Toy Train New Toothbrush

Sabbatical

2009-05-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

Greetings "Toy Trainers".

After about a year's worth of blogs, and six months of news letters before that, I've decided that it's time for me to take a little break. Partially this is to give me a chance to recharge and rest after a very busy spring.

But, if I'm honest, it's also because I want to have every story and spiritual application be guided by God and not contrived merely out of my own creativity.

Writing these every week was hard for me....

I'm not sure how senior pastors do it.

So....a sabbatical is needed.

Or maybe more of a hibernation....

...without the weight gain and the near-death heart rates.

TTNT (or another blog) will return at an undetermined time.

Blessings to you all and thanks for reading.

Bullet Ants

2009-04-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

I’m a useless trivia junky.

If there’s any way that I might find a piece of information useful in life, my brain puts it in the circular file.

That’s the garbage, in case you were wondering.

However, if there’s absolutely zero chance that I’ll need to remember something….my brain files that little tidbit in it’s super-safe-random-access-quick-load file.

Thus, I can’t remember why I’ve gone to the grocery store but I can remember that earthworms are in the zoological sub-class oligochaeta.

Weird.

Anyway…since I love random knowledge, when I see a link on the internet that says, “5 types of stinging ants”, I click on it.

I don’t just click on it....

I MUST click on it (and hope it’s not a virus).

So, as I was reading said list, I discovered that there’s a type of ant called a bullet ant.

This ant is so named, not because of it’s bullet like shape or it’s “superantian” speed, but because, when it stings you, you feel like you’ve been shot.

They live in Brazil which is why I won’t be going there any time soon.

But that same list had ANOTHER link which simply said, “manhood initiation” in the paragraph about the bullet ants.

That link was so compelling it clicked itself.

I was taken to a You Tube video posted by National Geographic. (the link is at the end of this post if you’re interested)

In this video, boys in their teens are initiated into manhood by wearing special mittens woven out of palm leaves and….

are you ready….

thousands of angry bullet ants!

Watching that video made me very thankful for my bar mitvah.

Klezmer music and semi-kosher food VS bullet ant mittens?

That’s a no brainer.

The boys have to wear these gloves for a full ten minutes.

But if they want to be warriors in the tribe, they have to do the whole thing twenty times.

That’s two hundred minutes of their lives spend with angry ants shooting machine guns at their hands.

Now, lest you think that they are totally barbaric, the most interesting part of the video comes at the end.

This is when the head of the tribe is explaining why they do this.

He says that it not only marks their transition into adulthood but it makes them better men.

“If you go through life without suffering anything or without any kind of effort, it wont be worth anything to you.”

I had to chew on that for a little while.

Especially considering my last post where I shared how much I hate losing/suffering/pain and how I’m a product of the first “t-ball” generation.

It made me think about American culture and how much we build our lives to avoid pain.

It made me think of how many people in the church are just like me and secretly have been believing that they should be exempt from suffering.

Frankly, it made me think what a baby I am.

Now…I’m not about to go to the local ant store and purchase some gloves-o-angry-ants.

But I do think that when suffering comes my way….and it will come…I’ll try to embrace it a little differently.

And hopefully, I’ll be a better man for it.

***Here's the link if you want to watch the video***

Bathroom Reading and T-ball

2009-04-19T13:13:00.001-07:00

I am, for lack of a better term, a bathroom reader.

I’ve tried the phrase “lavatory learner” but it lacks that certain “every day Joe” quality.

So, “Bathroom Reader” it is.

As embarrassing as it may seem for me to admit, I take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone.

In reality, there are whole books written (and titled) for the sole purpose of being read whilst the reader is in the commode.

Strangely, that isn’t the most embarrassing confession I’ll be making.

What I’ve been reading lately is the humiliating part.

While, at times, I’ve read whole books (not in one sitting), and lots of magazines pertaining to my work and my hobbies, my wife also places reading material in the “facilities”. And so sometimes, if I’ve exhausted my “materials”, I’ll read the more feminine offerings.

Which is why I’ve been reading Ladies Home Journal.

Men, don’t worry…the authorities have already contacted me about confiscating my “Man Card”.

But truly…if you can get past the pages…and pages….and pages of advertisements, there is some interesting stuff in there. Just a note though….it seems to me that the amount of ads in a woman’s magazine FAR exceeds the number in men’s magazines. Ladies…truly….if I see another “Painter of Light” two-page spread (with order form) I’m gonna scream. Complain already!

Anyway…one such article was about the difference in work styles/ethics/dress between my parent’s generation and the round of recent college grads entering the work force.

In this piece, the author referred to the younger generation as “The T-Ball Generation”.

This jumped out at me because I’ve been helping out with my oldest son’s T-ball team.

See that?

Man card reclaimed!

Talkin’ ‘bout sports now…….yeah.

The reference to t-ball was not positive though.

What they meant was that this up-coming generation has been used to getting trophies whether they earned them or not.

This is a generation that has been told that everybody wins because somebody, somewhere, said that having “winners” and “losers” would hurt their delicate psyches.

Now….I’m not NEAR old enough to use this word, but I’ve always wanted to….

Hogwash!

I’m a gen-Xer (who were the guinea pigs for that philosophy) and the reality is that sometimes you lose.

Brehm’s first game was on Saturday.

They lost.

This was partially because I was busy videoing Brehm’s first time at bat and forgot to send the runner on third base home.

Parental pride, apparently, beats base coach responsibility.

But, at that age, there are so many runners and, scores it’s hard to keep track.

So Brehm asked the coach of the other team who won.

“You all won! Cause you all played a great game!” he said.

What?!?!

My son looked at me REALLY confused.

I told him that the other team won but that he did, indeed, play a great game and I was super proud.

THAT actually made sense to him.

And yet, as I’ve been thinking about all this, I’ve realized I’m not immune to the “trophy-for-all” mindset.

Especially when it comes to God’s plan for my life.

I realized this today in church when it hit me that I’ve been secretly angry with God.

Part of this has to do with a couple of good beatings my ego has taken this past year.

I don’t like losing.

I always want to be the winner.

Because everyone is a winner all the time….right?

It sounds so ridiculous when I say it.

Even my five year old thinks it’s hogwash (yeah! Two times in one essay!)

But in my most honest moments, I believe that I should always win.

Or, at least, get a trophy.

And so part of the sting of losing isn’t even the losing itself.

It’s the expectation that I shouldn’t have to lose.

Of course, this exposes my narrow understanding of what it means to lose.

My definition of “losing” in this case, is me not getting what I want, the way I want it, when I want it.

That assumes that I even know what is best for me.

As I was sharing all these thoughts with Laura and our friend Tara today, Tara said this:

“I promise that God’s plan will not disappoint you.”

She was quoting a friend but I’ll still give her credit.

She’s pretty wise.

So, I come to a place of tension between what I’m feeling right now, and what I know to be true.

Eventually the truth will win out.

It always does.

In the mean time, I’ll try not to be such a sore loser.

Broken Trees

2009-04-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

Last week, at the Moritz household, our yard had a fashion show.

Due to a frost warning, we had to cover all of our plants (the ones that had just started blooming) with blankets, sheets, and tarps.

Since most of the sheets that were available were our plaid, flannel winter sheets, our trees and roses looked like they were sporting the latest trend from Seattle, circa 1993.

But, of course, those days are oddities.

Yes, here in Nashville, it’s springtime, even though we aren’t quite finished with the birthing pains called “tornado season”.

The birds are chirping, the grass is green and the air is filled with the sound of mowers being pushed by men trying to evoke lawn envy in their neighbors. It’s a wonderful time.

However, as most people know, not all plants bloom at the same time.

Some, like crocuses and forsythias, bloom first.

Then there are others that are “late bloomers”.

This is not a compliment to a middle-schooler.

To a plant….well….they don’t care so much.

Anyway…the other day Elijah and I were driving down the road and he looked out his window and said, “Daddy, look at all the broken trees.”

“Broken trees?” I asked, looking around for fallen branches or something like that.

“Yeah Daddy. Some have leaves but some don’t. They’re broken,” He said forlornly.

“OOOHHH.” I said, “they’ll have leaves later.”

“No. They’re broken”

I have VERY matter-of-fact kids.

But I can see why he said that.

If you don’t understand that some trees take longer to “leaf out” it would seem that they aren’t working properly.

Three-year-old logic at it’s finest.

But as soon as he said it, I thought about Easter and Good Friday.

Good Friday, for those who aren’t familiar, is when Christians remember Jesus’ death on the cross and Easter is the celebration of His resurrection.

But what about Saturday?

What about that day between the crucifixion and the resurrection?

I can imagine that the disciples thought that Jesus, the one in whom they had put their trust, was just another delusional rabbi.

They must have thought that that tree was broken.

No life.

No spring for them.

This wasn’t just a “late bloomer”.

This was a “no bloomer”.

But then Sunday came.

And everything changed.

And Jesus, the Tree of Life leafed out in amazing fullness.

Spring had come.

Life was here.

And the cross, often referred to as a “tree” in ancient times, was the only broken tree after all.

Christ has risen!

He has risen indeed!

1950's Cliche' and Bread

2009-04-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was near perfect.

For those who, like me, enjoy reading people’s Facebook “statusi” (the imaginary plural of “status”) you will already know what I did.

Saturday:

- Wake up, shower, have nice cup of coffee, and manage to get 0.5 seconds of quiet time before the kids woke up. At this rate, if I can add 0.5 seconds everyday, I’ll work my way to one hour of quiet time in 19.74 years…and yes…I actually did the math. But, hey. I’ll take any victory I can get….so this day had a good start.

- Blow eggs out of their shell into a bowl. Cook eggs for breakfast. Save shells for Easter egg dyeing. Score one for efficiency.

- Head out to the Spring Hill Little League Opening Ceremonies. Cowboy Troy (of Big and Rich Fame) tosses the first pitch, my boy wins a bat bag in the raffle, and I feel as if I’ve stepped back in time to 1950’s middle America.

- We get home and then I have a nice drive through a beautiful part of town for a lunch meeting. I almost get lost on the way home but have a great time of it and manage to get back to my house.

- The dog we’re dogsitting arrives and the kids play while I grill dinner. Unlike the 1950’s, I grill chicken, not steak.

- We eat dinner and then I set up the tent in the back yard so the boys and I can camp out.

- Laura makes an apple crisp

- Bed.

Sunday

-Awoken by the singing of birds.

-Laura makes homemade scones that shame the dry monstrosities they sell at Starbucks and could compete with those made by an old British lady.

-Church.

So, why do I give you the annotated itinerary of my weekend?

To gloat?

No!

Ok….maybe a little.

To prove that my life is a “Leave It To Beaver” episode where the parents don’t sleep in separate beds?

No.

It’s because I’m thankful.

I’m filled with a deep sense of gratitude that I am able to have a 1950’s, Americana, cliché’ weekend.

And, of course, that made me think about something that one of my pastors said at church today.

As we were getting ready to take communion, he read from the Bible where Jesus is eating the Passover meal. Jesus took the bread, and He gave thanks.

The Greek word is “eucharisteō” where many denominations get the term “Eucharist”

Anyway, as I was, at the pastor’s suggestion, thinking about things I was thankful for, I realized that I was coming up with all the “spiritual” answers.

Which is strange because this was all taking place inside my own head….and who have I to impress inside there?

And then it hit me that I was trying to impress God.

This, of course is even more ridiculous than trying to impress myself.

But there I was doing it.

And so I stopped.

I stopped being so self-righteous and began thanking God for the basic simple things. Things like Little League and scones.

And then I kept being thankful for the not-so-nice things.

