hogging the covers.  I miss her pillow on the bed.  I miss the way she laughs and the way she jokes.  I miss the way she hugs me when i come home.  I miss the way when i am hurting (which i am today - for a totally separate reason), she consoles me and reminds me of who i really am, as opposed to who i think/fear i am.

So, i was sitting there this morning in church, listening, singing, trying to notice what might be important for me to hear and feeling all this emotion - missing her (please bear with me - i know it probably sounds so trivial to many of you) - when it smashed me in the head like a 2x4.  This is how bad it hurts to just miss her (when she's coming back next saturday).  What if i lost her?  What must it feel like to have the woman you love die?  Then there is never going to be her joking and her hugs and her pillow and her reminders.  And then my mind continued (as it so often does), what if it wasn't that i lost her, but that she betrayed me?  What if she stopped loving me?  What if she not only wasn't here with me, but she chose not to be here with me?  If just missing her here and now hurts like this...oh my...and my heart began to throb for those i love so dearly that have lost those they love...their faces flashed across my mind - some i have been to the funerals and some i have been there in the divorces and some i was not around for the pain but i have seen it so many times on their faces.  I wanted to sob then and there.  I didn't, but i wanted to.  I wanted to grieve for all the heartache and all the pain they feel.  I don't want them to have to feel even the tiny amount of pain i feel right now missing my wife, much less to feel the agony that they have felt in their lives - i want to take it away - i want to make it all right...but i can't.  I can't make it all right anymore than i can make myself invisible.

I am reading this book a friend gave to me to read.  I think my mom read it a long time ago, because i remember the title and i wondered about it at the time (like why do you need that book, mom).  It's called Healing for Damaged Emotions.  It's by a guy named David Seamonds (i think that is the name anyway).  I am only a little way into the book, so i can't come out and say that it is fantastic or anything like that, but i have thoroughly benefited from what i have read so far and am promised a chance to talk about it when i am done reading, with the friend who gave it to me - that will be a good thing.  Anyway one of the things i have taken already from this book is that many times we don't fully appreciate the pain in someone's heart even when we know them.  There are many reasons for this, at least in me.  In part it is because i am way more self-focused than i want to be - and when i am thinking about me, i have a hard time noticing someone else's pain.  In part we dont see it because we don't give each other the chance to see the hurts - and understandably so, fool me once shame on you... - we are not easily ready to be open to being hurt again.  Sometimes it is because we do not even realize how the pain in our lives is affecting us - we figure we are "over it" and so we don't think it would be of any use to even share it.  Sometimes we don't share because it is just to painful and we don't want to go back there again - again understandably.  So, it is easy to miss the pain that is right there in those we care about.

Another thing i have learned in this book is that we need to be so kind and understanding with each other, willing to forgive, patient and wise.  For so many times the things we say and do come partly from all the pain in us - all the hurt in us - and we may not be able to control it.  In fact many times we do not even realize why we are doing the things we do, we just do them, in response to inward programming, brought about by the hurts.  We need to be willing to consider that when someone hurts us who we love and who loves us, it may not be because they are mean or bad, but broken, hurting.  Now, how to deal with that in a relationship is difficult and i am not sure i even have a clue how.  But, realizing that the pain and heartache in us motivates and drives us could be so helpful to forgive, to heal, to reconcile, to bear with.

I also have learned that many many times good people who are trying everything they can think of to be the best people they can be, trying to notice really good, trying to connect with God and inviting Him into their worlds - sometimes they really struggle with making progress because of all the hurt they have inside them.  This certainly has been the case for me - it has taken me years and years to make any progress at all with God - never really understood it until I began to see how my broken places were pushing to be a person that i didn't want to be - the good news for me is that God has brought tons of healing to my broken places (still have a long way to go) and for some of the people i know.

This feeling like you are trying and having a hard time making progress is super common i think.  And it brings out 2 points.  1) Don't get so discouraged that you give up - keep going - there is healing to be had - we can talk about it, we certainly can't heal your hurts, but we can help you begin the process and point you in some good directions - and this is the life journey we try to walk through together in More than more.  2) We must battle back against our tendencies to sometimes judge other people harshly because they are not making "progress" in their lives at the same pace as we are.  I have had to learn this as a leader.  People's journeys vary and i need to accept their choices and their lives as theirs.  The hard part is watching them make choices that harm them and receiving the harm they give me.  It doesn't mean that we have to condone what they are doing - we must still tell them the truth - but we must look for ways to continue to accept and love them, regardless of their choices.

So, i guess i just wanted to write a bit about the pain in our lives.  I hate that so many of you (all of you, really) have had to deal with pain - tons of it - massive amounts of it.  It breaks my heart to imagine the internal anguish you have been through.  I am sorry for the times i have not understood, the times i have been selfish, the times i have been too broken in myself to see you clearly.  In the midst of the taste of missing my wife, i want you to know that i may not understand, but i do care, we care.  This is what More than more is all about, creating space for people to go on this journey of healing together.  It is not perfect - but it is better than any other place i have found for this journey.

We will be hanging out again on July 25th.  McAllister Recreation Center - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, 645-800 pm.  Hope to see you there.