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Maybe it’s my glass-half-empty tendency, but I look at the Winter Solstice not for its promise of longer days, warm sunshine or candy thrown in neighborhood parades, but for the here-and-now: the longest night of the year, the broken heart of winter, the despair of darkness that seems to block out any hopes of the light.

Not that long ago, I felt like I was facing that dark night. Looking back, I’m not sure it was anything so worthy of despair, but it felt that way: I had just broken up with the girl I thought I would marry, the girl who seemed to fulfill all the dreams I had for a wife.

Except.

Except for the nagging feeling, literally in my gut, that something wasn’t right. To this day, I can’t identify it, I just knew I couldn’t continue down that path. And, stupid me, I tried to explain the unexplainable, which only added to her pain.

I walked away from her, from the church we attended, from the life I thought we were planning to build, and turned back to the life I knew before her. It was there, in a church I previously attended, that I met the woman who turned out to be my life partner. She was pretty, had a wicked sense of humor, and tolerated my penchant for tacky sweaters. And I was scared to death.

Perhaps it was fear of repeating my mistakes, or exposing my heart. Of foolishly believing God when he says he plans to give me a hope and a future. But it took me more than four months between the day I met her and the day I asked for a day in her life.

She said yes, thank God, or I might possibly have crawled into my Winter Solstice of the Soul and made plans to live there year-round, rearranging the furniture in order to best host my pity party. Then, making clear she had expected this, she added, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

In retrospect, it probably wasn’t that hard, but at the time I thought: Oh, sweetheart, you have no idea.

Seven months later, we were joining our lives as husband and wife. That’s not to say, however, that everything has been warm sunshine and free candy since we said “I do.” For parts of the first two years, faced with the stresses of a new child, a new business, and two 30-somethings trying to mesh years of singlehood into a partnership, I told God I couldn’t divorce her and couldn’t kill her, so I was leaving it up to him to take care of the problem.

I don’t know how this could be, but apparently I was the problem, and God took his scalpel to my heart with a surgeon’s precision, cutting away (parts of) my selfishness and replacing it with a little compassion and more love than I knew I had the capacity to show. Beyond the superficial qualities that initially drew me to her, I have fallen deeper in love as I’ve seen her wisdom, her patience, her perseverance, her support of my endeavors, and her tolerance for my idiosyncrasies (though most of those sweaters went to Goodwill). Two beautiful daughters have added to my joy, and shown me repeatedly how much work the surgeon still has to do.

When you’re in the midst of that Winter Solstice of the Soul, it’s tough sometimes to lift your eyes toward the promise of longer days, to believe that the night will end and things will get better. But as Maria said to her new stepdaughter, “you cry a little. Then you wait for the sun to come out. It always does.”

But even though the sun always comes out, it still feels death-defying to make a change when something’s not working, to move beyond the fear that holds us back, that keeps me from pursuing the life God has for me. What if she doesn’t like me? What happens if that editor declines my manuscript? What if my business doesn’t succeed? The sunrise, whether literal or figurative, is beyond my control. But God wants me to look to him, to put in the effort of lifting my eyes, of seeking the sunrise and the hope that inherently rises with the dawn. Or, as he says through the psalmist: “I look to the hills! Where will I find help? It will come from the Lord, who created the heavens and the earth.”

The effort to look toward the hills might include — and this is me preaching to me right now — stepping away from the darkness, physically moving in the direction of the light, doing your best to discern the most effective path toward a better tomorrow and then following that path with all the passion God has placed within you. And sometimes the effort to look toward the hills might include allowing him to cut away the scar tissue and replace it with something healthy and indescribably wonderful.

Imagining that effort might seem like childbirth combined with a workout with Satan’s personal trainer. But as you take that first step, if you listen carefully you might even hear God say, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

It only took about 100 feet of highway for my wife to shout, “Wait, honey, stop! It’s shifting!”

“It” was the Christmas tree we had just tied to the top of our SUV. Wait, did I say “tied”? I really meant “set atop with tie-downs wrapped around it.” Because as quickly as that Noble fir threatened to drop onto the pavement, I can’t in good conscience use any verb that implies “secure.”

