Christmas Eve 2013

Good morning sons-

Merry Christmas Eve 2013 to you. I write this to you from the bottom bedroom just next to the bathroom in your Papa’s cabin in Colorado. Hopefully this place will be the setting for many beautiful memories from your childhood both in the icy white of winter and the vibrant colors of summer.  I’ve been aching to get here for the longest time. I’ve yearned for the silence and the space and the grandeur of the mountains. There’s not much silence in the house as you and the Marsolek girls play ring around the rosy and such, but outside, it is so still, so empty and yet so full. In the still silence you are confronted with all the thoughts and emotions that fill you up to the point of overflow. Bear, you’re just 2 ½, but you’re such a manchild. How you understand social situations and the subtleties of communication, both verbal and nonverbal, its amazing. Boss, you’re still in your mommas belly for another 3 months and I’m so very excited to meet you. It’s such a wondrous thing to have kids and dream about what kind of person they might be. So far as we can tell right now, you’re a pretty chill guy, content to save most of your movement for a few good donkey kicks to various vital organs inside your mom. Not sure what that means yet, but I’m eager to find out.

This morning, as I was taking out the trash here at the cabin, I was struck by the quiet and noticed that in the east, the sun was just preparing to peak out over the ridge. I decided to grab a brisk moment of solitude and watch it rise fully into the sky. As I did, I started to think about the things I’ve been too busy to think about, like missing my dad, like the pit of loneliness I feel when I’ve been distant from the Father, like my inadequacy stuff that the enemy tries to lie to me about, but especially my dad. It’s been just over 5 weeks since my dad, your Papi Rus, went home to be with Jesus. I miss him so much. Not all the time, becaue I’m an adult and I have my own family and my own life, but in those moments that you still share with your dad even when you’re grown. I missed him when texted your Noni and Gigi to tell them we were headed into the mountains and would be out of cell range. I would typically always just text my dad that. I missed him yesterday when I was out scouting for Christmas trees and just riding around with your Papa Kevin in his new Jeep. We ran up on a pack of mule deer, 4 or 5 does and one buck, and they didn’t spook, so we got some pretty good pictures of them. On the way back, I stopped to take a shot of a beautiful view. I so wanted to send those pictures to my dad. To share with him the wild beauty and freedom that he hadn’t experienced in such a long time. You know that for the last 4 years of his life, he was pretty much homebound, restricted by his pride and his health to hide out from the world and all its beauty and splendor and heartache. I tried to share with him as much of my life as I could, and I think he enjoyed it as much as you can enjoy someone else’s joy. But maybe his joy was fuller, knowing that his son was filling up with life’s goodness. I think that’s the joy I just experienced watching Bear discover that he can see his own spit particles dance in the morning sun beams as they shine in through the window. Pure discovery, pure joy, pure wonder. The same wonder perhaps that I felt this morning as I watched the sun peak over the trees, but looking different than I’ve ever seen it. It looked to me not like the typical yellow ball of fire in the sky, but more like a clear diamond, shifting and moving like clear molten lava. A ring of pale crimson surrounded the diamond. Not bright red, but deeper and softer like the underside of a rose petal. And from the diamond sun, wisps of gold, more pure and delicate than anything I’ve ever seen, danced their way around, swirling like fall leaves in a breeze. Such beauty. And yet just a shadow. I’m reading the Chronicles of Narnia this week, and if I’m struck by anything, it is the deep mystery of the Lord and my limited understanding of all that the universe holds, and the seeming folly that I bring with me as the Lord invites me to discover him and his kingdom more and more.

I want you both to know something. This year has been incredibly difficult and incredibly good all at once. This spring, I spent a semester working 20 hours a week, taking 15 hours of grad school classes, interning at the Tulsa Boys Home 20 hours a week and attempting to be a husband and father. In the middle of that, I found out about the blood pressure stuff, then I graduated with my masters, walked with all my friends, convinced the announcer to tell everyone I had a smoking hot wife, drove to Stillwater twice a week that summer so that I could actually graduate and looked forward to my new career. We found out we had Boss on the way and then two months later, I landed my first job, and those two months before were a major shot to my self worth and manliness feelings as I tried to figure out how to take care of finances and imagine taking care of the whole family financially while you’re unemployed is a bit of a trip. I started work and then about a month later was my dad’s birthday. November 11 to be exact. In the last 4 years, I’ve always had a sense of knowing that my dad wasn’t going to be around forever, and towards the end, that sense got stronger and sometimes that led me to avoid being around him or talking to him. It was just really hard. But on that night that we went over to celebrate, I decided to just kneel down by his chair, and pour out my heart to him. I told him that I loved him, that he was a good man, that I was proud to be his son. I told him that I knew that life hadn’t turned out the way he wanted it to, but nonetheless, it had been good. I reminded him that you can tell a tree by its fruit, and the fruit of his life was exceptional. It was vulnerable, it was raw, it was honest. It was the last real conversation I had with my dad, and I’m so so grateful I did. The last thing he did say to me was something about how I looked funny without my beard (I grew it out for 5 months and then shaved it that week). My last words to him were something about not giving the nurses too hard a time. That was how our relationship was. I poured out my heart to him. He received it. I hoped he would reciprocate. He usually didn’t. We would banter or talk about football or something like that. The moments that are the hardest are the moments when I’m watching football and something crazy happens, or thinking of sending him a picture or when there’s a storm on the way and he would typically send me a warning because those were his moments. He chose those moments to reach out and connect with me. They weren’t deeply emotional or sentimental, but they were the moments where he felt safe and able to connect, and I’d give anything to get a text from him right now. 

Sorry just needed to grieve there for a second. So back to the point… All of this has happened in the last 12 months, and not once have I thought “ I have a good life because good things are happening” or “Life is bad because hard things are happening”. Life is life. Good and bad happen together all the time. Life is joy and sorrow side by side. That we have a single moment of joy is a gift. That we have breath in our lungs is a treasure. That we have love in our hearts for each other and moments to share like today, Christmas Eve 2013 is a kiss from Heaven. We live in a sinful, fallen world, separated from our Father and our true home. We need a savior, a messiah to rescue and reconcile us. This I am realizing in a deeper, truer, more honest way this year. And I am so thankful for Jesus. So thankful that he loved us enough to lower himself and come to us and take on our sinful humanity. So thankful that he knows what it means to suffer and was not afraid to enter into suffering on my behalf. I’m so thankful that in the moments of my deepest sorrow he is not far off, not aloof, but he is near to me. He was with me as I sat beside my father and read scriptures to him about the hope of resurrection. He was with me as I sat by my mom and told his that he was dying and didn’t have much time left. He was there by my side as I knelt and prayed at his side and in the moment that he left this earth, I faced the true despair of death and loneliness, and I was not consumed. My grief poured out like water; I felt completely helpless and weak and he was my strength. He was my sustainer and the lifter of my head. I’m not saying it wasn’t awful, I’m not saying that I didn’t have a massive headache from crying my eyes out. I’m not even saying that I don’t have a headache right now from crying as I type. What I am saying is that we do not have to fear death, or loneliness, or failure, or weakness. War has already been waged against these foes, and they stand defeated. We can enter the hard stuff and not be overcome. So what have we to fear? What can stand between us and our participation in God’s kingdom being established here and now? I can’t really think of anything, and I’m pretty smart. So there. Love you boys.

Dad.