Today marks 2 weeks since the storm entered our houses here in the Houston area. We’ve all been stepping through incredibly long days that never seem to end. We survived the storm, took hammers and boxcutters to everything we own that got soaked and now it’s all sitting in our front yard. It’s shocking. It’s disheartening. It’s exhausting.

But in the middle of all of this work we’ve seen the beauty of community. We have met all of these new neighbors. We have shared our storm stories with each other at the grocery store that even now still hasn’t really been restocked the way it used to. We have hugged total strangers, cried with friends, and asked questions that won’t probably have answers this side of heaven, but we’ve all been in this commonplace of Harvey.

But…Monday is coming. Monday most of us have to go back to work. Monday most of the kids will be back in school. Monday is going to greet us with an expectation of something that we can’t offer… “normal”.

There are really 3 types of people who are going to face Monday:

1. Partial PTSD sufferers who are still displaced along with their family by the flood that came into their house. We still cringe at the words “flood warning” and probably can’t watch the news coverage from Irma.
2. Those who didn’t flood, but since the day the water receded have worked sun up to sun down tirelessly helping people. You have been in more homes than you can count. You have ripped out more sheetrock, done more laundry, made more meals, than you can fathom and you are emotionally, physically and likely spiritually exhausted.
3. The people who didn’t flood, don’t live on a street that did, and their commute probably doesn’t take them by places that did. In their mind, it’s still just a news story that is located very close to home.

Well guess what? When you put all of those people into Monday and expect normal, it isn’t going to naturally work. All three have minds that are in completely different places. So what are we gonna do? How is it going to work for the next week, month, 6 months?

“Give Grace”

What does that mean? Respond to the tension…the right way. We give grace. Before anything comes out of our mouth we actually put ourselves in the other person’s shoes.

“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” — Atticus Finch “To Kill a Mockingbird”

That quote has always stuck with me. What a great framework for our reaction.

Next time your food takes too long because things are busier than normal at Whataburger, remember the town is full of more people because the town is in rebuilding mode. give grace

Inevitably things are going to fall through the cracks at work on deadlines, vision, goals. Chances are everyone deep down is going to feel like they are the ones going the extra mile, and on some level assume everyone IS going the extra mile, it just might not be able to be at work right now. It might be in the shell of their house, filling out the paperwork to get assistance, giving that last ounce of effort to help their neighbor’s place. If you didn’t flood maybe your job for the foreseeable future is going to be that slack. give grace.

When you see on social media that someone’s rebuild seems to be going perfectly or much more quickly than yours. give grace

You see someone you donated to out at the movies and wonder what they spent your money on. Realize they did need it. Assume you don’t know all their inner workings but they did need a night out to escape. give grace

The skin is going to grow back over the wound but the scar will still be there. The only thing we can do is give grace, give grace, give grace.

We can give grace because we’ve been graced.

This stage of this storm is going to be the longest. Let’s keep being that true picture of the church, even when the hype is gone and the news crews are on to the next thing. Whomever of that crowd you are, have your eyes open to others.

give grace.

About 2am Sunday morning my wife and I realized that this water wasn’t going to stop coming up. We’d living in our house about 10 years and never once had anything like this even come close. It was hard to believe.

We spent the next 4 hours while our 7 kids slept upstairs oblivious to this coming danger, moving everything we could upstairs. About 5:30 I told Glenna she may as well go to bed and that I would stay up and keep an eye on the water.

There was this quiet moment now. The family asleep. The rain pouring outside. The water rising toward everything we had built in this house over the past decade. I didn’t have anything else to do but just sit there. I parked myself just inside our front door with my Star Wars beach towel and I just waited. I could start to hear the water lapping up against the front door. It was a feeling 1000s of people have had this week, and that feel is called “powerless”.

So then it began. from 6am-7am God and I wrestled. “Hey God…I really need You to turn this water around. I’m awre you are watching and last time I check I was Your kid and as my good Father I’m sure that You don’t want my stuff to get messed up or my family to be in danger and displaced, so in Your infinite wisdom please stop this water.”

