Look… you get what we all get — a lifetime.

Just you or none of us ever get to know how long that will turn out to be.

So get to it. Because you woke up 18 this week.

You sat at the end of the table after barn chores, grinning like you were just getting stretched up for the starting blocks and the race of your life — and somewhere inside I felt this crossing of an invisible finish line, right through the stretched out tape.

And I want to go back.

I want to go back and hold the whole of you right in palm again and lay you in that kitchen scale and count your every gram, as if I could give you weight in this world.

I didn’t know that would happen until I started letting you go.

I want to go back and pull that boy with that bowl hair cut up on my lap again. Feel your chub fingers help me turn one more page, reach for one more crayon, hold my hand one more moment, and you have no idea how much I don’t care if that makes me a fool.

I want to go back to your sleep breathing on my shoulder and the way I didn’t want to move, to your bows and arrows and slung-on tool belts and well-envisioned, questionably-executed tree forts, to your buck teeth and big bravado and flipped up toilet lids and flipped out drive-me-mad attitude. I just want to go the whole ugly-beautiful way back and I want to get a do over.

Go back and shake up that 21 year old girl who brought you home and tell her that the best way to raise up a kid is to just loosen up. Nothing ever got raised up when held down tight. The Holy Spirit is a fluid grace and the wind is a carrying thing and you have to lean into it and let Him surprise if anything’s going to rise up and fly.

You grew up — and I want to go back and I want to go with you, but I can’t do either.

That’s a hard thing to sit with.

Hard to know I can’t fix any of the times I dented up your heart with my ridiculous white-knuckled steering-wheel control and big Buick idols. Yeah, you and I both remember how it got ugly and wild. You’ve got to know I’ll spend the rest of my life and pitiful wisdom trying to bang out those dents with presence and grace. Yeah, you and I both know I’ll probably make some more.

You made me get that: Grace isn’t some soft, ethereal notion. Grace is a noun, it’s a verb, it’s concrete, it’s like air. Just try living without it. Just try living without breathing. We all know how wrinkled hard lives like that are. You — you made me me breathe grace right down to the bottom of the lung. It was the only way we could live with each other. Inhaling, exhaling, giving and receiving grace.

It ended up beautiful, what all happened, and I don’t even think we realized it was happening at all.

So you’ll end up heading out.

Heading out down some back roads and long roads and roads I’d never pick for you and I wished I’d lived more backwards, backwards from the knowing that ends really do come.

Knowing that one day you’ll leave and I’ll be brave and wave. And you’ll go fall in love and you’ll feel it too and I can’t stop it for you — how a crush can crush you, how real love is never logical, how real love is always crazy love, and love is the most horrible and the most wonderful because it will make you strong and it will make you weak and it will make you vulnerable, which is the perfection of strong and weak together.

How Love will open you right up, then pull open your heart to let someone get into you and get to you and undo you and remake you and it’s everything terrifying and everything you ever wanted.

And I will nod and say yes.

That’s what you’ve done to me.

That’s what I’d go back to tell that new 21-year-old mother I was with her dangling kid, what I’m feeling as the woman falling over a finish line I don’t want to cross, what I’m saying to you, that new 18-year-old man done with being a kid — Don’t fight the hurt. Let the hurt make you real. Let go of the defenses and the shields and the tightfisted formulas for some life that doesn’t exist and give away beautiful pieces of yourself and feel the hurt, because the only way to own a life worth having is to give away your own life.

Give away the life of polished floors and gleamy sinks, of big hair and bigger bank accounts, and let love get in and mess with you and loosen you up and make you laugh and cry and really give and really hurt because is the only way to really live. Don’t waste a minute of your life on anything less than love.

Don’t waste a minute of your life on anything less than eternity.

And that’s. what. love. is.

I once heard the story of a preacher man with a PhD — whose mother died when he was two. When he was two and they were 5 kids in poor Kansas and she had grabbed hold of her husband’s hand and whispered her 5 last words: Always keep eternity before them.

Always keep eternity before them.

Think of eternity — and live backwards from that.

Don’t waste a minute of your life on anything less than eternity — and that’s. what. love is. Eternal, without end.

Let love happen to you. Don’t fight the hurt. It’s making you real.

You woke up to snow on your 18th.

“Crazy, for the 13th of May.” And you inhaled your plate of waffles, and said it again, “Snow — for my birthday in May!” And you downed the bacon and eggs I’d heaped up for you, and you pushed back your chair –

“I’ve got to go make a snowman. Before the sun makes it all go — ’cause who knows if it’ll ever happens like this again?”

And I get that. And it won’t.

And I stand at the window and watch you, the oldest, the child no more —

and your sister, the youngest, the child a bit longer, make a snowman out of spring.

And who would have known you’d be doing that on your big day when we found your gift weeks before — a watch.

A watch we had engraved with words that beg you to ask whatchya going to do with it:

“You have been given now. Romans 12:1.”

And all I can hear is the echo of a snowman melting in May: Seize the Day.

Just go do that: it’s never too late to love and there is always time to love and what else is a lifetime for?

