Love and Its Discontents

Stories are as distinctive as the people who live them, and the best stories transcend time and space.  So it begins, this story, like most great stories, with a woman, a city, and the hand of fate.

Julian sits on a grassy knoll observing two players in the thrall of an outdoor chess match on a life-sized board.  Checkmate is imminent.  There is no escape for the black king.  The contestant controlling the dark pieces should resign, but is unwilling, circling the board in languid steps, searching for an out.  The crowd sighs, tosses hands skyward in disbelief.  One shouts, "You cannot win!" The contestant is unresponsive, oblivious, detached from his audience, unwilling to see what the spectators see, determined to find what's not there.

Julian feels the tension and wonders why black won't fold.  But then he knows.  He recognizes the fierce determination in the contestant, the illusions.  His detachment with the girl is just as vast, feeling infinite, insurmountable, unbeatable.  He thinks his denial is as portentous as that of the circling contestant.  Black cannot win. To think otherwise is a mirage.

Julian rises from the lush, immaculate carpet of green, leaves the knoll.  The contestant continues to circle the board.  People's lives are lost in the trance of delusion, Julian thinks, as he moves through the historic city of Canterbury, passing the cathedral, the oldest in England.  He turns down a winding lane, brushes against the weeping willows as a gust of wind rattles the drooping branches. The lane curves, snakes alongside the riverbank.  Julian hears the chirping of swallows, smells the wildflowers, crosses an ancient footbridge, pauses at the apex.  He leans against the stone, wonders if he's as delusional as the losing chess player: repeatedly circling, refusing to cave, misreading the pulse of his own heart.  He looks down at the river, watching his shadow, the current surging in silence, his mind preoccupied, unable to shake the girl from his thoughts.

It's been this way since he moved from London three weeks back to attend the University of Kent for his final year of law school.  He goes for stretched, aimless walks, hoping to get away from returning to the one place he wants to be. Ever since he spotted her waitressing at the popular pub near his apartment in the walled city, his decision making vacillates, follows an identical pattern.  Just when he decides he's not going back, he feels something inside breaking, some pull, tugging at him like an undercurrent. But today will be different, he tells himself.  The ridiculous denial of the chess player has strengthened his resolve.

Julian observes the swans, ducks, fighting upstream on the clear waters of the Stour River.  His heart is roaring inside, tugging, pulling again.  He glances at his watch, fidgets, wrangles with his doubts, takes in the birds again.  Their fight inspires something within.  He closes his eyes, pinches the lids with his thumb and forefinger, changes his mind once more.  Today will be no different.  He will return.  He will follow the path of the birds - against the flow, upstream, refusing to cave.

The historic streets look old and purposeless basking in the afternoon sunlight.  Turning onto High Street, he glances toward the sky and notices an encroaching army of clouds choking the blue in the distance.  He speeds his steps, the world tilting beneath his feet, rushes past the corn market, the mansion of the White Friars.  Canterbury's shop windows become a blur of colors as he moves down the King's Mile, through the city inhabited since pre-Roman times.  The city feels timeless, motionless, without gravity.  He think's of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, wonders if its subjects felt buoyant like he does, moving through the enchantment of all that's been before.

Julian reaches the front door of the pub as the first drops race from the sky.  He pauses in the anteroom, hears the clatter of dishes, the clinking of glasses, SKY Sports broadcasting a Premier League match on the mounted monitors beyond the interior door.  The room is typical European fare; a mirror, wooden coat racks bloated with hats, coats, scarves, all things British.  The pub is packed.  He looks in the mirror, adjusts some strands, gulps deeply.  A deafening roar rattles the mirror, vibrates his reflection.  He sees what he feels, his heart lurching inside.  The walk through the interior door seems like the longest of his life.  He enters to shouts and hugs, raised pints sloshing beer, the packed crowd singing furiously.  Chelsea's fight song confirms the goal that has prompted the roar.

Julian takes a seat in an open booth, reverential, feeling as though he's in the presence of royalty.  The rowdiness subsides as the pro-Chelsea crowd pines for another goal.  He glances around the pub.  Though he doesn't see her, he spots her.  Like wind, he spots her by what she moves.  The twisting heads and contorting necks, the stammering lips and wandering eyes.  Only one happening can bend the crowd's eye away from the soccer match.  Her moving through the pub.  She's impossible to miss. Magical skin, long wavy locks framing a pretty oval face, pouty lips, mesmerizing curves, perfect in contour, provoking reveries of eroticism in men's minds.  Her beauty is hypnotic, having captured Julian the first instant he saw her, and every time since, sending his heart galloping wildly to a place it's never been.

And then she comes into full view.

Julian feels a sensation surge through him, a charge that is half thrill, half panic.  His pulse speeds up in that electric, yet terrible way, as she comes near, takes his order, scribbles, looks up, smiles.  Pure intoxication.  He catches his breath, feels the wetness under his arms.  The butterflies are soaring.  She spins, stuffs the white notepad in the back pocket of her jeans, moves away from the table in spectacular fashion, a bewitching gait, and mercifully vanishes into the thick crowd, allowing him to breathe again.

He has been visiting the pub to catch a glimpse, thrilled to be inhaling the same air as she, spending his meager savings on appetizers and drink, viewing her from a safe distance.  He is stalking and doesn't know why, or pretends he doesn't know why.  He is scared stupid by what he's doing but he can't stop himself.  No force on earth can prevent him from entering the pub.  He is not one to fall in love with a girl over appearance, an expression, a gesture, but in those moments she glances his way, passes near, his heart rockets out of his chest.

Everything about her entrances him.  He notices the little things.  The sway of her long tresses, whipping side to side, as she clears a table.  The beautiful arch of her back while carrying foamed pitchers of hops across the wooden floor to the old drunks clamoring for her, and another drink The reading glasses perched on her nose, her face buried in a book, foot bobbing with delight, her thoughts elsewhere, during her break. On every level, there is a draw for him, and each time he pays the bill, there comes a flicker of sadness, a foreclosure of some sort, his heart sinking inside.

