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We just had some of the CQ Missional Team over for some good eating and home made ice cream and we were talking about what it is we do.  We say we help people discover their unique role in making the world a better place.  I believe we do that in several ways, and thats good.  We believe that everyone has, as a created child of God, something unique and valuable to offer.  We believe in the people we serve- and we help them believe that they play a role unlike anyone else in history- and that is a beautiful thing.

The question that comes up, though, is huge.  Can people in their searching to discover “their thing” forget about what we would call in church “God’s general will” for people?  Is it possible that people miss the boat in their search and “journey” and forget that there is a way of living out of gratitude for what God has done- that is characterized by a life of thankfulness, taking responsibility, and integrity?

Tony Campolo was speaking to students and faculty at John Brown University when I was doing some adjunct work there and he asked students to fill in the sentence they would hear from time to time from mom or dad.  It went like this:  ”I care more about you than about what you do for a a living.  I just want you to be ______________.”

Whats the answer?  The crowd in unison shouted back:  ”HAPPY!”

True.  This is what we tell our kids, and what many of us have been hearing from those who love us most.

Tony, on the other hand, heard a different word from his mother, and in fact many of his classmates heard the same word.  It went like this:  ”I just want you to be __________.”

Whats the answer?  Students didn’t know.  His answer was:  ”GOOD.”

“I just want you to be good.”

Good people are humble, they know there is a God (and they aren’t Him), they look out for others, they stay married, they stay engaged in their faith community, they are nice, and they make a habit of telling the truth- even when its hard.  Not that they don’t mess up, or even do bad things… because good people are just, well, people.  But for them, goodness is a little more important than happiness, and contentment and joy flow from pursuing what is good.

Terry Ewing told me (among others) that people who seek after their own happiness first and foremost are the most miserable people he has met.  He knows- his counseling practice has been full of people who are hurting, and have sought happiness above all else.

So my question is, since we are in the business of helping people find “their thing”; Can people find their thing, their unique role and ignore general ways to live that have been prescribed for all men?  Can people really find their true identity, and not be true to an identity made for humanity,  first?

I have some ideas- but I’m curious what yours are…

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As we prepare to meet new students signing up for GPS Tulsa, and as this journey is taking me into conversations with new people and new friendships.  I am reminded of how much I enjoy getting to know people.  Each person (including you, Mr/Miss Blog Reader!) has such value and every story is interesting.  You are the only one of you, ever.  On a deeper level, as relational beings- we each long to be known.  So while I love enjoying new relationships, there are a few that have deepened over time in which I where I know my friend, and they know me.  I hear a song during the day, and I can text the title of the song to my friend.  My friend knows what I’m thinking and shoots back.  They get my jokes, and know my failures.  They accept me and enjoy me.    There are a few friends like this in my life who remind me through their love that I am known and that I am loved.  With their help, they have helped move me to a deeper truth where (in the words of Brennan Manning) I have accepted the fact that I am accepted.  As image bearers, we long to be known and when we’re not sure this is true, we live lost.

I want to remind you today that you are known, and you are not alone.  You are, in fact, completely known and people can give us a “dim reflection” of this beautiful truth that is much bigger than you or I.  Don Chaffer writes some straight forward words about his experience in the ground breaking solo work “You were at the time for love.”

And I used to bathe in tears at night

Cause I felt like I was on my own

I used to think I would never be

Completely known

I used to hold on tightly

To the sorrows that I owned

But they were all I knew

They had run me through

And they had left me

All alone

I used to pray every day

That God would mend what’s torn

Now I see the only way is to die…

To die…

And be reborn

I have finally found a way to live

In the presence of the Lord

- Don Chaffer “Completely Known”

Being known by another human being is a gift, its rare these days, more rare in our culture, and it resonates with our deepest image bearing self.

What do you think?