After all, while I’m sure that fresh, homemade, 1^st century unleavened bread is much better than the glorified saltine matzo they have now, it’s still unleavened bread.

It’s still the bread of haste, rush, and busy.

It’s the hard bread of those who are about to be free but aren’t yet.

And for Jesus, it’s the bread of His body about to be broken in one of the most terrible forms of execution in all of history.

But he takes it and gave thanks.

And so should I.

The Music Monster

2009-03-30T04:57:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of being a musician, songwriter, producer, and worship leader is that I get to wear what I want to work and, most of the time, have control over my schedule.

That is....until I have a deadline for a project.

Then the Music Monster devours my life.

My wife and kids forget what I look like (or that I can offer them my attention) and I disappear until I'm done.

Fortunately, this is more of a sprint than a marathon.

Like the whale that swallowed Jonah, the Music Monster will spit me on dry land in another day or two.

Basically...what I'm trying to say is, "sorry there isn't a post this week...."

"....I've been sitting in a belly surrounded by half eaten fish."

Blessings,

-a

Bermuda II: Agag and Lawn Envy

2009-03-23T04:04:00.000-07:00

Back when we moved into our house the neighborhood was still under construction.

That meant that our beautiful first home looked out on….

…thirty, muddy lots.

And a dumpster.

But our youthful optimism would not be quelled. No! We saw opportunity where other, less visionary types, might have seen a festering metal box of construction waste and half-eaten Taco Bell lunches.

And so, with grit and determination, I built garden paths out of the bricks we salvaged from those alters of waste.

There was only one problem.

No one was getting rid of gravel, sand, or rock dust.

And so, instead of using the tried and true method for building a walkway, I took those bricks and shoved them in the clay (which is all we had left after the developer had his way with our topsoil).

That was mistake number one.

Mistake number two was using the free bricks.

You see, the bricks from the dumpsters were for building walls.

They weren’t “pavers”.

They had holes through the middle to let the cement bind to them better.

Now fast-forward five years and you may be able to figure out how I spent my weekend.

I just spent two full days, on my hands and knees, pulling every brick up and removing the knotted mass of roots that had grown through all the holes.

Without being too gross, I once saw a picture (in a science textbook) of a pig’s intestine that had been blocked by parasitic worms.

The roots really reminded me of that.

They also reminded me that gardening is war.

I have, yet again, met General Bermuda on the battlefield.

For those of you who remember my previous post about Bermuda grass, you’ll know that this plant is my sworn enemy.

It’s my white whale.

It’s the Joker to my Batman.

The Capone to my Eliot Ness.

And it was those roots that had taken over my walkway.

So why, you may ask, do I still have Bermuda grass if I hate it so much?

The simple answer is “lawn envy”.

Bermuda grass fills in our lawn and, when the weather gets hot, it's a nice green color.

This hides the fact that we don’t have great grass in our yard.

Having great grass is a mark of manliness in The South.

Not having great grass is shameful.

Just shameful.

But since I actually have work to do and can’t spend all day trimming individual blades of grass with scissors and singing “Eye Of The Tiger” to them, l allow my enemy to live in order to hide my own inadequacies.

Now, I don’t believe that it’s a coincidence that I’m dealing with Bermuda again while, in my quite time, I’m reading about Saul.

Here was a guy who did foolish things to hide his own inadequacies...a lot.

The particular situation I’m thinking of involves a king named Agag.

You see, God had told Saul to wipe out the Amalekites but, instead, he captures Agag, their king.

Why?

I think it was the kingly equivalent to “lawn envy”.

King envy.

Saul wanted to be able to parade Agag around to show everyone how powerful he was compared to the other kings.

His kingly lawn was greener and had those cool, diamond-shaped mowing lines.

Here's the irony: that is what cost him his kingdom and his life.

He didn’t deal with Amalekites and it was an Amalekite who ended up killing him.

(Actually Saul tried to commit suicide but was dying too slowly and an Amalekite finished him off)

Often it’s the things we don’t deal with that end up coming back to haunt us.

If we’re honest, most of us are afraid of how messy things will look.

In the case of my lawn, I have bricks everywhere.

It looks awful.

And, were I to try and kill off the Bermuda, I would have brown, dead sections all over my lawn.

And that’s just shameful.

So I get the roots out of my walkway where it’s inconvenient but never actually kill it all off.

Fortunately, God has not allowed me to ignore “soul Bermuda”.

I’m still in process, but those roots are coming out.

How’s your lawn?

Johnny Depp and Hwin

2009-03-15T18:54:00.000-07:00

Do any of you have movie stars that you like but don’t want to like?

I mean…do you dislike yourself, if only a little bit, for being entertained by them?

For me the list is long, but here are a few: Tom Cruise, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Brad Pitt.

I never go into any movie that they’re in expecting to like it.

But I almost always do.

And I almost always dislike the fact that I do.

One of the reasons I feel that way is because they always have too much of themselves in their roles.

I always think of them first and their character second.

all of them have graduated to such a level of fame that I can’t help but watch them and think, “mmm Brad is being very convincing as Napoleon” or, “I didn’t know Tom could do such a great Fred Astaire impression.”

Leonardo escapes this critique, but he’s been on my black list ever since “Titanic”

One actor who continually impresses me, however, is Johnny Depp.

Even if I find myself thinking about him and not his character, it’s fleeting.

He IS Willy Wonka

He IS Jack Sparrow

And he IS Sir. James Matthew Barrie

Now, this last name might not be so familiar to you.

Maybe it’s because it isn’t as iconic as some of his other roles.

He played Barrie straight.

No strange affectations or costumes.

But when Laura and I saw the movie “Finding Neverland”, we were in the final five minutes of the movie when Laura shouted, “Hey! That’s Johnny Depp!!”

We were at home.

Not in the theater.

I kinda wish that we had been in the theater.

It would have been a better story.

But anyway….

Ole’ Johnny was so lost in his character, that he disappeared.

He was that way in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” too, but since only me and five other people saw that movie, I won’t talk about it.

Plus Leonardo is in it so….

But one of the things I like about Johnny is that, while his face is always recognizable, you never see him.

Recently I’ve been listening to The Chronicles of Narnia on CD with the kids.

We keep it in the car and so whenever we drive anywhere, we listen to the story.

Now, I’m a big fan of Narnia.

I’ve been known to check the backs of closets looking for snowy forests.

(if you don’t know what that means….READ THE BOOKS!)

Anyway, I think I may have come across one of the most beautiful passages in the whole series the other day.

It’s in the story “The Horse and His Boy”

I won’t tell the whole story but towards the end of the book, Hwin, a talking horse, meets Aslan, The Lion for the first time.

“Please," she said, "you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you then fed by anyone else.

For any of you who are familiar with The Chronicles, you will know that Aslan is Jesus.

And so, Hwin’s words are words of devotion, worship, and total surrender.

She’s willing to be lost in….consumed by God.

When I heard those words, I started to cry.

I cried because there was something that resonated deeply with me.

In the same way I don’t like watching actors who have too much of themselves in their roles, I don’t want to have too much of myself in my life.

I want, like Hwin the horse, to be totally consumed.

I want to be the Johnny Depp of Christendom where my life would be so characterized by God, that people would say, “Hey! Wait! That’s Adam. Man…I almost didn’t recognize him.”

I want this, not in any unhealthy way, but in a Biblical way.

You see, for once, Hollywood gives an amazing picture of Biblical paradox.

Johnny's greatness is directly linked to his ability to be consumed. When he makes himself small and totally loses himself, that's when he's at his best.

And, much like Aslan’s response to Hwin, I believe that God’s response will be, “Joy will be yours.”

Mirror Writing

2009-03-02T04:02:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned in previous posts, I recently led worship at a marriage retreat.

Usually, at such events, the amount of information you receive is the brain equivalent to filling a tea cup in Niagra Falls.

If your brain cup doesn’t get totally knocked out of your hand and shattered on the rocks below, the shear volume of the information “flow” splashes anything you might retain right out leaving you with a mere “mist” collected inside.

That, basically, amounts to one or two things you actually remember and take home from any retreat/meeting/conference/war council.

One of those things from this particular retreat was the whole “Pray Naked” concept, which I explained two posts ago.

The other was mirror writing.

I’m not talking about writing backwards like Leonardo Davinci did.

This requires a $1.50 dry erase marker and a bathroom mirror.

The idea is that you can have a place to write love notes to your spouse where they won’t miss them.

They wash off with Windex and are read when most people feel the most insecure.

While they are noticing all the pimples, growing crow’s feet, and slowly inflating mid-line tires.

It doesn’t have to be anything “flowery” or eloquent.

Men, if you want to write, “You smell good”, I’m sure your wife will understand that you really mean, “Honey, you are an amazing and attractive woman whom I admire and adore.”

Really.

And so, as you have probably guessed by now, Laura and I decided to adopt mirror writing into our lives.

Our kids have even jumped in and asked us to leave notes for “mommy” or “daddy”.

We love it.

But I noticed something the other day.

As I was trying to shave or brush my teeth or strike my best Calvin Klein model pose….I mean comb my hair…I realized that I was looking through the notes.

My eyes were focused on my own reflection, reducing the letters on the mirror to mere blurs.

And I sensed God saying, “Adam, that’s how you approach the Scriptures sometimes.”

I share that for two reasons.

1) Because God was right and…

2) Because I think lots of people do the same thing.

I think that most of us start off OK.

We read Scripture focused on what God is trying to say to us and believing that THOSE words are true.

But somewhere along the way, we become distracted by our own beauty or flaws and slowly, those things pull into focus while the words of Truth and Life fade into the foreground.

We miss the love letter.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I’m all for self-reflection.

But I believe we can get stuck there and miss what it is God wants to say to us, and the life He offers us.

This past Sunday at my church, we sang a song that deals with this very idea of focus.

As I sang in worship, I thought of mirror writing and The Love Letter of God, Jesus.

Here are some of the words:

O soul, are you weary and troubled? 

No light in the darkness you see? 

There’s light for a look at the Savior, 

And life more abundant and free!

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, 

Look full in His wonderful face, 

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, 

In the light of His glory and grace.

Shots

2009-02-23T03:43:00.000-08:00

Alanna turned 1 last month, which means one thing to me.

Shots.

Since I’ve never really had a “real” job (and by “real” I mean 9-5 and suits and stuff like that) I’ve been fortunate to have lots of time with the kids.

That also means that I’ve had to take all three kids to get their shots.

Every time.

Well…except once.

The one time, Laura had to bring them, she came home and looked at me with awe.

I played it cool and said, “it’s no big deal”.

Inside I was saying “That’s right, baby! You’re married to Superman!”

Of course Brehm’s kindergarten shots were the worst.

I think I was more traumatized than him, which is saying something considering he was so upset he said he would rather get Polio and spend his life in a wheelchair than get another shot.

Anyway…this week was Alanna’s turn.

I haven’t decided which is worse; shots with the older kids or the baby.

The older kids have a more expressive vocabulary with which to protest.

“OWWWWW that nurse just shoved a metal spike the size of the Eiffel Tower into my femur, Daddyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”

But when they’re babies, they don’t know what’s coming.

They lay down on that butcher paper covered cushion smiling and then….

The breathless scream.

You parents know the one.

Mouth open.

No sound

Red face.

You just want to say, “Breathe! Please! OK….not funny anymore. Breathe!”

Then it’s over.

They get bandaids with cartoon characters or silvery holograms (yes! I know! Where were THOSE when I was a kid?!?!) and before you know it, you’re in the car.

Now, whoever thought of inoculations was either a total genius or the scientific equivalent of a high-school boy.

I can just see it.

