To all of you that I have loved and done life with:

I am 27 years old, I have lived in six different states, have had a wide variety of occupations and life styles(for better or worse). I have screwed up horribly and succeeded greatly along side so many people. I have had the privilege of knowing some of the most amazing people that I've ever even heard of in real life or in fiction. I am one of the richest men that I know, not like B. Gates but relationally.

To all of you: You have shaped me. You have lived in a way that makes me admire you and has made me want to be like you. You have inspired me. You have picked me up when I was unable to stand. You have walked beside me when no one else was or would. You have fought with me and came out the other end all the better for it. You have listened to my endless rants about whatever I was crusading for. You have stayed up late with me(not even going to give a qualifier here). You were a good friend and not afraid to tell me what you thought, or what you thought that I should do better, or shouldn't do and on and on...

You know who you are if you are reading this and to you I miss you more than I can tell you and wish that I could recapture many of those moments with you or at least relive some of them to some capacity.

And to those of you who are in my immediate sphere of influence at the present, stay close until all of this can be said of you.

To the Chicago family: I love you. You have the inside scoop on what has been the hardest years of my life and you are still here beside me(some of you and to those who aren't I mean to call you. call me)

We will be here in this city for as far out as I can see at the moment, so unpack your bags with us and stay awhile. What you see is what you get from us, so this may all sound cheesy, though I don't really care, because I have a hunch that though a lot of you would never say these things out loud you want to be known as well.

Thank you friends.

I look forward to knowing you and to be known by you.

Like a farmer to the plow...

so has been my summer. Now that it is over, time to man-up on the harvest of the present and what is to come, taking account of all of the victories, hard-times, successes and failures.

A lot has happened underground in my heart this summer, though I wasn't often sure if that were true. I see more and more this last couple of weeks that it was and is in fact true.

" And you will know a tree by its fruit." I don't often like the fruit that I bare. But God will finish the work that He began in us.

What fruit are you producing? Do you think that you are kind when in fact you are judging and holding on to bitterness towards or against someone? Maybe a dad who didn't treat you the way you should have been treated? A co-worker who hurts your feelings and rubs you the wrong way, everyday? Maybe you have an over bearing mother who has robbed you of your masculinity leaving many things unanswered. Perhaps when you were a little girl your mother didn't invest as much as she could have in certain areas and your dad didn't make you feel as beautiful as God sees you.

Whatever 'unique to you' situation you are in. What is the fruit that you produce? When pressed what comes out? or say you go a while with out going through anything hard and you get a little wrestles, what starts to show up in your life.

Most people whether we mean to or not, on some level rebel against the way their parents raised them, lasting through high-school and if not manned-up to into the rest of there life. We all know examples. Tomboys raise princess' as little girls and say that they are totally fine unscathed by there childhood of actually wanting to be acknowledged as beautiful

(these are generalizations ), over-bearing mothers raise boys who can be more feminine than the college jocks(who have a whole other set of rebellious tendencies), absent fathers produce 'approval seeking' children and on and on and one of these overlaps the other and some of these have made us stronger or weaker and so on.

The two thing that I am nailing down(in a Kyle-rant sort of way) is what fruit do we see in our own life? better yet what fruit do other people see in our life AND what undelt with issues do you have that you would pass onto your children because you aren't dealing with them but instead you just think that you would be protecting them from the pain that you felt by doin 'A,B or C...' Or unowned issues which lead us to hiding or indulging in symptoms.

Here is the moral of the story. We all have the junk. Either we can play like we don't, only fooling ourselves, because I assure you we see them... or we can lean into Jesus, scripture and community freeing ourselves from the anxiety of hiding for fear that we will be 'discovered.'

Lets lean into Jesus. I choose to lean into you and I urge you like some of the worlds finest say to," lean back a lean back..." haha ok I know that I am a dork, it is a childhood issue that I am working out.

Ciao for now

"If you can't say anything nice then...

don't say anything at all."

Thus you haven't heard from my.

I don't mean to complain. I live in one of the wealthiest countries(well you know what I mean), surrounded by peace(if only because of the passive aggressive nature of chicagoans these days), in an apartment that is cozy, in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country(not that I am making the money that any of my neighbors are, we rent a one bedroom of a carriage house), surrounded by friends who love us and spend time with us several nights a week. We have a car. I have a band. I am part of the inner circles of relationships at church and a few other social arenas(leadership and otherwise, I really just mean 'in the know' and part of round table discussion and decision making teams). I have an AMAZING wife, who could not be any more beautiful and also happens to be the best "taker care of Kyle(er)" that I have ever met, not to mention the fact that she has a great job that she loves. I have four haircuts lined up for tomorrow and a few more on the burner for next week.

