Requiem

 I got the following message today from someone online.

“Didn’t know if you were aware, your father passed away.  There was no funeral, no one in the family knew.”  

He apparently died in April.

As I sat with a wave of adrenalin washing over me, just staring at the message, I didn’t even know how to react.  He was 81 years old at the time of his passing.  I knew one day I would get a call, or an e-mail informing me of his death.  I never knew how I was going to respond on that day.

I always worried I would be expected to go to a funeral.  I didn’t know if I could do it.  There was relief that I had been spared that discomfort.  I always wondered if toward the end of his life he would reach out.  We know the answer now.

No.

 

 There were at least four wives.  FOUR.  My mom was the first.  They were married seven years when I was born and after one more year she left him.  She told me I was what ultimately gave her the strength to finally leave.  She had tried to leave many times before.  Their relationship was the definition of gaslighting.  He would abuse her, buy her gifts when she left and beg her to come back, sell the gifts as soon as she returned, act like she was the one who was crazy.  He would regularly get into trouble with the law, he was wrapped up with organized crime, always in court, couldn’t hold a job.

The abuse didn’t stop when she finally left.  He kept her in court for years.  Challenging custody, visitation schedules, anything he could.  Mind you he didn’t want custody, but he wanted to make life as hard as he could.  I spent my young life in and out of court mediation rooms, being questioned in courthouses by strangers. 

The little time I did spend with him was usually unpleasant.  A lot of times he would take me to his mother’s house immediately and drop me off for her to watch me and then he would pick me up and take me home.  He wouldn’t allow me to communicate with my mom at all when I was with him but I would sneak out of my room at night and call her on the phone just to have someone to talk to.  He would send me home with complete strangers both to me and to her, just to scare her.  He tried to bait people into physical violence so he could sue them.  He tried it several times with members of my mom’s family.  They knew better at that point than to take the bait.

He married the woman he cheated on my mom with.  I would sit in my room at his house and listen to them scream at each other for hours.  Things the ears of a child should not ever hear.  Things two adults shouldn’t say to one another if they hate each other let alone if they are married.  It went on for years.  When she finally left him there was another, and then another.  Same story.  The third woman left with a police escort, he told me she was doing drugs, I doubted it.  I don’t even know what happened to the fourth.  She wasn’t around long.  There may have been others, I don’t know.

I could fill a novel with the stories I remember and some that I was told.  There was the time he let me play with his gun.  I think I was about five.  The time he took me to a doctor who wrote curse words ALL over my body in mercurochrome.  Sometimes he would force feed me food he knew I didn’t like, not healthy food mind you, this was like hamburgers and then mocked me when I cried.  I was never allowed to cry.  I was not allowed to have an opinion on anything, unless it was his. 

I watched him alienate every single person who came into his life, from his brother, to his mother and father, every women he ever claimed to love, even waitresses at restaurants.  It didn’t matter, he had contempt for them all.  He wasn’t there when I graduated high school, he wasn’t there was I graduated college.  He wasn’t there period.

My mom never got over the abuse she suffered at his hands.  Sadly, she lived in the horror of that time in her life for her whole life, and at 79 years old she still gets visibly shaken whenever his name comes up in conversation.  She never sought help for the trauma she lived through.  It permanently scarred her and stunted her ability to trust others.  She never remarried.

By the time I was a young adult I visited him occasionally out of obligation.  Oddly it was my mother who would push me to do this.  She would say “he’s an ass but he’s your father”.  What a thing to say…  My visits with him were cold and obligatory.  I had years of pent-up anger, I never talked about it, I never asked him why, he never offered any explanation.

Then one day everything changed.  I met Diane and fell in love.  The details of my childhood came out slowly over time.  I used to tell people I had a normal childhood.  Looking back on it, my childhood was the farthest thing from normal but it was my normal, nd to be honest, it was normal when I was not with him.  We continued to visit occasionally but over time we grew further and further apart.  See, it was not OK with him that as an adult I didn’t think like him, that I was a republican, that I was a Christian.  He hated all of it.  He regularly berated me about it. 