They’re in the lab with a needle full of something, triple-dog-daring each other to try it.

The reason I say that is this:

When you explain what those shots are, it sounds completely nuts.

It’s a virus…

…but not a virus…

…because all the virus stuff has been sucked out of the insides…

…but it’s still a virus.

And so you give yourself the virus so you don’t get the virus.

It seems like a paradox out of medical bizzaro world.

Almost like when Jesus says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it”

Why is it, that I seem to have an easier time with a doctor telling me, “I need to make you sick so you won’t get sick” than I do with what Jesus has to say?

Because when I REALY think about it, it seems crazy.

Just like the shots.

That is, until I bring the concept of possession into it.

Not The Exorcist type possession.

The ownership type.

You see, “health” is not something that the doctor possesses that can be handed out.

That’s why it’s called a “practice” instead of the “health dispensary”.

But life….

That IS something that God possesses.

That IS something that is His to give.

So when He says, "...whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." He's actually in a position to make good on that promise.

One the other hand, "life" is not something that I have the ability to find or create.

And so, any “life” I find or create for myself isn’t really life at all.

But as soon as I give up that counterfeit, I can receive the real deal.

The doctor can only offer “weak, non-virus virus” in exchange for “strong, deadly virus”.

But God….

But God offers “LIFE” in exchange for “not life”.

And that seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Hazel and Praying Naked

2009-02-16T04:32:00.000-08:00

One of the things that Laura and I have always wanted our home to be is hospitable. Currently, due to size of house and age of kids, we just aren’t able to have houseguests as much as we would like. So, of course, when some friends said they had a family member who needed a place to stay for a few days, we jumped at the chance.

Her name was Hazel.

At mealtime she got so annoying that we asked her to go in another room.

The first time we did this she cried.

We felt terrible.

She also had the habit of bursting into the bathroom when I was in the shower or on the commode.

She wouldn’t leave.

She’d just stare.

However the most humorous/troubling part (depending on how you look at it) was that she took an instant liking to me.

She began to look for ways to undermine Laura’s position in the family.

Have I mentioned that Hazel is a dog?

No really.

I’m not being ugly.

She’s really a dog.

She’ a “golden doodle”, to be exact.

Goldendoodle.com says that female doodles tend to pick favorites in a family.

Apparently, since I was the official walker and pooper scooper, that favorite was me.

That or my raw attractiveness transcends species.

I think I’ll go with goldendoodle.com on this one.

Anyway, I wasn’t kidding about her trying to take Laura’s place.

If we went somewhere in the car, Hazel would leap over the kids and get into the front passenger seat of the car.

Then she’d stare Laura down with puppy-dog eyes as if to say, “what? You’re coming? I had NO idea!”

I got her out and put her back into the rear of the car.

At night, she would try to wiggle in between Laura and me.

I made her go to her doggie bed.

It was all mildly amusing because, though she’s a dog, there seemed to be such intent there.

It was puppy love.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day.

And speaking of Valentine’s Day, this weekend I lead worship at a marriage retreat….on Valentine’s Day…..without my wife.

**Note from the desk of Laura Moritz: “I was OK with it….for real.”**

And one of the things they said was this:

“Intimacy means ‘in-to-me-see’”

At first I thought it was one of those silly sayings people use at retreats.

But then I thought about it.

Plus they explained it.

True intimacy is an invitation to see into our hearts.

It’s a place of vulnerability and it’s what we should have with God, with our spouses, and to a certain degree, with our close and trusted friends.

It’s saying to God, “Search me and know my heart” like David wrote in the Psalms.

It’s allowing people to see us bare and honest.

Of course, the key to this being a healthy situation is that it’s requited.

Unrequited intimacy isn’t intimacy at all.

That’s why Hazel’s puppy love is cute but not real.

I’m totally unknowable to her and she is totally unknowable to me.

Plus she has a hairy face.

But all this got me thinking about the incarnation and God’s self revelation.

The Bible, said Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel, is not a story of man’s search for God, but of God’s search for man.

It’s an invitation to intimacy with God.

It’s God saying, “Come see into me.”

So the challenge for us…for me…is how we respond to God “putting Himself out there”.

Do we invite Him, in kind, to see into our hearts and have intimacy with us?

Do we (again a retreat saying) pray naked?

Honestly, and bare before God?

It’s an invitation to life and love everlasting.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a houseguest, with a tennis ball in her mouth, staring me down.

Free Falling and The Context

2009-02-08T18:07:00.001-08:00

There are lots of things I remember from college.

Unfortunately, very few of them are the things my family paid a fortune for me to learn.

I learned how to use my meal card and a salad bar to feed stir-fry to my entire apartment.

I learned that sloshing pure bleach into a shower, while being the only way to clean a bathroom shared by six guys after three months of neglect, will make my coughs taste like Clorox for a week.

I learned that if I allowed my laundry to filter down to the bottom of the laundry pile it did, quite miraculously, come out less stinky than it went in.

There is, however, a lesson I learned in college that’s proven essential to life.

It’s been worth every penny of my tuition.

Context is king.

The key to understanding everything is to understand the context surrounding it.

Here’s an example:

If I say, “it turned blue”, that could mean all sorts of things.

I could be talking about a frostbitten toe…

or a pregnancy test.

(for the record, I am NOT talking about a pregnancy test).

I could be talking about the notorious, PC “blue screen of death”…

or the moisture indicator on the front of our middle child’s training diaper.

You have to know the context to know which one of those scenarios I was talking about.

And context can drastically change how you feel about something too.

Such is the case with the phrase, “Free fall”.

Those words have some emotional punch don’t they?

If you’re wearing a parachute and are with a bunch of college friends having a reunion weekend, those words sound exciting.

If you just tripped on an exposed root on the edge of the Grand Canyon…not so exciting.

If you just looked at your 401K, “free fall”, while accurate, may be terrifying.

If you are using those words to describe your emotional state it may be scarier still.

The context determines if those words thrill you or kill you.

And here is why that is such a great life lesson.

As a Christian, The Gospel is always the context.

God’s unfailing, unconditional, gracious and merciful love is always the theme.

And that changes everything.

So as The Moritz family, like a lot of families right now, wrestles with issues of joblessness and financial strain, we need to live as if The Gospel really is the context.

Will we still be afraid?

Sure.

But will we be excited that we have an opportunity to see God move? Will we be emboldened as we embark on this adventure?

Absolutely.

Now, for anyone who thinks that I write that glibly, know this:

I had a friend who used to tell me this during hard times.

I wanted to punch him.

It sounded like overly simple mind games for truly scary and difficult times.

It’s forever been the simplicity of the Gospel that is the biggest stumbling block for the minds of men.

Ironically, it can be even more of a stumbling block for us Bible Major/Professional Ministry types.

We like our coffee strong and our theology complicated.

And so it was the very simplicity of what my friend suggested that made me bristle.

But as Laura and I walked some very hard and painful roads together, and as we truly experienced what it meant to live in the context of The Gospel, we discovered that our friend was right and we can face the free fall.

Moses Sings and The "M" Word

2009-02-02T03:54:00.000-08:00

There is single word that can sum up ninety percent of conversations in a multi-kid household.

“MINE!”

And parents all over the world do all sorts of crazy things to avoid hearing that word.

In America, many parents even spend twice as much at Christmas buying double of everything so each kid has their own version of said toy.

This, of course, is laughable.

For, as anyone who has tried this knows, the “M” word is still screamed over WHICH one belongs to which kid. The only way to avoid this is by marking one of them with an identifier.

Again.

This is laughable.

No kid wants the “damaged” toy (even if they can’t pronounce “damaged”).

And so, “mine” is just a part of having more than one child.

Truthfully, it was a part of our lives even when we only had Brehm.

He constantly wanted whatever was on MY dinner plate.

Though you could justifiably argue that, in that situation, we didn’t only have one child in our house.

I do find it interesting, though, that universally we all have that desire to guard and fight for what is ours.

Which brings me to my quiet time this morning.

Lest you think I’m more spiritual than I am, “quiet time” here refers to me, with a cup of coffee and a bible, reading while my kids watch “Gofrette”, a terrible French-Canadian Public Television show.

Not quite monkish solitude, but it’s what I’ve got.

So there I was, reading Deuteronomy 32.

This is the part of the Bible where Moses sings a song.

Being a musician, I can relate.

And so Moses sings.

Around verse 8 he starts singing about how God gives the nations their allotted land.

Truthfully, I tend to skim parts like this.

It’s the Biblical equivalent of singing:

“To the North Dakotans you gave Fargo and to the Texans, The Country of Texas*”

But I didn’t skim it this morning.

And I’m glad I didn’t.

In verse 9, my mind got blown.

It says, “For the LORD’s portion is his people…”

I was stunned.

I’m God’s portion.

He says, “MINE” about me.

He fights for me.

He’s jealously protective of me.

He guards me as one of His own.

In the same way that nations are willing to battle over the land that is allotted them, God will battle for me.

And yet, all these analogies fall short.

My kids say “mine” out of selfishness.

Nations war out of greed or pride.

Even my joke about North Dakota and Texas could raise speculation about who TRULY has claim to the land. Is it the Native Americans or us?

But God’s claim isn’t sullied by sin, ambition or questionable motivation.

There’s no room to wonder, “Who was here first?”

What He says belongs to Him, truly belongs to Him and He is Righteous and Just to destroy anyone or anything that tries to claim it for themselves.

That’s scary and comforting all at the same time.

And I think that it was meant to be.

*Anyone who has talked to a Native Texan about Texas will get how funny this is.

Sleeping Bags, Staircases, and The Tango

2009-01-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

PART 1:

This past Friday we had dinner with some old friends.

Hopefully you know the kind of friends I’m talking about.

They’re those people with whom we have a long history of laughter, tears, major fights and reconciliation, and the comfort of knowing that, at the end of the day, we love each other.

Even though their kids are older than our kids, Brehm, Elijah, and Alanna LOVE playing with them.

This is always good when the parents want to hang out and talk in the kitchen.

**Side note**

Why is it that people always wind up in the kitchen?

And, considering that this seems to be a universal given, why do architects insist on designing homes with formal living rooms?

I’ve never understood that.

Just make a giant kitchen with comfortable chairs.

But I digress.

So, like every other “hang” time, the adults were in the kitchen when we heard:

THUMP THUMP THUMP then laughter.

THUMP THUMP THUMP then more laughter.

We investigated.

The kids were “Staircase Sledding”.

If you have children and you have never heard of this game, then allow me to explain.

Wait.

Before I do, I’ll issue this warning:

If you’re a worrywart like me, you might want to pre-dial “9-1” and have your finger ready to push the final “1” before you continue reading.

OK.

Everyone ready?

Good.

Staircase Sledding involves two kids getting into a sleeping bag together and flinging themselves down a flight of stairs.

All parents of small children can press that “1” now.

We came around the corner just in time to see Elijah (who was shoved into the bottom of the sleeping bag) and Brehm flip, roll and bounce down a very long staircase, then crash into our friend’s youngest daughter who was covered in another sleeping bag at the bottom of the stairs.

Of course our boys thought this was great fun.

I thought this game should be called “Kill Daddy With A Heart Attack”.

We told them to stop and explained to them that they could get REALLY hurt or dead.

They looked at us as if the only thing that was getting hurt or dead was their good time.

PART 2:

Several years ago, Laura and I served at a camp in Northern California called the JH Ranch.

Besides playing on the worship team, during the day, I was a “Tree Lizard”.

That meant that I spent my days harnessed, forty feet in the air, on a small platform helping campers transition from the ground to the high ropes challenges.

One of the events was called The Tango.

It consisted of two wires that got further and further apart.