Ti will be here this weekend for the second weekend in a row. I just spent two full days with Aaron. Vacation is set for the second in Sept. and it is pre-decided that we will have a good time. Jonathan and Thiele are going with us so our vaca has built in friends even.

I say all of that to say. My heart is still not full. It is a bottomless pit that will never be filled(here).

If my joy is to come from what I can do, find, win, buy, plan, attain, or sort out for myself any other way, then I quit.

Life is short and even if I set up the ideal circumstances, would that make me happy? Where does my joy from? Circumstances will change. The ups become downs? Money will come and go. Health will come and go and hopefully come again, both for us and others.

God never changes. He is not swayed by the free market, emotions, our temper, the house or job market. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He know the plans He has for us. Plans for us to bow to him in loving surrender. In order to draw all people to Himself.

He is a good father.

I have to admit that I do not want to bow. I want to try and take control, do what I know to do in order to make a way for myself and because I feel as though if I don't do it on my own then nothing is going to happen. I feel as though I will be stuck here, on my own. I have a hard time trusting. I have a hard time not freaking out when I don't know what is on the horizon.

Here is some new news to myself(ha ha you would think that since as long as I can remember I have been battling this). Kyle you do not control your world. I don't know the future holds. I am only able to decide right now what my heart will spend its energy on and it is a choice right now whether not I am going to trust myself or the God of all things, who knows the beginning and the end, the one who sacrificed His greatest love Jesus for me.

I choose You God now. Help me to choose you again in about 15 minutes when I am faced with another decision to take the reigns or to let you drive.

Sorry for some of the cheesiness. If I don't just write stream of consciousness (and sometimes that stream is cheesy) then I may not write at all.

I hunt for it in my heart and these days its, the rarity that I stumble upon on. It is allusive.

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If Deadness Is Next to Godliness
07/22/2009

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If the way to avoid the murderous rage and deceptive allures of desire is to kill it, if deadness is next to godliness, then Jesus had to be the deadest person ever. But he is called the living God. “It is a dreadful thing,” the writer of Hebrews says, “to fall into the hands of the living God . . . For our ‘God is a consuming fire’” (10:31; 12:29). And what is this consuming fire? His jealous love (Deut. 4:24). God is a deeply, profoundly passionate person. Zeal consumes him. It is the secret of his life, the writer of Hebrews says. The “joy set before him” enabled Jesus to endure the agony of the Cross (Heb. 12:2). In other words, his profound desire for something greater sustained him at the moment of his deepest trial. We cannot hope to live like him without a similar depth of passion. Many people find that the dilemma of desire is too much to live with, and so they abandon, they disown their desire. This is certainly true of a majority of Christians at present. Somehow we believe that we can get on without it. We are mistaken.

(Desire , 54–55)

The question of our hearts...

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The Question Lodged Deep in Our Hearts
07/05/2009

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The question lodged deep in our hearts, hidden from our conscious minds, is: “Do you care for me, God?”

What’s under that question?

Blaise Pascal, in his Pensées, says, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” What’s under that question is our personal stories, often punctuated by the Message of the Arrows: parents who were emotionally absent; bedtimes without words or hugs; ears that were too big and noses that were too small; others chosen for playground games while we were not; and prayers about all these things seemingly met with silence. And embedded in our stories, deep down in our heart, in a place so well guarded that they have rarely if ever been exposed to the light of day, are other grief-laden and often angry questions: “God, why did you allow this to happen to me? Why did you make me like this? What will you allow to happen next?” In the secret places of our heart, we believe God is the One who did not protect us from these things or even the One who perpetrated them upon us. Our questions about him make us begin to live with a deep apprehension that clings anxiously to the depths of our hearts . . . “Do you really care for me, God?”

This is the question that has shipwrecked many of our hearts, leaving them grounded on reefs of pain and doubt, no longer free to accompany us on spiritual pilgrimage. We might be able to rationalize away that question by telling ourselves that we need to be more careful, or that sometimes others are just bad. We can even breathe a sigh of relief when we realize that trouble has come from our own sin. But even the careful, legalistic, and constricted lifestyle that arises out of thinking we can avoid trouble through our own devices shipwrecks when the Arrows seem to strike us out of nowhere. What are we to make of God’s wildness in allowing these things to happen?

