One of the first things you are likely to learn about me is that I love birthdays. And not just my own birthday. I love every single person’s birthday, to the degree that I get in trouble for being overly enthusiastic with people who aren’t as into birthdays. I am borderline offensive with my love of birthdays.

My birthday is tomorrow.

I will do the usual birthday celebrating – extending my birthday for a full week, taking multiple liberties with our dining out schedule, going all Red Scare on any and all birthday present information I can dig up – and I will have a great time. How can I not? It’s a birthday. I’m going to get a Madden video game.

Nevertheless, this birthday is very different for me, and all future birthdays might be, too.

Last year, we rearranged my birthday plans so that my dad could go to football practice. No big deal … until he was diagnosed with brain cancer in November and my mom mentioned that his choosing football over my birthday should have been a sign to her that something was wrong. So knowingly or not (I guess it is knowingly since I’m writing about it now), I dated the beginning of my dad’s illness to my birthday.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of when this whole life-change started. Part of me wants to drive off into the country with a shovel and ceremoniously bury an item in a field as a way of putting this year behind me and moving on to better things. Part of me thinks that is stupid and something that would happen in an indie film. Part of me is sad. Part of me is happy. Part of me just wants to go out to dinner and open presents.

There is no right way for me to feel. I guess the feelings – whatever they tend to be from day to day and hour to hour – just strike me as new. My birthday is different this year. I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. I’ll just have to add it to my celebratory repertoire.

nonsense this well-orchestrated is a rare and precious thing.

I am so there, once “there” is “the dollar theater.”

***

From Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel:

Dr. Gary Habermas, Liberty University

Habermas rubbed his graying beard. The quick-fire cadence and debater’s edge to his voice were gone. No more quoting of scholars, no more citing of Scripture, no more building a case. I had asked about the importance of the Resurrection, and Habermas decided to take a risk by harkening back to 1995, when his wife, Debbie, slowly died of stomach cancer. Caught off guard by the tenderness of the moment, all I could do was listen.

“I sat on our porch,” he began, looking off to the side at nothing in particular. He sighed deeply, then went on. “My wife was upstairs dying. Except for a few weeks, she was home through it all. It was an awful time. This was the worst thing that could possibly happen.”

He turned and looked straight at me. “But do you know what was amazing? My students would call me – not just one but several of them – and say, ‘At a time like this, aren’t you glad about the Resurrection?’ As sober as those circumstances were, I had to smile for two reasons. First, my students were trying to cheer me up with my own teaching. And second, it worked.

“As I would sit there, I’d picture Job, who went through all that terrible stuff and asked questions of God, but then God turned the tables and asked a few questions.

“I knew if God were to come to me, I’d ask only one question: ‘Lord, why is Debbie up there in bed?’ And I think God would respond by asking gently, ‘Gary, did I raise my Son from the dead?’

“I’d say, ‘Come on, Lord, I’ve written seven books on that topic! Of course he was raised from the dead. But I want to know about Debbie!’

“I think he’d keep coming back to the same question – ‘Did I raise my Son from the dead?’ ‘Did I raise my Son from the dead?’ – until I got his point: the Resurrection says that if Jesus was raised two thousand years ago, there’s an answer to Debbie’s death in 1995. And do you know what? It worked for me while I was sitting on the porch, and it still works today.

“It was a horribly emotional time for me, but I couldn’t get around the fact that the Resurrection is the answer for her suffering. I still worried; I still wondered what I’d do raising four kids alone. But there wasn’t a time when that truth didn’t comfort me.

“Losing my wife was the most painful experience I’ve ever had to face, but if the Resurrection could get me through that, it can get me through anything. It was good for 30 A.D., it’s good for 1995, it’s good for 1998, and it’s good beyond that.”

Habermas locked eyes with mine. “That’s not some sermon,” he said quietly. “I believe that with all my heart. If there’s a resurrection, there’s a heaven. If Jesus was raised, Debbie was raised. And I will be someday, too.

“Then I’ll see them both.”

From what I can tell, Habermas’s confidence in the Resurrection gives him peace knowing that death is not the end for his wife. The story he tells is so riveting and heart-wrenching that I figured there was a deeper truth than that. Perhaps I wanted a deeper truth. But hey, life eternal isn’t that bad.