When Lydia was born, at around 2 months, we took her to see him.  She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  I walked into the room with her in the car seat.  The first words out of his mouth were “Take that stupid bonnet off her head she looks ridiculous”.  In that moment, something shattered in my head.  I had flashbacks of walking the path from our front door to his car as a little child, him yelling out the car window to go back inside and tell my mother to dress me properly.  A hundred thousand other stories like it….

But this was not going to be my story any longer, it was never going to be Diane’s story and it certainly was NOT going to be Lydia’s story.  I wrote him a long e-mail finally releasing my frustrations.  I must have read it a thousand times before I hit send.  I had already decided that our relationship was going to need to be over unless he could bring himself to some kind of change.  The response I got back was seemingly heartfelt.  Begging to meet with me to put all this behind us.  I knew it was a mistake, I went anyway.

I sat down in the booth at that Panera across from him.  I had no idea what to expect, I was terrified.  It was in that moment that he let loose with a barrage of accusations.  He told me I was unreliable, that I was selfish, that my wife treated him terrible and lied to me about it.  It went on and on, and I hadn’t spoken a word.  I vowed not to do so unless I had to.  I wanted nothing on my conscience, but the moment he implicated Diane in his deceitful divisive tirade I had all the evidence I needed that my relationship with him would never be what I hoped it would be.  He was never going to be allowed to come between my wife and I.  In that moment, I got up and simply walked away. 

It’s been over 18 years. 

 

He never called again, never reached out, not a card, not a comment sent through a relative.  Nothing.  I didn’t ever reach out either.  It took years to unravel the damage that had been done in my mind.  I found myself having conversations with him, out loud when I was alone.  My mind and spirit needed to have the conversation he never allowed me to have.  Eventually God allowed me to forgive him.  I never told my kids about him.  When they would ask about him, I would just tell them that he had a lot of problems and it was hard for him to be nice to people. 

The bible says to honor your father and mother.  But how do you honor a man who is not honorable?  I ultimately decided that I could honor him more by not seeing him because when I did see him it was impossible.

He never had a funeral.

Not one person in his family was there.

There is no grave, they poured his ashes in a river, apparently at his request.

I cannot think of a more sad way for a human to end their life than the way Tim Tirakis chose to end his.  I shed a few tears today, but not in sadness for the death of a person who I used to call dad.  It would be normal to do that, but there’s nothing there.  It was shed because today the last hope that I would have a normal relationship with a father died.  

If I have any regret its that when I walked away from him, I also left his family behind as well.  They were all good people who treated me well and they didn't deserve it, but I simply didn't know how to have a relationship with them and not him.  In addition, I never knew what he was telling people about what happened, so I thought there was a possibility they didn't WANT to talk to me.  The damage was pervasive.

I always wondered if God would restore what was broken in me so long ago, and looking from the outside one would be hard pressed to say anything other than that it is impossible.

But it isn’t impossible.  In fact, it occurs to me in this moment that God did indeed restore what was broken. You see,

  I try every day to be the father to my kids that I didn’t have

I try to be the husband to my wife that she deserves and our relationship is intact and strong after 26 years

I am the son to my mother that my dad never was to his own

You see, God HAS mended what was broken.  He kept His promise to me, and by His grace I will keep the promises I made to Him and to my family.

I do not have an earthly father, but I am not alone.  I am surrounded with love, and by God’s grace I will be the man for my family that I always wished I had in my life.

Matthew 6, Marie Kondo, and the Crushing Weight of the American Dream

I was minding my own business the day I first came across the name Marie Kondo.  She appeared almost instantaneously before me, in my news feed, on Facebook, EVERYWHERE.  After about the twentieth article I encountered, I decided it was time to find out who this person was, which led me to watch an episode of her show.

