My youngest son, Benjamin, was born on Thanksgiving day, 2002. He celebrated his birthday that year on the road. Today is his birthday. He’s nine years old. We celebrated as a family with bowling and lunch at Red Robin where Ben loves the mac and cheese. Last Sunday we had an early Thanksgiving at my Dad’s house as we celebrated his 81st birthday.

This is the time of year in Southern California when snowbirds come to Palm Springs and we remember why we live here. Moderate weather and clear skies in November are something to be thankful for.

I would like to develop an attitude of Thanksgiving that I can carry with me every day. I don’t mean I want to eat left-over turkey and cranberry sandwiches every day. I want to learn to be grateful for the daily blessings that come our way, the things that money can’t buy, love for my family and love for my God. In some ways this “learning” hasn’t been that easy this year. But each day brings a new lesson.

With feel-good gurus urging us to find the secret and live in the moment, I want to learn to get rid of anxiety through an attitude of prayerfulness and thanksgiving. It seems like I am making this one of my New Year’s resolutions. I frequently remind my clients that they can survive their financial and other legal troubles.

Give To KidCare

My friend, Larry Kapchinsky, runs a great relief organization, KidCare International. From one of his newsletters: “For many families, celebrating the holidays… will be an extraordinary challenge…Locally, (in San Bernardino and Riverside County, California) many poor children depend on KidCare International’s educational enrichment, food, shelter, and clothing, but there are thousands of children in South Africa, Haiti, Tanzania, Russia, and Sri Lanka that would have little or no hope without the help of humanitarian agencies like KidCare International. Thousands of children die each year in these countries from a lack of the most basic human needs—food, shelter, clean water and sanitation.” If you are looking for a worthy non-profit for a year-end charitable gift, I highly recommend KidCare.

I’m not a big sleeper under any circumstances. It seems that with five or six hours of sleep I will be awake and ready to start another day of “fun and frivolity.” Sometimes my sleep gets disturbed with concern about a project or appointment that I have on the agenda for the next day. I suppose some might say I have sleep “issues.” However, I don’t see them as a problem, unless I miss an entire night of sleep or only get a couple of hours of sleep. Then I know that the next day is going to be tough and that I will be needing a place to curl up for a nap in the afternoon or early evening.

So, why was I up watching Law and Order Los Angeles at 2 in the morning, you ask? As I was beginning to nod off in the first segment it dawned on me that I had a cup of coffee at St. Arbucks around 5 p.m. yesterday. And I had it with an extra shot of espresso. I didn’t think about it at all at the time, you know, that I was going to drug myself and be up half the night. I just ordered a familiar drink and enjoyed it along with some of my son’s leftover bagel.

When it dawned on me that I had taken an anti-sleeping pill and was living with the consequences I quieted the annoying complaint that was going on in my mind about my inability to fall asleep. I mean what do I expect? The drink I ordered has a nickname among Starbucks associates, “The Red Eye.” If I had thought it through a little more I might have stuck with lemonade!

It’s a simple example, but a true one: Our choices have consequences. And our lives are an accumulation of those choices and their consequences. A natural human tendency is to judge the consequences, but not the choices, unless we are in a particularly introspective or therapeutic mode. My advice: Give up judging. It only leads to self-loathing or worse, to loud complaining about how difficult life is. Let’s just recognize the facts: Life is! Why complain about it?

I met a man yesterday who is now a client. He is 88. He is a World War II veteran. He was married to his wife for 63 years before she died. He worked for a major company doing something he greatly enjoyed through his retirement. He had a strong faith and had been kind and helpful to others. He wanted to make some changes in his financial instructions in the event of his death. He’s thinking quite a bit about it because he has been in the emergency room three times in the last three weeks. He was smiling! A lot! He seemed satisfied and content with the life he had led. He did not want to change anything about it even though he did want to change his after-death arrangements he didn’t seem unhappy about it.

This man is part of generation that is passing from the scene. They fought. They lived and loved and raised their families. They worked in stable jobs for stable companies. Divorce and broken families was not the normal occurrence. Layoffs and downsizing and restructuring did not occupy their thoughts. They had been raised as children of the depression and had great appreciation for hardship and hard work. What a legacy!

