carbonated joy

For the love of cargo shorts.

Brace yourself, this is going to be shocking!
I’m an old man who wears shorts EVERY day.
EVERY single day, even…GASP!…during the winter.
I’m aware of the haters, the fashion nazis, those who believe that grown men should dress like grown men.
I rebel against that idea…with my pants.
It’s a personal pant revolution. My knees have declared their independence. VIVA LA SHORT!!
So I wear shorts.

I’m not afraid to make a completely questionable fashion choice, because for me, shorts are completely functional fashion.

There are many reasons that I don’t like long pants.
For starters, I’m 5 feet tall (and almost the same width). I’m a chunky little brother. I have NEVER EVER in my life been able to go into a store and buy a pair of jeans and just wear them. They all have to be altered, hemmed, sewed up before I can think about wearing them. The fabric that has been cut off my pants over the years could clothe the entire population of Nebraska. My mom and wife have both hemmed countless legs! I’ve spent a lot at tailors, trying to get my pants to look semi normal. I don’t have to get shorts hemmed. I can wear them right away. It’s no fun to wait for pants.
So I wear shorts.

It’s also for safety reasons, Skinny jeans are never gonna be an option. I couldn’t squeeze my portly body into them without bursting a spleen or some other almost vital body part.
So I wear shorts.
Actually they are more like capris…manpris.
I love my manpris.

It’s also all about comfort.
Rather than conform, I go for comfort. I have nothing to prove, I’m comfortable with me and I choose to be comfortable in my choice of pants.
There is nothing like the feeling of the breeze on my naked calves, I call it “free legging”.
There is also nothing like the freedom of wearing what you want to wear, just because it fits you.
So I wear shorts.

For the khaki wearing horde that say I should grow up…stop dressing like a 9 year old boy…be professional. I say I put on my big boy pants, they just happen to be shorter than yours!
I wear shorts.

True grace, the undiluted stuff, is unpredictable.
It’s wild and free…literally free!
It shows up in the sketchiest places. It hangs out with all the wrong people. You simply cannot domesticate grace. It is meant to be uncaged. It’s messy and it refuses to be sanitized. The minute that you try to control it, it becomes nothing but mostly good intentions and photo opportunities.

Grace rains.
Grace washes away the grit and the
grime and the guilt.
Grace burns and it brings beauty from the ash.
It gives out second (and fifty second) chances.
Grace doesn’t discriminate between the sinner and the saint. It generously transforms sinners into saints, it gently reminds saints that they were once sinners.
It oozes into all the cracks and crevices of real life.

Grace calls your bluff.
It sees right through you.
It lowers the velvet rope and raises the bar at the same time.
Grace doesn’t push or pound, it lifts and leads.
Grace doesn’t follow the rules. It destroys man made labels and shatters glass ceilings.
Along with its tag team partner, love, it wrestles guilt, pride, sin and hate to the mat.
Grace kicks butt.

Jesus came to earth, cracked his knuckles and opened up a bottomless can of pure grace. It’s been running wild ever since.

You have seen it and chances are you have made
it…
the STANK FACE!!!
That’s right, the symptoms are very clear: the wide,
watery eyes, the crinkled nose, the contorted mouth,
the angry eyebrows that can’t stop twitching.
It’s a look of utter disgust or blatant disapproval.
There is no denying the feelings
and thoughts.
behind it. It is the facial embodiment of
EEEWWWWW!!!!
It’s the face that you make when you smell
something unbelievably foul or just REALLY
annoying. You just can’t help it! Stank is spoiled
stink. Your face does weird things when it
recognizes it
It makes for a good meme. It’s pretty clear nonverbal communication. It’s the reaction of the face when it comes in contact with stank.

You have seen it and chances are you have made
it…
The STANK HEART!!!
It’s the reaction of my heart when it comes in contact with inner stank.
It can happen by the way I treat or think about other people or myself. When I have thoughts of hatred, racism, insecurity, unforgiveness or bitterness, I bring the stank. It shows up when I refuse to guard my heart and I allow it to be contaminated by stank.
Anytime my attention is held by the secret, rather than the sacred, I’m inviting the stank.
When I trade the hard truth for the easy lie, stank
happens.
It’s what lurks within that causes the stank heart to react. It’s not the external stuff, it is not what I look like or what I have or have not. It’s the inner attitude that can make me stank.