For those of you who don’t know yet, Marie Kondo is a Japanese woman who developed a system of personal organization.  She wrote a book about this several years ago, but it never took off, that is until Netflix decided to turn the book into a series of television episodes where she enters people’s homes and helps them dig out from under their things and simplify their lives.

To be honest, after watching the first episode I half expected that I would soon see an avalanche of articles from Christian authors decrying the show and its somewhat more mystical elements.  Ms. Kondo encourages people to gather their belongings into piles, take each item into one’s hand asking oneself “Does this item spark joy in my life?”  If the answer is yes, it goes into the keep pile, if the answer is no, then the person is instructed to thank the item for its service and to move the article to the discard pile.  Kondo ascribes an almost animist viewpoint to these inanimate objects.  I knew that the Christian pop culture police would soon be in full take down mode.

But after watching a few episodes, the thing that struck me was that the people the show highlighted, while not hoarders, were nonetheless suffering because of their excess.  They were victims in many ways of their lack of discretion about the items they brought into their homes.  They were buried in knick-knacks, collections of meaninglessness.  The stuff caused issues in their marriages, kept them from inviting people to their homes, and in some cases kept them from moving forward in their lives and relationships.  In many ways they were all victims of the very excess the American dream invited them to acquire.

One of the techniques Ms. Kondo utilizes to confront peoples excess is to ask the person to gather all of a category of items into a giant pile, whether it be clothes or books, papers or miscellaneous items.  When confronted with the mass of excess all in a pile, most people are shocked and embarrassed by how much they have.  A person’s clothing, for instance, might be piled up to the ceiling or in some cases filling an entire room.  It’s astonishing how we can allow these items to infiltrate our lives almost without realizing just how far we’ve overdone it.

Diane and I watched several episodes of the show together and we were almost instantly cleaning out our closets and drawers.  To be honest, the episodes are not really all that interesting, they don’t reveal much of Ms. Kondo’s actual methods and the episodes seem a bit too repetitive to hold my interest, however the similarity in people’s stories is kind of the point.  I think a great many of us have homes with far too much stuff.

As I cleaned out my closets the thing I kept asking myself was not, “Does this item bring me joy?” The question I kept asking myself was, “Have I used this item God provided me to its fullest usefulness?”, “Have I been a good steward of this thing God provided me?”  “Did I need it to begin with?”  “Have I made good use of it?”  “Did I intend to make use of it in my future?”  In many cases I found myself quietly repenting as I moved 30 plus shirts into the discard pile, some with the store tags still on them.

As I was being continuously confronted with the excess I had allowed into my life and as I repeatedly apologized to God for each item I had carelessly allowed to invade a space in my life and home, I felt a shift taking place. 

I want to be clear that unloading a bunch of things will provide you no more peace than the false comfort provided by amassing them.  We can be just as much in sin decluttering our lives as we can be by mindlessly amassing stuff.  But I do think that the act of mindfully inventorying all of your things and confronting yourself with the reality of the mass of your possessions is a worthwhile endeavor, whether you are a hoarder, a minimalist, or anywhere in between.  By the way, I believe a minimalist can be just as much a covetous glutton as person with 39 cats and 450 Christmas nutcrackers!

Matthew 6:11 says “Give us today our daily bread”.  This is part of the Lord’s prayer.  Jesus was teaching his disciples and us how to pray. There’s a ton packed into this little verse and I believe it is at the heart of what is resonating with people about Marie Kondo.  In America in particular, we have completely lost touch with the intent of this little verse.  Jesus tells us to ask God to give us what we need to get by, no more, no less.  But we live in a world that plans, that collects, that amasses.  We don’t need “daily” bread.  We have a month’s food in our cupboards.  We don’t need God to provide clothing, we have 100 shirts and 25 pairs of shoes (probably an understatement for a lot of you). 