Man what feels wrong about that? Well in the moment for me NOTHING! but it’s completely like my 5 year old looking at me and saying “Dad, I know you are smarter than me but here’s what you are going to do because it’s what I want.” HA! I can promise you what type of laughing response they would get.

I would like to say that I realized right then I was out of line but I’m a desperate man at this point so I spend the next hour pleading with God

“God think of all of the good things I can do if I don’t get flooded! I can help all of my neighbors, donate my time, my clothes, my money. God, just wait and see, I’m going to be Your champion!” The water still rising. —

This went on for the whole hour. As the tide of my hope of staying dry was waining, the current of my faith was rising. If faith is believing in what you cannot see then I was about to be thrust into faith because I could not see how this was good.

7am on the dot, I pressed on my floorboard by the door and water bubbled up. That was it. The water was here. I took a deep breath, stood up, and began to wake up my family.

The next several hours consisted of the craziness of getting 7 children and the family dog rescued by canoe along with our neighbors, then days of rain.

Here on the other side of it, who knew best? Me or God? What has he done that’s worth all of this trouble? Being the victim myself let me see the power of the church and of neighbors moving. Today will be more of the same. Our street will be filled with laughter and love as we work together again to clean up. Not only our church but the Church in our town will be there alongside the city and continue to make this a new day for Friendswood.

Then there’s this video I made. I was retrieving some supplies after the worst night of the storm and I wanted to reassure Rylor that his piano was going to be ok. I sat down and began to play whatever was coming to me just for about a minute. It was the first time that I had sat down and taken a second. It all really hit me for the first time in that moment. This was all unavoidable and we would make it thorugh.

Later that day our pastor Bruce Wesley, who was stuck in Boise, shared somethings on Facebook Live reminding us that this is the time for the church to rise up. He reminded us that Romans 8 tells us that we will encounter suffering but God is present and He will do something with this for His glory and our good.

That message coupled with this video of me sitting at my piano playing in 2 feet of water has resonated with people. It has done for them what it did for me. People have found in hope this image. It has been speaking to now over a million people all over the world. Seriously WHAT THE HECK!

Now hear me, the world news cycle is fast spinning merry-go-round and I will be flung from it momentarily, and I’m fine with that, but I look back at my prayer from 6am-7am and I feel foolish. Who was I to try and tell God His plan. For all that He has done with this and all He is going to do, it is so worth putting down new floors, building new walls, living out of a suitcase for a while. Thank you God, that in Your infinite wisdom You have allowed me to be a tiny part of what you are doing! Soak up that glory, it is Yours.

If you are looking to give to a relief effort, our church’s website www.clearcreekrelief.org is a trusted and reputable place. Even today dozens of work crews will be hitting the streets to help our area.

Play your part, say yes to God, love your neighbor.

Life is such maintenance.

Maintenance is the antithesis of innovation and growth.

There is a certain inescapable amount of maintenance that must be or otherwise things breakdown but as soon as you start only looking backwards then you stop moving forward. It can happen at any age and at any time, and you may or may not be able to turn back around.

It makes me think about Astroworld. If you weren’t born and raised in the Houston area then you may not know what Astroworld was, but it was a killer theme park.

Everything has a “hay-day” and I remember Astroworld’s very clearly. When I was a kid that place was pure magic. There were areas very defined by their unique themes and the rides were so fresh and exciting. You would walk from place to place and really feel transported through time and space. Every new season at the park was some new show, new ride, new idea. Every year that I got a season pass I knew it didn’t matter what it cost, I was the one coming out ahead.

I don’t have a crystal ball so I can’t tell you exactly what happened to turn the corner but it’s the same story everywhere, something made them turn around and look backward. Maybe it was the cost of operating the place, maybe they overextended themselves, maybe it was bad management, I don’t really know but at some point they turned back.

