Highways, Ditches, & Dirt Roads

The sun is rising. I’ve had my first coffee and the washer just chimed, announcing that the wash cycle is finished. I’m sitting here thinking of the chaos of this year and the coming Christmas season. What has caused this chaos? A virus? No it is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear for the future. Fear of death. I am not immune to this fear. ... This morning my thoughts were drawn to the verses in Isaiah 41. Do not be afraid. For I am with you. This is a promise from the God of the universe. Whether we believe it or not doesn’t change the promise He has made. There are many times I question His presence. We all feel alone sometimes. But His promise still stands. I am with you, to the end of the age. So in this season of uncertainty, let’s look up. Let’s simply ask God to make us aware of His presence with us. Let’s ask for His help, His comfort, His strength. The Christmas story is encapsulated in one phrase. Emmanuel. God is with us. That helps me make it through another day.

Chapter 14 - Alone The evening light Fades slowly from my room The trees stand silent... Sentries Whose shadows move slowly Across my bedroom floor The voices of the day Are silent now The laughter A memory The day is done And so the night creeps in And I am Alone Silence Broken only by my own hands And the sounds of the night These are my companions These and my memories Memories of love Of a touch Of a shared bed Of your body lying next to mine Of a time When the cares of the world Didn’t seem so heavy to bear But you’re not here And those days are gone I am alone My tears are dry Reduced to a dull ache I carry in my soul Sometimes I feel numb Is there no hope for this restless heart? Oh come dear slumber Embrace me in your arms Cradle me though the night And watch over me Until the light of dawn Caresses my check And wakes me to face Another day And pray perchance A Love to fill this void ********************** As always, if this writing resonates with you, please like, share, and or comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Chapter 13 - Red Wine and Jazz The overcast grey sky reflects the state of my spirit over the last while. I haven’t written for a long time. I guess I didn’t know what to say. Now I just want to talk a bit. Hopefully I make sense. As evening descends on another day, and Desperado plays quietly in the background, I’m spending one more evening, alone. Of course I’m not nearly the only one. As I write this we around the world struggle with a global pandemic, and no one really k...nows what to do. But we isolate hoping that will bring us relief. So we are alone. Actually many of us are always alone. We live isolated lives. Sometimes through choice. Sometimes through circumstance. But we are alone. We eat alone. We sleep alone. We wake up alone. And empty. No, not everyone who lives alone is in need of someone. I’m not saying that. But our hearts ache. Or maybe it’s just me. But I don’t think so. So I open the wine and turn on some jazz. I didn’t used to be a huge jazz fan but there’s something about the soulful notes that soothes my heart. I prefer red wine. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s just habit. Tomorrow is Good Friday. It’s a day to honor Jesus’ willingness to endure a Roman crucifixion to demonstrate the length to which He will go to restore our relationship with God. On the night before, Jesus ate with his followers. He shared a meal, and bread, and wine. It was a Jewish Passover meal. I wish I understood it better. At the end of the meal he said he wouldn’t eat it again until he celebrated it with us in God’s kingdom. If what I’ve written about the character of God is true, and I believe it is, then God’s purpose throughout history has always been to restore our broken relationships. Our relationships with others, our relationship with ourselves, and ultimately our relationship with Him. And that’s what Good Friday and Easter were all about. The hope of an unbroken, restored world. But it doesn’t fix everything here and now. Here Covid-19 still rages. Here we lose family, and friends. Here there is still oppression and violence. Here we still live in a broken world. But there is hope for a restored future. And there will be wine. And there will be music. And there will be dancing. And He will wipe every tear from our eyes. What a gift! May the Peace of Christ be with you all. PS. Feel free to share this if it’s been meaningful to you. And as always, I welcome your comments. Thanks.

Chapter 12 - Diamonds and Rice Diamonds are forever but rice makes forever possible. I remember seeing a champagne diamond once, that was incredibly spectacular even to my untrained eye. Its value was evident to anyone who cared to really look at it. It was arguably the most beautiful diamond I had ever seen.... I don’t think of rice that way. Rice is just rice. Yet it sustains the life of billions of people through its nourishment. Isn’t it interesting what we value? I have had the opportunity to be an executive and I have had the opportunity to be a farm laborer. I have held many positions along that spectrum. Some esteemed. Some very humble. To be honest, the high profile positions hold much more attraction for me than the humble service of a position that doesn’t get noticed. That is, it doesn’t get noticed unless it is not done. As I’ve looked around I’ve seen that most work is humble service that gets very little praise and yet, like rice, it sustains the masses. I once met a lady who’s job it was to clean the private restrooms and showers in a truck stop. It was about 9:00 in the morning and there had already been over 150 showers taken that morning. After each one, she would go in and completely clean and sanitize the rooms. I thanked her for her service to the truck drivers who passed through. Her reply was straightforward and enlightening. I enjoy doing it. What a wonderful, humble, servant heart! Her service makes forever possible. It lightens the load of the road for many, and on those days it’s worth more than diamonds.