Julian notices that Alexa never seems to bask, take pleasure in all the attention she receives from spellbound men. She seems oblivious to it all, as if she believes beauty is trivial, fleeting, inconsequential in life, undeserved.  He is unaware of what thrills her, what she cherishes most.  Upon waking each morning, she rushes to the nearby orphanage, volunteering, spending the early part of each day with young children. Unbeknownst to Julian, she loves children and hopes to relocate from her native England to some third-world nation, to better the lives of the abandoned.  There is a higher pull, an endless spiritual draw tugging at her heartstrings.  This is why she works at the pub, saving every pence; the tips are enormous.

Julian feels bashful, shy, afraid to strike up conversation beyond the routine obligation of placing his order.  It's unlike him and killing him inside.  He tries to walk away numerous times, each attempt taking a sharp right just before the exit, landing him in the men's room with nothing to do.  He talks to himself in the mirror, exhorts his psyche, splashes his face, takes a million deep breaths, mutters the same lines over and over, and when confident, exits the restroom.  The confidence seeps out with each step back to the booth, leaving him deflated again.  He expects the magnetic pull of her to fall away, to lead nowhere, to cease, for the ice to never break, as it hasn't on all previous visits.  But then, today, like a miracle, it does.  She looks his way, smiles, so brightly, it's a wonder she doesn't set something alight.  She approaches to refill his drink.  Something detonates inside Julian, bursting upward, a feeling defying explanation, spine-tingling.  Their eyes meet, freeze, something otherworldly locked in the gaze.

"Why are you always staring at me?" She asks.

Julian's heart kicks, slams into his throat.  He chokes on his water.  Seconds later, barely composed, he stumbles over his words.

"I'm not staring at you."

"Yes, you are. Every time I look your way, I catch you staring at me."

The discomfort that would normally overtake Alexa in a situation like this is allayed by Julian's noticeable unease.  Alexa finds it amusing, and even endearing, the way he keeps blushing and shaking his head in apology.  His embarrassment, the flushed cheeks, the squirming, charms her in some way.  Unlike most men in the pub, he's free of braggadocio, false bravado, speech stooped in flattery and insinuations.  She leaves, returns with an appetizer of fried Mozzarella, his favorite, leaves again, the sheen of her smile keeping him planted.  Between runs to other tables, some sexist comments, one catcall, she steals glances of him.

His face is now submerged in his law books.  He doesn't dare look up, yet amazingly, he has not left.  This impresses her as she studies him.  He's not completely handsome: the nose a bit small, the hair long and unruly, the jaw not so strong, but his eyes are alive, piercing blue.  He has a fabulous grin, beautiful teeth, and a habit of punctuating his orders with a positive, happy cadence.  And though his face does not enthrall Alexa as those of previous boyfriends, it's a kinder face and, as Alexa will learn, a visible emissary for the attentiveness, the compassion, the enduring goodness that resides within Julian.

Still embarrassed, croaking inside, Julian closes his books, vacates the booth.  He places a few pounds on the table, pays the tab, moves to the door, exits without peeking Alexa's way, his heart plummeting again.  He supposes he should be relieved, but he wants something else.  Perhaps if she had erupted, displayed some emotion, told him she feels uncomfortable, to never come back.  Something definable, like checkmate, no possible out.  Instead, he gets an appetizer and that breathtaking smile lighting up the world.

Julian walks a half block down the cobblestoned street in the dreary drizzle of the British Isles, feeling her absence, his senses still smitten by her aroma.  The air is frigid, and the valve in the clouds loosens.  Raindrops pelt the cobbles, blur the shop windows, ripple windshields, drench his hair and clothes.  He doesn't care; he needs the lashing, the cleansing, an atonement of some sort.  His head is hanging low, knowing he can't go back.  Ever.  The embarrassment of it all, caught ogling, lying like a psychopath.  "I'm not staring at you," how stupid of him.  He feels the force of it, like a thousand daggers, puncturing the life within.  Waylaid, he doesn't hear the sound of running feet, the splashy steps approaching from behind.  Her voice startles him, seizes the air from his lungs.

"I think you owe me a coffee for lying to me."

His heart rumbles, races for the moon.  He's tongue-tied.

"Don't pretend you didn't hear what I said," she says smiling

He knows what he needs to say, but he can't utter a single word.  Cotton mouthed.

"So are we going for coffee?" She asks impatiently.

"Yes." His head nods longer than his monosyllabic reply.

"Only one condition," she says.

"That I pay?"

"Well, that's acceptable, but not the condition."

He stares.

"You're staring at me again."

Dying a thousand deaths, he barely gets the words out, "It's hard not to."

Alexa blushes, feels warm inside, quickly adjusts.

"No more lies," she says.

"Excuse me?"

"The condition ... no more lies; it's a bad way to start something."

Rigid with embarrassment, Julian nods in agreement, his eyes looking away, his lips pursed like a child caught disobeying.  They move wordlessly toward the coffee shop, the rain concealing the film of sweat inching across Julian's skin.  A cool wind sheets the mist against his face as the world dizzies into a blur of feelings he can't identify.

A few steps into the walk toward his new life, he breaks the silence.

"I'm sorry for lying to you."

He pauses, turns her way.  All of what he's about to say, she sees in his eyes.  He feels the words surging, words that have been churning in his mind, pounding his heart, building for weeks, hours, minutes, seconds.

"I stare at you because you're the most beautiful girl in the world, the most beautiful girl I've ever seen."

To be continued ...

Redemption

Tim Montgomery stepped to the line, and called out the exercise to the other runners, all between the ages of seven and sixteen.  At his command, the students were off and running.  Montgomery shouted words of encouragement as they zigzagged through rows of cones on a grass field in Florida.  Back and forth they moved, kicking their knees high with the former 100-meter world record holder.

Most of the youngsters working with Montgomery don't remember when he was the fastest man on the planet.  They've seen his Olympic medals, but most had to Google his name to learn about the sprinter's glory days.  In doing so, they also learned about his troubled past, a dark period of failure covering nearly a decade of his life.