The campers had to lean on each other for balance.

When they started, their hands were on one another’s shoulders. By the time they reached the other end, they were almost parallel to the ground, arms stretched out, and leaning their full body weight on their partner’s hands.

I’ve done it.

It’s terrifying.

The interesting thing about it is, that the most natural thing to do is bend at the waist to keep your balance.

This is also the one thing that will make you fall.

PART 3:

Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 both say the same thing:

“There is a way that seems to right to man but in the end it leads to death.”

I used to share those verses with campers who were about to do The Tango.

It’s also the verse I thought of when my kids were staircase sledding.

In both cases, the most dangerous thing was the thing that seemed like a good idea.

And so, what’s scary to me about this verse is the phrase, “seems right”.

It’s scary because, if I’m honest, there have been too many times that I’ve assumed that the “Christian” thing to do was whatever made sense, was logical, or seemed wise to me.

I’ve trusted in my gut and not trusted in my God.

And that’s the “gospel” of common sense.

Not The Gospel.

It’s following my instinct instead of following Jesus.

And those verses are clear.

Listening to that “good head on my shoulders” will find me in a sleeping bag….

..tumbling down the stairs.

Penny

2009-01-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

This weekend, Laura and I went away.

It was the first time that we’ve been away from the kids for more than one night.

And yes...we do know that it’s kinda pathetic that our idea of a “getaway” is an intensive job interview weekend.

My mom flew down to watch the kids.

Because it’s been a while since she’s had them to herself (and since Elijah is going through the terrible threes) we devised a covert code with our neighbors so we could keep tabs on how things were going. We often borrow things from each other, and so we used a basic color system.

If my mom told us that they borrowed something green like, say, broccoli, it was “code green” and we would know that everything was OK.

If they borrowed some bananas, we would know that things were “iffy” but otherwise OK.

Tomatoes? That was getting into “Lord Of The Flies” territory.

Of course this was the weekend that they borrowed the black and blue shop vac.

After our frantic phone call, they reassured us that using the shop vac was code for “messy van” and nothing more.

So, knowing that things were copacetic on the home front, we relaxed and enjoyed our time in North Carolina.

While we were there, we had some time to explore the area with the aid of our guide “Penny”.

Penny is what we called the Tom Tom™ brand GPS that our host lent us.

We called her that because the GPS’s voice mode was set on “British female”.

She said things like, “take the next right and proceed onto the motorway” and, “turn right in 300 yards” and, “silly American, the pound is stronger than the dollar”.

She also couldn’t seem to find any Starbucks but could easily find the quickest route to the local gourmet teashop.

Go figure.

So, Penny directed us around town.

But we weren’t so sure about Penny.

Sometimes she would take us through the winding back roads as a “short cut” instead of keeping to the main streets.

While I’m sure that she was just trying to take the quickest route, it made us very skeptical.

Was she, perhaps, going to get us lost just to get even for the Revolutionary War?

We didn’t know.

But we had no choice but to follow her commands.

Even when they seemed crazy.

And thankfully we discovered that, despite her mildly sinister politeness, she was a very reliable guide.

Even when we had our bearings and deviated from her course, she faithfully persisted to speak directions that would bring us back to where we were supposed to go.

And I thought about Exodus.

In The Bible, God was always leading His people.

The most familiar example of this is the Exodus story.

God freed His people from slavery and then led them in the wilderness for forty years.

He gave very specific directions but when Israel deviated from His course, He was always faithful to lead them back.

He continually spoke, guiding His people, quite literally, to His destination.

And that is amazingly encouraging to me right now.

As Laura and I seek God’s directions in this new season, we rest in the knowledge that, even if it seems crazy, He is a worthy and faithful guide.

We can trust where He leads, even if it takes unexpected turns.

And, unlike Penny, He will always persist in speaking.

Penny has a power button we can use to shut her up.

God does not.

Hans and The Magical Half-Bath Of Wonder And Mystery

2009-01-11T19:05:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest things about being a dad is that you continually get to see things through your kid’s eyes.

The average things of life take on a new and unexpected sense of excitement.

Things like seeing snow for the first time, discovering their little voices, or, my favorite, “The Magical Half Bath of Wonder And Mystery –ry -ry -ry”

Yes, the echoing announcer voice said it right.

My baby girl is enamored…nay…obsessed with our downstairs half bathroom.

She loves it.

She’ll walk toward the door, look back with a smile, and then run as fast as she can into the “powder room” laughing hysterically.

I’ll rush in behind her to make sure that the toilet is closed and she isn’t splashing playfully again.

And yes….I said “again”.

Lately I’ll catch up with her and she’s looking, awestruck, at the handle on the commode, her lips making a perfect “O” as if to say, “DADDY….HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHAIR?!?! IT’S GOT SHINY SILVER JEWELRY ON IT!! AND IT RATTLES! I SAID HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHAIR!?!?!”

I truly can’t remember the last time I marveled at the lever on the toilet.

But man! Does she marvel.

And then there’s Hans.

He’s the wind-up, back-flipping dog we got at the penny candy store on Cape Cod.

You wind him up and he does back-flips.

Kind of like a canine Mary Lou Retton except Hans only “sticks” the landing forty percent of the time.

When he does make the landing I’m always disappointed that he doesn’t arch his back and throw up his arms.

10 point deduction from the American judge.

We call him Hans because he has that word impressed on his plastic doggy hindquarters.

Anyway, all he does is wind up, flip, miss the landing, fall on his side and then repeatedly kick his legs.

Every time.

And every time, Alanna’s eyes blink in surprise as if, at any moment, Hans would leap straight into her face.

Of course he never does but her constant surprise was fascinating to me.

It made me think about the last time I was surprised, and what ought to surprise me.

Anyone who knows Laura and me knows that we keep a journal of how God has provided for our family.

We call it our Ebenezer because in Hebrew, that word means “Rock Of Help”.

Without sounding too preachy, EVERY Christian should keep a journal like this.

No exceptions.

OK. The soapbox is being stowed.

The funny thing about it, though, is that we’ve been truly shocked every time God’s provided for us.

But should we be?

I think that this is another one of God’s mysteries…one of His glorious tensions.

On the one hand, I think that it’s only right that we’re amazed and bewildered every time God does something miraculous.

On the other hand, most of what amazes us is merely God being God.

It’s Him being who He said He would be.

When He’s good, when He provides, when He’s gracious, when He heals, when He disciplines and when He does the impossible.

He’s just being faithfully Him.

And our posture should be like Alanna with Hans: constant amazement at the repetition of a consistent nature.

In other words…

We should be awed by His faithfulness.

Taunting With Baby Jesus

2009-01-05T03:52:00.000-08:00

For whatever reason, this year, people seemed very eager to be through with Christmas.

In fact, in our neighborhood, several houses had removed their decorations on the 26^th.

I’m not sure why it was.

Maybe it’s because of the unusually warm weather we’re having here in Middle Tennessee where even the trees are being lulled into budding by temperatures in the mid-sixties.

Or maybe they’re preparing even earlier, this year, for St. Eastentine Fool’s of July.

Regardless, this year, I kinda felt that way too.

And so the day after New Year’s Laura and I began to put Christmas decorations away.

As I was packing up ornaments, I reached into the tree and pulled out a present that had been stuck into its boughs.

It was a craft that Elijah had made at church.

Inside the little, unassuming brown box was yellow, yarn “straw”, a paper Baby Jesus (clearly reflecting the diversity of His creation by donning purple and orange crayon colored skin), and a paper angel in the lid.

Elijah, who sees EVERYTHING, cried out, “Baby Jesus!! I want Him!”

So, I handed the present to him.

“I love baby Jesus,” he said, (sounding more like he said, “I lub baby Jeebus”) and then went to show Brehm. Who turned, Incredible Hulk like, into the green-eyed monster.

BREHM: “I want Baby Jesus!”

ELIJAH: “No! MY Baby Jesus.”

BREHM: “But I want him!!”

ELIJAH (holding the present out to Alanna): “You want him?”

ALANNA: “yes.”

ELIJAH: “no!”

And then he ran around the living room taunting his older brother and little sister with The Baby Jesus.

Alanna got so frustrated that she would burst into tears every time she saw the box.

Despite the growing lists posted in cyberspace containing all the things that make Baby Jesus cry, apparently, Baby Jesus makes my daughter cry. Great! Just great.

Finally, I shouted, “ENOUGH!” and took the present from Elijah and packed it away to wait, faithfully, with the rest of the decorations, until next year.

And so I, the guy who had had his mind completely blown by the incarnation this Advent, took this symbol of God’s Christmas gift and put it, unceremoniously, in a blue Rubbermaid tub.

Then I paused.

In my hurry to "get on with things", I realized that I didn’t want to put the baby Jesus away for another year.

I didn’t want to have unpacked him this December, gawked at him for a month, and then packed him away again.

I didn’t want to move on to the crucified and risen Jesus of Easter while being forgetful of the baby in a manger.

In the same way that Christmas doesn’t make sense with out The Cross, Easter doesn’t make sense without the incarnation.

So, today I dug that present out of the blue tub before it got lost in that sea of forgetfulness called “the attic”.

I’m thinking of putting it somewhere really annoying.

Like in the cup holder of my car or on the floor by my bed.

Anywhere that I will continually trip and stumble over it so I will constantly be reminded of God’s mind bending, miraculous, and priceless gift.

For more than one month of the year.

Made Up Words

2008-12-29T09:05:00.000-08:00

My oldest son, Brehm, has always had an interesting relationship with language.

Some of you may recall a previous post when I mentioned that he takes after his daddy as a “talker”.

Because of his intense verbosity, he often tries and says things whether he knows how to say them or not.

This was particularly troublesome when he was learning to talk.

Some of my friends have had toddlers that sound like they’re speaking a foreign language when they’re learning to talk.

One such friend had a son who, I would swear, spoke perfect, emphatic German.

Sadly, we were not so lucky.

Instead of sounding like 1940’s Nazi propaganda, our son said real English words.

The wrong ones.

Very wrong ones.

I recall one incident at a playground where my, then 2 year old, son began calling his friend’s name from the top of jungle gym.

“Nichole”, however, came out sounding like a racial slur and not the intended name.

I realized that no amount of explaining would make the other parents at the park believe that he merely had a pronunciation problem.

Nor did I think that they would believe that he hadn’t learned that language from me.

Especially since I was wearing my “Bama” t-shirt.

I scooped him up, shoved him in the car and drove away.

Apparently, in my mind, looking like I’m abducting a child is better than looking like a racist dad.

As he’s gotten older, his clarity of speech has improved but he still searches for ways to express himself.

Even it means making up words.

Which brings me to the other night.

He had just gotten out of the bathtub and was putting on his pajamas. I had recently arrived home after being gone for almost a month and so he was being very affectionate.

I’d missed him too so I was happy to be snuggly.

He asked me to help him put on his pajamas and, after I did, he said, “Dad, you’re very helpful”.

It was classic Brehm.

Very matter-of-fact.

But then he said, “You’re goodful and niceful too.”

I didn’t correct his grammar.

In fact, I think that those are two words that should be added to the English lexicon.

It also showed a shocking amount of linguistic insight on his part.

If being “helpful” means that you are full of help, then, it stands to reason, that “goodful” would mean “full of goodness”.

So, because I’m a big geek and love words, I started thinking about other “full” words.

And here’s what I found.

They either describe their object or they describe the response the object invokes.

So, for example, words like “beautiful” and “helpful” mean that something is full of beauty or full of help. Whereas words like “wonderful” and “dreadful” mean that something inspires feelings of wonder or dread.

Confusing, I know.

Welcome to my brain.

