I discovered food five years ago. Not good food, I grew up with a true Southern cuisine chef for a mom that shaped my pallet. We sat down at the dinner table nearly every night of my childhood and ate good food. I discovered food that you go out and want to pay for. Up to that point, I thought that you just went out because you didn’t want to cook and clean, or that you couldn’t cook- I never had an issue with the latter. I don’t remember ever going out and thinking the food that I was eating was any better than what we had at home.

Once, Tiff and I had only been married two years, a guy in the church showed up with a “hawg” already butchered and packaged. We stuffed our freezer and had to send some back home with him. He raised a pig just for us and we ate like kings for months. Ham, bacon, pork loins, ribs, chops, shoulder, butt- you name it, we ate it.

Tiffanni and I took our last trip to New York City five years ago. We were visiting great friends who invited us up for a getaway in the middle of our reeling. Tiff was diagnosed six months before and the denial had worn off for a number of reasons, not the least of which, Tiffanni couldn’t stay still. As fortune would have it, our friends Matt and Nicole had made City friends that made the trip unforgettable. Nicole was friends with several actors in two different Broadway plays that afforded us great seats and backstage passes to the most magical performance art that I had ever witnessed. Also, they had made friends with a Food Network producer. I should say, they made friends with a fabulous lady that just happened to produce Chopped.

She invited us to eat at Scarpetta, a Scott Conant restaurant. The first course began with a wild mushroom polenta that is etched into my memory. It was then that my eyes opened and I thought, “Oh, so that’s what the fuss is all about. This is what people pay for.” All of my life, eating at restaurants was less about good food and more about avoiding dishes. This was different. Very different.

Last week my baby girl turned thirteen. Beautiful, spunky, creative, dramatic, artistic, talented, and full of life- she crossed the threshold of childhood into the land of insanity. The only good thing about the last several years passing by so quickly is that I know that her teenage, crazy years won’t last forever.

The saddest part about discovering food five years ago is that I haven’t gotten to take advantage of it very often. But this night, I decided to take Addyson to a fancy dinner with good food. She dressed up, make-up upped, and rode with me into downtown Birmingham for a fabulous evening.

I have worked on this evening for years.

By personality, I am distracted easily. I erratically move from one thought to the next, sometimes interrupting stories, situations, and discussions. If ADD was the thing that it is now when I was a kid, I would have mainlined ritalin or had an adderall IV. Luckily, I discovered it and have intentionally fought it. It’s not an easy fight, but one I’ve purposed to win.

I decided four years ago when Tiffanni and I starting going to Dairy Queen, which would turn into a standing date, that I would sit, stare, and engage with her the whole time, no distractions. My phone never comes out, I sit with my back to televisions and people so that I am only facing Tiffanni and a wall, and I work at presence. Eugene Peterson says, “The men and women who are going to be most valuable to us in spiritual formation are most likely going to be people at the edge of respectability: the poor, minorities, the suffering, the rejected, the poets, and children.” My objective was always just to give her the dignity that she deserved, even if she couldn’t communicate well anymore. Some days we sit and stare, for an hour, and I make silly faces just to see if I can make the corners of her eyes shift. It usually feels like at least an hour, but I follow the self-imposed rules nonetheless. Dignity was my aim, but her response, her reciprocation was unexpected.

Addyson and I sat there, talking, eating, smiling, and enjoying each others’ company. Two hours passed and not a second was lost. It was a tapas restaurant and we set a goal to order ten dishes to share. Each dish, cooked over an open wood fire, and I can name and describe all nine- barely missing our goal. I know what she wore, a dozen conversations that we had, every plate, but can’t remember much about the restaurant. Toward the end of our meal, I told her, “I sure wish we could watch them cooking the food and see how they do it.”

She laughed. “Dad, look right beside you.” Ten feet away, we sat next to the wood flame grill. Like a massive pizza oven, the chefs placed dishes on large plates, inserted them into and then out of the oven. All beside us, the whole time.

But I missed it. And yet saw everything that mattered that night. Tiff, once again my tutor, I treated our daughter to a beautiful night that probably meant more to me than it did to her- maybe not. She had my full attention- I noticed details and nuances, outfits and dishes, conversations and laughs, even concerns and dilemmas- all because I was there. Not just physically, I was there.

My presence cost a lot.