You could see that snowman, right to the end, looking the loveliest real, giving itself away and unafraid to the sun.

Related Posts: How to be The Parent You Want to Be: 40 Things Your child Needs to Know Before they Leave Home
4 steps to Take When You are Not Ready For Change
After Steubenville: 25 Things Our Sons Need to Know About Manhood

How to make the Perfect Cup of Tea: George Orwell’s 11 Rules

The Best Moment of My Day… This. Slows your heart rate down, yes? What’s yours?

On living the Unhurried Life.… read. this. slow. What are your sheer acts of defiance?

Ten Inspiring Ways to Your Parenting – no matter where you live……

5 Minute Glory Holy-day -– the whole earth is full of the glory of God and this is nothing short of breathtaking. Like a mini vacation, hol-i-day— what a way to start the day, looking for His gifts…

Why you will remember what you read on the page — and not on the screen…. why reading books matters.

That post? Those 3 Simple Words for Every Day that are sort of rocking my world? “… then you came?”

Here is one way one man is doing just that — (inspires you to get thinking creatively, eh?)

82-year-old Barber offers Free Haircuts to the homeless — in exchange for a Hug:

“The 82-year-old Cymerys, who is known as Joe the Barber, began offering his services 25 years ago after retiring from a career in business. He had cut hair for his family but decided to put his clippers to work for the less fortunate after being inspired by a church sermon about the homeless.

“It really is love. I love these guys,” Cymerys said. He paused and turned to his client in the chair, “You know I love you, right?”
Full story and slideshow here

  A read for deep soul refreshment: Not by Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith

When Mr. Jon Bloom, President of Desiring God, sent me an early manuscript of his book to read, I read slowly. Captivated by the stories of Scripture all over again. I made notes. I re-read. The chapters, 35 imaginative retellings of Bible stories, made me hungrier for God, His Truth, the company of Christ. Mr. Bloom’s Scripture saturated lines stirred a trust in God’s promises instead of personal perceptions.

And when I met Mr. Bloom at his office this past winter — I was deeply struck, taken aback, by his humility, his genuine warmth and down-to-earth grace — this was a man who sincerely walked with Jesus.  Mr. John Piper writes the forward of Not by Sight: “Pick a chapters in this book whose title looks relevant for you. Listen as you read. Look through what you hear. And see if Jesus does not show himself to you in such a way that you do not trust Him more.” Mr. Bloom lives this.

And I offered my own endorsement: “Spurgeon said, “My books are my tools.” And this book is one wise match for the journey. Bloom’s stories and insights ignite– ignite fire in bones, ignite the best and old paths, ignite glimpses of God’s glory that makes you want to run this walk of faith.” I humbly encourage you to pick up Not by Sight… penned by a man who quietly, authentically lives what he so compellingly writes. Perfect devotional reading for your morning cup of espresso or tea!

In the morning when you rise…  (Consider clicking off music in the left sidebar?  Just click the speaker icon. And RSS readers, join us here to see this morning’s espresso videos…}

Worship.

Time for this… Let this have us on our knees:

Morning Verse for Today’s Living:

“He will have no fear of bad news;

his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.”

~Psalm 112:7

He’d set the alarm for 1 AM on a Monday morning because sometimes a man has to do what he has to do.

He’d slept the rest of a Farmer on the Lord’s Day.

Then hauled to the fields in the pitch dark just as soon as Monday feebly birthed.

Before that sun finally dragged up, he had a whole field worked up and half a ton of dirt ground into his jeans.

By sun down, he was still ahead of the clouds skulking in on the edges of the radar.

And the back of his shirt stuck to him like a dirt crusted skin and he wore dust like he knew what he was and he was surrendered to it and he kept on going, steadied.

One of the boys, Levi, he fills the planter with his dad, hauls and lifts and empties out those bags of corn seed. Before getting back up into that tractor seat, they walk a bit of the earth together. They scratch back soil and poke about for a seed. I watch them do this.

I watch them, the father and the son and the seeking of a seed. Something grows in me and it doesn’t have words and it doesn’t ask for words. It asks only for witnessing. Only for gratitude.

Only for the living that lets the everyday dirt become the sacred everyday.

There are times it seems wrong to keep your shoes on, to do anything less than stand bare-heeled and bowed and broken wide open.

Them bent. The way a soul can grow any way it chooses.

“Think we planted deep enough, Dad?” Levi kneels across from him.

The Farmer pats the earth over the seed. “As long as it rains.”

As long as water comes, as long as there is a coming.

The Farmer gets back on the tractor.

Levi and I stand on the hem of the field and watch him move away in a cloud of lit dust, into the dusk.

Levi and I go home and find our beds. The Farmer keeps going, keeps laying seeds into beds.

Come 1 AM Tuesday, that alarm goes off again like a screeching banshee needing coffee.

So at 1 AM, I yank the screaming banshee cord out of the wall, drag out looking for a Farmer still planting loam with impossible small hope somewhere in the middle of the night.