Chapter 11 - Wine I love wine. I love drinking wine; especially with friends. Of course, too much of a good thing is still too much. I’m talking about the wine, not the friends! I love making wine. It’s the perfect combination of science and art. ... I’m no wine connoisseur, but I enjoy a nice glass of wine. Several years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to travel to the Hunter Valley in Australia. It is home to one of the best known wine regions of Australia. Of course we took a wine tour. This was no ordinary wine tour thanks to Hunter Valley Carriages. www.huntervalleycarriages.com Spending a day in our own private horse drawn carriage as we visited one amazing vineyard after another created a memory of a lifetime. At our last winery, I finally asked a question that had been building up in my mind for quite some time. Often we hear that the taste of wine is drastically effected by the region that it comes from, and also the year it is produced. What is that all about? Our host was very gracious in his answer. The differences you are tasting is actually the terra; the earth. The best way for me to explain it, is to show you. Then he poured several glasses of wine. First he took two bottles of Chardonnay. Identical grapes, identical years, the same vintner; everything was identical about these two bottles except for the region they came from. One was from Adelaide Hills, a region in South Australia. The second was from the Hunter Valley, a region just north of Sydney in New South Wales. The first wine, from Adelaide Hills was pleasant, easy to drink, light. In contrast, the Chardonnay from the Hunter Valley, was much more robust and full bodied. One would either like it a lot, or not at all. It left very little room for an uncommitted response. Next our host poured a Shiraz from each area. Like before, the wines were identical except for their location. The results were the same. Adelaide Hills had produced a pleasant, easy to drink, light wine; The Hunter Valley, a robust, full bodied character. What had caused the difference? Our host went on to explain that, in that year the weather in Adelaide Hills had been pleasant. Lots of rain and moderate temperatures had allowed the grape vines to produce abundance with relative ease. It had been an unchallenging year. The Hunter Valley, however, had experienced harsh weather. Severe drought and scorching heat had forced the vines to struggle mightily to produce their grapes. The character of the wine had been directly impacted by the respective ease and agony of the year. How similar is that to the experience of our lives! Great character is forged on the anvil of adversity.

Chapter 10 - A Full Moon Tonight, in the Nevada desert, I watch as a brilliant full moon rises on a crystal clear canvas. A chorus of a thousand unseen crickets play their melody through the still night air. After driving all day, the moon now shines through my window and gently bathes me in its glow. ... Throughout my life I’ve gazed for hours on this moon. It has taught me much that I identify with. Maybe you do too. It has no light of its own. It simply reflects the light of the sun. It has a dark side yet it is still beautiful. Even its bright side has its scars. Sometimes it fades to oblivion. Sometimes it makes waves! With all of that baggage it still provides light to others. In many ways we are like the moon. I find comfort in that. But I sometimes forget. I’m grateful that it comes around every month to remind me.

Chapter 9 - Suicide I don’t presume to speak for others but this is my story. Since I was a young man I have experienced many periods of depression with no light at all. Despair. Utter blackness. If you’ve been there you will understand. This is a place where all hope is gone. Only a desperate black spiral going further and further down into the abyss with no possibility of escape.... I understand that from this side, there is always hope. But when those us who struggle with this demon are in its clutches, we really do not see any way out. In those times it really didn't help, to tell me to ask for help. If I thought that there was a possibility of help or if I even mattered, I wouldn’t have been in the situation I found myself in. On better days when I had some hope, I may have believed it was possible. On those days we may have been able to talk. But on those dark days the despair was complete. There was no light in the darkness. And I couldn’t talk about it. And I couldn’t go on. I knew I was a failure when even my attempt at suicide didn’t succeed. God stopped my hand. Literally! I could not move it any further. My arm was frozen in place. In His compassion, and against my raging spirit, He spared my life. I did seek professional help but anti-depressants made me feel like a zombie. I slept. I had no motivation. I gained weight. Finally I gave up. My solution came in the form of a phone call from a friend. He had heard of a vitamin and mineral supplement that helped some people. I tried it and it has saved my life and my marriage. (www.TrueHope.com) This isn’t a paid endorsement, nor can I make any promises but it has helped me. You may be wondering, what can I do? Please, just shine your light of love on us. And if despair claims our lives do not judge us harshly. We mean to hurt no one. But we simply cannot find the strength to go on. By the way, I am ok. I just wanted to share my story in hopes of promoting some understanding and to help shed some light in someone’s very dark world.