***

From The Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs

And the Bible itself? What do I think of it after my yearlong immersion?

When I started my project, Elton Richards made that majestic food analogy: He said my quest was like a banquet table, and not everyone would sit with me at my banquet table, but I have a hunger and thirst, so I deserve to nourish it. I love the way he talked. I decided that by year’s end, I would employ an extended food metaphor of my own. I think I have one now. It may not be majestic, but here goes:

There’s a phrase called “Cafeteria Christianity.” It’s a derisive term used by fundamentalist Christians to describe moderate Christians. The idea is that the moderates pick and choose the parts of the Bible they want to follow. They take a nice helping of mercy and compassion. The ban on homosexuality? They leave that on the countertop.

Fundamentalist Jews don’t use the phrase “Cafeteria Judaism,” but they have the same critique. You must follow all of the Torah, not just the parts that are palatable.

Their point is, the religious moderates are inconsistent. They’re just making the Bible conform to their own values.

The year showed me beyond a doubt that everyone practices cafeteria religion. It’s not just moderates. Fundamentalists do it, too. They can’t heap everything on their plate. Otherwise they’d kick women out of church for saying hello (1 Corinthians 14:34) and boot out men for talking about the “Tennessee Titans” (“make no mention of the names of other gods …”  – Exodus 23:13).

But the more important lesson was this: there’s nothing wrong with choosing. Cafeterias aren’t bad per se. I’ve had some great meals at cafeterias. I’ve also had some turkey tetrazzini that gave me the dry heaves for sixteen hours. The key is in choosing the right dishes. You need to pick the nurturing ones (compassion), the healthy ones (love thy neighbor), not the bitter ones. Religious leaders don’t know everything about every food, but maybe the good ones can guide you to what is fresh. They can be like a helpful lunch lady who – OK, I’ve taken the metaphor too far.

Now, this does bring up the problem of authority. Once you acknowledge that we pick and choose from the Bible, doesn’t that destroy its credibility? Doesn’t that knock the legs out from under it? Why should we put stock in any of the Bible?

“That’s the big question,” says one of my rabbis, Robbie Harris. I put the question to Robbie as well as every other member of my advisory board. There’s no simple or totally satisfying answer. But let me offer two interesting ideas from them:

The first is from the pastor out to pasture, Elton Richards. Here’s his metaphor: Try thinking of the Bible as a snapshot of something divine. It may not be a perfect picture. It may have flaws: a thumb on the lens, faded colors in the corners. But it still helps to visualize.

“I need something specific,” says Elton. “Beauty is a general thing. It’s abstract. I need to see a rose. When I see that Jesus embraced lepers, that’s a reason for me to embrace those with AIDS. If he embraced Samaritans, that’s a reason for me to fight racism.”

The second is from Robbie himself. He says we can’t insist that the Bible marks the end of our relationship with God. Who are we to say that the Bible contained all the wisdom? “If you insist that God revealed himself only at one time, at one particular place, using these discrete words, and never any time other than that – that in itself is a kind of idolatry.” His point is: You commit idolatry on the Bible itself. You can start to worship the words instead of the spirit. You need to “meet God halfway in the woods.”

Poor A.J. Jacobs. At the end of his book about following Biblical law for a whole year, I sincerely hoped he would find God. He sort of found him, which probably means he didn’t find Him. His analogy about cafeteria Christianity is scary because it opens the door to relativity where everyone can do as he or she sees fit.

Jacobs is right that different churches pick and choose different parts. That’s how we came to have so many denominations. But we never waver on the core foundations of Christianity – that Christ came to save, was crucified for our sins, and lives again. Maybe Christianity is more like a Subway where you have the same choices every day (Christian fundamentals) and every so often they have a special (disagreements here and there). And yes, in this metaphor hymns vs. choruses would be the Subway biscuits and gravy.

But before babies come our way, I have some fears I need to deal with. Here they are, in no particular order:

• Having a baby will make me confront my mortality
• I don’t want fatherhood to define me
• I don’t want to wait 20 years to see LL again
• Being a father is permanent – there’s no going back
• My mental state is the worst it has been in my 28 years of living
• Why bring a person into this world to experience pain at some point?
• Having a baby will change our lives
• What if something happens to LL? Miscarriage? Death in childbirth? Complications? Will the baby be healthy?
• How much will I have to give up?
• Can we afford it?