And, since I was thinking about “goodful” things, I began to think about whether or not I could use the word “goodful” to describe God. He is, after all, full of all that is good.

But “goodful” still falls short.

God IS good.

That phrase doesn’t just explain his actions toward us (though it does that as well).

It’s a definition.

“Good” is defined by God and not the other way around.

So I’ve been meditating on the goodness of God.

Maybe it’s because we’re all in a season that seems filled with uncertainty that it’s been so meaningful (full of meaning) to rest in the knowledge that God is good.

Regardless…I’ve found it to be “goodful” and “encouragementful.” as well.

Home For Christmas

2008-12-22T02:56:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been away for so long that going home felt like going on a trip?

That's the strange situation in which I find myself today as I double, triple, and, because I'm my mother's son, quadruple check my suitcases.

You see, after 22 days away from my family, I'm finally going home.

What makes it extra special is that, because of the above mentioned phenomenon, what will technically be a Christmas "stay-cation" will feel like a vacation.

And a good one at that.

And so, in the spirit of having a vacation, I'm taking a a break for this week.

Of course, the grand irony is that I'm telling you that I'm not going to blog this week by writing on my blog.

But that's OK.

My generation likes irony.

How post modern of me.

So...Merry Christmas to you all and I'll be back next week.

Zurich and My Christmas Wish

2008-12-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

I tend to be a big baby when I get sick.

If have a cold or a sinus infection, I load up on over-the-counter meds and try to tough it out.

Ok…that is, admittedly, a newer ability.

My wife will laugh when she reads this because she’ll know that “newer ability” means “within the past month”.

I’ve never been a good sick person.

Laura, however, can wait until her sinuses explode the front of her face off before she goes to the doctor.

She comes from hardier stock.

Her father is hardiest of all.

His advice is to drink a soda and beat the sickness into submission by sheer act of will.

My “will” is lucky if it says, “oh yeah?” to a sniffle, but against a heavy weight infection?

It doesn’t even go one round.

And, for me, nothing is worse than the stomach flu.

Just typing the words (swallow) makes me (swallow) feel queasy (go lay on the floor).

Which is why, when my wife called and told me that the kids have been throwing up, she also said that she was glad that I wasn’t there.

As it was, I was paranoid that the “bug” would become digitized and make its way to me via cell phone.

Of course, the fact that I’m in New England and the kids are sick means one thing:

Missed work…

Almost a week of work.

Missed work equals less money and less money results in worry.

I’m not sure why we worry.

God has been faithful to provide for us on countless occasions.

Maybe it’s an attempt to control the uncontrollable.

There’s a novel idea.

Let’s worry about things we can’t change.

And now, Johnny, tell them what they’ve won! A beautiful, sunny trip to Ulcerland!

Sometimes I’m just not that bright.

Anyway, in order to understand how puking kids and smaller paychecks show God’s glory, I need to back up one week.

Last Thursday, after we had a very non-spiritual phone conversation about our finances, Laura went and got the mail.

There was a check in our mailbox.

From our friends in Zurich.

Whenever I say “Zurich” and “check” in the same paragraph, I feel the need to explain that our friends are not spies, arms dealers, or stupidly wealthy American lumber barons hiding money from the IRS.

They’re a musician and a frog doctor.

For real.

The memo on the check simply said, “Prompted by the man upstairs”.

They meant God.

Not Heinrich, the chain-smoking guy in the flat above them.*

They had no idea that the kids were sick.

They had no idea, nor did we, that Laura was about to miss a week of work.

They were simply being obedient to what they believed God was telling them to do.

And God knew what we needed.

Before we knew we needed it.

But God, in His great love for us, saw fit to provide proactively.

And yet, that pales in comparison to what God was up to in a Bethlehem stable.

You see, while most people saw a baby in a feeding trough, God was entering our world to provide a way for us to have a relationship with Him again.

Whether we knew we needed it or not.

Before I was born, or even aware of the depths of my own depravity, God was entering human history to provide for my redemption.

And not just mine, but anyone who believes and accepts that free gift.

That’s really the gift of Christmas.

Not gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Not ipods or a Wii.

But Jesus.

And so my Christmas wish echoes the words of the famous carol.

“Let every heart prepare Him room.”

* No offense meant to Heinrich.

I have no idea if he’s a chain smoker.

Or if he even exists at all.

Zero and The Journey

2008-12-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

Right now I’m staring at a blank screen.

The empty, white rectangle hovering in its Microsoft Word window seems to taunt me, daring me to fill it.

You see, after writing for almost a year, I’ve finally hit a writer’s block.

I’ve got nothing.

Zero.

It’s not that God isn’t doing anything in my life.

He is.

And it isn’t that I don’t have anything to share.

I do.

The problem is that I feel the pressure to take what God has been teaching me and make it humorous and entertaining to read.

So, in the spirit of honesty, and since I don’t have a funny story for this week, I’ll just share how God has been challenging me.

It’s no secret for most of you that my season with Osterville Baptist Church is coming to an end.

This is bitter, sweet, exciting, and scary.

It’s sweet because the amount of time that I’ve had to spend apart from my wife and kids has been totally inconsistent with what I believe about family.

It’s bitter because I truly do love and care about the people I’ve been serving for the last year and half.

It’s exciting because I know that God has something in store.

It’s scary because I haven’t the foggiest idea where I’ll serve in ministry next.

We’ve also been wrestling with our preconceived notions of what God’s plans for us might be.

I think that we always assumed that God’s plan would involve better health, more money, a bigger house in a safer neighborhood, and nicer clothes.

No part of that assumption is Biblical.

If God chooses to bless us with those things, then we’ll be grateful. The challenge to us has been to remove that presumption from our minds so we can clearly hear God as we seek him for our next step.

For anyone who has wrestled with these things, you know how hard that is to do.

And so, in the midst of this season of transition, Laura and I have been praying for peace.

A lot.

Not “peace”, as in, “everything is smooth sailing”, but true, Biblical peace…even in the middle of hard times.

Even this morning, as Laura called to tell me that our youngest was throwing up, we found ourselves asking God for peace. And as much as I’d like to tell you that this story has a nice happy ending, as you can tell by the tone of this post, I still feel unsettled and afraid.

And I think that that’s an OK place to leave it for now.

I don’t think it’s OK to stay here but I don’t think we should be afraid to visit.

Especially during Advent.

Because the whole idea behind this season is anticipation, longing, and tension.

The fearful, difficult, but expectant journey to Bethlehem.

Apples, Chocolate, and Advent

2008-12-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

I love apples.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for me to be seen munching away on a tasty Gala or Honeycrisp.

This is not, as you might suspect, due to the fact that apples keep doctors away (though with my current co-pay and three kids, I wish that were true).

No.

I just love apples. But, my favorite incarnation of the apple is my wife’s amazing apple pie.

No one makes a pie like this one.

Even though I’m more than handy in the kitchen, I tried to make the filling this Thanksgiving and botched it pretty bad.

She even makes the crust from scratch with butter and lard.

Yes, lard!

There’s enough animal fat in that crust to stop your heart, but it’s flakey and tasty and I would eat two of them in one sitting if I let myself.

And the filling…oh the filling!

An exotic blend of cinnamon, clove, and allspice, vanilla, and rum…truly I don’t think a better pie exists.

My love of apples might have a deeper root though.

My name IS Adam and, in the same way I could eat my wife’s apple pie until my stomach exploded, I do recall a distant relative, with my same name, who had a problem with apples.

Also, I grew up Jewish, and apples are pretty significant symbols in the Jewish culinary tradition.

On Rosh Hashana, I used to eat apples dipped in honey to symbolize the hopes of a sweet new year. But, since it’s so much like apple pie filling, the use of apples on Passover is my favorite.

It’s a blend of apples, cinnamon, honey, walnuts and wine.

Strangely, because of its consistency, it’s a symbol of the mortar used while “my people” were in slavery.

Sweetness and slavery are a funny combination.

This is what I was always told about that: The apples and honey remind us of how sweet freedom is, and how sweet the promises of God are.

Which leads me to Trader Joes.

For anyone unlucky enough to have never experienced this shopping phenomenon, let me explain.

Trader Joes is everything you like about Wild Oats, Whole Foods and Fresh Market but priced for normal people.

“Healthy food for real people” is the slogan I came up with.

Joe, you’re welcome.

I’ll let you know where to send the check.

So anyway, they finally came to their senses, and built one here in Nashville.

Laura and I went to check it out, and came home with more than we planned.

This included two advent calendars for the boys.

Inside are all-natural chocolates for each day until Christmas.

The boys were very excited when we explained it this morning.

If we use the words “Christmas” and “chocolate” in the same sentence, they’re on board.

So as I sliced apples for their lunches today, I started thinking about the connection between Passover and Advent.

Both remember our bondage.

Both involve longing for deliverance.

Both find their ultimate, redemptive, fulfillment in sacrifice and a miracle of God.

Even more than that, there is the sense of hope that permeates both celebrations.

We allow the remembrance of what God HAS done to give us hope for what He WILL do.

So, if you’re like my family, and will be eating a daily dose of chocolate to celebrate the season, let it be a reminder of the bondage we were in (or in the case of chocolate….the bondage we are still in) and let us thank God for the hope that we have because of Jesus. Chocolate and apples ain’t got nothing on that.

Happy Blended Holiday

2008-11-24T14:53:00.001-08:00

When I was a child (or young’n, as they say down here in Tennessee) we had distinct seasons.

I’m not talking about winter, spring, summer, and fall.

I’m talking about holiday seasons.

For whatever reason, it seemed like there was actually a marketing pause between holidays.

But now….now there is a distinct climate change.

Blame my carbon footprint if you must, but there is a noticeable “global warming” of holiday merchandising.

And by “global” I mean “American”.

It started slowly.

Halloween decorations started showing up in stores around, say, late September. Thanksgiving had a nice long run from November 1^st until we all woke up from our turkey-induced comas.

Christmas always enjoyed a pleasantly festive hoorah. Or, if you were Jewish, like my family, you had eight whole days of gifts, dreidels and fried foods.

New Years was next with the appropriate revelry.

Then, a pause for a dignified remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr.

Valentines, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, April Fools, and The Fourth of July were all checkpoints along the way. But, like the proverbial frog in a stockpot, the heat is being turned up and no one seems to notice.

Nowadays, Halloween is blended with “back-to-school”, Thanksgiving has gone the way of the dodo, and, if my predictions are correct, we will soon see a line of Easter themed, candy hearts in stores for Valentine’s day or people dressing as Santa Claus for Halloween.

Even worse, we may see the blending of holiday names into unholy, inbred marketing unions:

Hanukwanzamas.

St. Eastentine’s Day.

The Fools of July.

Oh The Madness!

When will it end?

This year, however, there is an overlap that I feel is most appropriate.

Thanksgiving blends with Advent.

The first Sunday of Advent falls on the weekend of Thanksgiving.

Isn’t that perfect?

Doesn’t a holiday dedicated to thanking God for His amazing provision flow seamlessly into a season of praising God for sending His Son?

After all, THAT is an expression of God’s ultimate provision.

In fact, of the four Sundays of Advent (Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy), has anyone noticed the conspicuous absence of “Thanks”?

Why?

I believe that it’s because thankfulness is assumed. If God has given you hope, peace, love, and joy, you would think that one would be thankful.

So that’s my “Thanksgidvent” hope for me, and for you.

That as we sit and enjoy our turkey and football (you can’t forget football!), no matter how humble or princely the meal, that we would remember the pinnacle of God’s provision, Jesus Christ.

And we’d give thanks.

Deliverance Hamsters and The Geckos

2008-11-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

Back when I was twelve years old, my middle school class had hamsters.