With Father’s day being near I decided to share a quite raw and somewhat brutal piece I wrote about My father about 8 months ago…It’s harsh, it’s rough but it’s hopeful.  I know I have written about him before but I have just felt led that this is what I was supposed to post tonight.  Please try to understand the hope in this piece…

New Balance

Dead-beat waste of life, uneducated, hopeless, withering soul, substance absorbing seed donor.  You see my papa was a rolling stone.  With no high school diploma he successfully had four children with two different women.  Typical black man, right?  The man loves that white meat, he preys on their insecurities.  His once found confidence was to die for, but was backed with nothing.  To resist his dark skin and alluringly wicked charm was hard to do, his words were convincing but riddle with shame and misfortune.  He has a love for music and has an unlimited catalog of musical knowledge.  A dreamer with no dreams he strikes rhythms to hopefully go somewhere.  That somewhere took him to years of swallowing, inhaling and absorbing into the hole in his chest.  The man did this to himself.  Now I have to live life scared to the point of shakes that I will inherit these addictions.  Whispering promises is something he has been wonderful at, but if he shouted his promises he would be liable to let down more than just his children.  Waiting by the door looking out the window for his arrival that never came are some of my best memories of him.  The butterflies I would stomach when he would say, “I’m on my way to see you” are ones that will never return, for they are forever stuck in their chrysalis that is so hard to break through from years of disappointment.  Perhaps I should try to remember something better, like the walks we would go on together to the liquor store when he would get himself a tall boy of Budweiser and buy me a little bottle of Sunkist and a bag of cheese doodles.  My pulse stops when remembering the sound of his staggered footsteps and the look of his new balance sneakers when the sun would strike the reflector on the N in the middle of the sneaker as he would drink the tallboy wrapped in the wrinkled brown-bag on the walk back home.  The stale smoke and grilled cheese scent of my short stayed childhood home is one that haunts my memory, but whenever I have visited that place I still felt at home.  I would wonder if he loved the “boy down the street” more than me as he would push me to play drum beats that were too difficult for my 4 year-old frame.  With a can in his hand he would threaten me to the “whoopin’ chair” if I couldn’t play as good as he.  That is when he was there.

I remember looking to the sidelines of my soccer games seeing proud fathers cheering their children to victory, as my mother tried hard to fill that role.  I now fear that is the reason why I hated competitive sports as a child and teenager.  When I watch my New York Giants, I am stunned with shameful thoughts of wondering, “Maybe that coulda’ been me.”  The knowledge I lacked in my younger years about professional sports, are to be completely blamed on him.  I wish we were able to watch football like most of the boys in my neighborhood did on Sundays with their fathers.  I loved our discussions of Michael Jordan, that were never face-to-face, but always over the phone, I remember when the phone calls stopped, I was a teenager.  In my most vulnerable moldable years he was stomping the streets of brick city forgetting his past, as I was trying so hard to learn to be a man and foresee my future.  My heart was hardened to fathers.  The idea of the strength of a man was far from home to me.  Being surrounded by women is something that I had to cling to.  Years went by with close to no contact with my father, the man who watched me spring out of my mother’s womb, gone.  I am the man’s only son, how can one let go of that.  When I think of all his let downs the biggest one is that I have learned nothing from him.

All of these things I say to destroy his already small statured reputation are now the things that bring me joy to who this man is.  You see I had a self-realization moment a few years ago around the brink of me deciding I wanted to get married.  How can I be a husband or a good father with no contact with my own?  How can I have kids and them not have any clue who there Grandfather is or where their roots dwell?  My heart broke at the reality of this idea.  I needed to have this relationship, I needed to tell him about my needs, cares, and how our future didn’t need to be but was going to be.  This conversation was a pivotal moment in our relationship.  It was a bit of a shocker for him, catching him off guard with the words that his boy (who is now a man) loaded in his shotgun of love and aimed straight at his chest.  His defeated demeanor and shaky voice was riddled with something I needed from him, Hope.  Hope of a future.  Hope of a relationship.  Hope of a father.  Hope for a son.  I wasn’t looking for instant gratification, not just an “I love you and care for you” then to go back to the way it was.  I needed his concern, and to hear the sound of his voice more often than what I was hearing.  I needed him to try.