Fortunately, God is good, and He is already helping me work through some of these. And I’ve got at least nine months to take care of the rest, right?

Confronting my mortality

My child will live longer than I will. This freaks me out. All my life, I have been a member of the youngest generation in my family, and now I’m leveling up, so to speak. Pretty soon people will expect me to pray at family outings and they’ll give me ties as presents. I may as well have one foot in the grave.

Letting fatherhood define me

I don’t want fatherhood to define me. No doubt it will be a big part of my life, but I would also like to be known as a loving husband, a caring son, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a five-time fantasy football champion, etc.

The more I think about this fear, the better I feel. Fatherhood doesn’t have to define me. It is a choice. I will be the best father I can be while still maintaining all my other roles. Some people have kids and the kids call all the shots for the rest of their lives. Not me. (Unless we were to have a girl, in which case I’ll melt.)

Never seeing LL again

Copy and paste the fatherhood section above. LL will always be my most cherished person on this earth, so why would I ever let anything get in the way of that? We can still be ourselves when a baby comes. Again, it’s a choice.

The permanence of fatherhood

We owned a dog for a day-and-a-half, and we were so overwhelmed with the responsibility of it, we returned her. I’m pretty sure St. Alphonsus won’t let us do that with a baby. Maybe a birthing center would. Maybe.

So what if the responsibility overwhelms me again?

It’s not like summer camp where if you hate it you can call your parents and they’ll come pick you up (or not pick you up, as was the case with me). Lindsay told me something that relieved me a little: Women become mothers when they get pregnant, men become fathers when they see their baby. We’ll see.

My mental state has never been worse

I am having a very hard time with my dad getting sick. It has crushed me. So the thought of compounding my soul searching with child raising is the last thing I need right now. Either that, or it’s exactly what I need right now. See how confused I am?!

Life is hard

If I were at a party and the party sucked wind, would I call LL and tell her to come on over and BYOB? Of course not. I’d tell her to come pick me up so we could get outta there and get dollar milkshakes. Well, I feel the same way about the world right now. I’m ready to leave whenever, and I don’t really want to be responsible for more people coming over. Having a baby is like inviting a friend to a lame party. Do not want.

Complete and utter life change

Or so I’ve been told. This one will take me awhile. But change can be a good thing, right?

Complications with birth

You’ve heard the phrase, “Plan for the worst, hope for the best.” Well, the worst would be Lindsay not making it through child birth, and that is something I could just not bear. Second-worst would be a sick child. Third-worst would be a male OBGYN.

To confront this fear, I will probably need to read as much as possible about the safety of child birth, all of which raises a new fear … reading.

Giving stuff up

I am pretty happy with my afternoon workouts, lazy weekends, NCAA Football dynasty, and trip-planning freedom. The more I think about it though, the more I feel that I won’t have to give up the things I love to anywhere near the degree it seems. People have kids all the time, and life goes on. My friend Joshua still plays video games all the time. I can do this!

Money

Ah, Messrs. Franklin and Hamilton (but mostly Lincoln). The more I think about the fear of baby costs, I get the sense that LL and I will be just fine money-wise. My parents have a hoarder’s stash of hand-me-downs. You can go grocery shopping for next to nothing with the right coupons. We live debt free. Our kid can go to a public school and pay for his own college. Piece of cake.

I came across that question last week, and I’ve been trying to come up with a real big, philosophical response ever since. Something about the meaning of life maybe, or what eternity is like.

But the only question I really want to ask is, “Why did my dad get sick?”

***

I found this fascinating: The most opened e-mail subject line from the last year was “You are not alone.” What does that say about humanity’s need for love?

The second most opened e-mail subject line: “You are not alone – FREE Vi@gra!”

***

What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.

- Albert Pine

***

I guarantee that I am the only person you know who has a subscription to online MLS soccer video.

***

Speaking of soccer, I am in pretty deep with the Houston Dynamo this season, to the point that I watched a live streaming U.S. Open Cup match the other day. To put it another way, I watched a soccer scrimmage on the Internet. And yes, I am a married man with a job and friends and hobbies.