We began the year with two, but by June, we had a small tribe.

It was a good lesson for health class.

It was also a good lesson for genetics, since the two original hamsters were closely related and thus produced mutant spawn.

Please know that when I use the term “mutant” I’m not talking about the cool “Spiderman” or “Fantastic Four” kind of mutants.

I’m talking about the kind showcased in the movie “Deliverance”.

These were backwoods, rural Appalachian, scary hamsters.

It wasn’t pretty.

Some of them were blind, some had stumps instead of legs, and all of them would pee on you when you tried to pick them up.

So…come the end of school, the teacher asked who would like to take them home for the summer.

No one wanted them.

I, having not yet seen “Deliverance”, thought they were mildly cute and enjoyed the sound of their dueling banjos.

I took them home.

They lived about a month.

I wish I could say that they died of complications due to their “inbredness”.

Unfortunately, they died from my neglect.

One morning, I cleaned their cage out (it was one of those cool ones with two levels and a tube connecting them) and thought it would be nice for them to have some fresh air. So I placed their nice clean cage in the shade on the deck, so that my little, incontinent friends could enjoy the morning breeze.

But then things went South.

My mom and I got in a fight over something (I can’t remember what) and then discovered that we were late for an appointment. We ran out the door and rushed off.

Now, here’s the funny thing about planetary movement.

The spot where the shade is in the morning is not where the shade is in the afternoon…..what with the rotation of the Earth and all.

And so, we returned to find our furry wards baked inside their cedar chipped habitat by the noonday sun.

It was truly as terrible as it sounds.

We gave them a proper burial by the shed in the backyard.

Fast forward to this weekend.

Laura works in a middle school where the science teacher has several animals for the students to enjoy. This includes two gecko lizards named Izzy and Lizzy.

Since our kids love animals but don’t have any pets of their own, we volunteered to keep them for the weekend.

They came with instructions.

1) Pick them up from behind their front legs.

2) Don’t grab them from behind their front legs. You’ll crush their lungs.

3) If they get scared, their tails will fall off.

4) Handling them, looking at them, or taunting them, will scare them.

5) If they get too cold, their tails will fall off.

6) Reading this list will make their tails fall off.

With my history of killing class pets, I was a nervous wreck.

Brehm, however, LOVED them. His favorite thing to do was to hold them firmly, but gently, in his hand and pet their backs. Apparently the geckos liked this because their tales never fell off.

They would just rest in his hand while Brehm watched TV.

Eventually I relaxed enough to let them climb up my shoulder and onto my head.

They looked just like the Geico gecko but they never offered us insurance.

I guess they considered us a risk.

Lately I’ve been fearful that God is more like me than like Brehm.

That He will start to do something to bless me but then get distracted and leave me to bake.

I’m not sure why this is.

Everything in the Bible and everything I’ve experienced these past few years indicates that I can trust God. That he will not neglect me the way I neglected those inbred hamsters.

And so this weekend I’ve been praying that I would be more “geckoish”.

A fragile creature resting in strong but gentle hands.

I’ve also been thankful.

Mainly I’ve been thankful that, no matter how scared I get, I don’t have a tail that can fall off.

Security

2008-11-10T15:34:00.000-08:00

I, like many men, have a super-spy fantasy.

In this imaginary world, I appear to be an ordinary, mild-mannered citizen but underneath that innocuous exterior is a lethal, highly trained man of mystery and intrigue.

While I know it’s a pretty common daydream, I admit that I’m a bit embarrassed about it.

I’m embarrassed, partially because I’m a grown man with a ridiculous imagination and partially because, as anyone who knows me will attest, there is nothing lethal, highly trained, or mysterious about me.

But I’m working on that.

Thus far, the efforts to increase my “spyness” have included:

1. Increasing the level of black in my wardrobe

2. Keeping my eyes opened for a good pair of sunglasses.

3. Begging any friend who owns a gun to take me to the shooting range.

I know none of these things will have the CIA knocking on my door like, say, learning fluent Farsi, but, hey….I can hope.

AGENT 1: “Mr. Moritz, come with us. The President needs you.”

ME: “It’s about time!”

The problem with this fantasy is that, in recent years, I’ve become increasingly self-examining. And nothing ruins a good fantasy like asking yourself “why” you have it in the first place.

It’s kind of like asking what’s in a hotdog.

Once you know, you don’t enjoy eating them anymore.

And so, for example, it’s not enough that I realize that I prefer Starbucks or I actually enjoy shooting guns.

I have to ask myself “why” I like those things.

Do I like overpriced coffee because I REALLY like it, or am I seeking some sort of identity in being seen holding a white cup with a green mermaid on it?

Do I REALLY like shooting with friends or am I seeking some sort of affirmation of my masculinity and the sense of personal security that a gun can bring?

Truly, if left to my own devices, I’d make myself crazy because, like the Bible says, a man doesn’t even know his own heart.

Only God does.

And so, I’ve had to ask God to reveal my motivations to me…in all things. And sometimes the answers God shows me are mixed.

I actually do like Starbucks coffee and enjoy the ambience of the store.

Yay!

But I also feel “rich” when I drink it and so I tend to crave it when things are tight financially and I want to pretend that they aren’t.

Doh!

The same is true with guns.

I truly do enjoy them.

Yay!

But part of the enjoyment is that they are an easy antidote for fear because they make me feel powerful and cool.

Doh! Doh!

With both of those scenarios, the key is security.

If I’m not careful, I can become a security junkie.

I like to feel comfortable, safe, and in control.

I don’t like stress or difficulty.

And, while I know that God is the ultimate source of security and refuge, too often I seek that elsewhere.

But the reality is that, whether it’s a cup of coffee, a firearm, a 401K, stylish clothes, or a President, if my sense of hope and security is in anything but God, it’s misplaced.

And that’s a worship problem.

That’s a trust problem.

Now that I’ve gotten you all to be as neurotic as me about your choice of clothing and coffee let me say this: None of the things I’ve mentioned are “bad” (for the record, I’m typing this as a wonderfully delusional Americano steams sweet nothings next to me). But I believe an essential part of being a follower of Jesus is that we ask Him these sorts of questions and then pay attention to the answer. We need to allow the great lover of our souls to reveal the inner workings of our hearts, and then let Him bring healing so we can find our rest in Him.

And that’s where security is found.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the President needs me.

Plumbing and The Violinist

2008-11-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

Part I:

About a week ago the weather in Nashville began to change.

Having grown up in the Northeast, both my wife and I welcomed the cooler temperatures with gratitude. There is something severely wrong about serving turkey on Thanksgiving in shorts and a tank-top.

Like most people, fall weather makes me crave certain foods.

Unlike most people, those foods include parsnips and brussel sprouts.

I know it sounds crazy but you can blame Rachel Ray.

She taught me about roasted brussel sprouts and root veggies and I was hooked.

The sprouts are pretty easy to prepare but the root vegetables need to be peeled.

This led me to one of the many lessons of home ownership.

The average garbage disposal does not like to have large amounts of vegetable peels shoved down its gaping, grinding throat.

Mutiny will ensue.

Thus was the case, about a week ago, when I was making a batch of (drool) sprouts and roots.

That’s when our sink backed up.

I flipped the disposal switch hoping to move things along.

The water “vortexed” and then spun to a lazy halt peppered with chunks of parsnip and carrot peel.

I sighed a frustrated, “Of course!” and began to figure out how to fix the problem.

We have a two-basin sink and water flowed down the unclogged side without a problem. Therefore, I reasoned, the blockage must be between the basins, in the pipe that comes out of the disposal.

This led me to lessons number two and three of home ownership:

2. You never know as much about plumbing as you think. And

3. Before you attempt to remove your garbage disposal…empty the water out of the sink.

A roll of paper towels, two saturated dish rags and copious amounts of nonsensical muttering later, I sat with my entire garbage disposal disassembled and strewn across my kitchen floor.

I looked down the pipes, I checked the disposal and could not find the cause of the block.

So I put it all back together and ran the water.

It backed up again.

Now, you would think, that sloshing backed-up dishwater all over my face would have drilled lessons two and three (outlined above) into my brain.

If you thought that, then you would have thought wrong.

Another roll of paper towels, three more dish rags and a flurry of muttering later, I began to expand the focus of my hunt.

Against all reason, I start disconnecting all the pipes under the sink.

And that’s when I found it.

It looked like a normal, unassuming pipe from the outside, but this one was different.

Where the garbage disposal fed into the drain from the other side of the sink, the pipe had a divide in the middle, greatly restricting the diameter of the pipe.

And that half of the pipe was jam packed with parsnipy coleslaw.

I cleared it out, reassembled the pipes, reconnected the disposal and ran the water.

It drained perfectly.

Part II:

Back when I was a kid, my parents used to host traveling students at our house. From “Up With People” kids to roaming string quartets, we always had an open door. It gave me an amazing opportunity to meet people from all over the world. Countries like Switzerland, Sweden, and Texas found their way into our lives.

They taught me about alternate guitar tunings and how to iron a shirt.

It’s the latter of these that is pertinent to this story.

Since the classical musicians that stayed with us often wore tuxedoes for their performances, they had developed several ironing shortcuts.

One particular Italian violinist explained it this way, “If they never see what’s under your jacket, why iron it?”

It seemed to make sense. Why fix what no one will see.

This same lesson was reinforced, later in life, by a boss who said, “don’t waste time sanding the top of a wardrobe.”

The essence of these statements is this:

What you don’t see won’t hurt you so don’t bother fixing it.

I wish I had let that lesson apply only to ironing and sanding furniture.

But I didn’t.

For a long time, anything I could hide from other people got left alone. I didn’t work on it and I didn’t let God work on it either. But, like the pipe and parsnips, God, in his mercy, let things get backed up.

He had to disassemble, and examine….everything. Not just where I thought the clog was. God even had to take apart the places that seemed to have nothing to do with it.

That was the only way to get rid of the clog and get things flowing again.

While I know that, when He was on Earth, Jesus was a carpenter, sometimes I think He might be a plumber as well.

Monsters

2008-10-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

I can still remember Brehm’s first, major night terror. It was Halloween night, 2003.

I was on the road (I can’t remember where) and my phone rang.

It was Laura.

She sounded frightened.

You would be too.

She was a fairly new mom, her husband was traveling for work, it was Halloween, and that’s when the screaming began.

This wasn’t the normal, “I’m scared” kind of scream.

This was the “Freddy Kruger is real and he’s killing me” kind.

When she called me, she was holding Brehm in her arms, his eyes were open but they didn’t see her, and he just kept screaming.

I felt so unbelievably helpless and so did she.

So we prayed.

It was a real, desperate, scared, prayer.

Brehm started to calm down, his eyes focused on Laura’s face and then he fell back asleep.

I wish that I could say that that was the last time he had a night terror.

It wasn’t.

Fortunately, the next several times, I was home.

It was actually worse when I was home since there was an expectation that I would be able to help our poor son. I couldn’t, and that just made us both feel like failures as parents. We should be able to make our son feel safe. Right?

Well, as soon as Brehm started talking, we began teaching him to pray. That way, if the monsters came at night, he could ask God to make them go away.

This, of course, resulted in us running around our house “chasing” monsters and telling them to leave. If he thought he saw one, we would ask God to make it go away and then, we’d chase it out the front door.

He isn’t scared anymore.

Now it’s Elijah who’s scared.

He doesn’t have night terrors, but he sees monsters everywhere.

They’re in his room.

They’re in the half-bath.

They make appearances at school like guests on a monster version of David Letterman.

Everywhere.

The problem is that he is our little pragmatist/materialist.

