Jonesing For Home: April 2014

“But playing your music as loud as you want and coming home drunk aren't real life. Real life, it turns out, is diapers and lawnmowers, decks that need painting, a wife that needs to be listened to, kids that need to be taught right from wrong, a checkbook, an oil change, a sunset behind a mountain, laughter at a kitchen table, too much wine, a chipped tooth, and a screaming child.”
― Donald Miller, To Own a Dragon: Reflections On Growing Up Without A Father

"If you're 30 years old and have 3 or 4 good friends you can depend on then you're doin' alright"

- Dad

"The moments in life that require faith, that is where true adventure lies"

-Dwight Wilkinson

Perhaps one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn (other than how to interact with introverts) is learning what growing up looks like. It's weird, and sometimes I wonder if its something anyone has ever figured out. I just always assumed growing up meant boring stuff like comparing mortgages, spending Saturday mornings at the Farmer's Market, and remembering to take your multi-vitamins and change your bedsheets. Being a single guy, at the stage of life I'm in, affords me some pretty cool opportunites, sometimes it means watching Netflix and eating burritos alone. Other times it means I get to be the guy folks call when their wives are out of town and they want to go eat burgers with fried eggs on them. Then there is the rarest jewel of all, sometimes folks invite me to be a part of their lives. These times are the sweetest, and certainly the most humbling for a few reasons: A) It really does allow you to not feel like a second class citizen, which happens so often inside the church and seminary world. Don't get me wrong, the Church is the wart-filled bride of Christ that he came and died to win. I love her more than anything. It's also full of folks that sometimes don't know what to do with meatheads who rarely wash their towels and haven't seen Frozen. This can leave folks feeling a little disconnected. B) It allows you to see sides of your friends that you

otherwise would never experience.

Recently I got to spend the weekend with some folks that I'd give my left bicep to have the chance to live around again. Our first night together we made the terrible decision of staying up until 3 o'clock in the morning. Something we used to do all the time had turned into a mexican standoff as to who was going to be the first to admit they were tired. But what I found myself thinking was I would spend a thousand sleepless nights with these men because they had all transitioned from guys I've done dumb stuff with to guys I find myself admiring. They have wives, and a couple of them have kids, and when the morning hit they were with their children, feeding them cheerios and making sure they didn't crack their heads on the coffee table, or lose them at a theme park. The thought that came to mind was how proud I was of them. They had done it. They somehow tricked beautiful women into spending the rest of their lives with them. They were raising kids. They were working jobs. They had somehow made it all not look terrible and that real life is lived in the mundane, and God's grace meets us there every time.

Sometimes I wonder if the single/married dichotomy that exists in our churches is more akin to a Middle School dance where the respective parties are on opposite sides of the gym waiting for the other side to make the first move and praying that their parents don't show up wearing dark socks and sandals. I can't speak for the married side of the gym. I can only speak to what I know. I haven't learned much in my 32 years, but I've learned recently that calling girls "high maintenance" is typically a bad idea and that being selfish and afraid has caused me to miss out on a lot of great moments with my friends. My hope as I go forward is that I do that a lot less. Which probably means I have to start answering phone calls.