Take my advice. I’m not using it.

My faith, it is an oaken staff, o let me on it lean! Thomas Lynch

Last week’s blog was a cautionary tale about taking the time to really see people and to ask for their story. And, as often happens, in the middle of the night after posting, God whispers into my heart, “What a great growth opportunity for you as well, Char.” And the work begins.

For you see, writing the blog often sheds a light on my own inconsistencies. A shining goal sits out there somewhere on the horizon, and though I long to get there, I am often left trying to untie my knotted shoe laces or searching for my house keys, reluctant to actually commit to the journey.

On this day after posting, the growth opportunity began, as it so often does, with a long walk on the DeAnza trail near Canoa. As Tim and I completed the desert walk, replete with coyote sightings, he went ahead, as I stopped to take yet another picture of reflections on the lake. A full slate of activities awaited us at home, and as I turned to catch up with Tim, the “to to list” was forming in my head.

I saw my husband ahead of me talking to someone dressed for a nature walk, leaning on what appeared to be a walking stick. As I approached, I could hear their friendly conversation centered around our dog, who had cautiously and uncharacteristically stretched out her neck for a scratch.

I joined in the conversation and noted the beauty of the walking stick (a scrub oak I later found out), with insect trails and an unusual whorl pattern carved along its upper reaches. I could not restrain my curiosity.

“That is a beautiful walking stick. I would love to hear its story if you wouldn’t mind sharing.”

He replied in a soft, southern accent. “Ma’am, I would love to tell it to you if you have the time.”

I have all the time in the world, I said.

It was a beautiful, involved story. And it was about the stick and not about the stick. It began as a love story. And then it was a love lost story. And then it was about generational love. And then it was about how God provides small miracles to focus our vision and bring us hope. And then it was about the stick again.

It had helped him walk his daughter down the aisle, and it steadied him still.

When he finished, and after my tears had settled down, I said to him, “I am a songwriter, and I am apologizing in advance that your story may end up as a song someday.”

Ma’am, I would be honored, he said.

Before we left, he turned the strap of a bag he was carrying to show it to us. It was filled with his creative work, and he explained that he was a poet who came here often to walk around this lake.

But he was so much more than a poet to me.

He was a Divine interruption who appeared at start of my “busy”day when I was eager to be home. He was an angel who stopped time in its tracks so that a lifetime of memory could unfold before me in all its beauty and in all its struggles.

And he was a Light shining on my path to remind me of my own admonition to others to take the time to ask the questions and to listen deeply to another’s story.

Here’s the paradox. My time on this earth is but a breath in a major symphony. And even my next breath is not promised. That can create a sense of urgency to “get things done before my time is done.”

But in reality, I need to walk through this life like I have all the time in the world. Because when it comes to matters of the human heart, I do.

I have all the time in the world.

The dark shadow of happiness

The death by suicide of Stephen “tWitch” Boss has been one of the most difficult celebrity deaths for me to process. Having encountered his work and his spirit on his first season of “So You Think You Can Dance,” he seemed a beacon of talent, humility, positivity, and honor.

One encounter he had with a young dancer backstage on a subsequent season of the dance show inspired a song called, “Best Days of My Life,” and I loved telling his story anytime we performed the song in concert. I fantasized about one day being able to share that story and song with him.

But it will never be. He is gone.

In the wake of his death, people have wondered what deep, dark, painful place he must have entered to have ended his life in spite of what appeared to be everything in the world at his feet. The world who mourns talked about his joy, his smile, his ability to make everyone around him feel comfortable. They wonder what warning signs were missed.

And I say, it is all those qualities that were so admired that perhaps were the warning signs.

In my family, I was the one who answered the phone call at 2 am from the hospital where they took my dad after he was hit head on by a drunk driver. When they called to inform us of his death an hour or so later, my mom took my brother and I to her bed and we listened as she wept aloud and cried over and over, “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” My mother, the German immigrant who had not shown much emotion my whole life, who always had an answer, was at sea.

The next morning, when sitting at the table bleary eyed and shocked as a family, I remember seeing the Sunday comics and aching for the laughter that always accompanied their reading. I decided at that point that no matter how I felt, it was my job now to keep others from their tears.