I’ll never believe that the outcome was worth the price, but I was there still. Completely there. I don’t believe in an “everything happens for a reason” world. That’s dangerous when we’re talking about real people. But that night, after years of work, after thousands of French Fries, hundreds of blizzards, and endless hours of silence, I sat back and enjoyed every minute of my daughter’s time. Her life, her laugh, her love, her momma’s eyes, and I didn’t miss much. That time cost a lot, but that night, for a moment, it was almost worth it.

The kids and I stumbled across their baby books in the attic a short while ago. I forgot that Tiffanni recorded so many of the firsts in them. She catalogued each week for Addyson, and each month for Carsyn. Brayden got a few broad strokes, but he’s there. I was always surprised to see how closely each child’s development mimicked the developmental stages in the books What To Expect When You’re Expecting and What To Expect In The First Year. My kids weren’t as exceptional as I had anticipated.

Tiffanni and I weren’t great about documenting every moment, but she got the big stuff. This generation has their entire lives on a phone screen- my kids have some pictures and a few videos. I might do better to somehow gather all of the video cameras and cell phones from strangers around the world that the kids ended up photo bombing. It would probably inventory their lives better than what we did.

I don’t remember the details of each, but I remember the excitement of the first steps. One of the kids (the truth is that I think I’ve compressed each of their childhoods into one person. Three in one. My children, the trinity) went straight from laying, full body on the ground, and rolling everywhere to walking. Those first steps, for a year or more, were wobbly and uncoordinated. They spent so much time on the ground with plenty of scrapes and band-aids.

I know all of us have baffled at the idea of falling as much as a child, but getting up, dusting off, and continuing on undeterred. But walking means so much. It’s not just duplicating an action of adults. It’s the entryway to independence. The first action of autonomy. It changed everything when the kids starting walking. We had to “baby proof” the house. They touched and explored everything. We couldn’t take our eyes off of them for a minute or they would paint the walls, pee in the kitchen pots, and toilet paper the house. Soon walking turned to running and skipping and jumping and climbing. Walking became dancing and jogging and running bases and riding bicycles and swimming and cartwheels and diving. And one day it will become driving and dating and graduating and walking the aisle and pushing a baby carriage. That first step opens nearly every door to the future.

I’ve fought for years to keep Tiff out of a wheelchair. It takes work. Lately, I practically carry her. The last two trips to the movies, we used a wheelchair. For some unfortunate reason, the movie that we want to see is always at the end of the long theater hall. It’s easily 100 yards from the bathroom to the theater and that doesn’t even count the walk from the car. I pulled it out the first time and she looked at me puzzled. “Let’s just get you in and I’ll help you to your seat.”

“No. I don’t want a wheelchair,” she said to me. Talk about ripping your heart out.

“Me neither, but I can’t carry you that far. My arms hurt from just walking into Dairy Queen.” She acquiesced.

I wheeled her in, got her to the bottom of the theater seating and asked her to jump on for a piggy back ride. She laughed and I scooped her up and hauled her frail frame up the steps to our normal seats- top third, middle. There are rarely people behind us there that I have to worry about what they think about all of her moving and if we are too distracting.

I have slowly begun to use the wheelchair for long hauls. Like the ballpark or church. Those places that I just can’t quite carry or it’s too painful to watch her fall over and over, even if I do stop the impact. I’ve never needed or dreaded something more.

The significance of walking is more than just the use of her legs. Because when she can’t walk anymore, she is fully dependent. Even in a wheelchair, she doesn’t have the ability to push herself using her arms. Everything changes.

So she falls. Over and over again because it’s the price of independence. There is always a price for independence, always a sacrifice. Hers are bruises and scrapes and cuts and headaches and body pangs and band-aids and soreness. Whether she knows it consciously or subconsciously, the next transition costs a lot. Every day she asks for Tylenol, every day she falls again. A vicious cycle just to walk- but not really walk, stumble. All of the possibility that the first step opened, the last step closes. It’s a high price to pay to stumble. But at this point, stumbling is everything.

Reading and I have an interesting relationship. While I love to read, I am so easily distracted by life that reading doesn’t get near as much of my time as I wish it did. I buy a book every week or two, but if I don’t read it immediately, I forget that I bought it and move on to my next one. I tried the Kindle thing and have about 200 books in my collection, but I’ve recently gone back to the crisp, tangible feel and smell of paper. It’s just better.

