I met Tiffanni at Preacher’s Kids’ camp. As was her MO, she was dating a jerky guy and I was intrigued. Why do great girls go for those types of guys? I found myself working for the entire weekend to make her laugh. I wanted her to escape from her dredged relationship into my light-hearted humor. She laughed a lot, but I don’t know if she ever realized the contrast. She was in 9^th grade, and I in 10^th– 1992.

I saw her again the next year at summer camp. She said hello to me with a cautious smile, her brain churning to remember how she knew me. She tried to convince me later that she always knew it was me- embarrassed to admit I hadn’t left much of an impression. But her smile was the same. It had marked me.

I met other people, but always kept my eye on her. She had a group of friends that decided they weren’t going to waste time with boys that week. They spent the entire week having fun with each other. Laughing and praying together. They lingered at the altar every night crying and snotting all over each other, indifferent to anyone’s opinion.

The next year I came back to camp as a graduated senior and she was a camp counselor. Stationed at the lake, making sure that us kids wore our life jackets, so I absent-mindedly forgot mine every day, just for the reprimand. Any notice was a good notice. I stood beside her and talked away the afternoons, distracting her from her life-saving- but she was doing more important work.

The next summer, I worked the camp, hoping that she would too. She didn’t, but I remember one single night in two months that she showed up just to visit her friends that were there. She was taking a summer class, she told me, and couldn’t come to camp that year. She sat in the camp service, in the balcony- so I did too. The best night of the summer.

That fall, she came to my College as a freshman. For the first time ever, I had her to myself. Every day I walked her to class- how else would she find her way around the campus? We ate together, went out with friends on the weekends, and I invited her to the piano practice room to sing while I played. I had just taken a beginner course and her voice made my novice chord pounding playing sound brilliant. And inevitably, I won. As all upper-classmen do, I turned on the charm and she swooned.

By the end of the school year, we were asked by one of the traveling worship teams to join. I’m certain they asked me to play piano because they knew she would be more likely to sing. With 9-months experience as a piano player, we joined a traveling representative recruiting group for our college and went to camps up and down the East Coast all summer. It was the best summer of my life. By now, you can surely tell that I have a thing for summer camps.

The next year I interned with my brother-in-law who was a youth pastor. He had recently started a summer camp called Beach Freak (which parents still furrow their brow when they hear the name.) I was asked to play piano and Tiffanni to sing. I led a small group of middle school boys (who are in their 30’s now) and fell in love with the camp. After seeing and experiencing dozens of camps all over, there is nothing like it.

The next year, Tiffanni and I were married and became youth pastors. We brought our group from Tennessee to the camp and never left. Every summer for 19 years. We’ve attended Beach Freak longer than every student here this year has been alive! And boy do we have the stories. We’ve watched teenagers find their calling, give their hearts to Christ, release the past, and embrace the future. We’ve seen several marriage proposals, tragedy and heartache, restoration and transformation. Beach Freak has impacted us and those we bring for two decades.

Every summer for 25 years, we’ve camped. I watched Tiffanni as a camper love her friends and then as a counselor, love students. Then as a youth pastor, I watched her pour her life into young people- crying and snotting every summer. I guess that’s part of the experience. And then last night during the service, I watched her sit, wedged between two of our leaders so that her body couldn’t flail too far to the right or left. She pinballed off of them all night. Then they escorted her to the café, arm in arm, and placed her at a picnic table to talk and laugh with everyone. Where she used to entertain, now she watched and listened. Her smile, still as bright, her eyes bounced around the table as people told their funny stories. And my favorite camper and I did what we do every summer- we hung out at camp.

Tiffanni and I were married in January of 1999. The plan was to make sure that we did it over a break so that our college friends could come and we could go back to school for the spring semester. But I overloaded my schedule and finished early. 20+ hours at school, 25 hours a week at Red Lobster, For the Seafood Lover in You, and threw in some baseball so I wouldn’t have to sleep at all.

January is the worst time to get married. Not that it matters on the wedding day, but there are so many limited options for anniversary get-aways in the years that follow. A few years ago we decided to spend a few nights in Chattanooga, only to return after one because they shut down the city for a blizzard (the Southern kind- ice and wind chill.) But January it was. It made sense eleven months earlier when we started planning the festivities. A lot happens in eleven months.