Chapter 8 - Grief After we lost the twins I buried myself in my work. I don’t remember talking about it much. We just picked up the pieces and carried on with our lives. But grief doesn’t work that way. ... Grief waits. A year later I really cried for the first time. And even though this happened many years ago, decades in fact, sometimes it still hits me almost like it was yesterday. I used to think that working through the stages of grief was like pealing an onion and eventually you get to the end of the process. In some ways it is. In other ways its more like doing laundry; there’s always another load to deal with. But I actually find this encouraging. It means we don’t have to finish grieving before we can continue living. Our loss will always be with us. Our grief is like walking the rest of our lives with an injury that sometimes flares up. And that’s ok; we can continue to live and move forward with our lives while at the same time acknowledging the loss we have experienced. It makes us who we are. Grieving isn’t easy and it takes a long time. It is important to note that everyone grieves in their own way. But we cannot avoid our grief. If we try, it will find a way to confront us. In our case we found ourselves at odds with each other every year around the anniversary of our twins' death, for at least ten years. Once we recognized that pattern, we were able to deal with our conflicts a little better. We began to understand the underlying reason for our conflict. Often my grief sprang up at the most unexpected times and in unpredictable ways. It would blindside me. My neatly ordered life began to slowly unravel. Eventually, through a series of failures and bad decisions I felt my life completely fall apart. Financial, emotional, spiritual, and relational bankruptcy followed. It felt like God was taking my life apart, brick by brick, and leaving nothing together. Desperately I sought answers, attempting to keep my life together. It didn’t work. Eventually everything crashed around me. It was on one of these very dark nights that I decided to end it all.

The story of my life. I love this.

Chapter 7 - Kintsugi There is an ancient Japanese art called "kintsugi" or golden joinery. It is the art of taking a broken vessel and repairing it with gold. This process takes the ordinary and transforms it into a work of art. It creates a masterpiece out of the pieces of broken pottery. ... Imagine that you are in a pottery class and everyone has been given clay to work with. You’ve all created your own unique bowl on a potter’s wheel. Now you are sent home to fire it in your own kiln. Eagerly you anticipate the finished product, but when you pull the bowl from the kiln it has broken. All you have, is broken pieces. But you still have another class to go to, to present your piece for inspection. You place it in a paper bag and enter the classroom with the bravest smile you can muster. When asked by the instructor how it went, you nod and agree with everyone else that you’re very pleased with the result, hoping desperately not to be found out. The conversation around you is enthusiastic but your broken pieces keep calling out to you, and finally you can’t handle the charade any longer. Mine broke! you cry out with tears in your eyes. I don’t know what happened. It completely broke! Its ruined! The instructor calls you forward so she can examine your work. She smiles. She knew. She knew the nature of the clay she had given out. She knew it would break in the fire. Slowly the others in the class also present their broken pieces. Everyone had been caught up in the charade. She knew. But the purpose of the class was greater than creating perfect bowls. It was to demonstrate the art of kintsugi. Our brokenness, given into the hands of the "Master Artist", will always be gently held with deep love, and used to create a priceless work of art. The pain is so real but the restoration is truly priceless. Germination of the beautiful plant within a seed, can only happen if the seed falls into the ground, dies, and breaks. Then germination can begin and the flower can begin to grow and blossom. I think we have often looked at "perfect seeds" as some sort of ideal. But God didn't create a finished product. God created seeds. Seeds that needed to break in order to germinate and blossom. To me this is so encouraging. I've lived far too long thinking that my "breaking" was somehow a second best. But it's not. It is exactly what was intended all along. So that we can blossom. I'd rather have a flower garden than a bunch of "perfect seeds" any day. A dear friend of mine restores old cars. He’s got several. Every one of these restored beauties are far more valuable than the day they were produced and in their original perfect condition. Another Dear Friend of mine specializes in restoring people.