When I was a kid, I vividly remember a few books from the library like Superfudge, Oh The Places You Will Go, and Where The Wild Things Are. Wild Things was my favorite, probably because it’s barely 300 words, but also because of the imagination of Max the main character. When they turned it into a movie in 2009, I was so excited to watch it with the girls. We read the book (because you’re always supposed to read the book first) and then sat down to watch the movie one night. The girls were 4 and 5 and I found myself splitting my attention between the movie and their attention, laser focused on the screen, the images bouncing off of their eyes. The movie was darker than the book. Max retreated to the land of the Wild Things to eschew the brokenness of his life. I assumed the heavier elements went over the girls’ heads, but when the movie ended they both immediately burst into tears. No warning, no obvious cause, “Why are you crying?” I asked, startled and confused.

“I don’t know,” they both replied.

“Is it because of Max or his mom or the Wild Things?”

“I don’t know,” they repeated. Somehow they had seen bigger-than-life puppets, explored Max’s imagination, heard the voices of the Wild Things, but felt the heaviness of the movie and didn’t even realize it. They were sad but didn’t have the point of reference for brokenness from family dysfunction. Their insulated lives’ first experience with grief. Like trying to describe the color blue to a blind person, they couldn’t describe the new emotions that they felt. So, they cried.

Last week I went to a viewing for a close family friend’s gone-too-soon brother. It was a long drive and Carsyn asked to ride with me. Her brother sick and her sister at cheer practice, the thought of piddling around the house in boredom was somehow ousted by the prospect of riding in a car with me for two hours, only to watch me visit with friends around a casket for another.

I took advantage of the impromptu date and Carsyn and I went to a nice dinner at a seafood restaurant on the way home. I could tell that she realized the significance as well because she didn’t even look at the kids’ menu. Just us, good food, and all the time we wanted. One area that Tiffanni and I, and now my parents and I place importance on is meals. Meals are sacred. There’s something both mystical and practical about farming, preparing, and eating food together. It’s that one place that my family can disconnect from everything, stare at each other and take enough time to just see what comes up. Unfortunately, when an entire culture fills every reflective space with technology and distraction, we actually lose the discipline of introspection and thought- both individually and familial. Mealtime is our attempt to re-connect, every day, to think, to converse, to celebrate, to laugh, and to love. And we’re pretty good at it.

We stayed for nearly two hours and conversation filled every moment that it needed to. I couldn’t tell you who we sat next to or what the decor of the restaurant was because Carsyn had all of my attention. And not because I forced myself to focus, because she hijacked my attention from the minute we sat down. She told me stories, asked questions, made me laugh, and exceeded her word quota for the week. Unforced, easy, natural conversation from my thoughtful baby girl- it was a beautiful evening.

On the way home she asked me why I never let her and her siblings read my blog. “Some of my friends and my teachers read it and talk to me about it.” I didn’t have an answer. I think it’s less a conscious choice and more that they don’t have access to the internet. “Can I read it?”

“Some of it is pretty heavy, but I’ll let you read one with me right now.” I handed her my phone and asked her to read aloud. She’s a great reader and I smiled as she caught some of my nuance and tone, how she grinned at some of the subtle jokes. As she read through last week’s The Giver, the ending was heavy. I wrote about how the kids would never know their mom the way that I do, but that because of them I will never forget her. As she finished the last word, and before I could ask what she thought, she burst into tears. Like full on, wept. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. But I knew. I knew that I had held a mirror up to her own grief. Her own loss. The sense of growing up without a mom must be suffocating at times, and at others- numbing. Tears filled my eyes as I parked the car. Conversation was over, yet communication at its peak. And we cried together. Both for loss. She for the understanding that things are not as they should be and me for the realization that she understands that now. Now more than ever in her short life.

At one point in Wild Things, Max declares, “There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen!” When I’m at my best, I create those moments for myself and my kids. But more times than not, I am not at my best, so I can’t create them- but I see them. I name them. I recognize them. I don’t see them all, but I see just enough to capitalize on a once in a lifetime moment, a sacred meal with the most beautiful eleven year old in the world who just so happens to be wrestling her own Wild Things. And while we can’t make them disappear, I can’t insulate her from them, we can love each other through them. One conversation-filled sacred meal, one silent car ride at a time.