I like surprises, so I told Tiffanni to pack warm for the honeymoon and that’s all of the hints that she got. We went on a cruise to the Bahamas and back to Orlando for a couple of nights. We stayed in the Wilderness Lodge at Disney and then went to the Animal Kingdom. Tiff and I had been to every park in the area except Disney’s Theme Park Zoo, so we gave it a shot. And true to Disney, it was brilliant.

Over the next 17+ years, we made a life of hitting theme parks. Vacations and excursions were planned around roller coasters- The Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Epcot, Universal Studios, Six Flags, Alabama Adventures, Busch Gardens, Sea World Orlando, Sea World San Diego, Disney Quest, Point Mallard, White Water Atlanta- we like theme parks.

Last week we went on our Summer Vacation with Tiff’s side of the family to Orlando. There’s eleven of us. I know, because there are no 11-person configurations of dinner tables that works well. Someone gets stuck on the end and I knee-joust with them all night.

Last year, Jay and I took the kids to Aquatica, a water park, while my in-laws took Tiffanni and Stacey shopping. It just seemed like Tiffanni couldn’t do theme parks anymore. She moves so much that the heat is unbearable and I knew that she couldn’t walk around a park anymore. So for the last several months, Tiffanni begged to go to Disney. She told me, “We’re going.”

There aren’t many things in life worse than telling your partner, “No.” I never bought into the subordination theory of marriage- we were partners and made decisions together. Some things I was good at and needed to make the call on, some things she was, but mostly we made decisions together. That whole your husband is the head thing, that actually stems from the curse of sin (Genesis 3:16), and I’d prefer to not subject myself to curses if I can. So, we partnered. But lately, I have to say, “No,” a lot. It doesn’t feel right and I hate it.

So I avoided talking about it with Tiffanni all week in Orlando. I thought that if I pretended that it wasn’t an option, that it would just go away. And she pestered. “I want to go. Can we please go?”

On the next to last night, my mother-in-law and I talked and agreed it was just too hard. It wouldn’t work and Tiffanni just couldn’t make it. I went to bed sad. So many parts of this disease take from you without warning. You don’t realize that it’s the last time to do something until it’s over. But to my surprise, I woke to a text from my mother-in-law that just said, “Let’s do it. We’ll make it work. Let’s do Animal Kingdom, it’s the most shady and the easiest to maneuver.” With mixed feelings, I responded, “Ok.”

Tiffanni came into the room to wake me on the last day and to ask one last time, “Can we please go? I want to go so bad.” I don’t think it was about a park, or a ride- it was about independence. It was about memories. It was about being normal.

So we went. The Animal Kingdom. The place where it all started. And this time I got to feel the significance of the moment all day. Each ride, each snack, each smile from Tiffanni and our kids. We fought the heat and the extra work of a wheelchair. I noticed the beauty of the moment all day. And we smiled, and we laughed, and we played, and we were normal for one last ride.

My brother was married this weekend. Adam said, “I do” to the woman of his dreams and they were married in this quaint, rustic warehouse that was filled with life and love on Sunday. It was a perfect weekend. One of those weekends that the air determines to explode with rain, but realizes that there is something important happening, so it acquiesces. It finally let go during the ceremony that was indoors and stopped again just in time for all of the guests to leave. Mother Nature, the romantic.

As guests entered they received their order of service from the three most gorgeous greeters (Addyson, Carsyn, and Sophia.) The troop of family and friends signed a globe, recommendations of travel for the couple-to-be, and got their seats.

The ceremony was beautiful. Both dads were ministers and officiated. The bride and groom read their vows to each other and exchanged rings. They shared communion and each dad spoke a blessing over the couple- which I wish was possible to be a part of every wedding ever. I do’s, a kiss, and forever.

I love late weddings because it always means better food and more fun. Everyone loosens up when the sun sets. We ate and watched Adam and Keri cut the cake. We made toasts and speeches and “To Adam and Keri’s”.

After all of the traditional pomp, the party hit the dance floor. Keri had asked for 80’s and 90’s pop- all night. Whitney Houston, Journey, Wilson Phillips, with some Etta James and Louis Armstrong sprinkled in. Couples jumped and lip synced to “Faithfully” and “Hold On For One More Day”. When they weren’t bouncing, they were arm in arm swaying. But I didn’t have anyone to dance with. The odd part of the day was feeling both emotions. Life rarely gives us a single, undiluted emotion. I watched as my brother made his vows of “for better or worse, rich or poor, sickness or health”, and eyed my Tiff in the corner. A body that refused to cooperate the way the weather had.

