I Still Believe

 Scattered words and empty thoughts

seem to pour from my heart
I've never felt so torn before
seems I don't know where to start
but it's now that I feel Your grace falls like rain 
from every fingertip, washing away my pain

I still believe in Your faithfulness
I still believe in Your truth
I still believe in Your holy word
even when I don't see, I still believe -I still believe Jeremy Camp

 

I don’t know if you know that song or if you’ve heard of Jeremy Camp. That song at this point in time is eighteen years old, so having never heard it is completely understandable. I would encourage you to check the song out in it its entirety and the rest of Jeremy Camp’s discography out when you get the chance. 

 

Those words resonated with me in a way three years after it released that I never would have expected. The song was written in response to Jeremy losing his wife at age 21 to Ovarian cancer after just over 3 months of marriage. I have never been married so that pain isn’t one that I can relate with him on. For me it looked quite different. Before I dive into what exactly that is let me ask you a question. Does your life now look like you imagined it would when you were younger?

 

When you’re young you get told you can be anything you want when you grow up. We live in a world that tells us we can have anything we want and if we don’t we either aren’t working hard enough, or we don’t want it enough. The problem with this mindset is it’s not true. I’m 5’5” I could have wanted all my life to grow up and play as a guard for the Chicago Bulls (Michael Jordan was a big deal when I was in Elementary School) but physically and talent wise that was never going to happen.

 

But what if God says no?

 

What if what you want in life as a child, or a teenager, or as an adult isn’t what God has planned for your life? What then? We are conditioned to dream big dreams and told that if our dreams don’t scare us they aren’t big enough. But what if God has called you to something ordinary? What if you didn’t have some big dream of doing great things but God still has you in a place you really weren’t planning on being? Is there something wrong with you if God puts you in a situation where you work a 9-5 job five days a week? I don’t think so. I don’t think we can measure our faith by whether or not our lives are making massive impacts on the world. Ever thrown a rock in the water and watch it ripple out? Our lives impact people in ways we can’t understand this side of Heaven and often we don’t even know we are doing it. Those moments that seem insignificant as you say hello to a stranger, or just check in on a friend they matter. You might not be touching the lives of hundreds of people but, you are touching the lives of one person. I think we get lost and confuse real faith with people who God uses in ways that we measure by numbers and forget that God isn’t asking for you to do big things, he just asks us to be obedient.  Often that obedience doesn’t look anything like we expected it to. 

 

 

Obedience for some might look like a grand plan that culminates in providing clean water for people in impoverished countries. For others it just looks like having conversations with people across the street and sharing Jesus. I don’t know what that obedience looks like for you. Me, well that obedience looks like living a life I never imagined. Certainly not one I would have chosen for myself. 

 

I told you that those lyrics resonated with me so let me explain why. I’ve got a genetic condition called Kallman’s syndrome. It’s a hormone disorder that in simple terms means that the part of my brain that makes hormones the hypothalamus doesn’t work. It’s not a common condition statistically speaking there are only five other males in Chattanooga that have it. I can tell you I’ve never met them if they are out there. I was diagnosed with it on October 13,2005. I was fifteen and after not starting puberty and not really growing I was tested and that was discovered. Knowing what I know now there were signs that I didn’t realize were there, chief among them hyposmia which is a diminished sense of smell. Basically, if it isn’t food I can’t smell it and even then, I don’t smell much. As a result of this I also discovered my bones on an X-ray were several years younger than my chronological age. I don’t know if that is worth much, but it sounds kind of cool and makes me feel a little like Wolverine. 

 

To counteract my broken brain, I get testosterone injections every other week, so my body can function as it should. When my levels get low I get incredibly tired and lose my appetite. There really isn’t a single part of me that hasn’t been touched by the lack of hormones for so long.  I’m thankfully not afraid of needles. I get bloodwork done once a year to make sure I’m getting the proper amount and to measure a few other things and I’m the weirdo that sits and watches those little tubes fill up. 

 

Now, lack of smell is a bummer (most of the time), getting shots which is habitual at this point still isn’t fun, but I could have lived with that my whole life and been fine. Unfortunately for me I was about to find out just how wrong ‘you can be anything you want to be when you grow up' was. January 27th I was back at the doctor for a checkup to see how the testosterone was working out and all that fun medical stuff. I know those dates because my sixteenth birthday was January 20^thand it was after that.  That was when I found out just what Kallman’s was going to mean for me for the rest of my life. More than shots, and lack of smell, and a small stature. That day I was informed that because of Kallman’s syndrome I would never have biological children. Just like it didn’t produce testosterone, my Hypothalamus also doesn’t produce Luteinizing Hormone which is needed for that process. 