There’s a book that came out in the 90’s called The Five Love Languages. The basic premise is that everyone of us gives and receives love through one or two of these five ways- gifts, acts of service, physical touch, quality time, or words of affirmation. Each one of us have a relational love bank that can be overdrawn when love is not deposited, but only given out. The way to be our best is to give and receive love, however, sometimes the people that love us deeply are trying to show love yet we don’t receive it. They are speaking one language and we speak another. It’s as simple as trying to speak to someone in English that only speaks !Xóõ.

I’ve never been a gift giver. I don’t care much for gifts, I don’t want to spend money on gifts, I usually delay gift buying until I’ve “accidentally” forgotten that I was supposed to get one. Tiffanni on the other hand was a gift giving, gift receiving fiend. For years she would buy me a greeting card on special occasions after carefully selecting the perfect one. Apparently Hallmark had someone on staff from the NSA profiling me and writing limericks and haikus for Tiffanni to use regularly. She would hand the card to me and stare as I opened it. I’ve always liked opening presents and cards in private because there is so much pressure. As she waited, my mind churned with thoughts of how I could react the way that she expected. I felt like the groom at the altar when the doors burst open for the bride to walk down. Everyone turns to look at him to see his reaction to seeing his bride for the first time (except that they’ve known each other for years and just took family pictures a few minutes before.) Cards and gifts take too much thought and work. I never reciprocate the emotion that was first invested in the choice.

Tiffanni would stare, I would pretend to read intently. She, content with her purchase, waiting on a simple confirming tear, would wait as I read. Except that I wasn’t reading, I was more trying to figure out what reaction I needed to have. Was I to laugh, sigh, cry, grin, wink, who knows, I couldn’t bother myself with reading when something so pressing that our marriage depended on it was hanging in the balance. Unfortunately, I’ve chosen wrongly as many times as I have chosen rightly.

I just wasn’t a gift receiver or giver. Now, I am blackhole for words of affirmation, but gifts- no thanks. I’d rather someone give me money and I go out and buy myself something practical.

However, there are a select few moments of my life where the gift was more than an exchange of commodity. The gift embodied my person, my personality, my interests, my talents- the things that were deepest to me. I’m scared to list some of these for the sake of offending anyone who has ever bought me a gift, but there are a few that come to mind.

When I decided a few years ago that I wanted to write, my dad spent days building me a writer’s desk. He spent time selecting the right wood, the perfect design, the stain- it would provide the setting of motivation for most things that I write. It’s sturdy, inspiring, and has an intrinsic magical component to it. Reflective words, sacred words, fun words flow from its hull.

I have a friend who has leather stitched and book bound me a journal every year on my birthday for years. I use these journals to write music, ideas, to capture thoughts, rough draft reflections, and to invoke magic. It might only be magic to me, but magic nonetheless. On every first page of every journal is the Joseph Campbell quote, “We’re not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world.”

I have friends who have gifted me with a meal, a great restaurant with great companionship, great conversation, and a nice evening. That’s someone who knows me. I don’t want a gift, I want rapport. I don’t want a knick knack, I desire meaningful kinship.

And that’s the problem with Mother’s Day. Not for me or my mom or even my mother-in-law. They’re easy. I have three children that don’t know their mom. Not their real mom. Not the mom they were born to, that first conceived them in her mind years before she ever conceived them in her body. She held them, fed them, played with them- nurtured every first- step, cackle, word, hug, song, craft. Every Mother’s Day, and birthday and Christmas for that matter, they give Tiffanni a gift or a card. And it means the best that they can contrive. But it doesn’t mean mom. Not their mom.

Gifts matter because the people that give them matter. And so there’s a sense of intention behind anything that they give to their mother. They give “World’s Best Mom” mugs and Happy Mother’s Day cards, crafty trinkets and clever novelties, keychains and massage coupons and stickers and door hangers and refrigerator magnets. But nothing says Tiffanni. None of it reflects her now hidden personality, her disease masked soul. Nothing exemplifies who she was, the woman that I married partly because of how amazing a mom I could already tell that she would be.

I’m just not a gift-giver, but there are three gifts that are worth the world. Tiffanni gave them to me 12, 11, and 9 years ago. While they can’t give gifts to her that reflect who she is, they do. They reflect who she is. Their laughs, humor, love, empathy, compassion, gifts, loves, looks, words, and lives remind me of their mom every day. They might not ever know their real mom, but because of them- my gifts, I’ll never forget her.

