Tag: choice

When I Couldn’t Toot My Horn

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She and her band of merry musicians were treated like royalty as they made their perennial trek from the hormone-ravaged halls of the junior high to the prepubescent kid-ranch called elementary school. Their quest was to excite jubilant throngs of students with a buffet of instrumentation upon which they would indulge their aural appetites. At the end of their feasting, each 5th grade student was to select an instrument they would begin learning the following year.

Curious and wonder-filled, I sampled the symphonic spectrum. From the trill of flutes to the blats of brass to syncopated percussion beats. How excited I was to end my conscription in piano purgatory and broaden my musical expression.

In the parade of valves and pads and sticks and slides, my heart found camaraderie with the brass section. Specifically, I was enthralled by circular turns of tubing and hand-muffled sounds. I was fascinated by the range of tones traversed with the simple repositioning of pursed lips. My imagination brought forth a scene in which I played my horn to summon the King’s hounds for a fox hunt. Yes! I had made my decision. I wanted to play the French Horn.

Alas, there was no horn tootin’ in my future. Instead, I would squawk sounds like angry water fowl with my mother’s clarinet.

The dictum of “no” to the French horn and “yes” to the clarinet has provided enduring perspective. I can grumble about the trajectory my orchestral career might have traversed had my lips trilled into a metal mouthpiece instead of sucking a reed. Such speculation is packed with presumption. Still, passions are powerful. They need tending in the mix of the “no’s” and “yes’s” that lie along the tentacled paths we wander. Paths that criss-cross and spread and tangle and stretch.

I ponder my path. Often. I search-out roads to personal fulfillment, service, success, and rest. And as my journey lengthens, I come to deeper understanding that my feet fall not just upon a happy trail of “yes”, but also “no” and “wait” and “yes…but.”

A recent collision with “no” revived the melodic memory of a French horn’s bellow. My story has a chapter with that unrealized dream. A yearning that drifted – for a time – in restlessness. And now my soul seeps a fresh grief.

So what do I do with my French Horn nixing and other encounters with “no”?

Day after day, I reaffirm human dignity, acknowledge fallibility, and hope for alternative paths to flourishing. I fight commiseration and plead for the humility to submit to the Father who soothes our hurt with a holy poultice of grace and forgiveness. Healing comes through a faith-filled “yes” to the Sovereign who makes rightful claim on every creature and every action.

In his memoir, Life is Mostly Edges, Calvin Miller offers this: “Letting go of any drive releases the soul, and those who can’t quit struggling in an attempt to realize their dreams will be the last to realize them.” (p.265) There is a delicate tension between the consuming drive for desire and a settled trust that we are walking a gracious and satisfying path. A path that includes “yes” and “no”. French horns and clarinets.

So, as we take another step into life this day, may we embody this perspective:


“The life that intends to be wholly obedient, wholly submissive, wholly listening, is astonishing in its completeness. Its joys are ravishing, its peace profound, its humility the deepest, its power world-shaking, its love enveloping, its simplicity that of a trusting child.” (Thomas R. Kelley, A Testament of Devotion, p.28)

Bumblebee Pilots

Chris De ManLeave a comment

Side-by side we sat in a Chevy Chevette.

In a cemetery.

Two men. Confident and scared. Teacher and student. Father and son.

Tree-filtered breezes meandered across the polished yellow hood and through windows hand-cranked to full openness. The contrast of the car’s deep space black vinyl interior gave the impression we were pilots of a man-sized bumblebee. A masculine carriage, it was not. But that was of little concern.

Because I was under siege, pinned-down by a series of moments strung together with a thread of terror. I could not master the mechanical dance between the brake, clutch, and accelerator. Stooges, those three. Starts and stops and stalls was their schtick. A humiliating assembly of cyclic failure – which I didn’t find funny.

Succumbing to numerous resets, I struggled to gain ground toward acquiring stick-shifting skill. During each re-collecting, I’d direct my gaze past the windshield and upon the root-heaved asphalt further along. I yearned to cruise the curvy paths, deftly marching through the gears. But that required something I did not have. And at the time, I was beginning to think never would.

Amidst this battle between man and machine, my passenger-seated father was calm, fully immersed in saintly patience. From the noisy barrage of a high-revved engine and grinding gears emerged phrases of gentle instruction and well placed encouragement. Over and over, he renewed his commitment after each false start. He loved me well.