 

Ive got a strong memory. Unfortunately I don’t get to control what I remember. I can tell you that the floor looked like tooti-fruiti jelly beans a weird tannish pink with spots of green, yellow, red, and blue. I can tell you the walls were a funny color green. My father was wearing a seafoam green Carhartt shirt, blue jeans, and his asolo brand boots. I don’t think that the exam room table sterile paper that makes so much noise that everyone in their grandmother can hear you move on it was ever quieter than in those minutes. That was a moment I won’t ever forget. As a writer I tend to focus on details and those details are etched forever into my memory. 

 

See, from the time I was eight years old the one thing I wanted to do when I grew up was to be a father. I wanted kids of my own. Before all of this I would have told you, I’d be married by twenty and have three or four kids by the time I was thirty. That was my plan. I mean none of those things are dishonoring to God. It was, I thought, a normal life that wasn’t asking for much. I wasn’t after all out here praying for God to give me a mansion or a few million dollars. I just wanted a wife and kids. Again, not a crazy ask, relatively speaking it was pretty much the same life the majority of America lived. But God said no. 

 

Sitting in that room I’d never felt so alone in my life. I’ve given you that statistics this isn’t common, and my father was in the room with me but right then and there I was the only person in the world and God had just destroyed the only dream I’d had for basically as long as I could remember. That hurt. That made me angry. It is truly hard to describe the emotions sitting there at sixteen and hearing all of this from a doctor who delivered this news like he was telling me the time of day. Then I got to the processing stage, eventually. For me that looked a lot like the five stages of grief, denial, anger, all those things. Confusion isn’t one of those stages, but I think it should be, at least, for me it was where I was for a long time. 

 

Nowadays amongst my best friends and people who know me well I’m known for praying for them. You come to my mind I’m going to pray for you and then I’m going to text you, so you know I’m thinking about you. Back then that couldn’t have been said of me. I wasn’t praying for anyone that wasn’t me and even that wasn’t happening often. When it did it usually was just grief and anger that culminated in prayers like Why can’t I have kids? What did I do wrong? God please just fix me. You don’t have to change anything else just let me have kids. People all over the world that don’t want kids are having them and killing them. I want them, why did you say no. 

 

There are still days I ask those questions in prayer. Not in the angry and hurt words of a confused teenager but in the quiet seeking of a man who wants to see this pain glorify God in some way, so I know what the point of it all is. Again, statistically speaking it isn’t probable I will meet someone like me where I can share this story and they can understand and be helped. I do however refuse to believe that it was meaningless, I just haven’t quite seen the meaning behind it yet. 

 

 

At sixteen I found this out. One year later I started working with kids at my church’s Mother’s Day Out Program. Now you might be reading this and thinking why in the world would you work with kids? I’ve been around kids my whole life. Dealing with children comes naturally to me. My official title changed over the thirteen years I taught there but when I started I had a lot of free time. If I wasn’t being chased on the playground or by tricycle riding kids I was usually in the nursery holding and feeding babies. Which at the time wasn’t in my job description and wasn’t at any point, but you know, I had to do something when kids were in classrooms and that room wasn’t mine. For me those stolen moments were like tiny treasures because I got to experience things I quite likely won’t experience. Strange as it sounds I believe this was God’s way of helping me deal with everything. From an outsider’s perspective being around kids, especially babies, when I’d been told I couldn’t have my own would be a horrible place to be. For me it was the best place to be. It wasn’t always easy. The days were hardest when it was a dad who brought children in, mothers never bothered me. Quite frankly there are still times I get caught off guard when I see a man with kids, especially a baby and I have to fight back that envy and remind myself that God knows what he’s doing even when I don’t understand that plan.

 

There was no set time for that understanding. I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to be alright with how life has turned out. It was very much a slow process of little by little being reminded of God’s faithfulness. That process was certainly helped along with this song. When you listen to the whole thing you see the journey of faith that Jeremy goes on from when words don’t come and he’s hurt and confused to reminding himself that God is still God, He is holy and faithful and circumstances don’t change that, to in the end realizing that despite all of the pain God wasn’t surprised by what happened he’d designed Jeremy’s life for this. It sounds odd I know but his journey helped me despite experiencing different things. His pain helped remind me that despite not understanding anything God was doing that God was still faithful. My pain and confusion didn’t change who God was or is. 