I find him 2 roads over and nearly a mile and a quarter back, driving that tractor down into the dark and the dirt with a planter storming up a swirl of earth behind him and no mind of time only the task at hand.

When I roll up on the headland, he idles the tractor, walks straight through headlights, up through the ditch to the road.

“You need anything?” I roll the window down lower, night cold rushing in. Why in the world hadn’t I come with something warm for the man’s chill?

He leans in. “No… had a bunch of breakdowns. Gearbox on the auger. The marker arm on the planter. So I’ll still be a couple hours here yet before this field’s done.” He nods back at the tractor. “No… you get sleep. I’ll probably need your help sometime after 3 — move some of this home?”

“Okay. 3. I’ll go home and plug that alarm back in.” He nods and is gone again in the dark and why hadn’t I come with something?

At 3AM, I help him move the tractor and planter and wagon and truck back home and at 4:30, he finds the mattress for less than an hour and then he’s gone again in the greying light.

At 7AM, I bring orange juice and a muffin back out to him on the tractor, to him planting now on the home farm.

“Long night.” He takes the cup from my hand.

“Ah, I couldn’t keep my eyes open — just kept drifting off. For a while I had to stand up —” I can see that, how he’d do that.

How he’d stand up on that open tractor in the middle of the dark, a weary shadow in tractor lights and a fog of swirling dust, standing there fighting sleep and dust in the eyes and heaviness in the bones.

“…. and then how did I keep going the rest of the night?” He says it like a searching.

He looks across the field — as if trying to remember, trying to find the memory out there between the rows of seeds, of how he got through the dark, how he kept going when there was really no stand or vision left in the man.

And then he finds it in the back 40 of his mind and he lights, white teeth flashing across that dirt stained face.

“Oh, yeah — that’s what it was— ” he looks down at me.

“…. then you came.”

And then you came.

Just for a moment, I touch his cheek, his dust.

And you with only with a word, with only a smile, a hand, a yes, you with the gospel and you with His presence, then you came.

You who rubbed feet at the end of the day and you who massaged the tight crook of a neck and you who dropped off a bag of fruit just because they were on sale at the market for less than half price. You who got up in the middle of the night and came to the wretchedly sick and the deathly scared and to the one who just needed a face and hand to squeeze.

Then you came.

You shut off the screen, pushed back the chair, found your feet, didn’t come up with an excuse or a distraction or an eyeroll, but you simply came to the child, to the man, to the lost, with the name of Jesus on your tongue and the fire of Christ in your belly and the heat of your Savior in your bones and the thing is: When you’ve been saved, you can’t stay.

When your Savior is in you, you can’t stay still.

When you love God, you have got to go.

Yes, there is no other way to begin or become or be: Be still and know He is God. And once you know He is God… how can you not let other people know? Experience Him? Know. Him? There’s simplicity for a soul: Stilling. Knowing. Then Going.

And it comes unforced, like a reviving wind – When the gentle stillness of God fills you … the burning love of Christ fuels you.

To. Go.

Christianity means someone goes. Christianity means someone comes. SomeOne left heaven, SomeOne went to a manger, to a Cross, to the dying and trapped and the buried. And if no one goes across the room, across the house, the sidewalk, the street, the country, how many will grow cold and fall asleep and drift off and away?

How many will be held captive and chained and bound and who will go and break down doors and break down walls and break down small boxes and the only way for your life to yield anything is to go.

Take one step, reach out your hand.

You don’t have to have anything — but Christ.

Don’t let the Great Commission be your life omission by thinking it’s a function of distance — instead of going the distance right where you are.

You’ve just got to go down the hall, across the room, to the end of the street, across town, over high walls, across county and state and country lines and reach right across barbed wire fences. If we’re the hands of Christ — how can we just sit on them? If our feet are shod with gospel of good news — how can they not go where there’s bad news?

Isn’t this always the holiest work of all — to lay aside an agenda to carry a cross and the presence of Christ just. one. step. further.

He’s looking down at me, eyes tired and dirt-lined.

My hand rests a moment longer on his grizzled stubble.

And he says just those 3 words again like grace, the grace of rain —

Yeah –

then you came.

The way the presence of Christ is the gift wrapped in our skin.

The gift for yourself and everyone who loves you: Why we really have to take a walk everyday … physical inactivity is the #4 killer? {I’ll take a photo of my walk today and share on instagram and tag with #1000gifts — you take a photo of your walk too and tag it? Deal.}

The role of siblings in mental health — one to pray over… I can’t stop thinking of this.

Easy, calming handwork — How to knit an easy dishcloth…with video… I just am always so inspired by Edie

Simplified Chalkboard Tutorial … you have a chalkboard too? What if the kids helped with this too? Inspiring!

Hope Heals — this struck me hard.. what does love look like? What does hope look like?

An App to send your thank-you notes...  Voted best of the web by the New York Times… and I can see why? (free!)

The plan for the day? This:

Morning Verse for Today’s Living:

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;

You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness,

that my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent O LORD my God,

I will give thanks to You forever … Psalm 30:11-12.