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Miracles Still Happen

**These words were written 4 days after Avery’s accident.

May 4th, 2023

In typical fashion I find myself escaping with words on a page. I have tried to have them on my tongue, but the emotions just keep coming from my eyes as words escape my speech. 

It is day 4 (I think), she’s asleep in a chair. We are waiting for a room on the floor to finally leave the ICU. It has been both Heaven and Hell. It has been anguish wrapped in the miracles of God’s glory. It is a far cry from the scene of Monday afternoon. 

We say phrases like “life is fragile” and “days are short”, but the delicacy of days and life somehow collide in the space of seeing your child in danger. Somewhere between the urgent call and 15 minutes it took to get there, my mind ran a million different directions. When I arrived my imaginations were replaced by reality. My baby girl trapped in a car screaming. It was like a scene from a movie. Car parts scattered everywhere. Flashing lights from an assortment of emergency vehicles. Me, a desperate parent, running toward the wreckage. A police officer doing his job reassured me they were doing everything possible. I stood helpless watching, waiting.

Time stops, rewinds, and speeds by all in a blink. Every instant is frozen in my brain. Her screams to get her out haunt me. The mangled mess of the vehicle sitting still in the middle of the road. The blink of flashing red, blue, and white lights burned deep in my memory. All at the same time are the past moments of what had led us there. The first time I held her after she was born. The day before when I squeezed her close and kissed the top of her head as finished Sunday lunch at Tres. The last year where we had worked hard in therapy to recover some broken pieces of our relationship from previous trauma. And time in that same moment takes wings and flies fast and far away.

I watched as the EMS vehicle sped away. My daughter in the back with her last words to me “daddy come with me”. I briefly stepped out and they were gone. As I gathered myself and pieces of life that came out of the car, I drove off with uncertainty. Holding tight to my belief that God does miracles and the simple words of a man I had never met tell me she was going to be okay. In this moment, this was the definition of faith – attempting to have hope and certainty in what was so unknown. 

From the twisted metal of the vehicle is the message of a miracle. God’s protective hand. I do not want to make a mess of theology. Yet, the word for the Holy Spirit in the Greek language is wind or air. Every air bag deployed in the car. They did their job.  Yet, even with top technology, it is hard to explain how protected Avery was. My best description is the “pneuma” of God – the air, the wind, the breath – surrounded her. Am I saying there was a Heavenly air-bag that deployed? With one look at the vehicle, I am not sure there is any other explanation. The Holy Spirit of God was in that car with her. And I will say with certainty that is how she survived.

We will have to navigate a period of recovery. Her body will hurt. The places where surgery was done will take time to heal. But today, she’s alive. Today, she will hobble a few steps with a walker. In a few days she will navigate life on crutches. In six weeks, she will fully walk on two legs again. Despite difficult days lying ahead, today I rejoice for the deployment of something miraculous in that vehicle on Monday. Miracles still happen.

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Short Memories

I sat with a new friend the other day over coffee. (What else would I be drinking.) This friend is about 18 months ahead me in the process of planting a church. As many of you know, Rachael and I are in the beginning stage of launching The Collectives. Always attempting to be a student, I asked the question of my friend “what have you learned that you can share with me?”

His response was simple and profound: “Do not let the highs get you too high. Do not let the lows take you too low.”

Great advice for a church planter. I think it is great advice for life. Life is filled with ups and downs. It has moments of wins and moments of loss. How we respond to each is just as important as the outcome. Wins are worth celebrating and shouting about. Yet, win you wake up the next day, that was yesterday’s win. Losses come, hits to life, jobs, and family will surely show up. Feel them and as my friends said “move on from there. Do not set up residence there.”

In honest reflection, oftentimes it has felt like I have taken more losses than the wins, because I pitched my tent and set up camp in the valley of my defeats. I stayed there. I made it my address. In the same way, it is next to impossible to stay on the mountain forever. Even Moses after 40 days in the very presence of God had to return to camp.

As a guy who grew up playing and watching a lot of baseball, this movie quote has rang true often: “sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” In the wins, losses, and rainouts, God is still God. God is still for me. To carry through the baseball analogy, you just need to dust yourself off and get back in the box.

A lot of high level athletes talk about short memories. The ability to forget the last shot, the last swing, the last throw. What is interesting is that they try to forget the miss and the make. They simply move forward to the next one. The apostle Paul wrote about his own sports psychology in the book of Philippians like this: “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Yesterday’s wins we celebrate. Yesterday’s losses we mourn. Today, oh today, there is work to do. So let’s get to it.

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Summer Reading

Every summer of my high school career I was assigned at least 2 books for summer reading. I attended a rather large public high school in the Orlando area.  The reason the “public” part is important is that I attended private Christian school Kindergarten through 8th grade.  The summer before my freshman year of high school, my dad decided to do some summer reading assigning himself.  The summer I was 14, my dad went searching his office at the church for my assignment from him.  

As I was laying by our pool, my dad came out with my assignment.  “This is something I want you to read this summer.  I think it will really help you as you start high school in August.”  Now, I’ve always been semi-academic, so I was hoping for a really good piece of historical fiction.  I was partly right, but it was much more than that.  I get out of the pool and my dad hands me a very worn and faded copy of “In His Steps” by Charles Sheldon.  I was pretty disappointed.  The title sounded like some devotional you would find on the shelf at Family Christian Bookstore.  

My dad went on to say, “the main character’s name is Rachel, when your mama wanted to name you Rachael, I agreed because I always liked the Rachel in this book.”  (The story on how I got the spelling of my name will come in a different blog).  So, of course this being my namesake, my interest was piqued.  