 

This isn’t me saying that I have everything together at thirty-one. I definitely do not. I still haven’t seen how what I’ve gone through will impact anyone in the way I assumed it would be beneficial. Infertility isn’t uncommon, but it also isn’t something most talk about and its definitely not seen as a men’s issue. Ever wonder why people ask women when they will have children, but people don’t ask men that? One of the things that I see as a sort of double-sided coin is my age when I found all of this out. I wasn’t married then. There was no one to really discuss this with. I’ve got four siblings and none of them have this. In fact, to my knowledge no one in my family has ever had Kallman’s. On one hand I think it would have been easier to deal with it if I’d found out after I was married. On the other I think it was easier because it was just me.  If the time comes that I find a woman to spend my life with this won’t be that gut punch that it was then. 

 

What this is though is me telling you that God is faithful. I have no idea what you are going through. Maybe right now life is good. If so, great. If it isn’t, I hope I can help show you that God is good even when it feels like your world has been turned on its head and how you thought life was going to be isn’t how things are turning out. We might not know what He’s doing but we can be sure that He is working. Always for our good even when it feels like anything but good. 

 

I never would have imagined at sixteen the things God was going to change in me because of this. My heart was open to the world of adoption and orphan care to a degree I wouldn’t have thought of then. I’ve met multiple families whom have adopted children over the past several years. What was once simply a ‘cool’ thing in my head has become a desire within me to do it myself. I wrote a book eight years ago on the premise of orphans that has since been used to help fund adoptions for families I will never meet from all over. My family is well aware of this desire and also that the chances are if it happens, my children will not in the slightest resemble the rest of our family, they will likely come from other nations and countries. 

 

It might not be easy to see in the moment, it wasn’t for me, but God doesn’t waste hurt. He doesn’t waste pain. I don’t know what that looks like for you or even if you’ve had a time in your life that it feels like God isn’t anywhere near you. I can tell you from personal experience that when that time comes He’s right there. He hasn’t gone anywhere. That hurt might make Him hard to feel but believe me, He’s still in control, still loving you, and still faithful.

 

The Pleasure and Pain of Dogs.

“There is a cycle of love and death that shapes the lives of those who choose to travel in the company of animals. It is a cycle like any other. To those who have never lived through it’s turnings or walked it’s rocky path, our willingness to give our hearts with full knowledge that they will be broken seems incomprehensible. Only we know how small a price we pay for what we receive; our grief, no matter how powerful it may be, is an insufficient measure of the joy we’ve been given.”-Suzanne Clothier

 The  pleasure of a dog is that they devote themselves completely to you. The pain of a dog is they don’t live forever. Today I lost a once in a lifetime dog. I’m incredibly attached to all the canines that I call mine. You need only to look at my facebook or Instagram to see that, though you will see precious few photos of the dog about which I write, unless you go back a few years in my facebook photos. Today Takoda said goodbye. At 13 I knew it was coming, though he never lost his love for food and ‘talking’ the moment he realized he was fixing to be fed, his body had grown old and weak and his balance was off. The legs that at one point seemed to be able to run forever no longer supported him well, particularly the back ones. Instead of propelling him across the yard they dragged behind him.Frankly, every morning I woke up to him still alive is a moment I was surprised. He’s slowed down considerably in the last two years. The past two summers I assumed he’d not make it through the end of the year, but he proved me wrong, but the old man has been stubborn as a mule since the day I brought him home. 

 

Takoda was the dog that taught me patience. Not that he was unruly and untrainable, in fact he was quite the opposite. He was the first dog I clicker trained completely and if asked would perform each command like he was reading them off an order. You see, Takoda was a once in a lifetime dog because I waited ten years to bring him home. That is how the dog that I pined and prayed for taught me what it meant to be patient and wait. I am by nature a patient person. It is in my bones to go into things with a plan, and spontaneity scares me. But, waiting for him was a long process. You see I grew up in a home full of dogs, hunting dogs in the form of treeing curs (one of which was my own tiny ginger female Pebbles) , Great Danes, and Labs. None of them was the dog I wanted as bad as Takoda. If you’ve been around a few years you may or may not realize that Disney made a sled dog masterpiece long before Togo hit the streaming platform. Iron Will debuted in 1994 and has, since its inception, been my favorite movie (though Togo has since joined the ranks it really was masterfully done and seeing the real hero dog get his day was fantastic). 