Topping the search results were not the chronicles of his 1996 silver medal in Atlanta or his 2000 gold medal in Sydney.  Nor was it the 2002 tale of him setting the world record of 9.78 seconds in Paris.  Leading the Google headlines were captions that would make most men bury their head in shame, sending them away in humiliation, never to be heard from again.

At the age of 27, Tim Montgomery stood at the summit of human achievement.  He pretty much had it all.  He was dating one of the world's most famous women, was known as the fastest man in the world, and had enough money that if invested properly, could last a lifetime.  The success and status led to choices that would cost him dearly.  Enmeshed in a self-indulgent lifestyle fueled by the high-living wants of materialism, vanity, and pleasure seeking, Montgomery soon discovered that all the decadence could not fulfill his desires.  Within five years of setting the world record, he tumbled from the pinnacle of success, and most of everything he had acquired was gone.

First went his track career.  He was banned for two years from the sport that had brought him wealth and fame, for using performance-enhancing drugs.  After receiving the ban, he vacated results from March 2001 on, including the world record.  When he stopped running, he tried to find other ways to make money.  He involved himself with former friends from the track community, and soon found himself caught up in a $1.7 million dollar check-writing scheme.  In 2007, he pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and two counts of bank fraud.  He was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison.

While he fought the fraud case in New York, he was arrested in Virginia for dealing heroin, in another attempt to make money fast.  Again, he pled guilty and was sentenced to another five years in federal prison.  Six years after he set the world record, Montgomery faced spending the next decade in prison, becoming just another tragic story of a gifted man who threw his life away on worldly pursuits that could never satisfy.  Bearing the brunt and suffering the greatest fallout of his reckless and selfish choices, were his two youngest children, ages five and seven at the time.

Montgomery entered federal prison on April 6, 2008.  Two Olympics came and went while he was incarcerated.  During those prime years, that period in one's lifespan that God designed to be productive, a time to grow and strengthen the bonds of family and career, Tim Montgomery languished behind a fence, filled with regret and pain for the choices he had made.  Although he had accepted responsibility for the acts that had removed him from the world and the people he loved, the years away gave him time to scrutinize those poor decisions and resolve himself to change.  And soon, in that harsh environment, a notable story of redemption was born.

Seeing the disappointment and pain he had caused his family, Tim sought to make the years of incarceration a turning point.  In prison, for the first time in his life, he read voraciously.  He went through the Bible multiple times, enabling the work of transformation to take place.  And the resulting change was astonishing, working its way inside out, reaching distant wastelands of Tim's life.

The Word of God is not mere print gracing thousands of pages.  It's something living and alive, a sword of alteration.  Like a surgeon's scalpel slicing through tissue to remove cancerous tumors, God's Word does the same to a person's life.  Language fails to explain exactly how this miraculous process works.  Similar to the way God spoke the world into existence, creating something spectacular from a void of nothingness, the Word of God does the same to an individual's spirit.  When one engages its pages, something divine is unleashed in the invisible world, undetectable to the naked eye.

More emotionally than intellectually, we sometimes feel as though God has no interest in our lives, that He's unconcerned about our travails and plight.  When we stumble down paths of sorrow, failure, or disappointment, our spirits are wounded, which can easily lead to an avoidance of the Word.  Such negligence births disconnection, a hollow void.  Our spirit is vulnerable, left wanting, yearning for purpose, and meaning.  The emptiness coerces our hearts to consider behavior and actions that once seemed inconceivable.

The path of success can do the same.  Success is a lousy teacher.  It can cause God-fearing individuals to think they're invincible, that they don't need the Word, seducing smart people into believing they will never fail.  This is what happened to Tim Montgomery, and in many ways, to me as well.

Before my personal failure, I walked in close relationship with God.  My heart burned with passion for the things of God.  But slowly, over time, I started to neglect the Word, reaching a point where I did not read it for years.  Aberrant behavior soon followed, costing me everything I held dear.

Perhaps you're reading these words and can relate.  You once experienced the presence of God.  You walked in close communion with God.  You can remember when your heart exploded with a measure of life that was otherworldly.  Everything was fresh, alive, and promising.  You held high hopes for your life; your future appeared bright.  Now your spirit languishes in a wilderness of dissatisfaction.  You feel lost, alone, hollow, empty.  Internally, you long for the promises you believe God once spoke to your heart.  You just know they're out there somewhere in the void, waiting to reunite with your heart.  But you don't know how to get there, how to find them.  You have no strength to believe, no faith to receive what God has promised you.  You don't want much from God, just a measure of reprieve, some sense that what you once felt and believed is true, that God's promises remain in spite of what you've done or how you've failed, and notwithstanding what someone else has done to you.

At his lowest point, Tim Montgomery began to delve into God's Word.  There, he found words that exposed his hopeless dilemma with brilliant light.  Those words were not dead, nor were they coded.  They were alive, living words that interpreted his life and situation.  When he opened the Word, he encountered more than wise sayings; he encountered a Person - a living God, holding conversation.  And when Tim chose to listen to His words, to follow them, to bury them in his heart, the miraculous unfolded in his life.

During Tim's prison years, the Word began to transform him.  It struck the distant wastelands of his past, digging up promises from that past.  Returning from the land of the dead were lost and buried dreams.  At the most improbable time, the mother of Tim's oldest child reentered his life.  God had burdened Jamalee's heart for the man she once loved, while he was locked up.  "I just knew the heart of this man, who he was inside.  He was not the man who had made the horrible public mistakes.  He was a good man, misguided; a man with so much potential to do good."

Jamalee was determined to help Tim become the man God had designed him to be.  She committed herself to that task.  A year and a half later, Jamalee and Tim were married at the prison, as God's plan of redemption pushed forward.  Ten years after they first met, Tim was finally becoming the family man Jamalee had always known he could be.

Next on God's road of redemption came the reduction of Tim's cumulative prison sentence of 106 months.  Forty-nine months after entering prison, Tim was released.  Again, the Word worked in mysterious ways, causing the unthinkable to unfold, as Tim walked out of prison a free man four years ahead of schedule.

