Dispatch from the Valley of Interruption

Well hello there.

At this point, I should stop publishing statements like, “It won’t be a long wait until my next installment comes out.” I mean… what do I know? Life, the mysterious conglomeration of forces beyond my control, went, “Buahahahaha… That’s what YOU think! I will derail you from your work with a febrile illness followed by spasmodic coughing that resembles seizures. It will last for days that feel like years. Then you’ll be silly and go climbing as soon as you feel slightly better and end up pulling chest wall muscles you forgot you had. They will ache exquisitely every time you breathe in or try to sit yourself up in bed. And for longer than you would like, every time you sneeze, it will hurt so much that you’ll see stars.”

Actually, I was mostly feeling better about three weeks ago and ready to sit down in front of my computer to do my thing when I received word from my brother on June 13th that our 82-year-old dad had fallen at the end of his morning walk with my mom and sustained a traumatic brain injury. I drove from Dallas to Houston that evening and went straight to the hospital, where I spent the majority of my waking hours for the next two plus weeks. I was in Houston until this past Wednesday, a couple of days after my dad got transferred to a skilled nursing facility for extended rehab. We’re looking at a potentially long and complex recovery.

God has been doing so much work in me internally during this time, much of it relevant to what I’ve been writing about in my latest series, On (Not) Finding a Church. I’ve been wanting so badly to share these things with you all, but it’s been so hard to find time, energy, and focus to write. Our family-of-origin dynamics are incredibly complex and require me to reach down into the deepest reservoirs of my spiritual, mental, and emotional energy tanks. So, I’m not firing on all cylinders. To give you an idea of what kind of state I’m in: I left the house this morning planning to write for 3 hours. I made sure to put my two reference books and the computer charge chord in my bag, but when I got to my destination, I realized that I left my laptop at home. So I’m typing this on my phone.

I’ll write as I’m able to during this time, but I’m still going to shoot for some kind of rhythm. So it’ll probably look like shorter pieces with more regularity.