This conversation was over 2 yeas ago.  I can’t say that he is the best father ever, or the most amazing male figure in my life, but I can say he is trying.  Although it is likely he may never be either one of those things, I still find an overwhelming amount of joy that I hear from him every week or two since then.  His effort is what makes me understand now why I love him.   I would think to myself in earlier years why I love this man so much, I think it is just that God-given love mechanism that we have that makes us love our family whether we like them or not.  I burst with a prideful scream now that I actually have a reason to love him.  Understanding why I actually love my father is a new feeling that is very hard for me to express, instead of thinking of all his horrible traits and terrible habits, I instantly think, the man is trying.  I also have come to grips that I hate the term “Typical Black Man.”  I have many friends of many different races and back rounds and I can only claim two or three of them with fathers that are better off than my own.  So perhaps we should say “Typical Man?”  If so I refuse to take refuge in that title, I will not be that man.  I’ve learned too much from my father to end up that way.

This brings me to realize that I have learned things from my father.  I have learned what it is that I should not do when dealing with my wife and my children.  I have learned that I must lean on higher powers instead of substances.  My favorite lesson so far is that I have learned to maintain hope, and that people can be resilient, he is showing me much resilience in his reparation of our relationship.  I pray this will or is leaking over to my siblings, if not I hope they can have the conversation that they need to have with our father for it has been much more of a blessing than a curse.  I realize I have inherited things from him.  I am a drummer like he, my love for music is almost as large as my love for my life, my favorite sneaker is New Balance, and I as well have a heart to be resilient in my relationship with him.  They may not be deep or very monumental but I still find that these things are far from coincidental.

Do you think God intended some children to have relationships with their parents like this?  Do you see beauty is repaired relationships although there was a lot of years of hurt?  Could you respect a parent in the way God wants you too if you are or could have been in a similar situation?  Thoughts, cares, concerns and discussion are appreciated…

In his book, The Prodigal God, Timothy Keller discusses the parable of the lost son, and more specifically he details the state of heart of the “Elder Brother” in that parable.  Here is an excerpt:  ”Elder brothers base their self-images on being hardworking, or moral, or members of an elite clan, or extremely smart and savvy.  This inevitably leads to feeling superior to those who don’t have those same qualities.  In fact, competitive comparison is the main way elder brothers achieve a sense of their own significance.  Racism and classism are just different versions of this form of the self-salvation project.  This dynamic becomes exceptionally intense when elder brothers pride themselves above all for their right religion.  If a group believes God favors them because of their particularly true doctrine, ways of worship, and ethical behavior, their attitude toward those without these things can be hostile.  Their self-righteousness hides under the claim that they are only opposing the enemies of God.  When you look at the world through those lenses, it becomes easy to justify hate and oppression, all in the name of truth.  As Richard Lovelace has written:

‘[People] who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons…Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce, defensive assertion of their own righteousness, and defensive criticism of others.  They come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger.’

Elder brother self-righteousness not only creates racism and classism, but at the personal level creates an unforgiving, judgmental spirit.  This elder brother cannot pardon his younger brother for the way he has weakened the family’s place in society, disgraced their name, and diminished their wealth.  He highlights the fact that the younger brother has been with prostitutes, while he has been living a chaste life at home.  ’I would never do anything as bad as that!’ he is saying in his heart.  Because he does not see himself as being part of a common community of sinners, he is trapped by his own bitterness.  It is impossible to forgive someone if you feel superior to him or her.

If you can’t control your temper, and you see someone else losing theirs in exactly the same way that you do, you tend to forgive them, because you know you are no better a person than they.  How can I hold this against them when I am just as bad? you think.  However, because elder brothers’ sin and antipathy to God is hidden deep beneath layers of self-control and moral behavior, they have no trouble feeling superior to just about anyone.  If they see people who lie, or cheat on their wives, or don’t pray to God–they look down on them.  If such people wrong them, elder brothers feel their spotless record gives them the right to be highly offended and to perpetually remind the wrongdoer of his or her failure.”