And then came the restoration of his calling.  Ultimately, every person has a call on his or her life.  God births desires in every heart.  He imparts gifts and talents.  The coupling of those talents with our desires formulates into some sense of calling, something we feel inspired to do with our lives.  Often, when we fail to fulfill our calling, we feel disjointed, and experience discontentment.  Life becomes blasé, barren, if you will.  When we engage our calling, pursue that sense of purpose with passion, we are happier and more content.

In prison, Tim ingrained himself in the Word, and the hunger for his calling returned.  His world-class athletic ability was not a gift or talent to be wasted.  It was to be used to help others.  So, he started right there, in the wilderness, training other inmates, working with them on the weight pile, designing custom programs to help better their lives.  He created diet and fitness plans for the guards.  And as he spent the hours in prison pursuing his calling, God birthed a business idea to further that calling upon release - NUMA Speed.

NUMA stands for Never Underestimate My Ability.  The company focuses on coaching athletes across all ages and disciplines.  The confidence Tim lacked in himself to break the world record without performance-enhancing drugs is what he tries to instill in each athlete he coaches.  After less than a year, he has eighty clients.

To those closest to Tim Montgomery, the change in his personhood is obvious.  The rock-star lifestyle is gone.  His disgraceful fall and prison experience have brought him closer to his family.  The Montgomery whom Jamalee knew previously, would have preferred to go out partying.  Now he opts to take his kids to Starbucks or visit the father of a client in the hospital.  "There's nothing else I want," he says.  "I had everything else - fast cars, money, clothes, jewelry, traveled the world.  And I still ended up at the bottom."

At the core of God's heart lies redemption.  Stories similar to Tim Montgomery's tale of redemption fill the Bible's pages.  God's ultimate act, the death and resurrection of His Son, was one of redemption – not only a redemptive act to secure one's eternity, but also an act to redeem one's life from the tentacles of failure, setback, and disappointment.  Never underestimate what God can do.  No failure is too great and no problem too big.  According to God's spoken Word, nothing in your life is irredeemable.  Embrace His promises and watch the powerful work of redemption unfold in your world.

Arab Portraits

Arab Portraits

In 1991, I spent several days in Beirut, Lebanon. It was ill advised for American citizens to set foot in the war-ravished nation at the time, and illegal to do so from the standpoint of the American government. The illegality was partially a result of numerous acts of terror inflicted on American personnel in the mid-eighties, particularly the Embassy bombing that killed 63 and the Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 American soldiers. The latter caused the Reagan administration to withdraw all U.S. forces from Lebanon.

During my days in Beirut, I encountered a city and people that undermined depictions portrayed in the Western media. When I journeyed beyond the bombed out city into greater Lebanon, I experienced the same. But for a few billboards flashing anti-American sentiment, the supposed hatred of Americans was unseen in the areas of the country in which I traveled. No one was burning American flags or chanting "death to America." I never once heard the term "The Great Satan" in reference to me as an American or the United States in general.

On one trek, I crossed the mountains of Lebanon and entered the Bekaa Valley, traveling as far north as the city of Baalbek, a known Hezbollah stronghold. Though I attracted cross looks and drew curious stares, never once was I threatened or made to feel unwelcome by the general populace. Most of what I encountered contradicted the images being transmitted across Western airwaves, depicting an illiterate people blinded by hatred and powered by religious fanaticism. In fact, once I chose to look beneath the muddled exterior and beyond prejudice, I stumbled upon portraits of life that undermined the media's representation of the Arab people as a whole.

With my arrival in Beirut, I was consciously aware that certain hostile viewpoints did exist, and those beliefs could activate at anytime during my stay in Lebanon. Attentively, I took in my surroundings when I'd venture out to experience the Lebanese culture, feeling some urgency to safeguard myself from potential danger that might be lurking in the shadows. In hindsight, I recognize such caution was more a result of flawed preconceptions created by the nonsensical rhetoric of the Western media, forming some images in my mind of the Arab world that were anything but true.

Throughout my time in Lebanon, I met no one who openly spoke hostile words in my presence. Though I found myself in one chilling situation where the stakes were high, it was an isolated incident, materializing as a result of my ignorant curiosity, and not because someone targeted my nationality or ethnicity.

While in Lebanon, militant Islamic groups were still holding U.S. citizens as hostages. This included the journalist Terry Anderson whom I've written about previously. His seven-year ordeal in Lebanon was both a riveting and harrowing tale of survival. And this crisis was always at the forefront of my thoughts, further fostering my early prejudgments.

My first night in Beirut, I was greeted by a power outage, something one might expect in a country emerging from the throes of a seventeen-year civil war.  Minutes later, an explosion rocked the city. My sparse hotel shook violently in the wake of the blast. Once the building stabilized, I darted to the window and peered outside. In the moonlight, an ominous funnel of thick smoke mushroomed skyward. Some radical group had blown up the clock tower of the American University just down the hill from my quarters. The explosion solidified every preconceived notion I held about Beirut and the Arab world, which grew in measure the first half of the following day.

I woke up early the next morning, and soon was moving around the city. Near the university, military personnel had cordoned off the area. Of what military group, I was uncertain. Throughout Beirut, checkpoints were set up and manned by various groups brandishing weapons. Some of these factions were the official Lebanese Army, others a hodgepodge of militant Islamic groups, yet others various factions of the Christian militia.  Neighborhood bands of unaffiliated armed men also manned inspection points, as did foreign troops such as the Syrian army.  All of this was a result of wobbly peace accords set into motion and the ever-present sectarian tensions between rival Sunni and Shiite factions, along with the encroaching presence of Hezbollah (Party of God), the Shiite political movement and terrorist group backed by Iran.

By noon, I had crossed more than a half-dozen checkpoints. Initially, this was intimidating, reinforcing my preconceptions of the Arab world. But by midday, I had grown accustomed to the blockades and was able to occupy myself with the task of uncovering Beirut. And what I discovered was enlightening.