Shoving my own depression under the surface of a dark sea, I honed the skill of keeping things light and fun. Over the years, especially in professional settings, whenever I tried to expose tiny pieces of depression, I was usually met with comments that denied how anyone like me could ever be depressed.

So I mastered the art of keeping my own underground river at bay so that someone else could feel more comfortable, or laugh, or feel free of some burden. I fooled pretty much everyone except my own husband Tim, who himself came from a family who probably suffered from clinical depression. Only in his presence could I be my real self, it seemed. And in the therapist’s office, which I frequented for over a decade.

You see, in our culture, depression has been confined to stereotypes. The suffering artist…the kid dressed all in black…the one on medication …the person with the long, sad face.

But I say from my own experience that the ones we need to check in on are probably precisely the ones we go to for their optimism, their caring hearts, their listening ears, and their joyful smiles. I would say that perhaps those who seem to give and give are actually signaling the depth of their own need for support.

And I would say that perhaps, some of us have clung to optimism as a life raft as we are tossed in our own internal sea.

This season, and for all the days that follow, perhaps we need to look beyond the surface of those who seem to “have it all”…whose hearts seem the most open…whose spirits seem the most joyful.

Not because those emotions are false, but because sometimes there is a deeper, darker journey there that births the qualities that are admired. And because sometimes, we need to turn our attention in their direction and simply say,

I see you. Tell me your story. All of it. Especially the dark places.

Who knows what that story for tWitch might have been. I only know mine. And that story contains chapters when the razor was at my wrist, and the tears were so overwhelming and the pain so jagged that in moments I, too, would have given up.

I weep for him today, and my heart breaks. I could have been him.

So when you hear the admonitions on social media to check in on your friends, go to the ones you are least worried about and ask the hard questions.

Because they just might be the very ones sitting by the sea trying to find reason to take another breath.

Divine encounters of a desert kind

As a hiker in the Pacific Northwest, preparing a day pack was a series of what if questions. What is if I get hungry? What if I get thirsty? What if I get lost or injured? What if I get cold or it gets dark? What if I have to spend an extra night?

And so the careful preparations began for placing supplies in my fluorescent orange day pack…not so much out of fear but out of experience. You learn to prepare for these eventualities because you have encountered them.

Now in this desert landscape, the fears are different and new questions arise. A host of new venomous creatures lurk in these desert places where javalina and coyote leave tracks on the trail, and wild cats keep company with wild turkeys.

But there is another kind of encounter happening in this desert as well. Amidst the cactus, the Palo Verde and the desert dwellers, underneath sweltering skies, encounters of the human kind are happening.

Transformative encounters.

Divine encounters.

A local pastor here goes to the desert to refill water stations for migrants, and encounters a young boy of five crossing the road in front of him. With only the clothes on his back and a small pack, this child has already completed a 3,000 mile journey with his family to escape the violence in his homeland.

At the border, his family now faces the daily violence of rape, murder, and kidnapping. So great is their fear for their son, so deep is their love, that they send him to the other side of the wall into the desert with a prayer and a phone number of a relative in the U.S. and they pray he will encounter someone in the desert who will rescue him.

He has a name. His name is Esteban.

And a man and his wife hike down a well known trail in my favorite nearby canyon. Hearing agonizing cries from the canyon below the trail, they encounter a migrant who has fallen into a creek and is near death from hypothermia. He is nearly incoherent when they find him.

They take off their warm clothing, and she cradles his head while her husband hikes down to get help for him. She prays her body warmth will keep him alive and that her words spoken in a foreign tongue bring some small measure of comfort.

He has a name. It is Javier.

Estevan. Javier. They are the named. But they are only two in a sea of the unnamed lost, the frightened, and the traumatized fellow citizens of our world who are wandering the desert seeking hope and comfort. They are seeking our humanity, and they are challenging our faith.

Yes, the preparations for hiking in the desert are different here. But so are the questions. What might I bring for someone who is hungry? How much water could I carry for someone who is thirsty? What kind of basic medical supplies might be needed for someone who is injured?

I pray for desert encounters now, and I prepare for them because I know Jesus will be there. I know that will I encounter Him in the thirsty, the hungry, the lost, and the hurting. I know that in the face of the stranger lying at the bottom of a canyon wall, the child wandering in the desert, the hope starved walking these desert paths, an encounter with the Divine is waiting.

And I don’t want to miss it.