Anytime I’m allowing stank to creep in and pollute, stank face happens.
It’s what it looks like when my heart, which was built to love, recoils at the stankness.
My heart was designed for higher purposes than the all too natural predispositions that, I too often give into. It was built for truth and beauty, it was wired to love and be loved. It was made to show kindness and courage.
When I live for the lower, my heart gets stank heart.
The cure for stank heart is to turn it inside out.
Inward living never leaves a mark on the outside
world. We have to get our focus off our self, we
need to stop taking ourselves so seriously. We need to live for something much bigger than ourselves.
We need to choose kindness, compassion, joy,
sacrifice. These are the things that flush out the
stank and keep the stank heart at bay.

Only you can prevent stank heart!

My brother, Mark, was my first roommate.
Neither of us really had a choice in the matter. He just moved in one day. I had my own crib for two years…literally. Then, one cold November day, my parents brought home my brother. We were roomies from then on. We shared a space for 16 years.
At some point in the early 70s, we ended up with bunk beds.
Bunk beds, they are the space saving furniture choice of the Army, summer camps, prisons and our parents. They bought the bunk beds for 50 bucks from some friends.
We really didn’t mind.
It gave us room for activities.
The bed didn’t have a ladder. Mark’s legs were a little longer than mine. (They still are). So he got the top bunk. He had to use a kitchen chair to get up and down.
It took me a while to stop hitting my head on the top bunk every time I got up. I was tempted to sleep with my football helmet on.
At one point, we had sheets with big yellow smiley faces. We tastefully decorated our beds with bumper stickers that we got every year at the Tulsa State Fair. We had bumper stickers advertising the National Guard, and my favorite radio station, KELi (1430 on the dial). We had KISS Army stickers, we had Charlie’s Angels stickers. It was a beautiful, chaotic exercise in self expression. About, every 7 or 8 months we would redecorate by covering old stickers with shiny new ones. By the time we were in our late teens, the beds were mainly composed of stickers.
Strange noxious odors emitted from our bunk bed. The fragrant combination of sweat, chili dogs, crawdads, fireworks and feet.
The bunk bed was more about story than sleep.
We created some amazing stories.
There was a lot of farting (real and fake) and giggling and giggling about farting.
There were late night talks about girls and dreams and parental injustice. Mark would poke his head over the edge and we would fight sleep with crucial conversations about snakes and go-carts and front yard football.
It was in the bunk bed that I discovered that anything can be art. I would lay in bed at night and pick my nose. I created a panoramic sculpture of the great smoky mountains entirely out of boogers. My parents were pretty ticked about that. Artists are always misunderstood. Mark supported my artistic endeavors, I think he was just relieved that he didn’t get blamed.
It was our holding cell on Christmas Eve until we were sure the folks were in bed and we went snooping.
There were fights about things that have been long forgotten. We threw things at each other. We drew lines and made threats.
We planned adventures and schemed about ways to get our sister into trouble.
We bonded.
A friendship was forged. It lasts today. My brother is one of my best friends. He always will be. We don’t see each other as often as I’d like. But, the bond is eternal.
Eventually, we broke up the bunk.
My brother moved out, and I took one of the beds to Virginia. When, I got married, we ended up selling the bed to our friend Dena.
Those 50 dollar bunk beds were a bargain. Not only did they give us room for activities, They created space for really cool stories and sweet dreams.
Good night John Boy.