On the surface, I found chaos and destruction, and a physically obliterated Beirut. Hamra Street, often labeled the Champs-Elysees of the Arab world, was anything but a romantic boulevard lined with blossom trees, outdoor cafes, and trendy shops. Every building had suffered damage. Embankments of rubble replaced the dreamy ambience of decor, eradicating most signs of life. Yet, amidst such desolation, I witnessed a stunning gesture of kindness from a woman who went out of her way to approach me, directing me away from impending trouble looming nearby. Such acts of kindness became the norm, leading me to discover a resilient and beautiful people.

At dusk, I stood on the Corniche, the famed roadway running alongside the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean. The panoramic view was spectacular, the great sea stretching endlessly west, the mountains of Lebanon jutting skyward to the east, cradling the city in an ostensive nest. As the auburn hues of the setting sun washed over the city and the last hints of pink fell from the sky, I immediately understood why Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East. Even in war, Beirut was spectacularly stunning.

Aside from Beirut's natural beauty, I found a deeper beauty in the Lebanese people. In the midst of great uncertainty, and in a time of death and loss and suffering, I found a people who defied every impression conveyed about them in the Western media. I did not find hatred or religious fanaticism; I found elevated levels of compassion, love, and kindness.

Often, certain areas of the world look like they're on fire with malevolence and hatred when you watch the news. You see isolated images of people shaking their fists, committing certain acts, and a long-lasting opinion frames itself in your subconscious. Soon your view of others, people you've never met, is skewed by prejudice. Preconceptions develop, causing judgments to be cast without ever knowing a person or a story or a place.

In my travels throughout the Middle East, I've always found the Arab people to be lively, passionate, benevolent, sympathetic, and kindhearted, similar to any other people group on this planet, and not unlike most Americans. Beyond the obvious cultural differences, lay dreams, hopes, and desires congruent with our view of the world. The great majority of Arab men and women work hard to make a better life for themselves and their families. They hope to live in peace and security, to find their lives in the folds of blessing. They love their children and grandchildren as much as you and I. At a heart level, they're no different from any Westerner.

Arab people have extended grace to me in a plethora of circumstances in more than two decades of traipsing the globe. To this day, I carry fond memories of such encounters – a cab driver in Palestine, a hotelier in Cairo, a flight attendant in Amman, a restaurant owner in Beirut.  Concerning the latter, the man’s restaurant was blown up and his livelihood destroyed, yet his disposition on life remained intact as he said, "It's okay, it's just material loss. I still have the most important treasure ... my family. I will not hate those who did this to me because if you love more, you win."

It's unfortunate that images in the media shape and mold our Western viewpoint of other people groups and in no uncertain manner, paint Middle Easterners, specifically those of Arab descent, in the darkest light, colored by extreme prejudice and bigotry. This kind of targeted discrimination has created some of the greatest atrocities and injustices by leaders and governments worldwide, including our own.

One does not need to travel far to revisit the days of Stalin or Hitler or Mao. Following the horrific events of 9/11, our own government embarked on a witch hunt, profiling and targeting Arab citizens, looking to atone for the massive breakdown and failure of our billion dollar intelligence agencies. To this day, Guantanamo houses men who've never been charged with a crime. Over half of the 166 prisoners at the detention center are unindicted. Most have been held captive for more than a decade, unable to have contact with their wives and children. Recently, certain John Grisham books were banned from the prison, rejected because "their legal content is problematic."

A Defense Department spokesman said the following when asked for explanation of the Grisham ban: "We will continue to provide them with appropriate reading materials based on what we believe is consistent with our responsibility to maintain good order and humane treatment. The detainees in our charge are humanely treated with multiple outlets for enrichment." Grisham retorted, "My knee-jerk reaction, in response to their humaneness, is to ask where does waterboarding fit in? Gitmo is a sad perversion of American justice."

I ask two deeper questions: What kind of "humaneness" and "enrichment" is found when you've separated men from their wives and children illegally? If you cannot charge a man with a crime, what's "humane" about holding him captive because of his ethnicity?

In closing, I'd like to address one last portrait of the Arab world, the chemical weapons attacks in Syria.  I can't comprehend how one can view images of innocent women and children gasping for air, dying as their respiratory systems shut down due to sarin gas, and not be resolute to do whatever it takes to prevent such further atrocities.  To dismiss these horrifying acts simply because they involve people of a foreign land is inhumane.  If the nations of the world had taken such a stance during the last century when Hitler was gassing Jews, Poles, Czechs, Slavs, Hungarians, Romanians, along with Christians, people of The Resistance, and other ethnic and religious groups, the world would look much different today. Absent intervention, the death toll of the Holocaust would have far exceeded the eleven million now known.  May we remind ourselves of a chilling truth: Neutrality pledges silent allegiance to the perpetrators of such acts.

Like Jesus Does

Music is a harmony that unites the spiritual and emotional with the physical in the human experience.  Often, in a four-minute song, we hear something we've been feeling for an extended period of time.  We hear verses we've desired to convey in spoken or written word, but have failed because we couldn't find the exact words to intelligibly communicate our sentiment.

"Like Jesus Does," is a song by Eric Church that powerfully communicates something I've wanted to say for a long time, but I couldn't quite find the appropriate words.  There's a general perception that men find it difficult to connect with their emotions and to express those emotions.  I believe this perception is somewhat misguided.  We do connect; we just bury those connections inside.  Men are not emotionless.  Next time you're on an airplane, or on some form of public transport, notice how many men are wearing ear buds or headphones.  And compare that with women.  Men are wrapped in the folds of music because song allows men to reach some safe emotional connection.  Music transports a man's feelings to the forefront of his thoughts.

Men are a complex mix of masculinity, ego, emotion, and spirituality.  Growing up, I was told by a wide range of voices, "You'll never understand a woman.  Don't even try.  It's a hopeless cause, they're much too complex."  There have certainly been experiences in my life where I've believed this was the Herculean truth of life.  Every man on this planet would probably concur.  However, I don't believe this to be true about women.  In fact, I believe the opposite.  A man can understand a woman if he desires to do so.  And "Like Jesus Does" reiterates this belief for me.  Deep in the heart of every woman sits a hope: to be loved and to be free to love with all her heart.