A new season at the park just meant the same old promotions, a new coat of paint on the Texas Cyclone, and higher refreshment prices. Eventually there were no themed areas, it was just a jumble of incoherent marketing attempts to keep their collective head above water. The wonder was gone. The crowds dwindled and now the magic of my childhood that felt like something you’d find going through wardrobe is just a grassy field.

It didn’t go from land if wonder to grassy field overnite and neither will all of our dreams and ambitions. It will happen when you spend a whole week binge-watching a show on Netflix instead of reading. It will happen when you decide to just listen to that same album you already heard instead of hearing a new band. It will happen when you opt for eating alone with your headphones on instead of with someone new. It will happen when you finally believe that you are too busy for anything more. It will happen when you decide it’s someone else’s turn to contribute.

All in all it will happen…IF.

What you do with IF is all that matters.

So I was really tempted to leave this with that last line, but a little bit of real talk to give you a few first steps that have piled on me through trial and error is better.

1. Check under your hood: a little self exploration might help you understand some stuff. This might sound dumb but take a reputable personality test. Maybe you are trying to be your best friend from your childhood still and you need to be you.
2. Drag out your demons: write down your biggest roadblocks. Is it an addiction? Is it some bad habit? Is it a toxic relationship? Is it your own ignorance?
3. Get off your phone and grab a pen: Now I do realize the irony that I’m even writing this blog on my phone, but follow my deeper meaning. Make your lists in pen. Make yourself write things down and then scratch them out, carry them around, see them in your own terrible or beautiful handwriting. How you write something is sometimes just as important as what you write.
4. Connect both worlds: I started off saying maintenance was the antithesis of innovation and while I stand by that it is impossible to skip maintenance. Give it its place. Make your maintenance list. Schedule it out. Be disciplined most with it for the express purpose of owning it instead of it owning you. I gotta digress on this a little because I want everyone to see themselves in this a little. When my maintenance isn’t put in its place I will put it off so that I can try to spend time doing things creatively. What always ends up happening is creativity gets interrupted or short-changed because something I hadn’t handled when I could have suddenly is on fire. Name it, plan it, get it out of the way!
5. Do: start something, finish something, find people who will want to see what you finish, be a fan of someone else who needs to finish something. Enjoy what “forward” has to offer and never look back!

I think that people assume that since I have 7 kids that I must be a great dad.

Having a lot of kids does not make you a great dad. Just like throwing a bunch of pitches doesn’t make you a great pitcher, it’s the accuracy that matters, it’s how well a pitcher can hit the corners, hide his grip, get the batter off balance.

Being a great dad is about consistency and accuracy.

So for this Father’s Day I’m trying something new. I feel like a lot of my game is surviving and I want to be completely intentional.

Here’s my experiment for this year. This really springs from two things:

1. My desire to be a better dad
2. I know myself!

What I want for Father’s Day is to have my kids write down a wishlist for me. I mean, think about it…if we, as dads, are supposed to pattern our lives as a picture of God the Father for our kids and we are supposed to tell God the desires of our heart, then why wouldn’t I just simply ask my kids (and my wife) what they want out of me?

It might sound dumb to ask a 5 year olds what they want out of me but if they both come back with “play Candyland everyday” then I know that they not only want quality time with me but they want it to be intimate and fun.

If my older kids say “buy me a bunch of fidget spinners” it means they want me to take a legit interest in what they love no matter how asinine I think it is. (And they just want more fidget spinners)

I’m sure I’ll have to really change a lot of my priorities but in the end I want to be a great dad, a dad worthy of a having a day. I think the best gift they can give me is helping me be a gift to them.

****But I DO also love the socks they gave me!***

You have no idea how much you are to me.

You again tonite came sleepily wandering to our bed because you know it’s a safe place.

I laid here awake most of the night just thinking about you, your future. I can’t control it. I don’t get to play you like a marionette, lifting you over the potholes and pitfalls along the way. That’s just not reality even if I wish it was.

When I think about you growing up I have hope and I have fear but mostly I just want to say I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for the world you have to face.