(The Sacred Romance , 49–50)

Do I feel older?

This is a question that I have been asked a lot by different people in the last five hours or so and one that people often ask out of an awkwardness that people often feel because they don't know what to say, or maybe habit. Regardless. The answer is for the first time, yes!

 I feel older and I don't know how to explain it.

 There has been a significant shift in my heart, an almost settling. Not settling, like settling for the second best, but a settling like a seed into soil. Or at the cost of being cheesy. Like Settlers' (don't know if that spelling is write) into their new land. 

 That is more how I feel than ever before, like finally at the age of 27 I am ready to unpack my bags and stay a while.  Don't miss understand me, not move in for life and stay at this age, how I am now or where I am now forever, but ready to take where I am, who I'm with and where I am headed. Tie it all together and invest, even more than I have in the past.

 Invest in who I love, in who I want to eventually love. Invest in who I am and who I eventually want to be. Invest in who my wife is and who I believe she will be. Invest in children that we may have.

It is obvious to me that what I am saying may sound like commonsense. What I am really saying is that I want to be very intentional about what is ahead. 

Ok, just a birthday morning observation.

It is my 27th B- day and it falls right in the middle of a season of sleepless nights.

I have been working on this one sentence for an hour. I get a letter or two in and then it turns into ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd. because i keep falling a sleep.

Tonight we moved our sunday night gathering from 7:30 to 5 pm, I believe that this will be a great switch for all of us, but seeing as how , I can't hardly get on thought out. I will save it.

K. to tired to write. 

Ciao

The end of May?

 Really? That was fast. May went by way to quickly with a lot of haircuts, a trip to the twin cities, a trip back to Ks., dropping by the old digs in Madison for Aaron's graduation and pretty much not stop motion. Which certainly beats many months previous to this one.

 Summer is right here upon us and soon will be a glance over the shoulder behind us. I can feel my heart waking up to the sensory overload that is the beginning of a summer in chicago.

I pray and hope that we all have an amazing summer and dive into the communities that we are a part of and live life fully alive...

Speaking of... I have a dinner date that is waiting for me. Catch you soon!

Furious Indifference

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All Men Die; Few Men Ever Really LIVE 
05/11/2009

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The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death. All men die; few men ever really live. Sure, you can create a safe life for yourself . . . and end your days in a rest home babbling on about some forgotten misfortune. I’d rather go down swinging. Besides, the less we are trying to “save ourselves,” the more effective a warrior we will be. Listen to G. K. Chesterton on courage: 

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. The paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

(Wild at Heart , 169) 

You are meant to be...

amazing, beautiful, full of life, creative, wise, sharp and attentive, bearing the image of the Creator of the universe. I hate that this truth is so hard to stomach and that we have to fight to see ourselves as these things. It is part of the battle though. I am talking about the opposite of pride. We are called to be image bearers of God, why are we so afraid of this. Please for the sake of those around you be all that you are called to be. He has come to give us life and life to the full.

This week is off the hook. 

Kimberly and I's week is over the top I will be away at a conference for the beginning of the week and we move saturday and this is only half of the load. You have to laugh, right? I guess that I will just have to pray that I can be extra sharp and attentive.

 

Moving...

out and forward feels good. We just found out that we were approved for this apartment that we were looking at. Its not amazing, but we will be saving a little bit of money. It does have a huge deck and feels a bit like our place in Madison. It feels a bit cleaner than our place now. I don't know how to explain it but it does. In one week we are out. The new place is about half a mile from here so moving should be fairly easy. Thanks to all that will be helping me move.

WARNING... risk of deep pain.

My mom always said 'the problem with loving people so much is that it leaves you vulnerable to experience more hurt.'

This is always a statements that we remember when a life that is close to us is taken and the hole feels bigger than life because we loved them so much. Or a marriage that is in your direct sphere of life is caving in on itself, or a dear one to you says that they are going to kill themselves, and on and on the possibilities of potential pain.

THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE to not love people for fear of hurting but instead a charge to allow yourself to be vulnerable and press into the lives around you, daring to take the risk of deep pain, deep lose, real soul carving hurt that makes you want to throw-up. 

