Early on I wanted to matter.<\/p>\n
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As a kid I saw adults living dud lives and swore Not Me.<\/p>\n
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And then\u2026look how I\u2019ve lived so much of it\u2026<\/p>\n
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I gave such energy trying to cheat myself towards status and reaching it I found status to be all bun and no burger.\u00a0 Lost on what to do to grow me I randomly adopted molehills and tried to grow them into mountains.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019ve stretched the rubber bands of relationships, disappointed friends, disappointed family, burned bridges, stayed when I should\u2019ve left, left when I should\u2019ve stayed, and just generally come in for a grade of Average At Best.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And all along, there my father was\u2026doing things his way\u2026<\/p>\n
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_____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____<\/p>\n
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I grew up in his little life.\u00a0 Billy Graham was filling stadiums and my dad was preaching in little country churches where the piano needed tuning, the pews were uncomfortable and the church register board listed attendance in two digits.\u00a0 He worked side jobs and farmed to support his family.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
His best sermons were to the same old faces.\u00a0 While Billy Graham had herds come to the altar call, Dad spent much of his time one-on-one, with anonymous lives, lending an ear with one foot propped on the back bumper of his pickup.<\/p>\n
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It all seemed so small to the ambitious eyes of my youth.\u00a0 I wanted to do more, get there quicker, speed it all up, and matter more.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I left for a little, then left for longer.\u00a0 On return trips I\u2019d find him The Same.\u00a0 I hate to confess that I was this dumb, but there were times when I thought his stability was a kind of defeat.\u00a0 That was before I realized how hard it is to surrender yourself to faith, how hard it is to hold yourself steady when tested high, low, right, left, front and behind.<\/p>\n
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_____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019m All Eyes now as he heads to his end.\u00a0 He\u2019s summing up his life work right now.\u00a0 I see such power in the accumulated good works of all those years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t hide in small towns.\u00a0 You reap what you sow among your neighbors.\u00a0 As my father nears his end I see the truth in their eyes, that they admire him, that they are grateful for that one-little-moment, that they\u2019re looking at something rare and thinking how the community will have a hole in the floor when my father passes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I see them look at him like I look at him, as one looking upon your Better.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lookee here, Dad, lookee here, at how you ended up Mattering\u2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
_____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He had it boiled down to pure simplicity.\u00a0 Give yourself to God fresh every day.\u00a0 Start your morning with innocence, set your eyes on His example, listen for the pregnant kicks of His spirit, do right, do more right, do the little and the little bit more, do when nobody is watching.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You put the 85 years and multiply times 365 and that\u2019s a chunk of days\u2026\u00a0 The thing that most staggers me is how he sustained the 1-2-3 of keeping his life steady for all those days\u2026\u00a0 Easy days, boring days, nothing special days, grinding days, sad days, afraid days, wolf at the door days, he took them all with the same steady plan \u2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He was put here, in a small orbit, and I don\u2019t think it ever occurred to him to wish a different orbit.\u00a0 We mattered to him, and he wished us well, and wished to help us matter.\u00a0 It seemed to keep his heart full.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
_____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After all those decades of defining myself against my father I find myself wanting now to be more like him.\u00a0 I can\u2019t undo all my lost years, anymore than I can\u2019t undo seeing my father\u2019s life reaching full harvest.\u00a0 Forgiving was easy for my father, and I could use a bit of that, to not grind my nose in the mess of all the used-to-be of my foolishness, but give myself permission to keep my soul simple, surrender my life back to the Giver and say, \u201cNow what?\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I do want my life to matter.\u00a0 Maybe, like my father\u2019s, it\u2019ll matter in the whispered tip-toes of Doing Unto Others with nary a trumpet to toot the moment\u2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
_____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one where we hope you found your sermon somewhere this Sunday.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early on I wanted to matter. As a kid I saw adults living dud lives and swore Not Me. And then\u2026look how I\u2019ve lived so much of it\u2026 I gave such energy trying to cheat myself towards status and reaching it I found status to be all bun and no burger.\u00a0 Lost [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[59,894],"yoast_head":"\n