PAINFULLY TRUE STORY: So last week I was eating a tuna sandwich and I heard a loud “THHWWAACCKK” noise in the back of my mouth. I felt a little pain and it felt like I got something stuck in my back tooth. For days, I tried to get the obvious foreign object out of my innocent tooth. I KNEW there was something there and I KNEW that I could take care of it. I used 4 different kinds of floss, a new toothbrush, industrial toothpicks and a little thing that looks like a rotor rooter for the teethers. My very wise wife kept telling me “that’s not a rebel popcorn kernel, you need to go to the dentist!” I don’t enjoy going to the dentist and up until yesterday I haven’t gone in quite a while. To me, going to the dentist is like going to get an oil change. They always tag on extra things. You go in to get ONE thing done…”I just need an oil change please”…”please get the annoying popcorn kernel out of my tooth.” They always find MORE things that need to be done! “We need to fix this and this and this RIGHT NOW!!”
You never go to the dentist and hear “your mouth looks AWESOME, we don’t have to do anything, here’s a pack of gum!”
Like I said, it has been a while since I went to the dentist. Many things were the same. It smelled the same, very antiseptic. Just like my childhood dentist office, there was a copy of Boy’s Life in the waiting room. (I didn’t know that they even still publish it!) I was able to read about “how to make the ultimate s’more”.
But many things have changed since I last went. There is a lot of cool new technology. Everybody was wearing lovely rubber gloves. When I was a kid, there were no rubber gloves and my doctor had hairy hands that tickled the roof of your mouth. We used to be asked to rinse and spit every 7 seconds. It was like a slobbery competition. I didn’t rinse and spit once! Is that some kind of new environmental guideline? I’m a dude, I like to spit. AND, whenever we went in, we got a little snort of laughing gas and a free toothbrush. I’m pretty sure the laughing gas was for the entertainment of our parents and the dental assistants. I’m just glad there wasn’t YouTube back then.
Yesterday I did not get any fun inducing gas and no free toothbrush.
BUT, I DID leave with one less tooth in my head. It turns out, my wife was right! It was no popcorn kernel! I had split my top wisdom tooth in 2! I guess I’m a tooth grinder and that led to this ugly episode! So, I had a wisdom tooth extracted. (Extracted is a very ugly word! I prefer the words extra cheese). It was broken in half, so they yanked it. They also, SURPRISE, discovered several other things that need to be done. I even got referred to a specialist, which is never a good thing!! So, with a mouthful of gauze and no free toothbrush (I’m a little bitter) I drove myself home and walked the dog.
I am left with one less tooth, the knowledge that I soon get to spend more time in a dentist chair and a story about the time a tuna sandwich broke my wisdom tooth. A cheeseburger would never do that!
I need some laughing gas!

I’ve heard it said that good art can come out of pain, so here goes…
As I write this I have shingles.
So, this is ANOTHER thing that Terry Bradshaw and I have in common (you know, besides being tall and really athletic).
I’ve discovered that shingles are really no fun whatsoever.
It is pretty painful, it feels like I’m getting tattooed continually without any fresh ink to show for it.
AND I have a crazy rash that looks like a 3-D panoramic map of the Bahamas on my lower back.
How did this happen?
When I was a kid I had chickenpox. I was 3 years old. It was an itchy time that I don’t really remember. I imagine that it gave my parents a chance to play connect the dots on my belly…BIG family fun! Eventually, I got better. The pink pox went away and that was it…OR SO WE THOUGHT!
It turns out the chickenpox virus has stuck around. It has been biding it’s time all these years. And now…it’s BACK! (Boo! Hiss!) It has been reawakened by stress and it has made a comeback as shingles.
Have I mentioned that it’s really, really painful?
I’m normally not a fan of pain unless I get a tattoo to show for it.

As I try to find a comfortable spot, I’ve had a chance to think.
I’ve come to realize that sometimes we get soul shingles.
We think we deal with things.
We all have hurts and habits from our past that we think we have dealt with.
Sometimes, it turns out that we aren’t as done as we thought. Those things that we thought were dead are merely dormant. They are inactive.
But then, something comes along and sets them off. It could be stress, guilt, unforgiveness or anger. It might be a memory that strikes us at just the wrong time. It reactivates the virus.
The hurt is back and it’s not done, it brought the pain again. The habit shows up as a rash on our life again.
Have I mentioned that is really, really painful?
The things that we chose to ignore or refuse to confront, blister back up and bite us in the butt.
We have to find a cure once and for all. It’s time for urgent care from the great physician. We find that many times, things have stuck around because we have refused to let go of them. Because, He really, truly cares, the Healer stands ready to take our hurts and habits.

I’m dealing with shingles with some strong meds and lots of ibuprofen. I’m ready to be done with this thing for real.
I’m giving the deeper stuff, the soul scars to Christ. He is the only cure.