That scene from my 16th summer is a highlight, still vivid in the present because of its ongoing effect. I now fill the office of father and have spent time in the passenger seat. That seat is revelatory. It has brought forth some of my finest, and most despicable behaviors. It has frustrated and badgered. It has made me laugh and wonder and cry. That seat demands much – day after day.

There are many tasks and requirements we as students and spouses and parents and professionals do because we must. That’s our reality, and it is good. Even so, how we engage our compulsory duties is a strong indicator of who we are, what we value, and how we grant our trust.
 
Recalling my rough road to mastering a manual transmission brings to mind this quote from Thomas Watson: “To do duty without love, is not sacrifice, but penance.” (All Things for Good, p.88) My father had a duty to teach me how to drive a stick shift. But in that necessity, he chose long-suffering, patient love. He went beyond himself, and through his risk of releasing control I felt his side-by-side care for my development as a young man.

I have wandered into loveless duty and found – indeed – it is punishing. A snare of ungrateful effort. A joyless enduring, pock-marked by missed opportunity.

Yet, today is new! Mercy abounds, and each relational intersection is a divinely planned setup for us to love with patient kindness. To give not only because we should, but because it is our desire.

With the onset of a new season of school and activities and fresh routines, my desire that those things I want to do – as well as my duties – be done with tangible, sincere, freely-gifted love.

Like that which was given to me on a breezy afternoon in a car the color of sunflowers.

Free to not be Free?

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As a child, I thought my parents had limitless freedoms. No curfew, plenty of money (at least from my no income other than birthdays perspective) and the ability to have ice cream whenever they wanted. I couldn’t wait to be released from the chains of childhood. I craved freedom to decide when to call it a night, purchase without constraint, and consume half-gallons of ice cream just because.

Well, two decades into my marital journey and more than seventeen on the parenting path, my ice cream dreams have melted. My modest income is redirected to car repairs, home maintenance, vacations for my orthodontist, and allergy medication for the dog. And even with a late evening dose of caffeine, I can’t stay awake past 9:30pm.

Am I the victim of a cruel trick? A bait and switch? The adult freedoms I pined for in my youth seem but a ruse.

But they aren’t. They’re still there. The crucibles of marriage and parenting are recasting my vision of ice cream gluttony. The incessant heat of life’s tensions work to soften self-centered entitlements into realistic expectations. With those new expectations I’ve come to understand this maxim: True freedom is the freedom to not be free.

What does that mean? An example…

To start, a confession. At best, I’m a fair weather fan of table games. Perhaps I was scarred by too many Uno ‘Draw-Fours’ or overly frustrated by random banishment into Candy Land’s Molasses Swamp. The source of my aversion is unclear. The result is the need for self-administered pre-game pep talks so I can to engage family game time with adequate enthusiasm.

Go ahead. Say it. I’m weird. Even so, I do play. But be forewarned – I play to win!

So, when confronted with the opportunity for gaming, what’s my response? I have the freedom to say “no.” Yet, as a father of five, many are the times when the proposition to play is presented. Certainly, there are legitimate times for giving my “no.” But a “no” that is consistently self-serving is wrong. It’s an abuse of my freedom. True freedom isn’t the unbounded pursuit of personal peace. It’s not Patrick Henry’s, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” True freedom is the willful setting aside of personal desires so that others might flourish. It’s sometimes exchanging my wish for a quite evening of coffee and a good book for a rowdy night of Ticket to Ride, Life, Euchre, or Settlers of Catan.  

Such relinquishment is no easy feat. Even in my best moments, self-willed efforts fade quickly. I need the help of our divine Freedom Fighter, Jesus Christ. He’s the perfect example of sacrificing personal freedom. From forever past, He chose to give-up what was rightly His so that we might regain what we lost. When humanity turned its collective back on God in Eden, we were not abandoned. Love never wavered.

Although infinite in His freedom, Jesus choose to let loose of what was His to restore us to our Father in Heaven. He insured that we would complete our predestined good works for God’s glory. Because He was free to not be free, mercy and grace and redemption through love are ours.

What wondrous love this is. Love that draws us to live in God-centered freedom. Love that emboldens us to joyfully prioritize our desires below the needs of others. To hold loosely to what we could do so we can freely do what we should do. To give and serve and love – like our death-conquering Freedom Fighter.

So, anyone up for some Scrabble?


“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:3–8, ESV)