Hi all,

I’m back to writing—not just the book, but a blog again. But I’ve moved HERE. You were so kind to spend so much time with me a few years back that I didn’t want you to miss this. As painful as those years were, God did some deep things in me and this new blog is some of the fruit of that pain. God wastes nothing.

If you’d like to keep up with me, go to THIS LINK and hit subscribe. Each week, you’ll get the new post straight to your inbox. For those who were the real insiders, you might recognize a new day. You used to get a notification every Wednesday, but I’m now posting on Sundays. So much meaning in that! I’d love it if you joined me again on this new journey. God might just be up to something in it.

Jeremy

Hi friend,

If you’re wondering why you’re getting an email from me after all this time, I completely understand, and I promise there is a very good reason.

Life has been incredibly full lately. Between teaching my students here at Southeastern University, keeping up with family life with Hannah and our five kids, and spending every spare pocket of time writing, the days have flown by. I’ve missed being in this space with you, but a lot of that quiet time was channeled into a major project that I am finally ready to share.

I wrote a book.

It’s called The Way of the Spirit, and it is releasing this August from InterVarsity Press. I wrote this book for everyone who has quietly wondered if something is wrong with their faith—people who feel spiritually anxious, disconnected, or like they’re always missing something. If you’ve ever felt like you’re just going through the motions or trying harder but getting nowhere, I wrote this for you.

Because you’ve been a part of my journey here on the blog, I want to invite you to be part of the inner circle. I’m putting together a private Launch Team, and I would love for you to join me. All of you were unbelievably kind throughout Tiff’s illness, death, grief, finding love again, and having babies!!! If you’ve made it this far, then we might as well hang together for a while.

As a member of the team, you’ll get exclusive, early access to Chapter 1 right away as a freebie from my publisher. You’ll also get access to a private Facebook group where I’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes updates, hosting discussions, and hanging out as we approach release week.

In return, all I ask is that you pre-order a copy of the book, join the Facebook group, and agree to leave an honest review on Amazon on or after our release day.

Here is how to join the team:

1. Pre-order the book: You can grab your pre-order on Amazon here: [Amazon Pre-Order Link]
2. Join the Facebook Group: Head over to our private group, answer the entry questions, and you’re in! [Facebook Group Link]

Thank you so much for still being here, for reading my words over the years, and for supporting this new chapter. I am incredibly grateful for you, and I can’t wait to share this book with you.

See you in the group,

Jeremy

Her hands were so cold. 

So she said. I told her to slide one into my circa 1995 chocolate brown leather jacket pocket. Along with mine, we filled the cubby and my heart revved like a little Honda 50cc in second gear. This was getting real. We laid on the freshly dewed grass beside Lake Bonnie and stared at the stars, at least that was my excuse, two cold hands melding hearts. That was our first romantic touch. 1996.

She drove a stick shift, a maroon 1995 Nissan Altima. I watched her hand as she changed gears. If you knew her, there was nothing surprising about the way that she drove. I could never figure out why she wanted to drive a stick, she was already short on hands between coffee, make-up application, a cell phone, and you know…driving. 10 and 2 was replaced by 6 and a knee. She loved to drive. For seven years she told me that the greatest thing that the disease had stolen from her was driving. 

Three years ago, I found myself reaching for her wrist. She was unsteady and I couldn’t just hold her hand. I was afraid that it wasn’t sturdy enough to keep her upright if she began to fall. She was frail and delicate. I had to keep her out of the inevitable wheelchair as long as I could. Some semblance of normality. We moved from holding lovers’ hands to holding a wrist for balance as she stumbled through hallways and aisles and foyers and lobbies.  

They say hindsight is 20/20, which isn’t actually true. Science has already shown us that we recreate the past by changing our memories. Framing them the way that we want to remember. Tiff hadn’t eaten in weeks. Barely drank anything each day for weeks. So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when she woke up with a 105 degree temp Sunday morning- August 26. I immediately phoned her nurse, but she wasn’t available. The on-call nurse came and helped get the temperature to a manageable target. Triple digits. 

“Do you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you,” she said. I got mom and dad so that we could hear the gameplay together. Just another round of medicine I assumed. “Tiffanni has started to transition.”

Nine days before, Tiff and I saw a movie and ate at Dairy Queen. Well, I ate. She didn’t want anything and I couldn’t talk her into it. But I didn’t think anything of it. Transition. Three days before she went shopping with her dad. Transition. We did what most do. We argued with the nurse. She didn’t know Tiff and our situation. She was new to our family. Tiff just didn’t feel well, but would be fine when her fever went down. 