Keller goes on, “If the elder brother had known his own heart, he would have said, ‘I am just as self-centered and a grief to my father in my own way as my brother is in his.  I have no right to feel superior.’  Then he would have had the freedom to give his brother the same forgiveness that his father did.  But elder brothers do not see themselves this way.  Their anger is a prison of their own making.”

Friday night I happened to have an evening alone with my fourteen-year-old son, Alden.  Scott (my husband) and Kate (our daughter) were at a father/daughter night for the fifth grade girls.  Somehow, miraculously, Alden was not working on plans with friends by the time I got home.  So he and I set out to run some errands, rent a movie, and settle in for our own little mother/son evening.

We were almost home from Blockbuster when I ventured into what I consider to be a more grown-up conversation than we used to have.  That is, I volunteered information about my day instead of  just asking about his.  I launched in with, “Well, I’m really tired but I had a good day today.”  I went on to explain that most days I don’t get a lot of accolades for my work, but that day had been different.  A counselor has to always walk that fine line of looking for evidence that they are actually helping people, yet not depend on constant pats on the back to feel okay about themselves and their work.  There is always that knowledge that I cannot solve other people’s problems, and I had just had about a two-week run when that had been painfully clear to me.  So this day, last Friday, I had several different people tell me how much I had helped them.  I was floored.  And grateful.  And since I was hanging out with my teenager, he was the one I shared it with.

Now I have to tell you that there was a tiny bit of ulterior motive at work on my part.  I also had a little thought in the back of my mind that this could be a help to Alden.  He has had a good school year with a lot of accomplishments, but the previous evening we had attended the big 8th grade awards assembly and he didn’t get any of the big “surprise” awards that he knew he was in the running for.  I think I had some vague notion about a little life lesson for him somewhere in there — that when you get the accolades, it is really satisfying but most of the time you don’t get pats on the back for doing a good job.  I tried to explain that is why it meant a lot, because normally I don’t get a lot of that in my work and that is okay.

So I didn’t get very far before Alden said, “I’m not surprised.”

“You mean you’re not surprised that people actually find me helpful?”  Now this was a surprise, and I said so.  “I figured you and Kate wonder how I can help other people when I get so many things wrong myself.”  I mean, who knows all your flaws better than your kids?  They totally know that I struggle with my temper, especially when I haven’t had a full night’s sleep.  They see me letting my anxiety get the best of me.  They put up with me asking them multiple times every school morning whether they have their lunch and their house key, as if my asking enough times is going to insure their safety for the day.

Alden just said, “Yeah, but I don’t know how someone without problems would even be able to understand what people are going through.  It seems like you would have to have some problems yourself if you were going to be any good at helping someone else with theirs.”

Okay, I say stuff like this all the time but it really sounded different coming out of my child’s mouth.  Really?  If I was this ideal person that I wish I was, I may not have as much to offer to the people around me?  Is this what that passage in II Corinthians means?  “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

What if we all approached our weaknesses as our strengths?  What if we faced them and then asked God and our fellow humans to put them to use?  Could it be that our best gifts are contained in those parts of ourselves that we just can’t seem to conquer?  What do you think?  What are your best and worst traits?  Are the gifts inherent in the weaknesses?

“… for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

CQMissional is all about helping people discover their role in making the world a better place. We think the sooner you can start discovering your unique role in the world the better. This is why we created GPS Tulsa.

GPS Tulsa is a one semester educational experience that meets in the afternoon and early evening once a week. People who are in the program will serve the community of Tulsa by working at John 3:16 Youth and Family Center.  But this is about a lot more then just service. After each day of serving we will eat a meal together and talk about the day. By answering “what, so what, now what?” questions participants will grow and learn from the experience of serving others.

The next really important thing about GPS Tulsa is that it is designed to help people find life direction. They might not know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives, but they will have a better understanding of who they are, their strengths, talents, limits, and weaknesses. They will have a better idea what their next educational steps or vocation should be.