I appreciated this man for his lack of complaints and the absence of regret from his conversation. He signed my retainer check with his own hand and with sound mind. And so I resolve that today, running on only four or five hours of sleep that I will attempt to restrain my complaints and approach the day with “joy” in my heart and no regrets. By the way, note to self: “No Red-Eyes after noon, Charlie.”

The answer? Just keep on keeping on. Get up. Get dressed. Go to work. Do the best I can. Why not? There are alternatives but this is the one I have chosen I may as well enjoy it!

Next week they are doing three events to spread some Love to the city, a party downtown with music and food, visits to the elderly, and care for families who have ended up without a permanent address. it’s all good stuff and you can see God moving through this “normal” church. Now it’s a busy three days and then I am heading to Nashville for a few days.

You can imagine then how frustrated I was meeting with the paid pastoral staff of the church week after week as we were attempting to retool and relocate the congregation. None of the paid staff, except for the senior pastor, wanted to retool or move. They would rather die than change, and they would rather talk than work. As I spent hours every week attempting to move them, I imagined my blood pressure going higher and higher.

At the same time I was reading a book about paradigm shifts. You know, the kind that happen when a new technology surpasses an older technology. Electric lights surpass gas and oil lamps. Horseless carriages surpass horse-drawn carriages. The internet surpasses the broadcast networks. You get the idea, right?

As I drove away from one of the staff meetings, fuming and nearly foaming at the mouth, I heard a whisper from the Holy Spirit. “It’s okay, Charlie, the time of the paid staff pastor is coming to an end.” This idea was somehow comforting to me (He is the Comforter after all ). Of course, it takes time for new ways of doing things to rise above the old ways. This is the way it is with the “normal” way of doing church. But I am getting a glimpse of a “new” way and what I am seeing makes me very happy. I am praying that I get to see the great awakening that will come from it.

In one of those mind-numbing staff meetings one of the pastors said to me, “Charlie, you are just an iconoclast!” He didn’t mean it as a compliment and I didn’t really know what he meant. So I had to go look it up:

i·con·o·clast? ?
[ahy-kon-uh-klast]–noun
1. a breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration.
2.        a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.

Okay, he had me. That’s what I have been doing my entire adult life, starting in high school and continuing to this day. I am always asking the Dr. Phil question, “How’s that working for you!” I am also approaching the mission of the church with the Cable Guy mantra, “Git ‘r done.” I have a fundamental assumption, we have to change what we are doing if we are going to get different results. And different results are what we need to fulfill the mission of Jesus.

These unresolved feelings began when my mother began a series of psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts in my pre-teen and teenage years. Although not successful in taking her life her numerous attempts left a deep scar in my psyche which has clouded by entire life, mostly with a lot of misdirected anger.

Starting in December I began to face and then unravel the past hurts with my mom. I sought and received psychotherapy. For a time I tried medication to deal with anxiety and sleeplessness. Eventually I had a cathartic experience that relieved a huge amount of the burden I had been carrying.

For the past twenty-some years I had never visited my mother’s grave, just one more symptom of my angst. It was the day before easter and Loretta and I were taking my granddaughter Annie home. The cemetery was on the way, impulsively I turned in and we began to look for my mom’s grave. Twenty years is a long time and so we were unable to find it. Ben and Annie were running up and down the rows of gravestones while Loretta and I looked more methodically. I didn’t have any great expectation or ritual to perform at the gravesite, but I did want to find it!

After a trip to the office, with map and instructions in hand we returned to the general vicinity where we had been looking, and suddenly there it was. It had been so long that I didn’t remember what we had put on my mom’s headstone. Cleo Charlene Hight Wear, my mom’s name when she was married to my dad was in capital letters on the first line. The second line read: “Mom and Grandma.” My mom was a very sweet person who suffered from “smiling” depression. After her time of severe psychiatric disturbance she went on to live a life of connection to her children and her grandchildren. She babysat for my kids on a daily basis for a number of years.