This is a regular problem with me, one that has already caused mild heart failure one previous Christmas. I attribute it to the fact that I failed Boy Scouts. I was OK with Helpful and Friendly, but once I got to Thrifty (aka industrious), I was toast. I never learned a proper knot, so any time I need to secure something with rope I’m reduced to using a shoelace knot in repeated fashion, hoping that re-tying the same knot will strengthen it against highway acceleration, wind and my own ineptitude.

This year, hoping to rediscover the inner Boy Scout in me, I resolved to Be Prepared by bringing a ratchet tie-down strap. I figured I could just hook it to both sides of the roof rails, wrap it around the trunk a couple of times, ratchet it tight, and away I’d go.

Already, you people with an once of engineering smarts are realizing my error — that brilliant idea may keep it from rolling off the side, a la the Geico commercial, but it does nothing to prevent the tree from falling off the back as the G-forces of vehicle acceleration take hold.

(Maybe this is just me, but have you ever noticed that the wonderful memories you had as a kid are much more difficult to pull off as an adult? Every year as a kid, we’d visit the same Christmas tree farm, scouring the landscape for The World’s Most Perfect Tree®. It didn’t matter what the weather, we knew we’d have fun, we knew mom would take forever to pick out TWMPT, we knew dad would tie it to the roof of the car, and we knew we’d soon be home hanging ornaments and drinking peppermint hot chocolate. Evidently, I never inherited the learn-to-tie-trees-to-the-roof gene, and I’m starting to have suspicions about the make-wonderful-memories-for-your-kids gene, too. But I digress — back to 2011.)

Once the tree threatened to launch into the windshield of the car behind us, I took the first easily-accessible exit, which happened to be a weigh station. Thankfully, it was not operating at that moment; unfortunately, a state police officer had chosen that spot to create a speed trap. I was sure he would take one look at my desperate, pathetic excuse for secure tree transportation and haul me off to the the Island of Misfit Dads. Put me in the cell next to the dad who gave his kid the train with square wheels.

What were my options? My wife suggested I leave her and the kids at the weigh station, throw the tree inside the car, take it home and come back to get them. Great idea, hon! It’s 36 degrees outside and the sun will be setting in an hour. You don’t mind if I make myself some peppermint hot chocolate before I come back, do you?

I could put the tree inside the car with the kids. They wouldn’t mind a couple of branches in the face, would they?

I could send them home while I stayed with the tree, and the wife could come back with my neighbor — surely he didn’t fail Boy Scouts. Besides, it would give me the chance to get to know the state trooper before he hauled me off. (Not once, until this very moment, did it cross my mind to ask the state trooper for help. What does that say about me?)

Maybe I could flag down a passing car and ask if they had room on their roof.

Having discarded all those ideas, I took the next logical step, the one I’d been putting off: I whined to my wife. Then, wondering silently if she was questioning her wedding vows, I untied the tree, removed the tie-down, and started figuring a way to secure it both side to side and front to back.

Forty minutes later, we had a re-tied tree, two impatient children, and 10 frozen fingers. I’m sure there was a partridge in a pear tree in there, somewhere. But, we made it home without further mishap. It only took me 20 minutes to untie my spider web of ropes, tie-downs and tree branches.

So the lesson? Next year, I’m getting a truck and throwing the tree in the bed.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Well, not quite. But as I think about my dad on the fifth anniversary of his death, I shudder to think how close I came to joining him.

My family was in Maui for a long-planned and saved-for vacation, but we learned upon arrival that a set of typhoons in the south Pacific had stirred up the waves thousands of miles away in Hawaii, the result being that the heavy surf would pound my children deep into the sand if they ventured too far into the waves. The blue waves with their whitecaps mixed with the blonde sand to whisk together a sandy, frothy, murky mess that crashed down close to shore.

So, each day at the beach, it was my responsibility to wade in and determine if it was safe for the kids to follow. By the third day, we thought the surf had calmed a bit, but the beach we visited was exposed to the waves’ full wrath, and it only took a few minutes of watching people get tossed around by the power of water to know we needed to move on. Our next beach seemed more promising, so we settled in along the south edge of the sand. We were wedged between, on one side, the wealthy Four Seasons Resort patrons cooling off with rolled-up washcloths brought to them by platter-toting employees armed with silver tongs and icy lemonade; and on the other side, the jagged black volcanic rock of a small peninsula.