That evening I started my journey with the characters in that little town of Raymond.  It wasn’t at all what I expected.  It was way more than I had bargained for.  I finished the book in 3 days.  My poor dad…. The questions that I had over the next few weeks were varied and a lot.  I had so many questions of why?  Is that what we’re “supposed” to do?  We spent a lot of time discussing those who took the journey  of “what would Jesus do?”  that was posed by Henry Maxwell, the pastor of the little church in Raymond.  

Later that summer, I took the very giant steps of faith out of the row of chairs in our very small church and made a commitment.  See, I had accepted Jesus in my heart at the ripe old age of 6.  I’d gone to Christian school.  I’d been the pastor’s kid that helped with VBS and nursery and anything else that was required of the pastor’s family.  But that day, shortly after I’d embarked on my public education, I knew it was time to make a commitment.  I knew that the words of Sheldon would forever echo in my head, “what would Jesus do?”  I was certain it was time to start living a life that would reflect that question.  

However, I was a teeanger.  I was not perfect.  I stumbled and limped my way through high school as far as being a shining example of some Christian exemplar.  But I stood firm in my faith.  I, as Paul says in Ephesians, took up my shield of faith against the fiery darts of the wicked. By the time I was 18, I knew who I was and whose I was in the faith.  I was not only imago dei (made in the image of God), I was imitatio dei (imitator of God).  

As I reflect on that summer before high school, I see the real value in relationships with my kids.  My dad wasn’t an authoritarian that was “making” me read something.  He wasn’t  telling me to do something or live a way that he himself didn’t live.  He was showing me the way.  Guiding me.  Encouraging me.  There was no question that my dad shied away from, theological or otherwise.  It’s why today, I encourage my kids to ask.  Ask me questions.  Let’s talk about these world events and what’s wrong and what’s right and what’s our responsibility in all of it.  There’s nothing off limits.  Because of my dad’s willingness to endure the questions of a teenage girl, he was feeding the calling that would one day lay on her shoulders so heavy in a little house on the wrong side of the tracks. It has been heavy on me ever since.

Today, that calling is getting heavier and bigger with each passing moment.  I still don’t know fully how it’s going to all come to fruition.  But I do know that I will keep asking questions, and learning, and pushing, and asking the most important question of all, “what would Jesus do?”

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Replacing Roger

Empty house

Somehow every time I start to type I envision this is my Jerry Maguire moment. My words will pierce, find life on the screens of those that ingest them like warm chocolate chip cookies. In truth, often they seem to land like a crunchy oatmeal raisin. Not well loved, have a small but loyal fan base, without the fanfare of the chocolate chip. 

So here is more oatmeal raisins. 

The hangover

I fight the monster who lives inside my mind. I will give him a name to make him more relatable.  Let’s call him Roger. Roger in my mind looks like Zach Galifianakis from ”The Hangover.“ He has lots of things to say and no real wisdom. He is part big brother with sucker punches in the back and part movie critic that finds something wrong with even your best work. And Roger works overtime. 

I love what I do in light of the calling. I love to write. I love to preach. I love to mentor. I love to host the podcast. In those snapshots of life I feel most alive. In those moments of life Roger seems to shut his pie hole. It is the moments when the lights go down, the recording stops, the post is published that this internal critic does his best work. 

“Check Jeff to see who read it. I bet they disagree with you.”

“How many people listened to that episode. Wow, you are not as successful as you thought.” 

“No one responded. Well, maybe God liked your message.”

Roger is, well, a word we will not use on this blog.  At the same time, Roger has been a long time traveling companion. Every time I have tried to move away from him, he has stalked me to that new location. 

It is a true Fight Club moment. If you have not seen the movie Spoiler Alert. It is in the final scenes you find out that Edward Norton’s character and Brad Pitt’s character are really the same person.  All along he has been fighting himself. All along, I have been fighting me.

There are no haters. If so, they do not post or respond to my blog, the podcast, or my sermons. In truth, I have never needed them. The hater inside my head has always been loud enough. 

So I have to fight Roger. I have to fight myself. 

Jesus tells a story in the gospel of Luke about a person that has been cleansed of an evil spirit.  He says the spirit searches for some place to go. When it is unable to find a place of rest it returns to the person to find the house swept clean, put in order and empty. This spirit returns and brings with it 7 more evil spirits. The point Jesus is making is until something else resided in the house Roger will always be welcomed back. In time, Roger returns with friends. 

Roger has to be removed and replaced. When haunting thoughts would invade I used to just try to clear my mind. This simply left my mind swept clean and open for Roger and his friends to throw a house party of negativity in my mind. The Rogers of our thought life have to be kicked out and replaced. 

The apostle Paul writes these words that can operate as an instead. Instead of Roger and his lies think on these things:

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. And what you learned and received and heard and saw in me, do these things. And the God of peace will be with you.”  Philippians‬ ‭4:8-9‬ ‭NET‬‬

Roger has to be replaced with true, noble, worthy, pure, lovely, excellent, praiseworthy truths. It is not enough to simply to quit thinking the negative thoughts, they have to be replaced. The glorious outcome of replacing Roger is that “the God of peace will be with you.”  When you move Roger out, God moves in. When you kick out the negative, corrupt thoughts, the whispers of Holy Spirit moves in calling you loved, worthy, child. Holy Spirit replaces Roger. Holy Spirit becomes a constant companion who sticks closer than a brother. 

It is hard to let go of the familiar voices of negativity, yet it is the only way to peace. Peace has a price, it will cost you the comfort of the familiar voice of the critic to hear the good shepherd call your name. It is the price for peace. 

Everyone once in a while Roger tries to come by and visit. In weakness, I have let him back in. Yet, I have learned if I want true peace of mind, I have to keep Roger replaced with the voice of heaven who calls me son. 

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