As my pastor pointed out this morning, its interesting that Jesus never told us to thank God for the food sitting in front of us.  He told us to ask God for our next meal.  When we ask God to provide our next meal, we are admitting that it is God who is going to provide that meal, and He doesn’t have to.  

I want to be cognizant of the fact that its not easy to live in our culture and not be caught up in all its trappings.  This is a constant struggle for me.  There are legitimate reasons people might end up with too many pieces of clothing, for instance simply never throwing anything away.  Many of us live by the mantra, “I might need that someday”, and let’s face it, someday almost never comes.

The proper time for mindfulness about our things is before we acquire them not after.  Its being thankful for what we have so we do not feel the need to always get more.  It is daily acknowledging God as our provider rather than ignoring Him while we provide for every need by ourselves.  Maire Kondo is a fad that strikes at the heart of much of what is wrong with our society, as such, its resonating with many right now.  Sadly, decluttering your home will not provide you with the one thing we all need.

Need.

Simeon and Anna

Luke 2:21:38

Sometimes when my kids are waiting for company to arrive they keep going to the door looking for the person expectantly.  They say a watched pot never boils and I have to admit that sometimes having to wait can be hard.  We live in a culture that values NOW.  In fact, we don’t like to wait for anything.  So imagine waiting for someone for your entire life…

Simeon had been told by God that he would not die before seeing God’s Messiah.  He had waited expectantly his whole life for the moment when Messiah would come.  I imagine he was probably expecting someone a bit older.  Yet suddenly there Jesus was, and in his Spirit Simeon knew this baby was Messiah.

Anna had been a widow most of her life. Her husband had died after only seven years of marriage and yet even at eighty four years old, the bible says she never left the temple court but was dedicated to prayer and fasting.  She also knew immediately who this child was because as Simeon was talking to Mary and Joseph Anna began to tell those gathered about Jesus, even though she had never met him.

It must have been amazing for Mary and Joseph to get these two distinct confirmations that their son was indeed the Messiah, but God used the moment both to fulfill his promise to Simeon and also to reward Anna for her diligence in worship.  Their long wait was finally over and God had remained true to His word.  What a amazing moment it must have been for both Simeon and Anna to finally see Jesus after so many years of waiting and watching.

It’s clear that both Simeon and Anna were not simply passively waiting, but were actively, deliberately looking and praying for Jesus to come.  I hope you are also expectantly waiting for Jesus to come.  The question is, what does your wait look like?  

My Apologies to the Faithful Few...

Quick note of apology to the few people who actually read this blog, or don't read it as the case is since I never post to it.  While I haven't posted in quite some time, I haven't stopped writing.  I intend to post some of the things I've written here in the interim so that everything is in one place.

Apologies if your inboxes get jammed with my posts!

Questions

In my last post I talked about my kids; how it bothers me when they aren’t grateful.  Truth be told, I, like Bill Cosby believe all kids are brain damaged.  It’s true!  How else can you explain a child who is caught red handed in the act of committing some offense and then when the punishment is handed down, they act shocked…dismayed…dumbfounded?  Me?  What did I do?  My daughter will even sometimes get angry and blame ME for being mean!  I particularly like that strategy because it shows creativity.  She’s brain damaged but creative.  So I can kind of understand how God must feel in Malachi 1 when he begins to excoriate his children.  He begins with some questions of His own:

Mal 1:6  "A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?" says the LORD Almighty. "

Many of us like to call God our father, and He certainly is.  But God would like to know, if he IS your father when are you going to start loving and honoring Him in a way befitting a father?  For a smaller number of us it is easier to think of God as Master.  But if God is your Master, when are you going to start obeying Him?  In reality God is both our Father and our Master and we cannot have a right view of Him until we see Him from both perspectives simultaneously.