The excitement of the future, with all of the hopes of tomorrow- the uncertainty made thrilling because of the fact that you aren’t doing it alone. Life and love and hope and family. The best of what it means to be human. And yet I straddled over a chasm of ambiguity.

So my sister asked me to dance. And I felt both horizons of the night. The emotions crashed over me as I watched my kids dance and laugh and Tiff struggle to keep her head up and her arms still. My sister didn’t tell me why her cheek was stained with tears, but what other reason would you be asked by your sister to dance at a wedding? And I whispered into her ear, “Thank you for being sad with me.” As she too, teetered between the shores of emotions.

So we danced and cried. My brother in one eye, my bride in the other. Because this is and isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Because Vows hold both halves of the human experience. Because the rhythm of humanity beats to joy and pain. Because dancing is beautiful and sacred, and so is crying.

Organization was never my gift. It was Tiff’s. I’ll bring the adventure and Tiff can get us packed. As odd as it sounds, I just started packing my own bags for trips three years ago. And the truth is that I sometimes get some help from family friends for that. Trying to remember to pack enough socks and deodorant sends me into my reptilian brain- fight or flight. So I fly.

This past weekend I planned this amazing backpacking experience for me and the kids. A 14-Mile journey along the Pinhoti Trail in the Talladega National Forest. It’s a trip that I’ve taken several times with teenagers and know very well. We hike in 2 miles, stay at a campsite, hike 10 miles, stay at a campsite, and then hike out 2 miles to the car- a three day journey through God’s Country. That 10-miler is a killer, but I thought the kids could make it. 

I left my car at the end point, got a ride from a pastor friend from Eastaboga (a real city) to the starting point- Sweetwater Lake. A nice hike beside the lake and into the woods for 2 miles and we were off. No complaints, easy trek, just fun. I breathed in the mountain air and thought, I just don’t do this enough. The kids were enjoying themselves, I kept asking, “Do you love this or what?!” They always responded excitedly. I can’t tell if they really do like backpacking or just loved being on a new adventure with me- but who cares. It was amazing.

We got to our campsite quickly, set up the tent, and went crawfish searching. The water was cool and refreshing after a warm walk- not ideal for backpacking, but perfect nonetheless.

One of the problems with hiking in the heat is that all of the other critters that need the sun come out to play too. After our creek walk, I spent 20-minutes picking ticks off of all of us. Ticks suck. Not to mention, I had to keep an eye out for snakes, which we nearly tripped over on our hike in. Snakes bite. But all was made well by my selection in snacks.

Tiff never let me go grocery shopping. My stomach had this way of dictating what I would buy in light of the list that I had been tasked with. I’d go for milk and butter and return with Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Cookie Dough ice cream and a yo-yo, only to be sent back out for a second run to the store for milk and butter. I kept the yo-yo. Lately, I have no inhibitors on my grocery store purchases. I buy what I want, gain a little weight and a cavity, and eat my fill of sweets. Lucky for my children, my mom does the vast majority of the grocery shopping and meal planning.

But not this time. I’m a snacker, so we had snacks. You have to have calories to burn for the 10-mile hike! I bought chocolate covered granola bars (is that an oximoron?), decadent trail mix, nutter butters, chips ahoy, oreos, gummy bears, ritz pb crackers, and peanut butter M&M’s. Did I mention, I’m a snacker? Around 6pm the snacks had burned through and the kids were ready to eat. They were so excited about eating our freeze dried meals that we brought- spaghetti, lasagna, or chicken and rice. To be honest, the meals are much better than you think. I was so hungry. The way the meals work, you boil water and simply add. Easy as that.

We each selected our meal for the evening. There was even a picnic table at our campsite, 2 miles in the forest. I opened my well planned backpack to get the JetBoil (a piece of equipment to boil water rapidly.) Organization was never my gift. It was Tiff’s. I’ll bring the adventure and Tiff can get us packed. I feel like I had done my part- we were having so much fun! Hiking, snakes, tick removal, creek walks, we played cards, I-Spy, it was brilliant! Except, I couldn’t find the JetBoil. You know, the most important piece of equipment that we had. I looked up at the kids, staring in anticipation of dinner and fed them the news- “I forgot the JetBoil.”

Brayden began to cry. Ungrateful kid. Addyson just walked off. Passive Aggressive child. Carsyn told me it was ok that I was so careless because she “didn’t want me to feel bad.” Meh. And like that, I relinquished my Dad of the Year title.

