(now playing: anberlin/cable car/cities)

my grandparents, in so many ways, are heroes to me. now, my moms parents are far from perfect, dont get me wrong… but they’re still together. and they have been for a long time.

each afternoon, they go down to the local cafe and sit, people watch, and enjoy coffee.

its amazing, but im slowly realizing that that is just what i want. its where i want to end up. still in love, still enjoying coffee, 50+ years after ‘i do’.

while back home a few weeks ago, i walked into a grocery store and stepped aside for an elderly man and woman. obviously married, and probably oblivious to most of the world around them… but something rang true when i saw that. something in that moment, echoed a cry from my heart…. i want that. i want to grow old, in love.

i’m not sure where i’m headed tonight; other than to say that this part of who i am, i had forsaken. if i was honest, id have to tell you that there were times where i contemplated not ever finding that ‘someone’. where i could honestly see myself living the rest of my days single.

i dont have a lot to give. not yet. im still very much walking out from under the destruction of my parents divorce, and my fathers mistakes.

most men feel sentenced by their fathers in three ways. we feel sentenced by the wound, by what we got from them in answer to our deepest question (do i have what it takes?). we feel sentenced by the fact that there is now no one to lead us on in our need for masculine initiation. and we feel sentenced somehow to a bond we feel with our fathers – their sins, their failures, what they were as men. it feels like the hand we have been dealt. as if we might, with effort, make it a little father than he, but we will always be his son.

the way of the wild heart
-john eldridge

there are still parts of who i am entangled in the mess that john describes in this book. its amazing, but i still consider myself my fathers son. and when someone mentions his shortcomings, his failures, his sins, i hurt. and i dont know why……

sometimes, its in our silence that our heart speaks the loudest. sometimes its not the presence of a great orator, or the abundance of words that communicates what our hearts are feeling… sometimes its just the ‘being there’, the presence of something we know is beyond us.

sometimes, its in the moments of quiet when we realize the beauty around us. we realize the grace, the passion, the greatness in the things, the people, we’ve always known. we simply see them in new light.
there will come a time, when my heart will be ready. when i’ll risk it all, put my everything on the line and fall in love. im not there yet. im not. im not the type of man who could say ‘i do’, and say it again 50+ years from now over a cup of coffee.

but i want to be. i so want to be.