I met Tiffanni in tenth grade, she was in ninth. She had just finished her first summer traveling with the Alabama All-State Youth Choir and I assumed that she sang like a songbird. But with words. When you’re young, there are some things that seem more admirable than when you’re older. Anyone that could sing captured my wonder and a pretty girl with a great voice was like a dream.

I hate to admit it, but I had a real list when I was a teenager. Not just in my head, because you can adjust those subconsciously to match changing values, but a real list on a real sheet of paper- loose leaf, college ruled. It was what I wanted in a mate. We lived in the South, so I assumed that I would be married within a few years, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to think about marriage as a teenager. Maybe as a guy, but not as a teenager.

The list was pretty specific if I remember correctly. In fact, I broke things off with more than one girl because she didn’t seem to match the list at the time. I made up terrible reasons that I’m embarrassed to admit now, “God told me to” kind of commandment breaking, using the Lord’s name in vain stuff.

But when I saw Tiffanni for the first time, singing with a choir- because “can sing well” was on the list- my heart skipped a beat. I imagined marrying her from high school on. Which is an odd thing to say when you’re 16, but I really did think I wanted someone like her. And the summer after my senior of high school, I was certain.

I’ve mentioned this before, but when I accepted my first ministry position in 1998, we weren’t married yet and the job was for a youth pastor and music minister dual role. I felt good about pastoring teenagers, I was unconvinced of my ability to sing, play the piano, and lead people in worship. “Are you kidding, you’re amazing!” She told me. “If anyone can do this, you can. And I’ll be with you the whole time.” She was a brilliant liar, so good at it that she believed the lie herself. Which is the best way to encourage someone- you actually believe what you’re saying.

So, we accepted the position and moved to Tennessee. I began leading hundreds of people in worship from day one. The first Sunday that I was there was the third time that I had ever led worship in my life.

Every Sunday that I led, I got a little better, a little more confident, and every week Tiffanni bragged about how amazing I was. Just so we’re clear, I wasn’t and I knew it, but I honestly believed that she thought I was everything that she said about me. Admiration from someone you love, someone that I had watched in awe sing for years, goes a long way. Every week, we led, side by side. She sang, I sang, and when she harmonized, I sounded ten times better than I really was. It was like going to the studio and adding auto-tune and reverb and studio magic and all that jazz. She brought the best out of me.

Last weekend my daughters participated in the Fine Arts Competition. Several hundred teens from all over the state enter a contest of arts- music, drama, writing, dance, design, photography. It really is a great opportunity to discover a talent sans Simon Cowell. Both of my girls entered two categories. Photography and Vocal Solo. They have a knack for both. An artist’s eye and an angel’s voice. And that’s not just dad talking- they really are great. Their pictures were beautiful and their songs entrancing. All the feels, all the chillbumps just hearing them do something that they loved. Everyone should sing, but the best of us should sing in front of other people. I’m not sure that I ever had any business singing in front of people except for the fact of what it has afforded me for my girls. Singing gave me an appreciation of song and beauty, of lyric and rhyme. I’ve spent a lot of time with music only to end up average, however, I know what good is and I know what it takes to be good- drive, natural ability, and truth. I’m pretty good at two-thirds, but I see in my girls all three. You can’t go through what they go through and not be able to tap into an area of feeling that can only come from deep wells. Trust me, there is little girl drama, but they are full of truth, deep human raw truth.

Every time that we get into the car they ask for me to play a song. They assign melody and harmony and sing a concert for dad. I sometimes play my music just to hear them sing my truth because it sounds better that way. It sounds real and lived and honest and true. True, not in the sense of facts, I stink at those, but true in the sense of what Dumbledore said, “It’s a beautiful and a terrible thing, truth, and should be therefore treated with great caution.”

My truth is that my kids now sing the song that my wife can’t. I can’t remember a time that Tiffanni and I got into the car and didn’t sing. I also can’t remember when that singing stopped. It happened over the course of years and it happened all at once. Her voice slowly began to fade just as Addyson and Carsyn were discovering Veggie Tales. Singing and bouncing on the edge of the bed, every word, most of the notes, all of the fun. In some ways, lists are dumb. What I wound up with that didn’t make that list was far beyond what I could have desired. But I’m so thankful that I stumbled upon singing, that I added it to a teenager’s list of arbitrary preferences. Without a song that once was and is no more, I never would have recognized this new song and the beauty that it brings.