After a few minutes playing in the shallow surf, I grabbed the snorkel and mask and looked for a break in the waves where I could head for deeper water. I did not take my fins, which only in retrospect did I recognize as a near-fatal mistake.

Just after getting past the breakers, I passed a young girl of perhaps 12 swimming on a boogie board. “There are sea turtles out around those rocks,” she said, pointing to the end of the peninsula about a hundred yards offshore. “We swam with them earlier.”

That piqued my curiosity, and brought out the false bravado — if they could swim out there, surely I could as well. I strapped on the mask and allowed myself to drift in the direction of the aforementioned turtles. It didn’t occur to me that I was not swimming very hard (more like bouncing in the rough surf) but was still headed in that direction. I quickly determined that the ocean beyond the breakers was too rough for the kids, but I was determined to see those turtles, so I plodded on.

Never mind that the ocean was so rough that visibility was mediocre. Never mind that I had to swim back. Never mind that no one from my family could see me in that particular spot if I needed help, and there were no lifeguards. Later, I learned there was a known and regular rip current exactly where I chose to swim.

At some point as I drew near the rocks, still seeing no turtles and few fish of any kind, my grown-up brain kicked me in the butt. You’re getting a little close to those rocks, doncha think? You’re getting awfully far from shore, doncha think? You may be a decent swimmer, but you’re no Michael Phelps — what the hell do you think you’re doing?

I turned and looked at the shore. That little beach might as well have been a mile away. Not able to see anyone who would care where I was, I felt a little twinge of worry as I started swimming in that direction. It didn’t take long to realize I was getting nowhere, like what I imagine it would be like to walk against hurricane-force winds. I was starting to breathe harder, to the point where I had to take off the mask and snorkel in order to take in enough air, turning over on my back in the hopes of catching more air and less water. The choppy waves were washing over my mouth, making it that much tougher to breathe and coating my mouth with the flavor of soggy fries. My overweight, inadequately-exercised body was protesting the effort I was putting in, and now that grown-up brain was panicking.

I’m still a long way from shore. I can’t breathe. My legs and arms are already tired. I’m not sure I’m going to make it. I can’t even call for help — no one would hear me, and no one can really see me either. Is this how it ends? The family goes to Hawaii and the wife and kids have to come back with dad in a coffin?

That idea was not registering high on the bucket list.

I kept swimming; I was coming closer to shore, but still felt like I was a long way from safety, trying to ignore the pain and fatigue I felt as I drifted closer to the jagged rocks. At that point, I didn’t care if I hit the rocks — I had a better chance of being alive on the rocks, regardless of how scraped-up my body might be in a one-sided competition of flesh against basalt. The surf was also pushing me in a direction that made it near-impossible to reach the beach where my family was still playing, completely unaware of my plight, so I aimed for a small beach just south of our original location.

I reached down with my legs, praying that I could touch bottom. Nothing but salt water.

I kept swimming, trying to keep from hyperventilating, trying to will my limbs not to give up. Dammit, why did I leave those fins on the beach?

There. I’m touching the rocks with my toes. I can make it. I don’t care if it hurts my feet. It’s something to stand on. There are people on that beach who might see me if I’m still having trouble.

Within a few minutes, I was able to get past the rocks and crawl on the sand, two small scrapes to show for my brush with eternity. I think the family on that beach must have realized something wasn’t quite right when I sat there in the shallows for a few minutes catching my breath and thanking my God, but the only thing they said as I started walking over the rocks to my family was, “Did you see anything out there?”

Not much, I replied.

Just my funeral, I thought.

Every generation has its defining moment, an event that so impacts the country that no one who lived through it will forget it.

Ours, of course, is September 11, 2001. Among the World Trade Center collapses, the Pentagon attack, and the hijacked airplanes, our country lost nearly three thousand souls — fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues.

Over and over for the last 10 years, we have repeated the mantra to “never forget.” Never forget the bravery of the first responders who likely saved the lives of tens of thousands of people while knowing they could — and in some cases did — forfeit their own. Never forget that each of the lives lost in those attacks were people like us, people making a living to support families they loved, people who did nothing to deserve the fiery deaths they suffered. Never forget that there are people, even today, even after the death of Osama bin Laden earlier this year, who would not hesitate to do it all again — and worse.