 

A mere few years later I would read a book that birthed a desire in me that I would nurture for a decade before it came to fruition. KAVIK:The Wolf Dog was more or less responsible for my wanting a sled dog of my own. Funnily enough, the dog half of the protagonist was actually Malamute, not Siberian Husky. With much pleading, and waiting, and research, and reading I squirreled away books that are at this point now fifty years old or older, breed histories that I’m incredibly fond of. I would casually drop them in a basket at the book store and walk off. 

 

Then, one day at eighteen I saw an ad in the classifieds for a litter of puppies. For the first time we actually went and looked at a litter and though I had planned on coming home with a female (I wanted a male, but dad wanted me to get a female) I came home with Takoda (he was actually picked by dad and was the largest of the bunch). He let me know quickly he didn’t like concrete and it took about two weeks before he would walk on it without acting like he was being tortured. He got his first booster shot and slept for almost two days except to eat and use the bathroom. As a puppy he would find the oddest places to sleep and until he got too large to fit would sleep under our old secretary that sat by the front door. Then he started sleeping under the coffee table and occasionally he would sleep on the coffee table. He was always a strange thing.

 

I don’t know that we’ve had a more child patient dog, multiple cousins learned to walk holding onto his fur. Though as he aged his patience for other dogs wore thin and he wanted nothing to do with the others when they wrestled. He acted like a puppy whenever it snowed and when it got cold once we moved to the farm he refused to come in the house. He pulled me exactly two times on a toboggan because I didn’t have a real sled.  Like I said, he was stubborn. He knew what he wanted and generally did exactly that. There was the time that he got his head stuck in a yoohoo box (I’ve got photos of that one). That stubbornness was the reason for our  burying our fenceline in concrete before we moved because he dug out multiple times. Though he never tried once we did get the farm. He killed a few chickens that didn’t coop up when they were supposed to, an ode to his instinctual prey drive. I did my best to camp with him but he refused to sleep in a tent or do anything but run around the backyard at night while I tried to sleep. True to his stubborn nature he did what he wanted until the last breath. Instead of laying calmly after getting the anesthesia he did his best to get out and see the horses in the trailer beside the car even without the use of his back legs. 

 

He was also the first dog I taught to use his nose for something that wasn’t a squirrel. I taught him to search. He was a slow and methodical searcher. When he was first learning I used my own clothes as scent articles and hid a pair of boxers in an open baggy to keep them from getting covered in dirt but allow the scent to travel around the yard. I thought they were hidden and let him out to the bathroom while the scent aged, he found them and brought them to me sans baggy looking incredibly pleased with the work he’d done. He found Haylee and Ashlee multiple times including one Christmas. They were always up for being shoved into weird places or hiding in the dark in the yard for him to be let out to find. He loved to search and the petting and treats that ensued when he found the people he was looking for. 

 

The love of that crazy dog also helped me meet one of my favorite celebrities although by most worldly standards she would not be considered a celebrity.  One year the Siberian Husky National Specialty was held downtown at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. I met Karen Ramstead at the show. I’d followed her for years on her website and blog being regaled by Iditarod and training run tales and fawning over beautiful “pretty sled dog” pictures. I got to talk to her in between her showing dogs and manning a booth selling Northwapiti things (I bought a hoodie that I still have it is somehow still in great condition despite being worn fairly constantly for a number of years. 

 

Man, I loved that dog. Takoda will probably be the only Siberian Husky I ever own. The furry, wolf like dog that I waited for forever was quite the course in dog ownership and helped me learn to train stubborn dogs. Much of what I can do now with other people's dogs is because of him.

 

Thank you for being a once in a lifetime dog old man. You were well worth the wait. If I had a choice I’d wait all over again to bring you home. You’ll be missed.

The Darkness of Saturday

 Saturday. Those who followed Jesus had to have thought they’d never see a darker day. The disciples had left families and professions to follow Jesus. And yet now he was gone, and they were alone. They’d given up everything and I have to wonder if they felt like Jesus had lied to them. He’d told them all these things, made promises, and then they had watched him die, crucified on a cross on Golgotha. How was that for a mighty savior? Often, we talk about the brutality of Friday and the beauty of Sunday as we remember that Jesus rose again, but, we don’t talk much about Saturday. The day that it felt like Jesus had left the disciples and let them down. What they didn’t understand was God was there in the waiting. 