Brehm quickly understands abstract concepts. Elijah wants the “hands on” approach.

So here is a real conversation we had the other day.

“Daddy…I’m scay-ahd…monsters.”

“Well, buddy, do you want to pray and tell the monsters to go away?”

“No.”

“I really think that would help. Jesus can make the monsters go away.”

“Flashlight. I want a flashlight.”

“Jesus is better than a flashlight. The Bible says that he’s the ‘Light Of The World’. Doesn’t that sound brighter than a flashlight?”

“Flashlight.”

“Flashlight it is then.”

He is, after all, only three.

But I’m not.

Yet I still pick the flashlight sometimes.

I still pick the temporal band-aid instead of the eternal solution.

Sometimes I still close my eyes and hope the monsters will go away instead of squaring my shoulders, allowing Jesus’ light to shine in my life, and never being scared again.

I would rather live life with a glow-stick than flip the switch and let the whole room be flooded with light.

God’s been teaching me to let His light shine in all areas of my life, especially the dark closets where the monsters live.

He’s been proving to me that, whether it’s the literal devil or the monstrous potential of sin in my own heart, He is the ultimate monster killer.

The reason I don’t just tell my kids that there’s no such thing as monsters is that I would be lying.

And they would know that I was lying.

Whether they’re the invisible kind, or the kind my friend’s FBI neighbor puts away, monsters are real.

Saying otherwise would just be me, trying to make myself feel better.

Believing in monsters won’t hurt my children.

Believing that monsters can’t be killed will.

Presents and Presence

2008-10-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, Elijah turned three.

When he woke up on his birthday, he found the whole living room covered in signs that Laura and I had made. They declared things like: “E Is 3!” and, “E: The Three Year Old, The Legend.”

He couldn’t read them but he knew they were for him.

Brehm, however, turned into a green-eyed, jealousy monster.

He was annoyingly persistent at reminding Elijah that, tomorrow, it wouldn’t be his birthday anymore.

Ah…brotherly love.

This event also kicked off “birthday conversation” season.

For those of you not familiar, this is more anticipated than football, baseball, and hunting seasons combined.

It’s the season of seasons.

And Brehm is quick to make sure we know it. About once a day he asks when his birthday is, and then tries his best to calculate the months, days, minutes and pico-seconds until his big day.

But here’s the problem.

His birthday is two days after Christmas.

Thus, no matter how hard we try to separate the two events, his birthday is, inevitably, eclipsed in the public consciousness.

What's weird is that he doesn’t get envious about Jesus’ birthday the way he does with Elijah's.

That may have to do with the fact that HE gets presents at Christmas.

Or, as I choose to believe, it’s because he’s a budding theologian.

Here's a conversation we had the other day.

“Dad, when is my birthday again?”

“In a few months, Buddy. First, it will be Jesus’ birthday, and then yours is a few days later.”

“I think we should sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jesus….like this (he sings his adorably off-key version of the birthday song.)”

“I think that’s a great idea, Buddy! Maybe we can make Him a cake too.”

(Brehm looks at me very seriously)

“But Dad, he won’t be able to eat it!”

“Well…um....we can eat it for him.”

(Brehm, almost in tears)

“But then there won’t be any left for Him!” (He recovers), “Can we give him presents?”

“You know what he really likes, Buddy? When we love Him and walk with Him.”

“I think he likes toys.”

“I think He likes toys too.”

Strangely, this conversation got me thinking about some of the silly (and un-Biblical) things that I say as a Christian.

Nothing will streamline your theology like trying to explain it to a four-year old.

The particular phrase that came to mind is, “Lord, we ask you to be present with us as we (fill in the blank)”

The reason that's silly, is that God is omnipresent.

He’s everywhere...all the time. So how can He be “more” present?

What I really mean, and what I ought to say, is, “God help ME be present to you.”

At Gordon College, it’s a graduation requirement to go on a two-week, wilderness trek called La Vida.

One of the first things they tell you is to “be here now”.

Be present with what God is doing right now.

That was the first time I realized that I've lived as a shell most of my life.

My body is here...but I’m not. My mind is thinking about the future, replaying the past, wrestling with some issue, or making other plans.

Those were two very hard weeks for me.

Even though most people view me as someone who loves experiencing all the details of the moment, the truth is that I’m almost never here.

Increasingly, God has been healing me of this. He’s been helping me be present with my wife, with my kids, with Him.

That is what I was trying to convey to Brehm when I said that the best present for Jesus is for us to love and walk with Him.

That being present TO Him is a present FOR Him.

As I wrote last week, I’ve been reading the Christmas story during my Bible study time. This, obviously, has had me thinking about the mystery and miracle of the incarnation. God with flesh.

One of the things that’s so amazing about it, is that God, as the great initiator, is actually present with me first so I can be present with Him.

So what can we give “God-with-us” (Emanuel) this Christmas?

To start, we can give Him, “Us-with-God.”

And, if we’re like Brehm….maybe a toy too.

Disappointment

2008-10-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

Last week was a hard week and so today’s post won’t be funny.

There hasn’t been much laughing in the Moritz household for the last seven days.

It’s been there for sure (with kids it always is) but it’s been more like islands in a big ocean.

Truth be told, we, and lot of people we love, are feeling disappointed with God.

I know this may seem like a shocking confession, but it’s an honest one.

The stories, if they had happened to a single person, would add up to a modern-day Job. From our friends who are dealing with addiction, cancer, a miscarriage at 32 weeks, and infidelity, to our own unexpected job news and bleak financial forecast, it has been, as I’ve already said, a hard week.

This past Saturday I realized that I’m actually part prairie dog…or some other burrowing rodent. All I wanted to do was find a hole and hide from the collective weight of the prior week.

The universal sentiment expressed from everyone has been, “I thought my life would look different, God.”

Depending on the day, Laura and I have felt the same way.

Not coincidentally, during all of this, I’ve been preparing for Christmas.

For any of you who read my Facebook status, you’ll know that this has been another point of contention between God and me this week.

Fall is supposed to be cold.

Not 83 degrees.

But I digress.

So, this morning, as I sat down with my coffee…in a t-shirt….I began reading the Gospel of Luke. And that’s when I realized something.

I was reading the Christmas story with full knowledge of the ending.

I was forgetting that the people who lived through it had no idea how things were going to turn out. And so for them, the greatest expression of God’s love seemed like the greatest disappointment.

They expected a messiah who would come and free them from Roman oppression.

They got a baby in a feeding trough.

They expected a scholar.

They got a carpenter.

They expected prosperity.

They got a homeless man.

They expected handsome.

They got mildly, “inoffensive-to-look-at” at best.

They expected someone religious.

They got a “friend of sinners”.

In short, they expected everything they could ever dream of, and instead they got……

God.

What a disappointment.

The amazing thing is that, through all the devastation of past week, through all our disappointment, God, just like he did that first Christmas, has been initiating greater intimacy with us.

I’ve been praying more than I have in a long time.

Everyone, whose stories I mentioned, has been.

And all of us are learning that God is not a God of expectations.

He is God.

Period.

You see, for the brief moments that I’ve been able get my head above the waters of fear and disappointment, I’ve seen that God is still working.

I just don’t know the end of this chapter yet.

Supermarket Cannibals and Wolverine

2008-10-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

Cute babies do strange things to people.

Most notably, they tend to turn them into Hannibal Lecter.

True story.

We’re at the supermarket waiting in the checkout line and Alanna is looking around with her big, blue eyes. A woman gets in line behind us and starts making faces at our daughter. So far, that’s pretty normal.

We start to chat.

“She’s a cutie! How old is she?”

“Eight months.”

“Ohhh she’s a pretty one. I could eat her up. Yes I could, yes I could!”

The last part of that was said in a high-pitched voice and directed at Alanna.

Wait…did she just say that she wanted to eat my baby?

If I look at the conveyer belt and see fava beans I might just run away.

“No you couldn’t”, I said.

“Couldn’t what?”

“Eat my baby, sicko.”

I held my daughter tighter.

Ok….that last part isn’t true but I wish it were.

For the present, it’s filed in my brain under, “things-I-wish-I-had-thought-to-say-but-didn’t-think-of-until-later-but-probably-wouldn’t-have-had-the-guts-to-say-anyway-but-man-it-would-have-been-funny”

Anyway…point is, I have an incredibly cute daughter.

I’d venture to say, “cutest ever” but that assertion of fact would just give other kids a complex. But come on, “cute enough to induce cannibalism” is pretty cute.

She should have come with a warning label.

Also on that warning label should have been a caution about baby nails.

Allow me to give some history.

When I was a kid I liked comic books.

One of my favorite characters was a hero named Wolverine.

This superhero, amongst other abilities, had his entire skeleton molecularly fused with a fictional substance called adamantium rendering it nearly indestructible. As a part of the process, the Canadian government (who had done this experiment on him) also gave him retractable adamantium claws. The only substances stronger than adamantium are adamantium itself, Captain America’s shield, and, apparently, my daughter’s fingernails.

As adorable as Alanna is, her nails can do some damage.

We try hard to keep them cut but, despite their paper-like appearance, our little wolverine has taken a few chunks out of daddy’s face.

You see, she’s always looking for me and then, whenever she sees me, she gets really excited and reaches for my face.

If I’m holding her, this involves her carving her initials on the inside of my bottom lip. But that’s not the point.

The point is the seeking and reaching.

She’s always looking for her daddy’s face, and then, upon finding it, she reaches and clings to it….with adamantium fingernails.

Seeking someone’s face, in the Bible was always the same as seeking the person.

Not just their presence, but a relationship with them.

Here are a few examples:

“Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always.”

-1 Chronicles 16:11 (which David quotes in Psalm 105:4)

“My heart says of you, ‘Seek His face. Your face, Lord, I will seek.’”

-Psalm 27:8

After one of my recent adorable (yet bloodletting) encounters with Alanna, I was really struck by the question, “How intently do I seek God’s face?”

Alanna is always seeking her daddy’s face.

When she’s eating, she’ll look up until I look back, then flash me a messy, baby foody grin.

If she’s cruising around the coffee table, she’ll look for my face and say “dada”.

No matter what she’s doing, she always stops to seek my face, not out of some obligation, but because she loves her daddy.

These past few weeks have found Laura and me being forced to stop and seek our Father’s face for both rejoicing and comfort. It’s been wonderful and difficult. But once our gaze is locked, I pray that I grab on with all I’ve got and don’t look away.

Pox and Pax

2008-09-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

A pox was upon our house this week.

Yes, despite both of my sons being traumatized by the inoculation shots to prevent it, they still got the chicken pox.

Please note that I said “both”.

I’m not sure how they got it. We asked them if they had been kissing chickens and they assured us, with utter sincerity, that they had not kissed any domestic fowl.

Regardless, we still got shown the “secret, special exit” at the doctor’s office.

You know.

The door in the back, by the dumpsters, that doesn’t send us through the waiting room.

So, I was “Mr. Mom” all week.

Most days it was just me and the boys, but for a couple of days I had Alanna too, since daycare thought that her mosquito bites looked suspiciously like The Plague.

We were home and quarantined.

Let me count my blessings first. Both boys HAVE received the inoculation shots and so their cases of The Pox were very mild.

Let me complain now. Both of their cases were mild and so they were at full energy and we couldn’t go anywhere with other kids. Plus our middle child is being potty trained. That means accidents.

Laura came home, one day, to find me angry and speaking gibberish under my breath.

I held a shovel.

“What are you doing and…um….where are the boys?”

“I never thought I would have to do it.”

“Umm……do what? And……where are the boys?”

“I never thought that I would have to shovel my own son’s poo out of the yard. I want to throw up.”