A word has been bouncing around in my brain for a few days. It’s a beautiful word, a bold word, a belonging word. It is a word that is full of both promise and pain.
The word is “kindred”.
Kindred is defined as a group of related persons, as a clan or tribe, a person’s relatives or, here in the south, kinfolk or kin. It’s people that have a similar or related origin, nature, or character

Kindred can be a people gathered together around a common passion, purpose or pursuit.
People who are somehow bonded together.
Kindred can be a negative thing, that happens when hurt and hate are passed on from generation to generation.
No kindred is perfect but a well constructed kindred breaks chains and builds bridges.
Kindred is framily.
Framily is a fusion of friends and family. It’s what happens when family become friends and friends become family.
It’s framily,
It’s kindred.

Kindred is a people, I think it also should be a place…
A place where bread is broken and promises are not.
Dreams are shared and insecurities are bared.
Framily brings freedom. The freedom to be your messed up, dysfunctional, quirky, crazy self. The freedom to be who you are and grow into who you are meant to be.

Kindred is a divinely designed deal. From the beginning (literally) we were meant to operate as kindred. We are meant to be one beautifully constructed, breathtakingly colorful framily or tribe gathered around a common passion, purpose and pursuit…love.

Kindred is meant to be fueled by love AND to fuel love.
We have a kindred spirit.

We are able to share a Kindred spirit because the Spirit makes us kindred.

“God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.” (Eph. 1:5-6 NLT)

“Because you, too, have heard the word of truth—the good news of your salvation—and because you believed in the One who is truth, your lives are marked with His seal. This is none other than the Holy Spirit who was promised.” (Eph. 1:13 VOICE)

Kindred grabs you by the hand (and heart) and says the words of Johnny Cash, “We’re all in this together if we’re in it at all”.

It’s a mighty big tribe who have been united by a common need and a common discovery. We have let the things that would divide us be burnt away by a holy fire, and we are left with the things that make us the same…beauty from the ashes.

We have realized that God doesn’t compare what He creates. Instead he calls…
Come, be the kindred.

Have you ever seen a plate spinner? Maybe on late night TV or at a circus? His act is pretty simple, yet really stressful. He spins plates, just average glass dinner plates, lots and lots of plates. His job is to keep them in motion. He comes out on stage, he clears his throat, cracks his knuckles (this is called creating tension) and grabs a plate and starts spinning it on top of a long pole. Then he spins ANOTHER and ANOTHER until he has a plethora of plates spinning around. He has to pay attention to see if a plate starts to wobble. If it does, he has to dash over and spin it again. To me it seems like really stressful stuff.
Here’s a question, do YOU ever feel like this dude? Do you find yourself frantically doing 75 things at once, you have all your plates spinning. And, you are petrified that you are going to drop a plate (or 6).
There’s no rest for you, you gotta keep things going! Keep spinning those plates. It’s more rush than rhythm .
Life has a way of throwing plates at you
You gotta…
do this, be there, pick up, drop off, fix, decide, complete, learn, relearn, move, move faster, perform, work, work harder…
spin…spin…spin.
It never stops or slows down.
You have all these plates spinning.
Keep it going as fast as you can and pray that it all doesn’t crash and break.
Our world spins out of control.
Maybe it’s time to turn some of your plates into frisbees. Realize that some plates were never yours to spin and hurl them as far as you can! Fling them!
Here’s another thought: why in the WORLD would you spin a plate when you can fill it! Fill your plate with cool, interesting stories smothered in awesome sauce.
Why not fill your plate with some promises that you can remember when the temptation to spin is strong.
Here are a couple of really cool promises to get you started:

“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

Give God your plates. Don’t spin, surrender! He’s much better at keeping things in the air than we are!

Here’s an invitation from Jesus to dance..
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

You can’t dance and spin plates at the same time. Slow down, wait a minute, don’t rush, learn the rhythm of grace.

We find a grace that calms our spinning world when we sit in the presence of the Prince of peace.

Stop spinning! surrender and sit a while.

