The Crooked Mouth

Between you and me, I can’t believe I actually followed through on the 35 for 35 blogging exercise, but I did! 35 posts over 35 consecutive days leading up to my 35th birthday. I learned a lot about myself and about my readers. The posts you liked the most were the ones about life’s big events: being fired, getting married, my parent’s divorce. I learned that I’m still working through a lot of stuff from some of the negative experiences in my life, and likely will be for a long time. But as I reread those posts, I see glimmers of hope. While I may not be completely healed from the various wounds about which I’ve written, I see a lot of growth in my life because of them.

The most surprising thing that came out of this series is a fresh start between me and my mom. If you read that post on her, you’ll see why. I don’t know if the conversation between she and I would’ve happened, were it not for this series of posts. That totally makes it worth it. So, thanks for reading these. I hope you feel like you know me a little better and can hear me a little more clearly when I write about things in the space with which you might not agree. We all have a story and we’re all spinning a story. Maybe by knowing more of my story, you can see better the story I’m spinning. I know I can.

Here is a comprehensive list of all the posts in the order in which they first appeared:

1. Atlanta
2. Dunwoody Baptist Church
3. Tattoos by Court
4. Jeep Wrangler
5. My Brothers
6. My Baptism
7. Trip to Israel
8. The Cabin
9. Gainesville Theatre Alliance
10. Coalition for Christian Outreach
11. The Last Battle
12. My Girls
13. Divorce
14. Philadelphia
15. Running
16. Homebrewing for Dummies
17. Living Truthfully
18. The Bible
19. Northern Virginia
20. Abba’s Child
21. You’re Fired
22. DMINLGP
23. Beach Week
24. The Dark Tower
25. Mom
26. Wedding
27. Irresistible Revolution
28. Portland
29. Dick & Deb
30. Civil Rights Tour
31. The Shack
32. Bren
33. Music
34. Dad
35. April

My love.

Perhaps there is no more fitting way to close this series than with a post about my wife, April. She
loves me like no one has before, and like no one ever will. Over the past 14, almost 15 years, we’ve
undergone our ups and downs, like any couple does. Yet with all we’ve been through together,
she’s never wavered in her longterm commitment to our marriage and our family. Continue Reading…

Perhaps no single person has had more of an influence on shaping me than my dad. As I’ve written elsewhere, I spent some of my most formative years in a household that was made up of just me, my brothers, and our dad. I saw him struggle through divorce, adjustments to his job, his involvement in church, dating, and then remarriage. The early 90s changed my dad a lot, and I was there to witness those changes first hand.
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My weekly set-up for dissertation writing. Coffee and tunes.

As I mentioned in my post on my mom, music plays a pretty big role in my life, due to her. I’m almost always listening to something and I’m on the hunt for new music, new genres, new bands. Music moves me. It is emotive, cathartic, and can sometimes convey what I’m thinking and feeling better than words of my own. Usually it is the composition, more than the lyrics, that stir me. Allow me to present you with four musical acts that offer a soundtrack to most of my life, along with songs from each:
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Bren and my brother, Michael.

If my parents had never divorced, I would’ve never had the honor of having Brenda (Bren, for short) as my stepmother. I don’t think anyone ever gets married hoping for a divorce. It is a horribly tragic, rending affair. Yet, one of the things that sometimes happens in the wake of that tragedy is that a new marriage is built out of the rubble. That is how I got to have Bren in my life.

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I was a latecomer to The Shack. I read it in November 2012, after having the opportunity to meet its author, Wm. Paul Young. Much of my reticence to read the book was due to the overwhelming number of Christians and churches that were so gaga over it. Forgive me my skepticism, but Christians tend not to have the best cultural palate, so when the same people who will recommend The Prayer of Jabez or “Fireproof” also commended The Shack, I made a mental note that it was probably one of those fluffy, sentimental books that makes Christians feel good about themselves and their tame God.

I was wrong.  Continue Reading…

Me and the late Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Civil Rights pioneer, in 2006.

Though I grew up in the Southeast U.S., I knew very little about the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s until I went on a Civil Rights Tour in 2005. Called “Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights: Honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” the tour was a bus trip from Pittsburgh, PA to Greensboro, NC, Atlanta, GA, Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham, AL, Little Rock, AR, Nashville and Memphis, TN, and Cincinnati, OH. The tour was hosted by the Coalition for Racial and Ethnic Diversity. I participated through my affiliation with the Coalition for Christian Outreach.

My exposure to the Civil Rights movement was surface, at best. It was given a light treatment in high school American History. We spent more time on the Civil War’s leaders and battles than we did the Civil Rights’ leaders and battles. I was amazed at how little I knew. This tour opened my eyes to a struggle that was much deeper than I’d previously known, and much more entrenched in bad theology and poor hermeneutics than I was willing to see. I came back changed, understanding the privilege with which I’d been born and a conviction to always find ways of giving power away or using my advantage to platform other voices and perspectives that need to be heard more than my own. This is something I still strive to do today.  Continue Reading…

My lovely in-laws.

Dick & Deb are my in-laws and they are the best in-laws in the world. Really. In a culture where mother-in-laws are synonymous with overbearing, controlling matrons and father-in-laws synonymous with disapproving tyrants, I cannot relate. I've had a great relationship with them since I met them in 1998, when my wife and I were just dating. They came to town for her graduation and I met them that weekend. I was pretty nervous. I already had an inkling that April was “the one,” so this was a big meeting. Her parents and I hit it off pretty well. Over the next couple of years, I'd grow quite fond of them, and they of me. When I called them to ask permission to marry their daughter, their response was, “What took you so long?”

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I haven’t lived in Portland for very many of my 35 years. Just one-and-a-half, really, but as soon as we arrived here from the east coast, something felt “right.” I went from being one of the only tattooed, vegetarian, handlebar moustache sporting dudes I knew, to a place where I’m a dime a dozen. In fact, moving to Hipstertown USA makes me look square. I don’t ride a unicycle or juggle or anything.

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Another one of the books that shaped me is Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution. I read it shortly after its 2006 publication and it blew me away. This book was my first exposure to a simply lived Christian ethic, founded on the words and deeds of Jesus, unapologetically brought as a countercultural incarnation in the present day.

Shane is a great storyteller. He chronicles his journey from Tennessee country boy to Philadelphia college student to Calcutta to megachurch intern to intentional community founder. The Gospel of Jesus got ahold of him and altered the course of his life. I remember reading it and wondering what my life would be like if I was bold enough to live out my faith like Shane does.

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