We are all broken people. Until we acknowledge our own brokenness we will be blind to it, blind to the effects of that brokenness. Remember, these pieces of us are lost in darkness, we need God’s light to help us find our brokenness.

These occasional moments of quasi-competence, stir an interest in the significance of cross country skiing. Underlying metaphors and significance seem ripe for discovering. But those are the love-struck words after a third date, not the slow wisdom grown over years of attentiveness. Even so, the rhythm of cross-country skiing calls out to be noticed.

It’s probably a regular occurrence for you- in your work meetings, the gym, or even at church. Sometimes church is the worst, as pharisees are often the least secure.

It is fun to reminisce about the beauty, goodness, and hope that Easter brings through the eyes of a little boy. However, in recent years it has been much more difficult to recapture these feelings on Resurrection Sunday.

After all the effort, time, and money, I keep running into more obstacles. The sense of accomplishment, enjoyment, and fun that I had been seeking in the finishing of this project was yet again elusive. Rather than taking the kids on a ride and buying ice cream, or showing up at a car show with a picnic lunch, I was bound to spend more hours laying on my garage floor. Rather than joy, I had the weight of disappointment and discouragement pushing me down. A bad April Fool’s joke.

This is my story. And it’s not really about a jeep.

As I dropped my daughter off to start school in the big city, I wondered if I had done enough to prepare her for this big change in her life? Did I maximize these 18 years with her, and will she be okay? These questions stirred deep within me in this season of transition.

The dance felt like a gracious opportunity for me to follow my daughter’s leading into the needed place of whimsy and light-hearted dance.

Amazingly he was able to shape up a ragtag group of underfed, underpaid and underarmed men into the fighting force that would defeat the most powerful military force the planet had seen.

I was alone in our basement watching The Little Mermaid. I remember Ariel’s beautiful voice, her kind and loving desire toward Eric, and her reminding me of Amanda Baker, my 2nd-grade crush. I cried as I thought of her. Maybe returning to her could make me happy again?

But to view all of life as a test? It seems that’s a recipe for performance and a sub-surface simmering fear of failure.

Transitions are hard. Moving from one reality to a new one always involves a loss, or a letting go of something that was a more stable or known quantity for something that is less known. There is an inherent risk of failure involved in going to a new place or position. Sometimes those failures are minor, or more acceptable. Other times those failures can feel catastrophic.

The other night at dinner, I naively asked her to tell my kids a few stories from my childhood, not realizing that her long-term memory is now beginning to wane. She could not tell my kids stories I had heard my entire life. Yes, even this loss is yet another death I must mourn.

Why expend the energy and to what end? At Restoration Project we ask men to reflect beyond the timeline diagram of their life. We believe the activity is not most important, but the significance within that experience. We follow the wisdom of the early Celtic Church who would ask travelers not what they did on their journey, but what their journey meant