Goodbye Grandpa

I don't even know what to write anymore. The deep ache is ever with me. The longing to be where I know that I was made to to be has been great as of late.

My Grandpa died this last week. He was one of my best childhood friends and hero's. I didn't realize that it would bother me so much or that I would think this much about it, I hardly cried at the funeral. That could be because Joey got married this weekend and we left from his bach. party down by where my brother lives for the funeral back in Ft. Scott Ks. and then after the funeral left to drive back up here. I am tired. Tired of my souls 'deep ache'. Jesus You rose to care for us well, so please come to my aid.

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.