Contrary to popular opinion, women are not as complex as men make them out to be.  Most women desire a life partner.  A woman hopes for a faithful man who will love her, cherish her, adore her, and place her first in his life; a man who will treat her like the princess God has designed her to be; a man who will live and act like a man; a man who will give her his time, his heart, his dreams, his emotions; a man who will stand strong in her weakness, in life's storms, one who will protect and provide.

Without question, for a period of years, I failed greatly at being this kind of a man. I put the women in my life through unspeakable chaos and heartache because I was not the man God had designed me to be.  I was anything but a good husband during that time period.  I was an imposter, a fraud, a chameleon, a liar, a cheater.  I was just about everything except the man I was called to be.  Perhaps that's why "Like Jesus Does" resonates with me, why it connects emotionally.  When you've gone through the fire of failure, the crucible of change, of transformation, everything takes on a new perspective.  The world no longer looks the same, it's radically altered in every dimension of life.

Men can appear to be a series of contradictions.  If you're a woman reading this, you've no doubt experienced such contradictions in a man's life.  Many of the incongruities you've encountered are magnified larger by a man's propensity to bury his emotions – his fears and hurts and failures and hopes – making him seem emotionless.  But I can assure you that men are not emotionless.  In fact, we are deeply emotional, but we often bury our emotions inside.  The contradictions we encounter often block emotion in the context of our relationships.

As I look back, I've found contradictions in my life that stunted emotion and devastated my marriages.  For example, I have this enormous ability to undergo deep, dark trials per se, yet my spirit is easily wounded by another's words.  And in those wounds, I tend to bury my feelings, harboring unpleasant emotions.  Another contradiction: I am extremely sensitive to the greater needs of the world, the suffering of humanity, but am often insensitive to the needs of those closest to me. Such a contradiction only pushed my spouse away, injuring her spirit, making her feel less as a person.  One more: In years past, I spoke to thousands about loyalty and commitment, yet lacked integrity in my own life on these issues.  There was a great disconnect between my spoken word and personal actions.  And this contradiction only diminished my life and destroyed the trust of my wife, devaluing her in every way imaginable.  

I suspect, most of us have struggled at some point with what we want for our lives and the shortcomings we face while wrestling with personal flaws.  The contradictions.  When such contradictions are prevalent in a man's life, he has a tendency to bury the fallout internally, and in doing so, compresses emotion and lives in denial to himself.

It's such contradictions, paradoxes, that caused "Like Jesus Does" to resonate with my spirit.  The song speaks of a love that pushes through flaws, of commitment that surges through failure and overcomes.  It speaks of love the way God designed love to be – unconditional.  For me, love has been something distant, existing more in my imagination and memory than in the reality of my life, in terms of how I displayed love, how I conveyed love through personal actions.  

Seeing this deficiency, the contradictions, has caused my belief in love to develop and grow while in prison.  But the foundation of this love has shifted.  It's no longer the same self-serving, selfish love that dominated some of my life and was ever present in my marriages.  It's a love that empowers, that stretches, that looks to others first and foremost.

At heart, I am a romantic, but my romanticism has become more pragmatic.  I have a dream of love and family that nourishes me when the physical reality of its existence is barren.  In my imagined future, I see the reality of my hope reaching fulfillment through cosmic serendipity – God working in ways that extend beyond my imaginings and understanding. (Ephesians 3:20)

Love is the indestructibility of life, an experience, when true to its nature, propels us away from ourselves and toward the world and the lives of others.  Only unconditional love can remove the contradictions in people's lives.  So I write to all you brave and amazing women who stand through every storm of life and love the men in your life "Like Jesus Does."  Thank you for standing strong through the difficulty of contradictions in a man's life.

I write to the men who've been blessed to have a woman in your life who loves you "Like Jesus Does."  You have the greatest blessing you could ever ask for.  Treasure that special lady God has given you.  Adopt these magical, yet poignant words from Nelson Mandela.  Store them in your heart: "When you love a woman you don't see her faults.  The love is everything.  You don't pay attention to the things others may find wrong with her.  You just love her."

And I write to the incredible women in my life who love me "Like Jesus Does."  Mom, both my mother-in-laws, and T, T, T, and R.  Thank you for your constant support and unconditional love.  And of course, the three most beautiful girls in the world, my daughters: S, A, S.  Thank you for loving me "Like Jesus Does."

I'm a long gone Waylon song on vinyl.

I'm a back row sinner at a tent revival.

She believes in me like she believes her Bible.

She loves me like Jesus does.

I'm a left foot leaning on a souped up Chevy.

I'm a good ole boy drinkin' whiskey and rye on the levee.

But she carries me when my sins make me heavy.

She loves me like Jesus does.

All the crazy in my dreams,

Both my broken wings,

Every single piece of everything I am.

She knows the man I ain't,

She forgives me when I can't.

That devil, man, he don't stand a chance.

She loves me like Jesus does.

[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsty.com/eric-church-she-loves-me-like-jesus-does-lyrics.html ]

I always thought she'd give up on me one day.

Wash her hands of me leave me staring down some runway.

But I thank God each night and twice on Sunday

That she loves me like Jesus does.

All the crazy in my dreams,

Both my broken wings,

Every single piece of who I am.

She knows the man I ain't,

She forgives me when I can't.

That devil man, he don't have a prayer.

She loves me like Jesus does.

Yeah she knows the man I ain't.

She forgives me when I can't.

That devil, man, he don't stand a chance.

Cause she loves me like Jesus does.

I'm a long gone Waylon song on vinyl.

Love Behind Bars

I yearned for her love.

She sat there, eyes agleam with tears, phone in hand.  Nothing was said, nothing needed to be said.  I understood her pain.  It was I who gave birth to it.  Without speaking, she had spoken.  She spoke fluently.  The language of heartbreak.  Her eyes spoke of the lonely nights to come. Our child in her arms spoke of the broken home.  This was my doing.  All of it.