 

Jesus had died, he was gone, but he would return as promised. That period of death to resurrection wasn’t without purpose. There was pain and loss, yet God was still working amongst that, they just didn’t know it. The darkness of Saturday makes Sunday all the more glorious. The time in between when it seemed like Satan had won was actually God working for our good. Jesus would conquer death as he said. He would return as he said. Because God doesn’t break his promises. As hopeless as Saturday had to have felt God was never not in control. He was never not there.  That is the sovereignty of the God we serve. Complete control even in the darkest moments when the world is chaotic, and we don’t know which way is up. 

 

For the disciples that Saturday was dark, they were in the depths of despair. We get the benefit of reading it as our history. We know Jesus came back. They didn’t have the luxury. But, like the disciples, we have days when tragedy strikes and all of the sudden it feels like God isn’t there. We lose a loved one, we get horrible news, there is a catastrophic event somewhere in the world, and we don’t know where God is in that pain. Friend let me assure you He is right there with you, just like He was waiting on that dark Saturday as Jesus lay dead in a borrowed tomb. He hasn’t left you in your despair. He won’t leave you there. Why? Because He promised never to leave or forsake you in Deuteronomy 31:6. 

 

In God there is hope even in our darkest moments. Even when it feels like we are completely alone like the disciples staring at an empty cross that had held the man they followed for years. We can’t see the beauty of Sunday without realizing the darkness of Saturday. In darkness there is hope because of Jesus. We are never alone, never forgotten, never forsaken. We might not always feel like God is there in those dark times but because of a dark Saturday thousands of years ago we can rest assured that God hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s alive and He is right there waiting to give us peace and hope. 

 

 

The Man Behind The Shield

 

If you've been around awhile you've seen me write about superheroes before. Although it seems like a lifetime ago when I wrote about the masterful storytelling ability Marvel had with the conclusion of Endgame. Whereas the last was an ode to what it means to see so many of my favorite superheroes brought to life on screen over the years this time around I'm going to focus on my favorite:The First Avenger, Captain America himself. 

There are certainly more powerful superheroes. Men and women gifted with the ability to fly, shoot lasers from their eyes, super strength,speed, and the list could continue for a long time. What sets Captain America apart is the man behind the shield. Steve Rogers isn't a billionaire. He isn't an alien. He doesn't fight with a plethora of fancy gadgets. While he is the human body at its peak form what makes him special is his character. The reason Steve Rogers became Captain America isn't because he was a physically imposing, super strong, man. He carries the moniker and the shield because of who he was before the super soldier serum not because of what the serum made him. Quite simply the kid from Brooklyn became a symbol of what it meant to fight even though he had every medical excuse not to join the war effort. That is why Steve Rogers becomes Captain America. Much like only the worthy can wield the mighty Mjolnir it would take a special person to be imbued with the serum to obtain human perfection and not have all that power go to their head. Steve Rogers was that person. 

All that power, the perfection,  is a dangerous combination if you give it to the wrong person. You can look at most any politician and see that power shouldn't' be tampered with. But, in the right hands or veins as it were you get a man whom does everything he can to make things right. He fights for the little guy, the overlooked, and the marginalized. While there are far more flashy super suits in the comic world you'd be hard pressed to find one as noble as Steve Rogers. What makes him different is his motive. You will see a man that understands what it means to be bullied or ignored. His upbringing forged the man that would bear a shield, lead a team of super powered people, and do so with the intent to help others. 

In an age where popular opinion trumps truth and if your career puts you on the television what you think is the only way to think, Steve Rogers is one of the best examples of superhero you can find. You wouldn't find him touting his power or his name to get his way. You'd likely find him doing what he could for those that needed help and not wanting anything in return. Cap is the quintessential superhero, not because of what he can do but why he does it. Steve Rogers might have been turned into Captain America physically but in all reality he was Captain America all along. It isn't the power or the shield that makes the man, its the character and if anything these days is important to understand it is that. Who you are matters far more than what you can do. Being able to build a super-suit or throw a car with one hand doesn't matter much if you're a jerk. 

Cap is my favorite because he's a little skinny guy who becomes something great because of who he already happens to be. Fame and fortune don't transform you into a better person they usually lay bare what is already inside. Character matters. 

"The serum amplifies everything that is inside. So, good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen. Because a strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion."
"Thanks. I think."
"Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man."-Abraham Erskine 

“Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. 

This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world -- "No, YOU move.”-Captain America