I’m sorry that outside the door is a world that is fighting to destroy your innocence as fast as possible. I’m sorry that a world riddled with blurred sexuality is taking down future men of God at a shocking and increasing pace. I’m sorry that how you are told by media to view your body is way more important than the view of the contents of your heart. I’m sorry you, as a beautiful young girl, can’t ride your bike around your small town freely without fear. I’m just sorry for those things.

It is unlikely that I will ever be able to change those things. It’s also impossible for me to keep you all wrapped up in your box fresh from the store. Forgive me for the coming times when I will try anyway. I am going to make mistakes as a father but I am going to live to inspire you in the real passions of your heart. I will throw logs on the fires that burn in your eyes. I will fight to my end to see you succeed with every opportunity to become the woman of God that He has called you to be. I will forever love your mom sacrificially and honestly in hopes that you find that diamond in the rough that has kept his heart from evil that will love you that way too.

What sucks is there are no guarantees. To be perfectly honest straight roads turn out to be quite boring in the end. My hope and prayer is that while you live under this roof I can teach you to face the winding road, to hug the turns and turn into the skids.

In the end the thing that will never change is I’ll be your dad who will always love you. The sun is coming up so let’s take on another day. I love you.

Love, Dad

When you are a kid every swimming pool is only half its actual size because one half was the always the ominous deep end. You weren’t quite sure what all it meant but mom said don’t go over there and the water looked a little darker so you just stayed in the shallows.

We grow up and realize we all have a shallow end and a deep end too.

Almost everyone’s deep water spots in their life are different so it isn’t the easiest thing to want to go there. You know how hard it is to tread water in your own deep spots, so stepping into someone else’s abyss is hard.

We are happy to stand in someone’s shallow end but really loving is getting beyond where you can touch, where it costs you energy, where it gets dangerous to be there too long, not just in little stuff but the big things that really make someone tick, in the deep where the light isn’t so bright and people can hide stuff that you might not be able to see, that can get wrapped around your legs.

But it’s worth it

Otherwise just like only knowing half of the pool as a kid you will go your whole life only half knowing people, half understanding, jumping from one expendable friendship to the next, skimming along the surface.

I’m a 100% extrovert, and for most of my life I thought there were only two kinds of people, extroverts and people who hadn’t evolved into extroverts yet. Now after having lived more life with some incredible and very introverted people I have realized the err of my ways.

One aspect of living as an extrovert turned up to 11 all the time is that you can tend to live life so fast that you speed across the surface of every person you know. You are generally liked by everyone and you generally never have anything bad to say about anyone because a decade goes by and you realize you don’t really know anyone.

Half Knowing is Half Growing

Getting in deep with people is definitely for them BUT there is an undeniable truth that the pieces of you that get tangled up in their deep grow because they learn to fight, to cry, to listen, to think. My wife and I have walked with friends thru loss of kids, loss of love, addiction, aimlessness and it has shown me my blind spots, put up a big light on my own dark deep that I hadn’t been honest about.

I can say that I have survived my deep (thus far) because I have been in deep.

I may never completely heal from being a total extrovert but I do realize that life would be much easier to live within our pretty social media posts and our passing waves on the way to baseball practice but there’s more in the deep and real life lives there.

“I Can Rise and I Can Shine But I Can’t Do Both at the Same Time” — How To Survive Mornings As An Adult

I had to stop by the mall the other day and I saw a t-shirt in a store with those words “I Can Rise and I Can Shine But I Can’t Do Both At The Same Time” and I had to buy it for my wife because truer words have never been spoken for her.

I remember when we first got married we both loved to sleep in till that last possible second. I remember with that first snooze of the alarm it’s almost like you can see a list of things you have to do when you get up but before you leave the house. On snooze five when you finally mentally cross off your shower that’s when you have truly crossed the line back to some existence you had in college when you got stuck signing up for all 8:00 classes.

Then kids came along and the great divide happened…one of us was going to have to become the worst thing, a “morning person”.