The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor cost the lives of 2,350 people, most of them military, and led us into war against the Axis Powers. It wasn’t until victory in that war (at the cost of another half-million U.S. soldiers) that we learned the extent of Nazi atrocities that, while not a single event, took the lives of millions of victims. The shot that killed President Kennedy, a single event, cost only one life (or if you count the revenge killing of Oswald, two), but shattered the innocence of a country moving from the swingin’ 1950s into the turbulent ’60s.

In each case, I’m willing to bet, the mantra became something similar: Never Forget.

But “Never Forget” has to be more than a comforting mantra. The people who are most likely to remember such an event are those who lived through it. That’s why it was such a notable, and tragic event, when the last World War I veteran died. All the books in the world can’t make up for the eyewitness viewpoint of its survivors. All the TV interviews can’t make up for the heart that beat at a million miles an hour because of fear that the next beat would be its last.

“Where were you when the towers fell?” implies that you were an eyewitness, whether in person or glued to a broadcast. But as each generation distances itself from its Pearl Harbor moment, as the eyewitnesses lose their memory and sight and heartbeat, it becomes the next generation’s task to carry that memory forward. That can only happen if we ensure subsequent generations understand not only the facts of the matter, but the hearts that skipped a collective beat as we watched 100-story skyscrapers become dusty tombs for thousands of our fellow countrymen.

Even though we remember Pearl Harbor, we cannot have the same emotion for the moment as someone who lived through that Sunday morning. Similarly, the emotion we feel for September 11 will ebb throughout the years, diminishing to textbook status as our generation hands the reins of our country to future generations. For most, that has already happened with December 7, 1941; it has already happened for VE and VJ Day; it is quickly happening for the days we lost Kennedy and King.

So if our generation wants to ensure that our country never forgets the people, the events, the lessons of September 11, we must find a way to get past the bickering that has come to define our most recent years, and to return to the days immediately after that fateful September morning — days when we were committed to healing our country, defending our people, loving our neighbors. If we can rediscover that spirit of unity, it will show that the terrorists can hit us and knock us down, but they cannot keep us down.

And then we must talk about that day and that unity with the people we love. Moses, speaking of a different set of lessons, made the same point:

Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Repeat the story of September 11 to your children and their children. Find ways to remind them — and yourself — of the emotions we experienced that day, and the lessons learned afterward.

Never Forget.

Is that redundant?

Anyway, some of you, if you’re really bored and looking for something to take up 90 seconds of your time, might enjoy a short story I wrote at The Write Practice. It’s a website I recently discovered that gives writers ideas for improving their craft. In this case, site owner Joe Bunting provided a prompt and a suggestion of writing about the prompt for 15 minutes. You can find the story in the comments; as you’ll see further down in those comments, I may have stretched my 15 minutes a bit, but it was a good exercise, and a lot of fun, too. And I was very humbled and appreciative of Joe’s encouragement.

Almost three years ago, my wife and I made a difficult decision: it was time to look for a new church.

It was difficult because we had a history of more than a decade with that church. We met there, the pastor married us, and our children had been attending since they were a few weeks old. We were part of a small group inside the church (as well as one outside the church involving friends from the congregation), we were active in volunteer ministry, and those relationships sustained us.

But two years after a change in leadership that impacted the teaching, we felt it was in our family’s best interests to see if something else was a better fit. Indeed, we found a better fit for everyone in the family, and feel that God has us where He wants us.

I recount all this now because of a post I read from Tyler Braun at Man of Depravity, in which he suggested that someone who attends a church based primarily on its teaching or worship style is placing too much value on those things and not enough on developing community.

I guess I agree with this to a point. I agree that community is huge, no matter if someone is brand new to a church or a long-time member, but it’s not something that develops immediately. It takes time and effort. Tyler is right that those things by themselves (excluding newcomers) are indicative of a church consumer, not a church participator.

When we were looking for a new church, we had several items on our mental checklist, and the worship and teaching were definitely important elements. But they were more easily and, depending on the week, immediately discernible. We knew the sense of community we were leaving was something that would come later, and was contingent on us getting involved in the life of the church so that we would not simply be consumers.