When she renewed her faith and rejoined the church she naturally gravitated to the nursery. She loved children, especially babies. It was herself she didn’t like.

And then the third line on her gravestone, “Love Never Dies.” When I read those words the sob immediately escaped and I began to gently weep. As I stood there by my mom’s grave I felt her love for me echoing long past her death. My wife, Loretta stood with her arm around me as I wept. Ben and Annie put an easter egg on the grave. We hadn’t brought flowers.

And then I was remembering the love of God. The Love that has echoed throughout eternity. The non-ending, and eternal love of God. Who, knowing full well the mess we would make of things made a plan to rescue us from our mess, all because of love.

Yesterday we celebrated Mother’s day with Loretta. Cards and Mexican Food for lunch were the order of the day. I thought about my mom, and my grandmothers, and my great grandmothers, the women who held together my family over the years. They were a strong group of women who faced trials. The love they had for their children and grandchildren reverberates past the grave and touches their descendants today.

Father, thank you for your unending love and the love our mothers, Amen.

The name of the book is No One Turns Down the Blessing [simple church planting] by Charlie Wear. You can find it in the Kindle Store by searching “Charlie Wear.” I hope you enjoy reading it!

I know that is not an explanation for leaving the house at 2 a.m. for an appearance at 8.30 a.m. Let’s just say that I have a hard time sleeping in the early morning hours these days. It helps my writing rhythm but hurts my mid and late afternoons. A daily nap is required, for sure.

There is a child’s welfare at stake this morning. Protection is the watchword. It’s my job today. I know I can’t do it on my own. I need the empowerment beyond my own strength. And so I am praying, with understanding and in the Spirit. I have already begun to experience the presence of God. It’s no Benny Hinn meeting but it’s real and in my workplace. Today I will be an advocate for a mom and a little girl. I’m glad the Boss is on my side in this one.

One of the couples are the assistant managers at a senior low-income mobile home park. They told us that Jesus lived there. We thought, let’s take some tri-tip sandwiches and cookies and go there and feed Jesus. There wasn’t an elaborate plan and we didn’t have a big team. Just four of us. I hadn’t ever done this in quite this way but I was pretty excited.

As we got to the park our assistant manager guides went to their home. They have been warned that they could get in trouble if they feed Jesus. They did have this advice. Start with space 155, they need what you have.

And so we were walking down the street almost to its end. I was asking the Holy Spirit, “How do we do this?” The reply: Go to the first door and knock. From years of sales training I had learned that when you are a stranger knocking on the front door, it is important to step way back after you knock. Don’t knock in a timid way. Give the door a good rap! And so I did. “Hello,” I said, “Anybody home?” No answer. And so I knocked again. My team waited patiently near the front of the mobile home, and then there he was: Jesus in the form of Yvonne.

“Hi, Yvonne, my name is Charlie and the Boss sent me with a gift for you.” She had a smile on her face and looked at my quizzically. “The boss?” she replied. The Team answered for me, “God sent us.” “I have the best tri-tip sandwich in the Central Coast, prepared by the famous chef, Roberto Ostini, how many sandwiches would you like?” “We have four people here.” Okay, here you go, and here are some cookies.

So far, this was going pretty well, I thought. And then a flash of inspiration: “May I bless you?” I took her hand and prayed: “In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, I bless you. May the peace of God be on this house in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” A big smile was on Yvonne’s face and so we moved to the next house.

House after house person after person we gave away BBQ sandwiches and cookies and the blessings. We were invited into a home to pray for a woman who had surgery on her back a couple of days before. I prayed for her healing. Tears filled her eyes. She said thank you. Blessing upon blessing was given. Smile after smile as we fed Jesus.

It came to me then. If we only had a minister we could come back next week and invite people to join us for a sandwich. We could read from the Boss’ manual, maybe our co-worker Paul’s first letter to Corinth, chapter 13. The one about love. We could share some bread and remember what Jesus did for us in his life and on the cross.

When we left, we left the blessing. We had spread the love of Christ with tri-tip. I was happy.