Hi Guys.
This blog is for my dad and yours and for you and for the dads we’ve never met, 50 years ago and 50 years from now. There are some things we can’t change and there are some things we can. This blog is about the idea that if we’re not careful, the days turn into years and our rooms fill up with elephants. This blog is also about asking the elephants to leave.
i had planned to write this blog last night – it was Father’s Day and we’ve talked about how it’s a difficult day for a lot of people and i told you there would be a new blog… i thought about it all day – things i wanted to mention. The basketball game was on at my parents’ house and my dad was sitting on the couch across from me. i had told him we would watch the game together, and i guess i was pretending that if i wrote the blog in the same room as dad and game, a case could be made that we “watched the game together.” Basically, i had two things to do and both felt important and i didn’t know what to do. So the game is on and the day has been good – it was my sister Jessica’s birthday and so the whole family was together and she opened cards and presents and we rooted for Rocco and did a lot of laughing. It was really good, actually. And i guess in my head there had been some traces of quality time and maybe it was okay for me to zone out and write a blog…
My dad and i were alone at this point, both together and still for the first time in probably months. The game and the blog are the obvious distractions at hand. The truth is that there was also an elephant in the room. i knew it and i’ve known it for a long time and it’s easy to tell everyone else to say the honest thing and say the hard thing but it’s a different thing entirely to say it yourself. So i wasn’t going to. Just gonna try to write the blog, put in some pretend time and stay hidden in the safety of a laptop, a television and an elephant.
It wasn’t his first question but i think maybe i started to know it was coming. He asked how i was doing, he asked about TWLOHA and then he asked about the elephant.
“Are we okay, you and I?”
i didn’t know what to say. Where do you start and it would take a thousand hours and i have to write this blog…
It crossed my mind in that moment that whatever i was attempting to write was basically a joke and a lie if i chose it over talking to my dad. The truth is that this conversation was months overdue. Some of it was years overdue.
So i closed my computer and we talked. We talked about the distance. We talked about the way things have changed in the last couple years. We talked about depression and money and love and home. We talked about pain. We talked about the way things used to be and why things are the way they are. We talked about the things i talked about in counseling last year. We talked about the things that feel broken inside of us. We talked about the ways we feel alone.
We said a lot of things that we had both been needing to say for a long time. Confessions and apologies and questions. Honestly, the whole thing wasn’t that hard. It weighed a lot less than the silence of all the months before, all the stuff i’d been carrying around… Basically we agreed that the things we were saying were big and the whole thing was gonna take time – we weren’t just gonna talk for an hour and then everything would be wonderful again. It’s a process. We didn’t have every answer. We can’t fix each other. We are each our own person with pain and past and choices. But we agreed we were back on the right track. Talking, being honest, saying it mattered, saying it was all worth fighting for. Trying to communicate.
We agreed that the goal was to be healthy and to love the other person. i can’t fix him and he can’t fix me but we have a lot of control how we treat each other, how we talk to each other, how we make time for each other.
Love is a thousand things but at the center is a choice. It is a choice to love people. Left to myself, i get quiet and bitter and critical. i get angry. i feel sorry for myself. It is a choice to love people. It is a choice to be kind. It is a choice to be patient, to be honest, to live with grace.
i would like to start making better choices.
It is one thing to stand on stages or write these blogs and spend all my time talking to strangers about hope and love and community. If i have learned anything in the last couple years, i have learned that it’s a lot easier to talk about loving people than it is to actually love people. It is easier to talk about community than it is to live in community. Honestly, i mostly suck at both. i am good at being short with people and i have gotten really good at being quiet.
When i die, i hope the people close to me will say they felt like i loved them. The rest of it is bullshit if i miss the boat on that one. My dad needs to know that i love him. My mom, my sisters, my friends, the people i work with.
And i would like to be the sort of person who loves people unconditionally. The sort of person who loves people even when they hurt me. When they offend me. When they embarrass me.
The alternative has not been going so well… The alternative is that i set up a bunch of hoops and i say “Jump through these and i might love you. Be exactly who i want you to be and do exactly what i want you to do and i might love you.” Strange and broken attempts at control. They have not been working.