Tears fell from her eyes as if her spirit had erupted into a thunderstorm.  It would be years before the forecast could change. I wanted to embrace her and our angel, to protest that this storm would pass.  But no words would suffice.  She placed the phone down with a ballerina's grace and put her manicured hand to the Plexiglas.  She longed for my touch, wanted to feel the hands that had brought her pleasure, to touch the strength she had come to know.  I placed my hand on the glass in return.

We connected. 

Our kindred spirits. 

Together again.

Everything important in life rested between those two imprints. 

A lifetime of togetherness.

The good and the bad.

The family we had. 

Our love. 

Our hopes. 

Our dreams.

Our fears.

Our sorrows.

All of it, right there, in that finite space, between two hands.

She stared back through the glass, with tear-laced eyes.  She was as beautiful as the sunrise.  She was the kind of beautiful that would make an atheist believe. That was her.  So beautiful.  Inside and out.  The most beautiful woman in the world, in all of creation.  Her beauty gave me strength.  It caused me to believe.  In her.  In us.  In love.  In our family.

In that moment, I saw a new day.  I saw a new life.  I saw a miracle.  I mouthed, "I love you."  As tears streamed down my face, as tears fell from her face, as our hands were aligned in togetherness, she mouthed, "I love you too, but I can't do this."

I Am Fear

Today, I came across a thought-provoking definition of Fear.  Fear is perhaps the most crippling emotion, robbing us of both our present and future.  It steals dreams, stifles love, buries forgiveness, and quarantines hope.  Fear is the one negative emotion mentioned throughout the Bible repeatedly.  The words, "Fear not" appear in God's word 365 times; seemingly one for each day of the year.

Reflect for a moment on how fear has infiltrated your life and heart.  Ask yourself, "What am I afraid of and what does it cost me?  What has it cost me and why did I allow fear to envelop my life at certain times?"   As you do, consider this definition from an unnamed source: 

"I am Fear.  I am the menace that lurks in the paths of life, never visible to the eye but sharply felt in the heart.  I am the father of despair, the brother of procrastination, the enemy of progress, the tool of tyranny. 

Born of ignorance and nursed on misguided thought, I have darkened more hopes, stifled more ambitions, shattered more ideals and prevented more accomplishments than history could record.

Like the changing chameleon, I assume many disguises.  I masquerade as caution.  I am sometimes known as doubt or worry.  But whatever I'm called, I am still fear, the obstacle of achievement.

I know no master but one; its name is Understanding.  I have no power but what the human mind gives me, and I vanish completely when the light of Understanding reveals the facts as they really are, for I am really nothing ... I am Fear."

If we find the courage to acknowledge our fears, we take the first step to controlling those same fears.  By taking this step, we open our hearts to understanding and are able to move past our fears and press toward the higher forces in life such as love and empathy and forgiveness, those forces that unleash hope and healing and faith.

The Unexpected Path of Blessing

No matter where we are in life, no matter what injury or scars envelop us, we can find the good in the bad if we search hard enough.  Sometimes we reach a place in life where we feel a little off balance.  We lose our feeling of identity and subsequently lose our sense of uniqueness and destiny, betraying our own individuality.  Searching questions storm our spirit asking of ourselves, "Who am I?  What's my place?  Where do I fit?  Am I being true to myself, my gifts, my desires, my perceived calling?  The world can all of a sudden become a mirror replicating images that appear real but in truth are mere reflections.

Sometimes we get to a place where we must grant ourselves permission to listen; to eavesdrop on our own heart, to hear ourselves think and allow ourselves to feel.  We must pause and pay attention to what we feel, and to fit those feelings within a frame of thought and fact.  In doing so, we open up our lives to understanding that can alter perspective, aiding us to not judge a situation prematurely.  In most episodes of our lives, there are many moving parts, unseen elements working in the background.  The surface image is not always the truest image.

This time for me has allowed this to occur.  I've been able to identify issues in my past that carried separation, a detachment of some sort that deprived my life of blessing.  I saw everything clearly and saw that separation for what it was and how it impacted my life, mostly robbing me of destiny, leaving me off balance and vulnerable.  I could see where life's mirror cast an image that was anything but true.  I recognized when it wasn't my true image in the mirror; it was somebody else's.  I saw how the good and bad came, how love and loss arrived.  I saw where I made excuses and accepted things that were not true to who I am as a person.

One area of separation I saw is I had this tremendous fear of failure, though at the time I did not even recognize this detachment.  I was not going to let people down and in retrospect that mentality hurt me.  It drove me and drove me.  And this led to some of the missteps.  I explicitly connect this fear, this separation and relentless pushing of myself, to some of the choices I made, to some of the mistakes that caused my life and marriage to unravel.  Deep down, I only hoped to provide a wonderful life for my wife and three daughters and prodigious gain for my investors.  Below all the surface stuff, the visible images created, the facade of illusion and interpretation and implications of story and spin in the public eye, this was my underlying and one true motive.  And the separation, my inability to recognize the disconnect, allowed a lot of bad to infest my life, leaving me to believe blessing may never come again.

Such infractions of bad, as you can imagine or have experienced, have a tendency to cloud perspective on how the wave of blessing unfurls in our lives.  Surprisingly, the way we normally perceive blessing is quite contrary to how blessing arrives.  Routinely a pattern forms in our mind that says, "This good thing leads to this good thing and that good thing leads to blessing."  Though such a process is true, it's not always the norm nor as frequent as we might expect.  As I've studied Scripture and chased the path of blessing through the lives of various characters filling the Bible's pages, I find a pattern contradicting our common perception of how blessing arrives.  Recurrently I find "this bad thing leads to this bad thing and that bad thing leads to this good thing--blessing."