“In my professional opinion, you have two to three days.” I’ve never heard more jarring words. There was no container to put them in. They just fell out onto the floor. No way to process, no way to decipher, life-changing words.

“Sometimes they rally. Sometimes they catch a second wind and go back to normal for awhile, but I wouldn’t expect that. We can come check on you whenever you need- just let us know.” And she left. Four people in the house and I had never felt more lonely in my life. Never more hopeless.

The kids came home and I sat them down on the couch. They immediately knew something was wrong. A few years prior, I sat them down on the couch to tell them that our 15 year old dog had died while we were on vacation. I think it was my tone, or the way that I said, “Sit down, I need to tell you something.” I’ve traumatized them to couch sitting family meetings. I’ve been working on redeeming the couch with family devotions, but they still have big eyes every time that we sit down for a conversation. I usually start with, “Everything’s fine. Let’s sit down for a few minutes and talk.” It takes a few minutes of conversation for their hearts to slow down. It’s amazing how a single act, a single moment can condition a person.

 We cried a lot that day on the couch. The escapist part of me kept thinking that a few months from now, everything would be easier. The dad part of me just cried and listened. I was pretty good at both parts that day. “Can we see her,” they asked.

“Of course, but she probably can’t wake up. But you can climb in the bed with her and I bet that she knows you’re there.” So they took turns looking at her. Running their fingers through her hair. Laying in her arms. Crying on the bedsheet. Three puddles. Kids growing up in minutes. I felt sad. And guilty. And tired. And lonely. And protective. And somber. And a hundred feelings that don’t have names. 

We spent the next few hours oscillating between pretending like it was a normal day and talking about how it wasn’t. Homework and a TV show. Dinner and showers. A video game and bedtime prayers. All the while Tiff lay, transitioning, in the next room. Living and dying, the full spectrum, under the same roof. 

But then something miraculous happened. I went in to check on Tiff and she was awake staring at the ceiling. “Whatcha doing,” I asked. 

“Nothing.”

“The kids want to see you,” I said. I called for them and they all came from their normal life grief havens. That was one of the most special moments of my entire life. Where the living and the dying held hands. Ever briefly, but held hands nonetheless. 

Over the next hour, we talked, and laughed, and reminisced, and pretended we weren’t crying. I caught each kid turn away from Tiff to wipe tears, only to turn back and belt out a song. For the life of me, I can’t make sense out of what they sang to her. A three-part broken harmony rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Belted. Like top-of-the-lungs. Who knows what that was about. But they sang and Tiff smiled. Each kid kissed her goodnight, we prayed, and everyone went to bed. “She rallied,” I thought, “That nurse doesn’t know us.” And I went to sleep. 

Around midnight she woke up again. I heard her stirring and woke up as well. “I’m hungry,” she said. 

“You are? How about I go fix you a smoothie,” I responded. And she consented. She hadn’t eaten in days and here she was hungry. “What does that nurse know?” I thought. For the next hour we talked and laughed and she ate. Looking back, I think I knew it was our last conversation ever, but then again, hindsight plays a few games. I climbed in the bed with her and held her hand. Frail. Delicate. Sweet. 

The next morning her fever skyrocketed. It was obvious what had happened. She woke up to tell us goodbye. I called in all of the family because the next few hours would be the last. By mid-afternoon we were in the last moments. Twenty-four hours filled with everything that life offers.  

Her hands were so warm.

And she breathed her last breath. Just me and my sister talking in the ad hoc final stage bedroom while other family were taking a break. “It’s going to be a long night,” Hospice had said. It didn’t feel eventful or surreal. I had thought of that moment so many times over the last seven years. It wasn’t like any of those forecasted moments. Katye and I talked and I glanced back and forth at Tiff’s stomach, heavy breaths. Then they just stopped. I held her hand and waited for them to begin again. Please begin again. She was gone.  

I’ve replayed those moments a hundred times in the last twelve months. Twelve months. I’m not sure how many of you are still there, but I just needed to put this on paper. For me. For the kids. However I remember those last few days, factual or framed, I just needed to remember. As I look back over the words above, they seem so fragmented and disheveled. Just a shotgun blast of random thoughts to remember those last few days. Words are a sorry substitute for pictures. And that’s what I remember most about those last days. Pictures. Glimpses.

Thank you for helping me to grieve well. For reading my words and for praying for my kids. Thank you for your kind thoughts, both stated and just felt. I am grateful to have such amazing family and friends. Thank you. Sincerely, Jeremy.