I wish it had looked like an interrogation room with two men in suits sitting next to us with stacks of evidence for each side to make their argument on why either of us should get out of this responsibility but it didn’t happen that way. I think I ended up just being the one genetically predisposed to pull of the feat.

I have yet to perfect being a morning person because to do so you have to put to death being a “night owl” and that’s mine and Glenna’s only time to actually hang out as a couple, so I pull a little double duty.

But a couple of things I’ve learned for those of you who are teetering on the edge of becoming a morning person or who find yourself in the precarious position of being forced into it.

1. First Man Up Gets to Drive

The first person to put feet on the ground gets to set the tone for the home. Maybe you put on music, maybe you start the coffee and let the aroma fill the house, maybe you actually get things left out the night before put away so that no one feels a sense of chaos when they enter the family arena.

2. You Are On Offense

You know how disorienting it is when you are woken up by something in the middle of the night? You almost feel like you kick into fight or flight! I realized I was starting my days like that everyday because I was being woken up in the morning by a kid jumping off the top rope dropping a pile driver onto my undefended manhood, which you can imagine is a terrible start to the day. It would begin my 14 hour skid into being a terrible father for the day.

When I get myself up first, read, watch the dog chase the squirrels in the back yard, drink a cup of coffee, preheat the oven, then I am in control of how I begin. God can speak peace into me and our home.

3. Modeling Responsibility

Man that almost hurts to even type, but as a parent EVERYTHING is modeling. Every response to every situation is informing our 7 little people on how “adults” are supposed to act. How that plays out every morning for me is to begin the day with a level head, prayed up, caffeinated (ha!), ready to receive.

4. Serve

For me a big part of that is serving my wife by giving her that morning to sleep in. I used to look at it as doing her a favor, but in reality I am going to get into my car and drive to a job I love, do work around people I enjoy (who are adults…mostly) and put my heart into things that I am passionate about.

Glenna is doing all the same things minus one detail…the adults part. If her day can begin with an extra hour of sleep, followed by the light aroma of a hot cup of coffee by her bedside and 7 fed and clothed children then I have left her only one exit from bed which is getting up on the right side.

All in all that’s how it works best for us. Not everyday is like that. Some days I am a total disaster, I still snooze the alarm, I still skip my shower, I lose my temper right off the bat, but I’m glad that’s the exception and not the rule…now I guess I need to stop blogging and go get the oven going.

I got up way before dawn yesterday to get preparations finished up for a sunrise Easter service. As I was pulling into Starbucks I wanted to get my mind and heart in the right space for the day. I opened YouTube and pulled up a video from the Jesus Storybook Bible (which is incredible btw) about Resurrection Morning. To skip ahead a little it outlines the interaction between Jesus and Mary and then it starts to talk about her running back to tell the others that HE IS ALIVE!

This is where maybe this hit me differently for the first time in all the years I have heard this story because it reminded me of another person I had seen run just a couple of days before. We spend Good Friday down at the beach with some friends of ours every year. It is always an awesome day. The kids all play in the sand, skin board, boogie board, throw the football around, it’s truly the most relaxing time. There are tons of people just enjoying the day.

That all changed in an instant. About 50 yards down the beach we start seeing this frantic activity. People start motioning for help and that’s when we hear the news that strikes fear into EVERY parents’ being “there’s a little girl missing. Her mom can’t find her anywhere”

The whole beach, strangers and family alike begin to scramble. We all begin the pray. I went running barefoot into the neighborhood by the beach hoping I would see a brown ponytail and a rainbow one-piece skipping thru someone’s yard unaware of her having wandered away…I didn’t.

After making the loop I began to run back to the beach. Thru the dunes I see the mom of the girl to my far left and then to my far right I see a teenager walking the little girl her way. She had been found!!!

That run I saw in the mom, THAT was Mary’s run from the tomb that Sunday morning.

I had always seen Mary’s run as a happy skip of glee like a scene from Godspell, but that’s a ridiculous notion to me now. That wasn’t it at all. It was total relief and joy. It was that feeling when you almost got in a car wreck but missed it by a split second.