I think sometimes I like to toy with the idea of obedience.  Obedience is like recycling.  It seems like a good idea until I have to walk all the way to the garage to throw away the soda can, and then it just seems like a lot of work!   Obedience is a nice concept but when the rubber hits the road, sometimes I’m just not interested.  When I read Malachi, I’m caught red handed, and my bluff is called because God is calling me out.  The folks in Malachi, just like my kids, just like me, are incredulous.  How have we shown contempt for your name?  How have we defiled you?

God says that He is defiled because the people are promising to give the best of their flocks for sacrifice, but when the time for the sacrifice comes, they bring the diseased and sick from the flock to sacrifice instead.  They persist in this as if God wouldn't be aware of what they are up to.

I see a direct correlation here between the Israelites and us.  Like them we promise to give God our best, we promise to obey Him, we promise to give him the first part of our day, the first part of our income, the first part of us.  But often as I mentioned before, obedience is just a nice sentiment, it’s something we sing about in worship songs and talk about in small group.  Obedience is a slogan we mindlessly repeat without comprehending the meaning.  Reading the bible and spending time with God in prayer is important, I’m sure we all agree, but often God gets our leftovers or maybe nothing at all.  It’s almost like we thought he wasn’t really standing there seeing all of it right?

Apparently brain damaged kids grow up to be brain damaged adults.

I Have Loved You

The book of Malachi begins with these words from God speaking to you.  Four thousand years of biblical history have occurred at this point.  So many events: the creation of the world, the fall of man the flood, the exile the Exodus, the Kings, the prophets, countless wars, thousands of years of history.  We have reached the culmination of the time before the coming of the Messiah and Israel is about to be plunged into hundreds of years of silence from God.  God’s message is … “I have loved you.”

Why would God make this statement at this point in history?  It’s almost as if he is saying after all we’ve been through together, you and I; after all of it, I just need you to know that I have loved you.

I love that the statement is in the past tense.  I have loved you.  It’s not because he has stopped loving us.  It’s because we as children question our father, and not in a good way.  When things happen, life, circumstances, we tend to say, why God?  Why are you doing this to me?  Why are you allowing this to happen?

When we do that, we have forgotten the first thing, the biggest thing, and we need to be reminded.  God has loved us.  I talk about election a lot, and it’s because election is all through the bible.  Election is here as well.  Before the beginning of the world God loved you, and chose you. 

Think about adoption.  I know a lot of people who have adopted children.  When was the last time someone walked into an orphanage and the child said, you look like a fine person, I chose you to be my father or mother.  Silly right?  No, it’s the other way around.  The father walks into this world and out of all the chaos says, I chose this one to display my glory through.  Not because he’s in any way special, or deserving of this blessing but simply because.

Now this situation ought to make me the most grateful person in the world, knowing I deserved nothing but hell and yet was given everything.  But throughout history the response has not usually been one of thanksgiving and devotion.  It’s been one of cluelessness and complaint.  God, why did you do this to me?

As a parent there’s nothing that annoys me more than when my kids are ungrateful and / or bratty.  The reason is because I know how lucky they are to live the way they do.  To have the luxury of their biggest worry being how long they get to play the video game every day.  So when they are ungrateful it really bothers me.  I feel like I need to make them see differently.  I find that hard to do.

Imagine what it must be like to be God and to have to listen to his chosen ones complain…about everything…all the time. Imagine the frustration to be God and to have provided EVERYTHING, and to listen to the object of your grace berate you for their circumstances.  I don’t want to belittle people’s troubles.  Some people have real problems and the bible says we can come to God with these but how we come is important don’t you think?

One person in my small group challenged us all to abstain from complaining for a period of time.  I’m unexcited about this as complaint is like breathing for me.  It’s cathartic.  It’s part of me.  It’s wrong.  So this is me not complaining on day 1.  I’m skeptical.

I wonder how this verse, Malachi 1:2 might apply to you?

God I can’t hear you?     “I have loved you”

God why did this happen?           “I have loved you”

Why are things so hard?               “I have loved you”

God has loved you.  God loves you.  God will love you.  Today I will try to love Him back just enough to not complain.