But I guess I’m reluctant to sign on to the idea that community trumps worship and teaching. More than once, as I explained our decision to friends who stayed at our former church, I heard them say they weren’t overly dependent on the level of teaching because they had enough background in church, seminary and life experience that they could shepherd themselves. I knew these friends well enough to not be offended, even though my response each time was to wonder what that said about the depth of my own Christian walk.

But I (lacking the church experiences and seminary education of my friends) don’t think I’m unique in hoping that a church service will give me the opportunity to learn more about God and grow closer to Him. Otherwise, what’s the point of having worship time and a sermon at all? Let’s just bring the green bean casserole and set up the potluck.

Yes, I realize the previous statement simplifies community to the point of superficiality, but the point remains that community is developed under the umbrella of worshiping the God who created church, and that has never been solely about friendship or even sharpening the mind.

Particularly when I was a new believer, I can’t tell you how often I felt like the pastor was talking directly to me, encouraging me to leave behind the sins I had embraced for so many years. That’s not to say that a close friend or mentor can’t have an even greater impact, but it cannot negate the power of effective community-wide teaching.

Tyler is right: developing community to the point where those types of personal relationships can thrive is a difficult, messy, humbling process, but it is hugely important — it’s why the author of Hebrews encouraged us to keep meeting together and to encourage each another. But if community is present without teaching that helps you grow and worship that brings you before the throne of the creator, your three-pronged stool is missing a leg or two, and you’re in danger of doing a face plant on the carpet.

That’s why I think worship, teaching and community are all necessary for us as the church.

Do you think one aspect — worship, teaching, or community — should be preeminent in the church?

I’m sitting at the Costco food court, waiting for the tire folks to take a screw out of my tire, and reading through my RSS feed because there’s no Wi-Fi, free or otherwise.

(No Wi-Fi?! What is this world coming to? I thought it was a Constitutional right or something!)

Anyway, I just watched a food court employee sit down next to a trio of women and start cleaning up the mess one of them created when she spilled (accidentally, I think) a drink on the floor. This man looked to be only slightly younger than me and sported a graying, closely-cropped goatee, hairnet and wire-rimmed glasses, along with the baggy red apron that made it difficult to tell if he was skinny or in good shape. He didn’t fit the image of someone who worked days cleaning up for people who had just bought two years’ worth of shaving cream, aspirin and laundry soap.

And the name tag — Michael.

He sat down with a smile, his rag, a roll of paper towels and a bottle of cleanser, and proceeded to wipe up the spill. The Costco eating benches are constructed of hard, red-colored plastic & white metal, so this was no easy task — he had to sit on a bench, back strained to fit under the tabletop, and start wiping, trying not to bang his head on the table. Either that or get on his hands and knees on the unyielding concrete floor, and he chose the former.

“Thank you,” one of the woman mumbled as he started his work. Not insincere, but almost an embarrassed apology, knowing that someone else was taking care of her mess.

“It’s no problem,” Michael replied.

Nothing unusual there, but it was the way he responded — he genuinely sounded like it was no problem, that he was happy to take care of it. Not a “Grateful to have a job in this economy” response, but a “There’s nothing I would rather be doing than cleaning up someone else’s sticky 7-Up and ice” response.

How often, I thought to myself, have I been in a situation of serving someone and had that same thought? Not “I’m serving because it’s what I should do,” but “I’m serving because it’s a genuine joy.” How often have I cleaned up my kids’ mess without grumbling to myself (or more likely, out loud. And loudly)? How often have I received a call from a client needing something at the most inopportune of moments, and taken care of it for no other reason than the self-satisfaction of a job well done — never mind the fact that I derive my income from that service? When’s the last time I had the chance to serve someone and was able to elude the mindset of “I’m doing this out of a sense of obligation” (if I did it at all)?

If I’m honest? Not very often.

It’s that combination of joy and gratitude that is so often missing from my life. Joy in whatever situation I find myself. Gratitude for the gifts God has given me.

My dictionary defines gratitude as “the quality of being thankful,” but it’s the second definition that caught my eye and burned in my heart: “readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.”

Right now, I appreciate Michael and his example, and it suddenly hits me — if I’m truly grateful for him, I need to express that thought and look for ways to “pay it back.” And at that moment, Michael is nowhere to be seen. I wait for 15 minutes, hoping he’ll return, but my car is ready.

So wherever you are, Michael, thank you for your example. I’m praying I can retain it and pass it on.