When that mom finally got to her daughter it was as if her whole world got readjusted. She couldn’t stop sobbing but also smiling. What she already had when she had come to the beach that day had been returned to her. What Mary had just days before had been returned to her.

I wanna run like that. I wanna to feel that readjusting of my world. That can only come when I also realize what was given to me.

My wife and I have taken a break! We got in the car Monday with our entire old CD collection of 100s of albums, knocking thru our favorite tracks one after another, singing at the top of our lungs.

Houston in our rear view mirror and New Orleans shining in thru the front, we hit the Starbucks drive thru and didn’t slow down until we could smell the French Quarter.

It takes a 5 hour drive to let yourself calm down from the anxiety of hoping you got every angle covered for the 7 kids you left at home.

These moments for us are what we call our “30,000 foot view” moments. We get to talk about EVERYTHING. We get to eat food that we don’t have to cook or clean up after. We get to laugh, reminisce, dream, and what ultimately ends up happening is we figure some stuff out. Glenna and I have been together for 20 years and married for 15 of those, you can’t live everyday with life looking like some type of dreamer hipster Levis commercial, but there is such value in the escape. God ALWAYS uses that time to fill our hearts for each other and our family, empty a little of our bank account, and fill up our stomachs in a new way. It usually happens in some unforeseen way.

Today we were driving down Magazine Street headed back to Maison Perrier to relax before dinner. I saw a deteriorating poster on an electric box. It simply read “LIVE A GREAT STORY”

It was so simply put. It was refreshing. I can become such an over-analyzer about pretty much everything and then talk myself into a corner with an idea. Maybe, just maybe it is that simple. “Live a great story”. That’s a statement that isn’t boxed in, it’s not over-commercialized, it doesn’t require anything of me other than to move forward. Reminds me of the words from our friend Jennifer in small group this past week, “be mindful”. Experience life as it comes and live a great story.

We still have some time on this getaway, but for me I feel like already I have arrived. I have what I came for, and today I’m thankful

Every morning at my house usually begins with my realization that I am completely surrounded! If you are even remotely claustrophobic then never have kids. There will never be another moment of personal space. The population of our king size bed goes from 2 to typically about 5 or 6 by morning.

Most mornings it’s like a game of pick-up-stix where I have to unfold myself from the pile of humanity and go get the morning coffee going but from time to time I get to sit and enjoy just being surrounded.

This morning I was flanked by one of our little guys Jude on one side who has been officially a Harding for a couple of years now and then by Aliza on the other side who was adopted three months after our boys.

I laid there looking at Jude’s cast on his arm that he broke a couple of days ago just playing like a crazy man out there in our neighborhood with his buddies. The side of my face is getting tickled by Aliza’s crazy puffy blonde locks that have almost as much of a mind of their own as she does. I love it. I. absolutely. love. it.

But in that moment I was sad, not for me, definitely not for them, but for the parents that birthed these kids. This one tiny moment is a single snapshot of the thousands of moments that their birth parents will never have.

When you go through the process of adopting you get completely engulfed in your own needs and the needs of the child or children. There are a lot of days that you just feel like surviving is the goal. Then once the court part is finished then there is the whole raising the kid, integrating them into a new family, loving them unconditionally (which is learned no matter who you are).

Long before the dust has settled in the new adoptive home the birth parent life has moved on for the better or for the worse. Just statistically you can assume their life is full of challenges because otherwise they would still have their kids. Some of them face mental illness, drug abuse, physical abuse, intense poverty, but still every morning they are waking up and THEY don’t get what I got this morning. They aren’t surrounded by the touch of their little people. Regardless of whether they even wanted them in the first place, that touch from your kids, that completely different experience they bring, that joy and trial they will completely miss.

So our dust has settled. Our crazy level is still at an all-time high, but so are these moments that will last forever.

Today my heart breaks for those parents’ lives separated by choices, circumstances, and things just plain out of their control.

To honor what they couldn’t be today and forever I’m gonna love them by loving the kids they lost.