Kony 2012, What They Don't Want You to Know

Have you ever noticed there’s always someone who doesn’t want you to know something.  Seems like everyones trying to hide something from me.  Anyway, I watched the Kony 2012 video yesterday and to be honest I thought it was pretty good.  I like to see Americans thinking outside the box to try and solve one of the world’s problems without throwing billions of dollars down the UN rat hole.  But, as I did some research on the Invisible Children charity, I read several disturbing bits of info.  They go like this:

• ·         Invisible Children only gives 32% of its donations to the direct services to help those it claims to serve.
• ·         Charity Navigator rates them 2 or of 4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited.
• ·         People are upset because the Kony video advocates military intervention to bring Kony to justice risking that many of the children they are trying to help could be injured or killed in the process.
• ·         They spent 1.7 million on salaries and 1 million dollars on travel in 1 year.  (FYI from what I can see they have over 100 people on their staff.)
• ·         What about all the people who need help here in America?

I’m not here to bash Invisible Children.  I don’t know anything about their organization and before this week I had never heard of them.  It’s disturbing to me that so many would immediately begin attacking this organization considering most of those who are criticizing probably never get off their butt and do anything to help anyone let alone these kids in Africa. 

I’d like to briefly address the last bullet point because it is particularly distasteful to me.  I’ve heard this sad expression used by many over the years for various reasons and I’ll tell you it really bothers me at this point.  I hear a lot of guff in the media and from others about the 1% these days.  They refer to corporate fat cats who live in luxury while the rest of the 99% struggle to survive.  Let me share some truth with you.  If you live in America and your family makes 50,000/yr, you are in the top 1% of wage earners worldwide.  Not only in this time but in all of history!  If you make 50,000 you are one of the richest people in the history of the world.  That said, here’s my next fact.  There are no poor in America.  That’s right I said it.  The poorest people in this country live better than many billions of people around the world.  Two billion people on this planet RIGHT NOW live on less than two dollars per day. If you are poor in America, you get free food, free clothes, free housing, free education, free healthcare, and just about anything else a person could need.  Please don’t misunderstand me, these people are in need, and deserve our help but let’s just keep things in context.  So when hear someone complaining that we should be helping the poor here first quite frankly it makes me a bit sick.

Now back to Kony.  In light of what I’ve already said you can understand why I’m happy so see normally uninvolved Americans getting behind a movement like this.  But there is a problem.  Kony exists for a reason.  The governments in this region are incapable of stopping these warlords and the people are so destitute and powerless that they can’t stop them themselves.  But even if we intervene, there will be someone to fill the void when Kony is gone. Does that mean we should just look the other way?  Of course not.

Then there’s the matter of peace and negotiations.  I just laugh when I hear people talking about negotiating to bring peaceful resolution to matters such as these.  It really highlights the foolishness of a culture like ours that has lived in luxury and safety for so long that we aren’t even capable of understanding that men like Kony don’t negotiate.  Their power exists through terror and force. It’s all they know and they will never go peacefully.

All of these factors are important, but there is one critical factor I haven’t discussed.  It’s really the reason that I can’t get behind Invisible Children.  Invisible Children is supporting the use of force to bring Kony to justice and see these children restored to their childhood.  Noble cause to be sure.  But then what?  They are still poor beyond belief, they don’t have a stable govt., they don’t have basic services and no amount of money will fix that.  There are a lot of social justice programs out these days.  It has really become quite en vogue to get involved.  After the limelight fades and the cameras have gone away, these people are without help and without hope.  Hope that only Jesus can bring them. 

I’m praying for Uganda today.  Praying that Kony will be caught and brought to justice.  Praying that people will be drawn to the needs in that part of the world.  But I’m also praying that Christians will get involved and help the MANY ministries that are already operating on the ground bringing the hope of Jesus along with the physical help this tattered part of the world desperately needs.  It’s the only real hope they have.