***

Is this the world passing by
Or is it turning, turning
This is the first time that I
Have ever looked inside myself

It was the first time that I
Ever looked inside myself

Now the world beneath my feet is turning, turning
Oh this silly world keeps turning, turning away

“I’m not here for rage, I’m here for revenge” by Emery, We Do What We Want

Here goes nothing:

• Me (I assume)
• Reading a good book
• The entire process of learning – new information, structure, grades
• People watching
• Period-piece dramas
• Dogs
• Baking
• Gardening
• Enjoying the outdoors
• Rain on the roof
• Sleeping in
• Quality time with friends
• Exploring new places
• Comfortable clothes
• Warm towels
• The orderliness of organizing
• Her mom and dad
• My mom and dad
• Music with memories
• Games and puzzles
• The satisfaction of helping someone who can’t help himself
• People who really listen to her
• Cereal

I could go on, but that’s a good start.

***

Every now and then, I visit SoulPancake.com – a website community of deep thinkers and big questions, founded by Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office). Occasionally, there are some really interesting conversations going on there. Here’s one I found: Write a six word autobiography. My favorite:

Every day was rad, back then.

Here’s my stab at it:

Too many blessings, too little time.

Also, football.

***

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. It’s like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down through the air and there’s a sickly moment of dark surprise.

- Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Praise the Lord and stuff because that is the best news my family has had in awhile. And thank God that the week of waiting/anticipation/holding our breath is over. It is not fun to sit around and wait for news on how long one of your three favorite people in the world has left in this world. I would not recommend trying it. One star out of five.

But enough about how much I didn’t like waiting. How about that news? Wow, what a blessing. I wish I could capture my mom’s joy when she left that room, put that joy in a bottle, and carry it around with me at all times. She was thrilled, my dad was relieved. I was as happy for them as I was for the actual news.

I’d been wrestling for awhile with the idea of why God spares some people with cancer and takes others. How does he choose? Why does he do such a poor job of choosing some time? How are the people whom the good ones leave behind supposed to feel? In fact, this very topic came up with my parents this week. God has a purpose for giving my dad this hope of healing, and whether the good times last two months or 20 years, it’s in His hands. I don’t know if I would be able to say that so easily had the news came back bad, but it didn’t come back bad. It came back good. Cliches for everyone!

Of course, I’m going to go through the waiting game again. We all are. My dad will continue to have MRIs and check-ups and each one might be The One. Am I ready for that? No, but I don’t really want to be. The doctor’s advice to my dad when he left the appointment was to praise God, forget about cancer, and live your life. Same goes for me. And my mom. And LL. And my brother. “The glory of God is man fully alive,”  so what am I waiting for?

***

In Waking the Dead, John Eldredge challenged readers to make a list of all the things they love. Challenge accepted!

• LL
• My mom and dad
• Football – absolutely everything about it
• Driving (but not in traffic) and road trips (but not too far)
• Making meaningful connections with friends
• Clouds
• Thunderstorms
• The satisfaction of things going as I expect them to
• TV and movies that don’t take themselves too seriously
• Mystery Science Theater
• Playing sports for fun and not to win
• The exercise bump
• Listening to music that is emotional and transparent and good
• Watching people do something they love
• Watching people smile
• Inside jokes
• Christmas
• Birthdays
• Giving and receiving gifts
• Being creative and seeing that creativity come to fruition
• Dogs
• Being at home
• The satisfaction of knowing you’ve done everything on your list
• Discovering something that few others know about
• The challenge of games
• Artful web design
• Writing that surprises me, in a happy good way
• Technology that serves a purpose and makes sense
• Taking care of others
• Video game achievements
• Chili

***

My paranoia has reached new embarrassing heights. I am now digging into mailboxes to retrieve outbound Netflix envelopes and ripping them open to make sure I haven’t mailed a video game disc by accident. Serenity now!

***

I am fine

I am fine

I am fine

I am fine

I just need 100 dollars.

I am fine

I am fine

I am fine

I am fine

I just need 100 dollars from you and you and you and you and you.

- “One Hundred Dollars” by Manchester Orchestra (Mean Everything to Nothing)