Basically, there’s things i don’t like in my own life and i don’t know how to fix them (or i’m too lazy) and i end up telling everyone else how to live. i am not very healthy but somehow i pretend to be the absolute authority on what everyone else is doing wrong – finger always pointing, advice and frustration pouring out of me.
Again, it hasn’t been working.
As for the original point of this blog…
You have a life. You have a story. You have your past and your pain and your dreams and your future. You also have a dad. i would be so bold as to say that your dad probably has a lot to do with the stuff i mentioned at the start of this paragraph. Dads are people and people tend to do a lot of different things. Great things, beautiful things, horrible things. At some point, some more than others and for a million different reasons, people tend to make mistakes. Our dads were once children – our dads had or have dads – we forget it but it’s true. So they had dads and their dads were people too and their dads probably made some mistakes as well. My point is that it’s all connected, and maybe also that the older i get, the more i realize that life is really fragile.
“It seems we humans carry the shortcomings of our fathers.” – Jeff Foxworthy
“I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships, so will our healing, and i know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.” – from The Shack by William P. Young
“No I don’t want to battle from beginning to end
I don’t want a cycle of recycled revenge
I don’t want to follow Death and all of his friends”
– Coldplay
Father’s Day is a strange day because the word “father” means different things to different people.
“i love him.”
“He left.”
“He died.”
“He’s here but he’s never really here.”
“He’s good.”
“He used to be good.”
“i used to be good.”
“i never met him.”
“He doesn’t understand.”
“i saw him ten minutes ago.”
“i saw him ten years ago.”
“i’ve never seen him.”
“He hasn’t been the same since ________.”
“i haven’t been the same since _________.”
“He’s great. He’s my best friend.”
“i wish i could tell him ____________.”
“i wish i could show him __________.”
We want to say we’re sorry.
We’re sorry for the broken stuff in your life. We’re sorry for the places that hurt. We’re sorry for the questions that won’t seem to go away, the places you feel stuck.
This blog won’t solve everything. It would be great if life worked that way but i don’t think it does. Perhaps this is a moment to consider your own story, to consider your own pain, to consider the sources, to consider some solutions. For some of us, it’s a reminder that we have much to be thankful for, things to hold onto, things worth fighting for. For some of us, it’s a reminder of things we hope we can begin to let go of. This will certainly be a fight as well…
The thing we want to say is the thing we say a lot. That we want you to know that you’re not alone. That if yesterday was a hard day, you weren’t the only one who felt that way. Maybe there’s things you need to say. Maybe there’s a letter you need to write, an email to send. Maybe it’s going to take a long time and today you just need to call a friend and begin to be honest. Maybe things are really heavy or it’s just too painful. Maybe it’s time to sit across from a counselor. (For what it’s worth, i did it for the first time last year and it helped me a ton.) Maybe it’s time to find some help. Help is real. Hope is real. These things are possible. You’re not alone.
The thing about the idea that we’re not alone is that it doesn’t do us much good if it’s just an idea. We have to do something with it. It’s like having no money and then someone hands you a check. You have to take it to the bank. You have to do something with it. Maybe hope is like that. Maybe community is like that. Maybe relationships are like that. We have to choose these things. We have to say they’re real and possible and important. We have to say some things out loud. We have to choose to believe that our story matters, along with the stories of the people that we love.
About 30 hours ago, i had to choose a conversation over a computer. The conversation wasn’t easy and this blog isn’t easy but the good news is that there is freedom to be found in all of this. My heart is less heavy today. The elephant is no longer in the room. i know he’s gonna try to come back because that’s just how life is. Elephants show up where they don’t belong and they try to stay forever and they ask us not to say a word.
The thing we are suggesting is that it’s okay to tell the elephants to leave. It might take a long time – it is certainly a process – but we think you’ll find that it’s the best way to live.
And don’t worry, you don’t have to go alone. You were never meant to.
Peace to you tonight.
jamie
PS: There was a girl in Baltimore. i can’t remember her name but i remember her honesty. She asked about my story. This blog is also for her.
PS2: That quote from The Shack, that’s a good one. Hang on to that one.