With Hearts Overflowing

We joyfully participated in our daughter's wedding this past weekend. It was, all of it was a joy. We gave our daughter and youngest child in confidence to a young man we adore, welcoming Ben into our family with open arms.

The weekend featured reunions with many dear friends. It was also the first time in a long time my parents and my three siblings were (with most of Kaycie's cousins in tow) in the same place at the same time. We had so much fun. The wedding went off without a hitch, save the couple that got hitched, of course. (Any hitches to be had I learned of only afterward. Nothing burned up. No one lost their salvation. No animals were injured in the filming of this epic.)

But no one told me how hard it would be for me to keep my own emotions in check. My friend Russ had told me, "Giving your daughter away is a big deal." He was and is so right. There were four times when I had to try hard, really hard to keep from sobbing and making a mess of things.

When I was invited into the bridal dressing room to place the garter above Kaycie's left knee I walked in and Kaycie said, "Daddy, don't look at me." She teared up. I tried not to, and spent most of the episode looking up at the ceiling. This was the hardest. When I saw a photo someone took of that very moment a couple of days later I had a serious, overdue cry. Tears of joy tears.

I thought the walk with Kaycie down the aisle toward her husband-in-waiting would be hard. We decided to laugh instead. We showed up smiling. That walk, as it is for any bride's father will be a lifelong memory.

The third event, the one I perhaps "dreaded" the most was the daddy-daughter dance. Don't know why I was so worked up over this, but I was. But as it turned out Kaycie stepped on my toes enough times during that dance that we laughed and talked and held each other close, and it was great. But seeing Ben's mom and dad dance, and then Ben and his sister join them, and then seeing Kaycie join them all was a show-stopper. I openly wept. So did everyone else. A magical moment.

The fourth and final challenge was the father's toast. Nick the Best Man and Haley the Maid of Honor had just completed back to back serious tear-jerker toasts. I was up next, and before I could get a word out Kaycie looked at me and said, "Daddy, please be funny." I parked what I had planned to say to the newlyweds and instead went into some ridiculous commentary about how troll dolls taped to bicycle handlebars somehow related to grandchildren. (Okay, it was the first thing that came into my head, so I went with it.) Not sure if what I had to say was the least bit inspirational, but Kaycie laughed, so it was a win.

Deb and I returned to our Alaska home exhausted, emotionally spent, with hearts overflowing. And I'm glad God gives me tears of joy, and the freedom to let them flow. It's one way we can all emulate our heavenly Father.

Barbershop Musings

I went to the barbershop yesterday. I needed a trim. I arrived a few minutes early, and found myself chatting up Mindy the Barber and her two customers. Mindy is great. She loves to talk up our city, and this time with two Floridians in town with a cruise ship.

The son was in the barber chair; Dad sitting nearby. Our shared conversation started with the weather (as does every conversation around here). We then moved on to the highs (natural beauty) and lows (the price of property) of living in Juneau. And then, somehow the conversation topic moved on to the subject of marriage.

I mentioned I was soon to leave town for my daughter's wedding in California; hence the obligatory haircut. After expressing their congratulations the son in the chair asked me if this was my daughter's "starter marriage." While stifling my initial indignation I responded with a resounding "Nope." I then countered with a short treatise of my daughter's love for her future husband, and my future son-in-law's love for my daughter. (They're both immanently lovable, by the way!)

This morning I find myself musing over that conversation. Today (June 20) is our 31st wedding anniversary. (Deb and I will celebrate later, as always it seems.) Our own marriage is a picture to me of God's steadfast covenant love. (And I am well aware I married "up," out of my league.) My daughter and youngest child will become a Missus come this Saturday, and this fresh new marriage speaks to me of God's redemptive love. My own parents, who have enjoyed a 50-plus year marriage, are an incredible example to me of God's changeless love.

It will be my joy to walk my daughter down the aisle this Saturday. How I will do that while still wrapped tightly around her little finger is beyond me, since that's where I've been since the day she first showed up.

And I will praise my heavenly Father for the love He shows me in so many tangible and intangible ways. It is this same love I want other people in Juneau know first-hand as well.

North to the Sun?

I like Fairbanks. I didn't used to, but I like it now. I've been to Fairbanks two of the past four weekends,  and liked it both times.

It's ironic I've had to go to Fairbanks to see the sun. Fairbanks is only 198 miles from the Arctic Circle. But when I've left our cozy abode in the Southeast Alaska rain forest for Fairbanks their weather has allowed me, even encouraged me to ditch the socks and break out the flaps. Ironic indeed.

Fairbanks takes pride in being the "northernmost" of a lot of things. I visited the northernmost brewery in the world. The sun does not set in the summer, at all, ever. I'm surprised anyone gets any sleep. I'm surprised I got any sleep.

It takes some serious effort for its citizens to live in Fairbanks. Their utility bills alone would scare off the rest of civilized society. Churches are forced to deal with the seasons, of which Fairbanks appears to have two; people are out playing in summer, and hunkered down in winter. Neither season encourages church community.

But some of them get it, and get it well. I was hosted by Radiant Church this past weekend. These people are kind, friendly and generous. I was sent home packing moose meat, "canned" salmon, and a hunting rifle. These people are also committed to the cause of Christ. They love each other as fellow sons and daughters of the King. They passionately love their city. They are led by humble and capable elders, Caleb, Mike and Loren, and a host of other servant-leaders. They are on mission. They get it.

They also sent me home encouraged in my own church-planting endeavor. They sent me back home as a partner, a co-laborer, a fellow partaker of gospel reality.

God is present in His people, in His church, even in the far north. I can hardly wait to go back. My flaps need the exercise.

And Then There Are Days...

Church-planting (a term used by its practitioners to describe starting a new church from scratch) is usually limited to those with an entrepreneurial bent. Dropping with a proverbial parachute into a new community is either adventurous and brave, or foolhardy. Church planters are applauded by churches, if they're not in the same locale. Parachuting church planters are applauded by only other church planters.

Each church planter, me included begins his work fueled by a deep sense of God's calling and commission. Each church planter envisions a future community of Christ-followers who will be joyfully and faithfully engaged in mission. But the calling of God and the commission to plant and the vision of the future all come up against the reality of real life, real times, real people, real personal shortcomings and real challenges. There are those days, and there will be those days when the vision seems to hit a cloud bank and the entrepreneurial work seems like a slog.

As yesterday ended I realized I had run out of scheduled people to meet with. Some others apparently don't view meeting with me as a necessary priority. I had spent the day, unsuccessfully I might add, trying to find the main point in the sermon text I am to deliver this coming Sunday 600 miles away in Fairbanks. My attempt at a run in the afternoon lasted all of three laps around the high school track before my right Achilles tendon told me it was not of a mind to cooperate. Working from home always includes my executive assistant, our dog, who was acting particularly weird. In a weak moment of self-pity I asked God if He had moved us here to southeast Alaska only to leave me high and dry, a church-planting failure waiting to happen, a statistic waiting to be recorded.

I am not the first to ask this question I learned this early morning. "Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?" (Psalm 77:7-9)


The answer then, and now to me is "no." The psalm writer goes on to say that pondering God's covenant love and past works informs the present. And more often than not we are blind to the present acts of God in our midst, and in our own hearts. But our momentary blindness does not negate the activity of God.

"Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen." (Psalm 77:19)


Church planting is entrepreneurial; it requires stepping out in faith into the unknown, hoping God will intervene and do a great work. Maybe God's most dramatic and necessary present work in this endeavor is happening in my own heart, even if I don't yet see it.