Chapter 6 - You Break It, You Bought It. I’ve been thinking about this a lot more and it seems to me that love must be more than just a gushy feeling where everything is simply overlooked or ignored. Love must also include justice. Evil must be judged. Heaven isn’t mandatory. We always have choice, but it’s not about being good enough.... I love the story I heard recently about a father who took his young son into a store to help him purchase a birthday gift for his mom. It was one of those stores that had a sign, You break it - You bought it. (I’ve been in those stores and I always breathe a sigh of relief once I’ve successfully navigated my way through!) Well, within a very short time, his son bumped an article and it fell and shattered on the floor. The shop-keeper wanted payment. But, the father thought, I didn’t break it. I should just leave and let them deal with my son. Of course the Father paid for what had been broken. There are all kinds of broken things in our lives.

Some dance to remember. Some dance to forget.Some dance to remember. Some dance to forget.

Chapter 3 - God and Zeus I remember the adult Sunday School class where we were discussing the blessing of God on His righteous followers. If you are righteous, God will bless you. This tore at my heart. I knew I wasn’t perfect but if this was the standard for God’s blessing, how could anyone expect to receive it? ... And what about Job? Here was a man that clearly honoured God in his life. Scripture records even tell us that God brags about His servant, Job, yet he was afflicted with all sorts of torment and lost everything! His friends suggest there is some deep sin in his life, but in the end God vindicates him. I mention this in the class. What happened next is almost impossible to believe. It was as if the conversation was moving along, and when I spoke, the soundtrack just dropped out completely. As soon as I had finished, the conversation carried on as before. Nobody had heard anything I said. Not one comment; not one acknowledgment; not one response. Unbelievable! When we left that day, I told Diane that I was not going back. Who is this angry, judgemental God? And what hope have we of pleasing Him? It was years before I began to see that my image of God was really the image of Zeus - and angry old man, who was looking for any chance to cast his spear of punishment on his enemies. God will get you for that! God was always watching with angry displeasure on everything I did. He was our Elf on the Shelf, gonna find out who’s naughty, or nice. If you don’t behave, you’ll only get a lump of coal for Christmas. Thunderous lightning from His flaming spear! This was a God to be feared! This was Zeus. So who is this God of Love that we hear about?

Chapter 5 - Our View Of God What is God REALLY like? This question has been the biggest struggle in my life. ... Like a dance, if we get this answer wrong, everything else will also be wrong. Our entire worldview, our way of being in the world, our way of understanding life, and even our actions and reactions to events in our life, are all coloured by the answer to this question. What is God REALLY like? If we met face to face, what would our reaction be? Is God a He? Is God a She? Is gender even a consideration or is God a blend of the very best of both genders; He and She inside one body? This to me makes the most sense. God isn’t He and also isn’t She but is both He and She at the same time, in the same Person. Which then means God is a Person. I also believe God is personal. This belief comes from my Judaeo-Christian position. It is my worldview. But this doesn’t answer the question as to the character of a God of Love. If God is Love, it changes everything. This statement does not say that God is loving. It says the very essence of God is Love. Like a perfume that is spilled out the fragrance, the essence, fills the room. It permeates everywhere and everything. God is completely Love and whenever we see love, we are actually seeing God’s essence. God is in all love. All love is the fragrance or essence of God, wherever we encounter it. Therefore if we live in love, we live in God, and when we live outside of love, we live outside of God. On the one hand, love is irresistible. We are drawn to it like a moth to the flame. But on the other hand we can resist love and turn away from it, but doing so leads us into a life of darkness and hell. This we see repeatedly as we look around us. It may even be that this is the reason we say, They have fallen in love. The resulting darkness and hell is also evident when two people fall out of love. A broken heart is a physical pain. The essence of Love (God) is all around us. It is clearly evident in the lives of people who live in love. The opposite is also evident. We choose moment by moment, which position we will live in. But this still doesn’t answer the question of how God (Love) interacts with us (me) on a daily basis in terms of how things go in my life. Yet maybe it does on a deeper level. That even when things do not go well, I am carried in Love and I can respond in love. I’ll think on this some more, and maybe I’ll have other insights to share later. Id love to hear your thoughts. Comment below or PM me.