GPS Tulsa is designed to be a complement to college. Anybody who has recently graduated high school can be in GPS Tulsa. It is designed to be a complement to college and we built GPS Tulsa to work really well in conjunction with the Tulsa Achieves program at Tulsa Community College.

If you are interested in GPS Tulsa all the info you need is in the GPS Tulsa section of this site. If you are already convinced and want to apply head right to the application section.

We would love your help getting the word out about GPS Tulsa. If you know anybody who might be interested please send them our way!

One of my children is grounded.

A little bit ago, I had to remind my child that the plans being made did not take into consideration that grounding.  My child began talking to me like I was an enemy. So, I said, “You are talking to me like I am your enemy.” (I thought it was a profound statement that would change the course of our conversation.)

My child said, “I feel like you are my enemy.”

I wisely responded, “You should challenge those feelings.”

My child replied, “I think my feelings are right.”

There was nothing left to do (nothing I was smart enough to figure out) but to walk out of the conversation as my child tried to justify the accusation against me.

In so many other circumstances I have been able to help my child work through feelings and embrace each other in love.

Now, we are ignoring each other.  I don’t think I could continue the conversation in any productive way.  At least not right now.  I still don’t know what I would say even if I weren’t feeling so terribly hurt.
I know what I want God to do.  I want Him to convict my child; to bring the injustice of the accusation to light; to break my child’s heart and lead my child to a humble contrite apology.

This is not a made up experience being used to illustrate how we sometimes think of God as our enemy.  I wish it were.  Instead, I am a professional counselor who (at this moment) has no idea how to respond to this emotional, relational, and spiritual situation.

My one comforting thought is that this is not the first time I’ve been in this type of situation; Hurt, not knowing how to respond.  The other times?  Some ended well.  Others – not.  Yet, God remains with me.

Why are we so surprised when we see God at work? It is true isn’t it? God is at work all around us, and yet we fail to engage what he is doing and try to manipulate and start our own stuff. Just last night I am sitting at home watching the good ol’ TV when my 8 year old Kate says, “Dad I want to get baptized!” My reaction was one of total surprise as I responded, “Who talked to you about being baptized?” Like it was a bad word and that some how she was signing up for an occult. Of course, she responded, “At Church…”  Once I regained my composure and got rid of my prideful self saying, “why didn’t she hear it from me, or learn it from me.” I had a very proud moment and acknowledged that God is at work even though I didn’t manipulate it, start it, or control it.

Are you surprised when someone is healed, when someone receives salvation, or a simple prayer is answered? Why? As believers why can we not rest in the fact that God is at work all around us, he loves us, and wants the best for us? My best advice in engaging adventure in this life is look around you and see where God is at work and join in and stop trying to manipulate, start, and control something just because you want your fingerprints on it. It will never be all it can be with your mark anyway.

So where is God at work in your life, home, and community? Are you joining in or pridefully staying at arms length?

I am making a short documentary for school about a subject that interested me and everyone else in my class.  It’s working title is “We Love Everyone” it’s about two generations of the same modern christian family and their personal feelings on homosexuality.  I kind of had a hypothesis in my head about what the outcome would be.  I thought that the older generation would be less accepting towards the idea and the younger would be more accepting.  I was wrong.  They both shared the same amount of acceptance as each other.  What I got out of this is, that is doesn’t really have to do some much with the generational gap and modern man being more used to the idea of homosexuality but it has to do with the family altogether and their influence and thought.  They all had the same idea, which was they don’t condone homosexuality but they will love and try to relate and understand people on a personal level even in their differences.  It was refreshing to me, because we are required by God and as Christians to love thy neighbor.  Not love thy neighbor if he is straight, or white, or rich, or ugly.  Love they neighbor altogether.  The documentary has been a very refreshing thing for me, to see that as Christians there are families that don’t judge outright, they are willing to love despite flaws or feelings, or sex, or orientation.  I think that is what we are supposed to do.  Do you think that this is what we are supposed to do as well?  Do you think that homosexuals have a place in heaven?  Do you think that you love the way that we are commanded to, despite differences?  I love people, and I hope they love me like I love them…