I revisited the story of Joseph and found this divergent pattern of blessing dominating his life and story.  The bad (his brothers' jealousy) led to a bad thing (Joseph thrown in a pit and left to die) led to another bad thing (Joseph sold into slavery) and that bad thing led to an unimaginable blessing of Joseph finding favor and being made the viceroy of a very wealthy and prominent man in Egypt.  Later in his life the same pattern of blessing reappears: a proper act of rejecting the advances of his boss's wife led to a bad thing (Joseph thrown in prison) led to another bad thing (Joseph forgotten in prison) led to an astonishing blessing of Joseph rediscovering his gifts and becoming Prime Minister of Egypt.  Ultimately this blessing led to the rescue of the very people who betrayed Joseph--his brothers--and this led to his entire family being saved from financial ruin and possible death.

The outcome of blessing in Joseph's life was something he could not foresee when he was in the throes of trouble and hardship.  When only bad surrounded him, it must have been difficult for him to consider, let alone comprehend, that he was on the path to blessing.  If anything, he must have believed the opposite.  But in spite of that separation, the detachment from truth, Joseph discovered a key.  And that key unlocked the door of blessing in his life: Joseph embraced his state of affairs and did not dismiss or waste the years when the bad enveloped him.  He embraced his circumstance and never allowed actions or choices, be it his own or those of another, to destroy him.  He could have allowed the bad years to make him bitter and negative.  But he chose the opposite.  He was determined to trust God by continuing to do his best, to give his all, and to be productive amidst the chaos encumbering his life.

By embracing where we are, we permit God to fight our battles when we are powerless to do so ourselves.  At the same time, we unlock the door of blessing, enabling good to come from the carnage and wreckage the bad has brought.  Don't shortchange or dismiss the bad in your life because inevitably something good comes from it, and sometimes, the greatest blessing flows from something we never imagined could lead to blessing.

One of the greatest writers in history, Fyodor Dostoevsky experienced this pattern of blessing.  Early in his life the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas I, sentenced him to 10 years in prison.  Prison became a crucible of religious faith for him as he pored over the New Testament.  He described a process in which the blunt reality of human evil convinced him of the need for redemption.  Then through the living witness of believers in prison, he saw the possibility of transformation.  And this led to his conversion and subsequent search to extract meaning from the horrendous experience of life in a Siberian prison camp.  Eventually the bad engulfing his life led to an unbelievable blessing: Dostoevsky discovered his gift for writing and this led to the authoring of Crimes and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, arguably the two greatest novels in history.

In a similar way I've experienced this same pattern of blessing.  Nearly a year ago a friend approached me with a novel he was writing, asking for my critique and opinion.  Reading the text, I immediately recognized the potential of a fascinating story that could reach publication.  I also saw the need to tighten the writing with tension and suspense.  So I agreed to help and this began my foray into the world of fiction writing.  A year later, a 600 page novel is now complete, undergoing the next phase of the publishing process.  This effort of assisting with the writing of a novel not only reignited my love for writing, it also fanned the flame of fiction writing in my heart which has led to an unforeseen blessing in my life.

In the beginning I was very tepid about my ability to write fiction.  Honestly, I didn't believe I possessed the skill set to perform such a task.  But the effort of aiding another coupled with the relentless pursuit of developing this skill in my life has resulted in an unexpected blessing I never imagined could be found in this type of experience, which I can only label as bad.

I launched my expedition of writing fiction by penning a short romantic story centered in Italy involving an American man and Italian woman.  The writing brims with exotica and imagery, supporting a plot line that surges forward and pulls the reader along, culminating with a heart tugging ending in which two broken lives find wholeness, healing, and love. 

I distributed the short story to various men and women who read extensively, asking for an honest critique of the work.  As I awaited feedback, I pressed forward in outlining a suspense novel that's been on my heart to write for some time, a propulsive thriller bearing a social conscience.  The story originates in the United States and expands into Europe, fueled by a dilemma that a likeable protagonist faces, "What do you do when the only right thing to do is the wrong thing to do?"  It's a riveting tale of love and loss and power and corruption, coalescing dilemmas seen daily in today's headlines, while taking the reader on a ride through twisting plots leading to a soaring climax.

As I delved into the early stages of writing this novel, reviews came back on the short story.  I was taken aback by the comments.  All critiques were favorable, the most common reactions being "moving, gripping, heartrending, tearjerker."  More dumbfounding was the advice I received from each reviewer: "Turn this story into a full-fledged novel and screenplay; it possesses all the elements that could lead to a blockbuster book and movie."  So I've followed this advice and begun this journey.

In every bad thing we can find something good if we move forward, lay the past to rest, and press ahead with our future, doing what we can to right our wrongs and remain true to those dreams God placed in our heart.  In this context we experience blessing and we allow God to help us discover gifts we never knew we had.

We can navigate situations in which the unknown predominates and our understanding is limited.  We grow and improve through adversity.  We must learn to benefit from disorder in our lives.  Modernity has been obsessed with comfort and cosmetic stability, but by making ourselves too comfortable and attempting to eliminate volatility from our lives, we make our spirits fragile.  We miss out on blessings that come from the bad, the disorder, and the pain.  Don't accept the bad or ignore the bad.  Use it to pursue what's good.  Discover the immense blessing that's found in the bad.

Right now, I'm at a place where I dismiss negative energy, the status quo of life.  I reject the monologue a place like this tries to throw on me, the rhetoric of what others perceive prison does to one's life.  I reject advice that desires to temper me, "Don't love as hard, don't work out so hard, don't laugh so hard."  When you lose your life it grants a perspective unfound in the commonality of living.  You stop to take stock of the world around you.  I do my best to view life through a lens that recognizes, "this bad thing may have led to this bad thing and that bad thing will lead to a good thing--blessing.”  This time in my life could very well be the gift that God gave to usher in the miracle of restitution in my legal situation and one that will provide for my daughters' futures.

By pushing through my comfort zone and exhorting my spirit through the bad, I've been able to train an emotional muscle that serves me well today.  All of us on a daily basis have opportunity to move forward or backward or stay put.  Today, I know to move forward.  Always.  Life's blessings await.  And they await you as well.