I am (at the moment) so moved by compassion and so in love with the messiness of real relationships that I care about that I have to see the Lord move. (Us) People are such a wreck without the saving grace of Jesus Christ. How do we not see this all the time. The Savior must be just that, the Savior. I have met very "nice","loving" people in my life and none of them are capable of the kind of love, "real love" that we, each on of us need.

Jesus, may your Kingdom come and You be glorified in lives, marriages and relationships of all kind.

In the end, are we willing to really love people, getting to know them, do life with them and take the risk of deep pain? 

Here we go...

for the second go around with getting in shape. I will be easing back into my active life style. I won't be lifting much, bench pressing, rock climbing or kayaking yet but soon enough. The very thought of being in shape again makes me very happy. I truly can hardly wait. I am very fortunate that things have gone well for the most part in this last year and you know if any of us have the ability to get in shape we shouldn't take advantage of it.

 On another note. I believe that we found a new place that we will be moving to.  It will be a little bigger than our place back in Madison and like that apartment it also has a really large deck on it, and here is the best part, we are saving a bit on the rent as well. We are now placed in a better financial situation.  

We are trying to build a little more margin into our life on all fronts and that has me very excited about this next season.

May is going to be a very busy month, we will be moved in, I am going to Minniapolis for the National Prayer confrence and then a weekend away with my family, weddings and many more things.

 There is enough time, there will be. It is going to happen. 

Jesus rose from the dead for our sins. Sins that not one of have avoided. Jesus paid the price.

Kyle

Our main prospect for a place to live was said to us that it would be kept open for us...

 I guess that maybe he meant in spirit. Kim and I have to be out of our place on April 30th by noon. We don't know where we will relocate to exactly but have had our eye on this place over on Wayne ave and haven't really been that concerned about it because Bob(the fourth generation owner) said that we 'get dibs on it', in a very chicago-an sort of way. We drove by it tonight and that is obviously  no longer the case. Looks like chicago-an Bob found some renters to take our place not in spirit so much as reality. We now have no prospects and are back to the drawing board. Something will turn up, we will keep pounding the pavement. I trust the Lord, that he will provide a beautiful space and that He knows the plans He has for us.

 Other events of the day being the last of the "man class" gatherings. Tonight a group of us guys and our families got together for dinner as kind of a celebration and cap stone. Over the last six months we have been getting together every thursday morning at 6 am to collectively work through the process, baggage and truth about what a real man is, asking ?'s like: What is a real man? How does one become a man? Is there a moment when it happens? What is it that holds men back from being real men? How should authentic manhood express itself today?

One of the main things that I have realized over the last six months to a year of my life is first of all that, these are not even ?'s that men ask themselves. Men just kind of leave these things alone assuming that they know the answers or they are just simply to prideful and quite frankly scared to ask them. What is a man? What does a real man look like? Who is a real man? Another thing that I have noticed is that I know very few "real men".  Collectively as a band of brothers we landed on some pretty good realities and verbiage that I resonate well with, for instance; 

 Men are not just born they are proven. Men don't just stumble into being a man, they have to approach it consciously being engaged and intentional, rejecting passivity(emotionally) as well as in other areas and accepting responsibility. Real men are not push-overs who give into all of there little pansy whims, trying to set there life up for a piece of sweet 'easy-life-cherry pie'. 

This "man-class" is not, nor was it a pep rally or a Dr. Phil make me feel good and 'slap my momma' class. It was a lot of truth that sounded a bit like a foreign language due to the fact that we live in a world without confrontation, thats gotten so politically correct that men don't even know what it is to be a man. This strikes me as very sad.

All in all I am grateful that I made the investment.  I would recommend this series and study to  almost all men having looked at quite a bit of literature like this. It is titled Men's Fraternity, the Quest for authentic manhood.

Ok there is my review, I guess I didn't know that I had an opinion on the matter, oh well there it is.

Until next time, good night cyberspace.

It is very important that we do what we need to do, when we need to do it.

Holding someone back is such a drag and makes me feel guilty, as it should. Sometimes by NOT addressing an issue because conflict is uncomfortable is a selfish thing to do. We need to face the music and not be afraid of confrontation. I haven't always taken this road. Passivity is an easy route to go down and the more commonly chosen path as we can see by looking all around us.  Lets make a difference. Confrontation and conflict draw out the settled places of our life into the light and often give breathing room to areas that could use other means of motivation than we can provide by ourselves.