Chapter 2 - The Twins Diane, and I were married exactly one week after I turned 21. She is exactly one year younger than I am. We share the same birthday. I was farming and with the summer farm schedules there were two possible dates for our wedding. One was our birthday, the other was a week later. At least this makes it easy to remember our anniversary! Things were very good. We were involved in our local church and had a strong (young) faith in God. We sang in the choir on... Sunday mornings and at one point I was asked to be the chairman of the church board. (I was wise enough to know that I wasn’t wise enough to hold that position and turned it down.) Our boys were growing. We made the decision to sell our interest in the farm and moved to our small town where we paid for our first home with cash. Several years later, we would sell it and invest in a business franchise that was a dismal failure, but for now it looked like our lives were blessed and completely together. We wanted another child, and soon we were expecting. You can only imagine the excitement we felt when we learned we were expecting twins! But then some concerns began to develop with Diane’s pregnancy. Something was wrong. So we turned to our faith and prayed. We prayed as fervently as we knew how, yet the day came when we were told that there was no heartbeat that could be heard. Yet we believed in a miracle. God would somehow protect our little ones. We prayed harder than ever. A youth ministry that I was leading hosted an Amy Grant Age to Age concert with Micheal W. Smith. When Amy sang her hit single Friends I was sure she was singing it just for me - for us. I was deeply encouraged. This would work out. Two weeks later, our perfectly formed twin boys were delivered - stillborn. We were devastated. We didn’t know where to turn. How could this have happened? We believed for our miracle. Our faith was strong. And now our dream, and these precious little children, lay in white sheets on the hospital bed. The next days, weeks and months were a blur. Questions plagued our minds. Where was God? Why had our babies died? Was our faith not strong enough? Had we not prayed enough? Had we not believed enough? What did we do wrong? Neither of us pretended to be perfect. We knew that if this was some sort of judgement from God, we deserved it and far worse. Yet we had tried so hard to live in a way that would please Him. This was the beginning of a long journey for me. A year later, I cried for the first time since we had lost our twins, Michael and Gabriel. My faith had been utterly shaken.

Chapter 4 - Starting a Dance on the Wrong Foot. I have a confession to make. It was during my time as choir conductor that Diane and I decided to take dance lessons. This might not seem to be a big deal, but we had both grown up in very conservative churches where dance was taboo. (Don’t try to figure it out. Its just the way it was.) After much consideration we had come to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with dancing and we wanted to learn.... But dance classes were on Thursday night - the night of choir rehearsal. That fall, the church was without a choir. They only knew that we had a personal development class that conflicted with choir practice, so we weren’t available on Thursdays! I still love dancing! I’ve learned one thing about dancing. You’ve got to start on the right foot or everything goes wrong! It’s no different in our understanding of God. Our understanding of the character of God is the most important thing and we must get it right. Otherwise our entire life is a dance that started on the wrong foot.

I wanted to share this video with you all. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Watch for the next chapter coming soon.

A breathtaking evening.

Chapter 1: The Lilac Bush I was eight when I first drove my father’s truck. We were living on a farm in Southern Alberta, and our crop of fresh peas had just been harvested. Our family consisted of Mom and Dad and their seven children; five brothers, and two sisters. I was third youngest.... Some of the family were at home shelling peas and getting them ready to freeze for winter and I was out in the field spreading the piles of vines the harvesters had left behind. There was a tractor and my Dad’s truck out in the field. Both needed to be brought home to the yard. My older brother Melvin, had walked out to bring the tractor home. Once he got out to the field he also helped me get going with the truck with the instructions to turn off the ignition once I got to the yard. I set off. I carefully steered the 1952 Ford 1/2 ton across the field toward the dirt road that led home. This was about 1/2 mile from the yard. As I got to the road, I was beginning to feel more confident, and although I couldn’t reach the pedals I was doing fine. I was excited as I drove onto the yard. My chest must have been popping the buttons from my shirt. I had driven Dad’s truck in from the field! I pulled up in front of the house while the rest of my family watched. I was looking at them, proudly beaming from ear to ear. I can still see the expression on my father’s face as he watched me drive directly into the lilac bush! Rarely does life turn out he way we expect it to. Years later, I was married and my wife, Diane, and I had two sons. Life was good. Little did we suspect the tragedy that lay around the corner.

As life’s journey takes you from highway to highway, remember the exit ramps are always construction zones.As life’s journey takes you from highway to highway, remember the exit ramps are always construction zones.