I quickly gathered the troops and Winston Churchill’d my way through. “Good news and bad news. The good news is that we have food. It’s crap, but we won’t starve. The bad news is that we’re 12 miles from the car and we don’t have an option- in the morning we’re hiking to the car. It’ll take all day, but you can do it.” And with that, we started joking and having fun again. Kids are resilient. Adaptable. What a great way to make a memory- Remember that time we went backpacking and almost starved to death. If I had the ability to plan, I might have designed the oversight.

We slept well and hit the trail at 8am. Full of granola bars and M&M’s, we hiked. And it was beautiful. The kids were amazing. No complaining, just enjoying one another. We talked, and laughed, and played, and I loved every minute of it.

Several times along the way, I couldn’t help but think, This wasn’t the way I planned it. We were supposed to do this together. I bring the adventure and you pack. I’ll lasso the world, you just tell me what to do with it. But those were the best laid plans, and plans change.

I walked through the house at 2am. It was at least the second time that I checked on the kids that night, not counting praying for them and saying goodnight before bed. My mind was doing mean things. I had played over in my mind what I would do if one of them wasn’t breathing, if something was wrong. I went through my CPR steps, was it five chest compressions or ten?

About a year before Tiffanni was diagnosed in 2011, my subconscious starting “doing work” the counselor would later tell me. Something was wrong in my family and my mind played games with all of the possibilities. So many people told me later, “We knew something was wrong, we just didn’t know how to tell you.” So my mind toyed with my emotions and fear crept in.

So many people know me as happy and fun, but nights were terrifying. Endless outcomes of pain haunted my imagination. One of my children dying was the worst. I have no doubt that every parent fears this. But for me, it was out of character. So every night I couldn’t fall asleep until I checked on the kids multiple times. I began to lose sleep, walking back and forth to their rooms just to make sure they were ok. I would tell myself, “If you don’t go check on them now and they die in the night, you’ll find them in the morning and regret for the rest of your life that you could have done something.” So, I would get up and check on them- over and over. Every night for months.

I even became superstitious about prayer. Fear does this. I thought that if I didn’t pray for my kids each night at bedtime and say the mantra, “God protect my kids”, that somehow there was a greater chance that something would happen. It became part of the routine- prayer for protection, and then I would double check that God was doing his part throughout the night, since I had done mine. I pretended like it was normal. Or maybe I just didn’t let myself think about it.

I was in the middle of my doctoral studies and taking a class on counseling. One of our requirements was to work through a current problem with our teacher. I couldn’t point to anything to talk about, when it struck me, I guess I could talk to him about the fear for my family how many times I check on the kids at night. Maybe it’s not normal.

So, we talked. One of the most amazing things that a professional can do is make you feel normal. Not that what I was doing was normal, but it was human. There are moments of our lives that things get out of balance and we don’t even realize it. He told me, “What you’re doing isn’t healthy, but it’s not surprising. You’re a parent.”

I asked him, “What should I do?” I expected wisdom. I anticipated that he would look deeply into my childhood and diagnose some stunted maturation process. Like I slept with a nightlight too long as a child or watched Jaws too early in my adolescent development. What he told me was frustrating.

“You’ve got to stop.”

“Stop what?” I asked.

“Stop checking on your kids at night.”

“What do you mean I have to stop? Like, I just don’t do it anymore? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“Yes, that’s it. What you’re doing is normal, in that it’s common. It’s just not healthy. So stop.”

And that was it. That was my professional. Sometimes things don’t need complicated answers. The first night was miserable. I fought all night. I dreaded waking them up the next morning and throughout the night projected horrors into that moment. But there they were, sound asleep, sun peeking through the windows, wadded up in a comforter. Alive. So, I did it again the next night. I don’t think it was any easier. But I stayed with it. I gave in once in a while and graciously chided myself. Doesn’t every addict relapse at least once? I don’t remember when it went away. I just know that I don’t feel that same fear anymore. Sure, some nights are a little harder, but I can’t live that way again.

I don’t check on my kids at night any more. Although I pray with Addyson, Carsyn, and Brayden every night, I don’t ever ask for protection. I can’t go back there. I can’t live in a world where everything bows to my fear, even God. I can’t worry about breaking a mirror, seeing a black cat, opening an umbrella inside, or checking the protection box off during my prayers. I’ve taken my step of faith toward a God who loves me, my children, and Tiffanni more than I do with a perfect love. And perfect love casts out all fear.