Three years and she still hasn’t figured out how hard she settled.

Been thinking about Anthony Bourdain a lot recently. Re-watching old episodes of his shows, dreaming about what it would be like to make a living traveling the world and telling the stories of the people and places I’d see. I loved his ability to tell the stories, and in particular I loved his ability to tell the sad and heartbreaking stories as well. It was evident in his storytelling that those nasty truths affected him. Looking back now, a few years after he took his own life, and it’s evident in his shows the toll that the nastiness of life was taking on him.

I’d often lied to myself and said I could be a storyteller like Bourdain. I realize now the greatest difference between us was never upbringing, Northeast vs Dirty South background, the drinking or substance abuse. The difference being Faith. My faith is what allows me to confront the nasty truths of the world, to engage with them, and come out on the other side. Not unaffected, obviously, but unshaken in my foundation. I’m sad Tony never had that faith.

My mind these days is often burned with the harsh truths of life. We can battle against systemic racism, against the darkness of the world, etc. Yet in the light of progress made, we have thousands of years of human history that tell us hate will still be around. Injustice always returns. People will find new ways to hate other people for arbitrary reasons. Some new social media will bring out the worst in us. The cycle continues, and it’s exhausting and it weighs so heavy. I think that weight killed Tony.

But Faith! Faith tells me that the cycle only seems unending, but is broken! Hate only seems to continue because Hate is trying to rage against its own inevitable end! Racism, Anger, yes even the devil known as Facebook which all seem immortal are quite the opposite: they are already dead, they just don’t know it yet.

At the end of the day, when the sorrow of the world bears down on me, it is Faith that helps me into the bed at night and wakes me the next day with the energy to fight the seemingly neverending cycle. Sola Gratia, Grace Alone.

I feel the World’s hurt. But I feel my Savior carrying me. Sorry I’m not often more open about that.

(This post was originally published on Instagram. Turns out you can share Instagram posts on WordPress! So here it is)

It doesn’t actually feel like all that long ago that we were so heavily involved in the weird Christian Blogging Circle.

I guess when I say “we” here I don’t necessarily mean you who are reading this or, really, any one person in particular. It seems somewhat important to point that out for whatever reason. There’s no subtext here. There’s nobody in mind as I write. Other than myself. Maybe all of us? Probably not important.

In those days, things began simply enough. I sat in an office and felt like I should be doing things that weren’t related to the office. It was full of paperwork and phone calls and all kinds of things that didn’t engage a significant amount of my personality. In the most basic of terms, I needed to create something, so I did. Read More…