Jesus was a trouble maker

We think we know Jesus.
We think of him as that hometown boy that everyone loves, you know like Tim Tebow in sandals. The kind of guy that all the Grandmas loved and the little boys looked up to. He was nice…right?
The religious leaders didn’t think he was nice, he made it tough on them. He caused a lot of trouble, so much that they wanted to kill him.
The money changers in the church didn’t think he was nice. He marched in, turned their tables over, scattered their money and called them names.
Nice guys usually don’t make trouble.
Jesus did.
He wasn’t the hometown hero! People in his hometown had a problem seeing him for who he was. They looked at him and saw Joseph and Mary’s boy, nothing more than a carpenter.
Mark 6.3 says: “they tripped over what little they knew about him and fell sprawling. And they never got any further.”
We trip over what we think we know.
We have to get to know Jesus…the real Jesus. Strip away the preconceived notions and nice sentiment and see what you find.
Be warned, it might get you into trouble!
Jesus redefined the rules. He turned law into love.
“I lay down my life for you because I love you, so love me and love each other.”
That kind of thinking stirs up trouble!
Then he actually, in true trouble maker form, did what he said.
He laid down his life.
The trouble maker became the trouble taker.
“Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.” (Isaiah 53.4)
Get to know Jesus, not just know about him, but truly know him.
The Son of God came to make and take trouble.
My rebel heart likes that.

I get asked a lot if I’m a biker.
I think it might be the weird beard.
I have a chullet (a chin mullet).
When you have crazy facial hair, you get asked a lot of crazy questions.
I also get asked…
Are you homeless?
Are you Santa Claus?
Are you the Travelocity Gnome?
But mostly, I get asked, are you a biker?
I get that a lot.
I’m alright with that.
Some of the coolest people I know are bikers.
I want to be a biker!
I have huge biker dreams!
I get a Harley Davidson shirt (or 2) anytime we travel.
I want to be a biker. I like the style and swagger.
I now have a bunch of Harley shirts, hats and do-rags.
I dream of jumping on a hog and riding to Sturgis, popping wheelies and making some noise. I long to feel the wind in my chullet.
I dream of getting my motor running and heading out to the highway. To look for adventure in whatever comes my way.
There’s something so wild, free and beautiful about that!!
I have the clothes, I have the attitude, I just don’t have the skills.
There are some things that prevent me from being the easy rider…
For starters, my legs are like 14 inches long, seriously! That complicates things and makes it hard to reach the pedals and keep a motorcycle upright. I would need a booster seat and possibly training wheels.
I’m also blind in one eye. I have no depth perception and I usually can’t see things on my left side. That might be a problem on the open road.
And on an annoying side note, I have a freakishly huge noggin. This makes it hard to find a cool helmet. I would have to wear a colander or possibly a large bucket with one eyehole…not the renegade vibe I’m going for!
I’m an unapologetic wannabe biker.
I do want to point out that a wannabe is totally different from a poser.
Here’s the difference, in my heart I WANNABE a biker, in my brain I know it’s probably not gonna happen. BUT, I follow my heart and I look the part. But I’m honest about it and so I’m not a poser.

My motorcycle driving career was short lived, it was about 7 minutes long. I was in middle school at my friend’s house. He had a new dirt bike. I was watching him ride in his pasture. He asked me if I wanted to ride. I said ummm…YES! He gave me a quick lesson in gears and clutches, most of which went in one ear and out the other. I just wanted to go fast. I hopped on and gunned it. I drove straight through the side of his barn. That was embarrassing and painful. His stepdad was not a happy man.
I haven’t ridden a motorbike since then.
But, I WANT to be a biker.
I have this unhinged sense of adventure and curiosity.
The good news is that I wed wild.
My wife is an amazing lady with a sense of adventure and some serious skills.
She is a much better driver than me and I am man enough to boldly admit that!
So we might have a solution…
She will drive the bike and I will be her biker babe.
I will sit on the back and hold onto her, or I could ride in a sidecar.
I think we all need to find our own ways to be wild and free, even if it’s in a sidecar.
Work together to achieve independence!
So if you see a chubby dude with a chullet riding on the back of a Harley being driven by a beautiful blonde, make sure and honk and wave, and find your own way to be wild and free.