Then and Now

This journey is teaching me something about myself.  Every great journey does.
I am continuing to learn about the man I am and the man I am becoming.

Last week I was down at the Forum Shops in Caesars Palace.  I was all alone in the middle of thousands of people in the middle of a city built on pleasure and indulgence, on the motto that "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."  This is a city where people come for a week or a weekend to get away from their normal lives, to live out their fantasies, to do all the things they can't do on a daily or weekly basis in their normal lives, and then to leave it all behind and go back to their normal lives.

As I watched the people walking by me, it occurred to me that in my present situation, it would be very easy for me to "get away" with just about anything I wanted.  For a moment that scared me, and then it passed because this year apart from my wife and children has taught me a few things about myself.

The journey is teaching me and I am listening.

In my past life I would have indulged.  In fact, I know I would not have survived a place like Vegas in my teens and early 20s.  (I almost didn't survive it the first time in my 30s - but that is another story).  I would have gone searching for every experience until I found it.  I would have left no dark corner undisturbed.

But that is no longer the man that I am.
Some of what I have learned simply comes with age and experience.
Some of what I have learned comes from the community I find myself part of these days as well as the community I have experienced over the past several years.
But most of what I have learned comes from the fact that I am continuing to seek out a deeper knowledge of God.

And so, these are a few of the things I am continuing to learn about the man I am.

A very special woman has placed her heart in my care.  She has given me something that is worth more than all the money in the world: her love.  She trusted me above everyone else to be the one to love her and take care of her.  She trusted me with herself.  And although I have not always been as careful with it as I should have been, this year apart has made me remember in every detail how special, awesome, fragile and worth protecting, true love is. If it is possible, I have fallen in love with her all over again.

Together, my wife and I created three very amazing children.  They are all in their late teens and early twenties now, and although they might not admit it, I feel that they still look to me in some way, to see how I handle difficulty, uncertainty, disappointment, and separation.  The men and women they will become will be modeled, in some part, on how I treat them as a father, and the example I show them regarding how to love their spouse and how to have a genuine relationship with God.  In the past I have not always modeled this well, but this year apart has made me remember how important it is that I am someone who they can be proud of and look up to; someone they can come to when things are difficult, someone who they can celebrate with when things are going well, and most importantly someone who they know without a doubt loves them and supports them no matter what.

I am still learning to be comfortable in my own skin.  I hear stories about people who have known since elementary school what they wanted to do with their lives, who knew from day one what they were good at and pursued it with single-minded determination.  If that is you, you are lucky.  It has not been my experience.  I have found joy and excitement in so many different things and I have also experienced profound disappointment in those very same things.  I have always struggled between the academic and the artistic and it has only been recently that I have begun to find a level of comfort embracing both and dividing my time between both pursuits.  I also have come to realize that without either one in my life I would be incomplete.

And so I smiled to myself, got up, walked back out onto the Strip, finished walking to where I had parked, and drove home to finish preparing my message for that weekend's services. Then I got on Skype with my wife and kids and reminded them how much I loved them and was reminded how much they loved me.  Later I took time to relax while I finish working on a song I am writing, and finally I went to the gym and ended the day with a good workout.  25 years ago I would have considered that to be the most boring evening in the history of mankind.  Today, I am thankful for the opportunity.