Laura convulsing in uncontrollable laughter.

I was not amused.

But I was apparently prophetic since we all came down with the stomach flu a few days later.

Ahhh…the irony.

Needless to say, I found myself loosing my cool multiple times.

As I’ve written before, I tend to try and organize my exterior world when my interior world feels out of control. That meant trying to keep three children, under five, quiet and orderly.

Fat chance.

And so I yelled.

I yelled more than I would like to admit.

I yelled at my kids, I snipped at my wife, and I was, overall, a bear to be around.

I wanted everything where it was supposed to be.

I wanted order.

What I needed was peace.

To use a little Latin: I had The Pox but I needed Pax.

More than that, I needed Pax Domini.

The Peace of The Lord.

“The Peace of The Lord” is not synonymous with order, quiet, sleep, cleanliness, or any of the numerous things I set up as idols in place of it.

It’s both a gift of God and a deep trust in His goodness and His sovereignty.

You see, 90% of my frustration was due to the fact that I felt out of control of my life. My kids had gotten sick and I had to drop everything to take care of them.

The nerve!

And if that sounds selfish….it’s because it is.

Welcome to the yuck in my heart.

That is not an expression of is a deep and abiding commitment to care for my kids. It also doesn't reflect my desire to be a father who reflects the heart of God, The Father.

It’s an insistence that whatever I had planned for that week was of such cosmic significance that God couldn’t have other plans for me (i.e. learning what a selfish dad I was or simply being a father in general). I was angry that my dominion of my life had been disrupted. Please note how many times the word “my” appears in that last sentence.

The strange thing is that I experienced The Peace of God a few days later when it was 3 AM and I was throwing up.

At that point, I had no illusions that I was in control of anything. Not even my own body. And so there, snotty nosed and bloodshot eyed in my bathroom, I began to experience God’s Peace. Not quiet, rest or order (by any means) but a peace that surpassed my understanding.

And so, while I don’t wish a pox or the stomach flu upon you, I do hope for this:

“pax domini sit semper vobiscum”

The Peace of The Lord be with you always.

Bermuda

2008-09-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

I hate Bermuda.

Allow me to explain that statement so I don’t start a war with a British territory.

I hate things that bear the name “Bermuda” with the lone exception of Bermuda shorts. Those, I’m thankful for. The 1970’s style short-shorts look terrible on me.

OK…maybe I should clarify further.

I hate two things that bear the name “Bermuda”.

First is the Bermuda triangle a.k.a. the bane of sailors near and far.

The second is Bermuda grass a.k.a. the bane of my yard care existence.

Those of you living north of the Mason-Dixon line are fortunate to avoid this demonic ground cover due to the fact that it thrives in hot climates. In The South though, when a contractor wants to seed your yard on the cheap, he’ll lay down a combination of fescue, rye, and, you guessed it, Bermuda grass. He’s banking on the fact that one of the three will germinate and give his client something green in the front yard.

He’s also banking on the fact that you won’t ever want to have flower beds or a garden.

If you go to Bermudagrass.com, you will find several pages explaining all the wonderful things about this kind of grass. Then you get to the bottom of the page and there is a section entitled, “The Down Side”. There it uses the word, “aggressive” to describe how it spreads across your lawn. That is, in my opinion, an egregious understatement unless, by the term “aggressive” they mean “Attila The Hun” and by “lawn” they mean “Central Asia and Eastern Europe”.

Let me explain what I mean.

It can spread by seed, by above ground runners, as well as by vast networks of root runners. When you try to dig it out, it will break off at weaker “nodes” leaving the majority of the root behind. If there is even a millimeter of root in the ground, it will grow a new plant. Basically…if you ignore it, it will eventually grow over your house and pull it into the ground.

Also, if this grass were personified, it would be George Patton or maybe Bruce Willis in the movie “Die Hard”. Anyway, it acts like it has a strategy and it takes no prisoners. It will wrap itself around the roots of other plants so that the only way to dig it up is to damage or destroy the plants you want.

It’s also a liar. It doesn’t even come from Bermuda.

I used to think that gardening was a slightly less than masculine hobby. Now I’m convinced of this truth: Gardening = War.

Every time I go out to tend my landscaping, I’m walking onto the battlefield.

For the plants it’s a life or death struggle and they fight as if they know it. I just came inside from pulling ten miles of Bermuda from my raspberry patch and my arms bear the scars of that skirmish.

Now it’s personal.

I’m contemplating adding the phrase, “with a vengeance” to all my gardening activities. For example,

“Honey, I’m going to mow the lawn….with a vengeance.” Or, “I have my garden fork and I’m going weeding…..with a vengeance.”.

If this rant sounds angry, it’s because it is. I’ve been battling this noxious plant since we moved in and I know that the only way to win is to apply a scorched Earth policy.

Total botanical annihilation…

with a vengeance.

Every time I’m fighting this stuff I think of sin.

I think about how the sins in my life are just like that Bermuda trying to aggressively spread in my soul.

I think about how this is a life or death struggle I’m in and how, in the same way that plant lies about where it comes from, my sin is never forthright about its origin. It will try to hide its roots by mingling them with the roots of good and virtuous “growth”. And the only way to deal with it is to let Jesus take his trowel, dig down, and pull out the roots.

This is not a passive thing on our end.

It will take time and it will hurt.

But, just like the garden, this is war and I, for one, do not want that Bermuda sin to win. And so I’ll let Jesus dig, and I’ll keep weeding…

with a vengeance.

The Economy Of Words

2008-09-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

From all accounts, I’m a talker.

It’s gotten much better as I’ve aged but apparently, when I was younger, I suffered from a near incurable case of “verbalus diarrheus” also known as motor mouth syndrome.

I talked so much that my second grade teacher put me at a desk, all by myself, facing the wall. There was a map of Cape Cod hanging there that indicated the location of all the pirate ships that are sunken off the coast.

So then I talked about pirates.

I was a fast talker too. So instead of sounding like a machine gun (where there is some discernable space between sounds), I sounded more like the emergency broadcast test tone. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Eventually, my friend Peter (I love you Pete!) began to teach me the economy of words. He would ask me a question and then say, “OK. You have five words to answer. I’m not listening to any more than that.” It sounds harsh but he actually got my mind to slow down enough to think about what I wanted to say.

It really helped.

Well, it seems that this disease is genetic because my children, particularly my oldest son, never stops talking.

I mean never.

Last night, at two in the morning, we even heard him talking in his sleep.

Sometimes what he is saying is a running commentary on what he’s doing. Sometimes he’s singing songs, or books he’s memorized, or making up stories. Once I thought I heard him reciting the Magna Carta. It was either that or, after all the talking…the never ending talking….my inner ear was feeding back.

The interesting thing is this: All of it is meant to be heard.

He’s talking to Laura and me most of the time. And so, our home is filled, from sun-up to sun-down, with conversation. Non-stop conversation.

Recently, I had to ask him to stop for five minutes because I was tired and my brain hurt.

Don’t get me wrong.

I love his little voice.

When I’m traveling and have to be away from my family, I enjoy the silence, yes, but I can’t wait to get back to “The Conversation”.

As strange as it sounds, I desperately miss my kid’s verbosity (please note my nice use of the word verbosity).

When I step out of my fatigue or frustration, when I boil it down, I’m thrilled that they all want to share every little thought, observation and emotion. And I love the fact that, at least for the moment, they want to hear what I have to say too. Every random fact, or correction, or encouragement means the world to them.

So while the tired part of me longs for the day when, he too, will learn the economy of words, part of me hopes that it’s a lesson he never learns. Because I know that, sooner than I want, he’ll grow up and stop talking. And so I hope that before it’s too late, someone invents a “time-freezer-thingy” that will keep him a little kid forever.

I think that’s why Jesus said that we had to be like little children.

Obviously there are many applications to that verse but I believe this is one of them.

In light of the command to pray without ceasing, I think that, when Jesus calls us to be like children, it’s an invitation to an eternal conversation with our Heavenly Father.

It’s a call to constantly share our lives with God in prayer and to hang on every word He says.

Because, in the same way He calls us to this ceaseless conversation, He is always speaking.

And so while, for obvious social reasons, it’s often necessary to learn the economy of words, in our relationship with God The Father, no such thriftiness exists.

Stretched

2008-09-08T10:22:00.001-07:00

My wife has a secret.

I, of course, felt that the best way to honor that secret was to turn it into blog fodder and put it on the internet.

Actually, I cleared this “outing” with her first. The deal was that I had to share something equally embarrassing. I really wanted to write this particular blog and so I bit that worm, hook and all. And so here I am, thrashing at the end of a proverbial fishing line, wishing that I hadn’t agreed to do that.

But here it goes.

OK, first a prologue (or “prolong” if I’m honest)

Spring Hill, Tennessee, where I live, was rated the third skinniest city in America.

I know!

I didn’t believe it either, what with the cheese grits and sausage gravy and all. But it’s true.

There are several reasons for this.

Part of it is because the average age here is 32 and people in that age bracket tend to be more heath conscious. The other part is that most of those thirty-two year-olds are parents of little kids who DRASTICALLY skew the body mass index report for the city. My son Brehm might actually have a BMI in the negative numbers and thus, statistically speaking, suck fat off of other people like a cellulite mosquito.

Why am I sharing this?

Because I want to put my past, current and future comments about my weight in context. I’ve been very honest about my recent dealings with my weight and diet. I know that I’m not “husky” and have already lost twenty-five pounds, but I live in a city that has been recognized for its skinniness. I might as well live on the cover of Cosmo or Men’s Health. That would give anybody a slight case of body dysmorphia just by shear osmosis.

Well…that and the stretch marks.

OK. There’s my “equally embarrassing” tidbit.

During the last several years I had an ongoing affair with my mistress Krispy Kreme as well as several other culinary trysts. For you deprived Northerners who may not know the lure of Krispy Kreme: imagine Dunkin Donuts with twice the fat and sugar, and served fresh, hot out of the oil. The store even has a sign that says “Hot Now” that glows illicitly from the window. Anyway, I had expanded enough to get some stretch marks around the "love handle" region.

So regardless of what my environment may have contributed to my recent focus on personal fitness, I have scars on my skin to prove that I needed to do something.

So why is that equally embarrassing?

Because, my wife’s secret is that she has stretch marks too.

Hers came courtesy of her last pregnancy not from secret rendezvous with Ben and Jerry.

I think hers are cool.

This is probably because I’m a man and I view her stretch marks the way I would view a battle scar. If you see a guy with a big scar on his face, for example, you know he’s got a story.

And it’s gonna be a good one. Knife fight or shark attack. Not something like “knitting mishap”.

Though that might be a cool story too, now that I think of it.

The point is that, as a man, when I see “scar” I see “story”.

So that is how I view my wife’s stretch marks. They’re cool because I know the story they tell. They tell the story of three beautiful kids and her cute basketball belly, and gestational diabetes and labor.

They’re a sign of a journey.

So are mine.

Mine may be self-inflicted reminders of my personal demons but they still show where I’ve been. And for both of us, they’re proof that we’ve been stretched more than we (or our skin) thought we could be.

God has had a funny way of doing that in my spiritual life too.

He’s never been afraid of stretching me more than I thought I could take. But like Laura’s stretch mark story, God’s stretching is always the result of new life growing on the inside. It’s always hard, always scary, and it always leaves a mark. It’s the kind of mark that will remind us of what God has done and how far He’s brought us. Quite literally, as the guest preacher at Osterville Baptist Church shared a few weeks ago, when we’re stretched beyond what we can take, when we come to the end of ourselves, that’s where we’ll find God. And those are stretch marks I want.