In January I had an idea to go back into the studio and write some new music. Lots of people know that I’ve recorded three albums. By lots, I mean dozens. Those albums were amazing outlets for me to work through my thoughts, but more importantly, I just enjoy writing music. In January of this year, I started a new song and had a brilliant idea. I would write a new song every month about what I was thinking, feeling, experiencing. But I couldn’t get past the first line. It’s a really good line. I’ve sat down at least ten times to get past the line, but it just won’t come out.

So, in February, I started a new song. It has an amazing feel. Billy Joel and Elton John in my head. A little funky, but straight piano rock. (I have this app on my phone where I record my melodies and ideas because I’ll forget them so quickly if I don’t.) I’ve got a tight piano groove and a mumbled, monosyllabic mutter throughout…but no words. Not even one word.

Again in March, I tried. Another really cool vibe, but no words. April, same thing. That song is epic. Really big, really fun. An anthemic chorus. No words. 

For those four months, I have four tunes and one line. I need a second line.

I started reading Steven King about four years ago. Actually, I read his book On Writing about eight years ago. It’s part memoir, part how-to-write. It’s so good. It made me want to write even more. After reading it, I assumed that I should probably read some of his fiction. If he can write about writing that well, surely he can write. I began with a tome- 11/22/63. I was blown away by the character development, the story arc, the creativity. I just kept reading him. A few other fiction books mixed in after I finish one, but I keep coming back to him. 

Except that I’m in the middle of one right now, and I’m having a hard time picking it back up. The story is good and I’m interested. But I keep coming up with other excuses of things to do. (I only read one fiction book at a time, but I’ll have several non-fiction books going often.)

I love fiction. It is often more honest than anything else that I’m reading. Not real, not factual, but true. But I haven’t picked it back up in over a month. Maybe two. I’m sure a counselor could sort it out, but I’m log-jammed. 

I’ve sat down to write here a dozen times over the last year. But nothing will come out. Every time that I sit down, I have this story in my head that I need to tell. But I don’t want to. I want to talk about my life. For me. 

I always wrote for me. My memory is lousy, and I needed to remember. I have nearly two years of my life on paper. Holidays and normal days, silly conversations and important ones, comedy and tragedy. And I’m so glad that I wrote them down. I now have a collection of these beautiful stories of our life for a season. Writing helped me to see the sacred inside of the struggle. And I haven’t reflected for the sacred in a long time. Because every time I sit down to write, I need to tell this story. But I don’t want to. 

I don’t want to tell the story of that last weekend. I don’t want to remember the final breath. I really don’t want to see my kids faces again when I told them that their mom was gone. I don’t want to go to the funeral again or watch my brothers and nephews carry the casket. But I need to. It’s time to. It’s time to unjam the logs and write again. Not because writing is magic, but because writing helps me to see. To see the beauty and the sacred in the mundane and the monotonous. To see joy and to see pain. To see that tragedy and suffering aren’t the worst parts of life, but that they are simply parts of life. 

So, tonight I’m going to pick my book back up. Tomorrow I’m going to go back to the piano and sit there until I get that second line. And sometime soon, I’m going to tell the story. 

This feeling is foreign to me. I haven’t spent enough time with it over the years to discern it, to define it. The distractions of a noise-doused life of busyness and what’s-next anticipation easily hide its soft footsteps through my soul. But loneliness lurks.

I think that I could have predicted most of my feelings. Most of my experiences. Care-taking is not new to humanity. In fact, all of us will either die unexpectedly, give care, or be taken care of (or all of the above.) That’s pretty much the options. Which makes care-taking a nearly universal human experience. Not to mention, if you were ever a baby, you were cared for. I think that about covers it.

But this feeling isn’t one that I know how to contend with. It’s almost unidentifiable for me. Just an empty, unbelonging. By the way, I only try to write about this season because I want to remember it. I have belonged and I will belong again. The again will be sweeter because the unbelonging is recognized and real. I suppose there’s a similar emotion to empty-nesters. A recalibration of relationships. And this wouldn’t be so hard if the past wouldn’t have been so satisfying. There was never a moment of our marriage that I felt empty, displaced, or unseen. Now, I embody them.

My life is not absent of love and attentiveness. I am surrounded by family, friends, those who minister and need ministry. Yet, lately, this unbelonging echo chamber stifles any contentedness of companionship that tries to reinforce kinship. It’s odd to know one thing and to feel another. To logic one, and emote the opposite.

In some ways it’s less about loneliness and more about discovering a new identity. I lay in the beds with my kids at night and talk about love. I sit at the dinner table with my family and inhale life. I share meals, conversations, board games, concerts, car rides, movies, ministry, and being. This dis-ease is confusing. I am not alone. Just lonely.