I am back at it...

blogging that is. 

 I have been out of the habit of writing for long enough.

 I have no idea what this next season of life will bring but we are beginning to see changes coming around the bend. I just spoke with our landlord and let Him know that we are not resigning our lease. I have little idea of where we will be moving but change has to happen. I am praying for a miracle and that we will land in a place that we will be able to live fully alive and to our fullest. I have gone through craigslist, the tribune and then the most effective route which has been hitting the streets. We are trying to stay as close to the 1110 Lill ave and the fullerton stop as possible. It will work out.

In other news. I attended my first staff meeting at New Life community church today as I am going to be attending them regularly and am doing quite a bit of staff(ish) things. It will be good and it is somewhat encouraging do to the fact that I have been serving here for the last year or so and feel very much like this is where my wife and will be located for quite a while.

Changes are good. Change for the sake of change is just a re-arranging, but change for a purpose causes forward motion.

I will log in soon.

Kyle

Here is my excuse...

as to why I haven't been writing. I have been lazy, un-motivated and overwhelmed with the feeling that what I have to say isn't even worth repeating, let alone publishing to the general public.

 There is the peek inside at the shameless truth.

 Its 1 am middle of the week. Six months ago, I had my chest cut open for major surgery and as sick of talking about it as I am. I am even more fed up with the fact that 3 weeks ago I re-broke my sternum and even now have trouble sleeping because of it. Yes I am as tired of hearing about it as you are, but am even more tired of the pain and discomfort.

 I don't even know how to process all of this anymore. I haven't been writing lately, because I don't want to sound like Debbie Downer. There are worse situations, scenarios and places that I could be in. I am rich in so many ways. I have a beautiful wife who loves me and is amazing in every since of the word. I have a community that supports me, encourages me and loves me despite of me, or at least they act like it. My family is among the best in the world, my dad is my hero, right along side of my very own personal hall of fame of Grandparents. My mom has shown me what it is to love unconditionally. I am so blessed to have the health that I do. 

 There is my list of positive thinking. To be honest, I am not disciplined enough to run through that list all the time and find myself wrapped around what I don't have and where I can't be, hanging out in the land of discontented daydreams floating down the self indulgent river towards the gnarly falls of self-destruction. This by know means means that I am running around doing stupid things jumping off the Jesus train and diving into depravity, don't hear me wrong. It means that I am human and realize just how much by each passing day just how much that I need Jesus. I need Jesus to be my guide. All have sinned, will sin and left to ourselves are a wreck, no matter how "put-together" you come off, we come off. We need Jesus. Pure unadulterated, 100% Jesus, in everything that we do in all of who we are. 

What can wash away my(our) sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus! What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!

No one is around or there to stop you. What do you do?

 There is no one who would know if I did or didn't do 'that', what do I do? 'I am the only one who knows my real thoughts anyway, so my thoughts are just my thoughts, it's not like I am acting them out.'

These are the beginnings of entrapment or freedom. This core concept of integrity, which penetrates (either now or later) all of your life. What do we do in our heads?

 I look around and see the sad state of friends, leaders, fathers, pastors, couples, people that I think ,'that would never happen to them', taken out by this integral truth. Integrity matters and by ignoring that, they wind up entrapped by the playing out of years of  wrong internal process.  The arena of the mind finds its way into reality in some capacity or another. What I think matters. All people are capable of doing far worse than one would imagine. It starts with just a couple of unharnessed internal, minds-eye tangents that end with you saying, 'but I would never do that'.

 The Bible says, take every thought captive. I am not talking about murder(yet). I am talking about integrity(of thought and deed). I am talking about being honest even with the small things. I am talking about being disciplined in telling the truth and being disciplined in controlling your actions but even and especially your thoughts. Take every thought captive. The ramifications of that are huge. The idea that it matters what we think is so counter cultural and we will see. We will see if this is true. Maybe not now, and maybe not to the full extent but we will see. Maybe just by the fruit of our lives. And here is the kicker and the sunday-school lesson that is way more true than we will know this side of heaven. God sees and knows the truth about our heart and our motives and I don't know about you but I am so imperfect and so selfish that I need His grace and even with His grace find myself so flawed. That my friends is where Jesus comes in. I will take my thoughts captive and rejoice because of the blood of Jesus.