Many of this family are angry. They feel betrayed and lied to by the institutional church, by their parents, by their pastors, by authors, by themselves. They’re angry it took them this long to discover what they should have grown up on. Many of them have given up on anything that looks like a local church; mistrusting that it would ever be possible for authentic grace to exist in one.

They should be angry. They should be mistrusting. But there is a trouble with mistrust. It can globalize. You learn to not trust as a way of life. You can gain knowledge without trust, but you can’t become wise, or discerning or insightful, without trust. For truth comes through the heart. And the heart must allow truth or it is not received. This goes a long way in explaining why so many are deeply intelligent and knowledgeable in the Scriptures but not wise and discerning in the things of God.
A lifestyle of mistrust also costs the next person who comes into your life…and all those who are already there. They never get the real, best you.

And anger ultimately never wins anything. It just eventually makes you too much like those whose dead theology you’ve run from. Grace gradually makes me alive, playful, true, authentic, safe, available, sacrificial, honest-but mostly free-for the sake of loving others.
I get weary of those who are just against what they don’t like in Christianity. I sometimes leave them wondering what they’re for. Sometimes it all just feels smug and judging and superior and hip and too cool. That is not grace-it’s probably more just immaturity. It’s much less important for me to know what convictions you are against than what you are for.

There is a subtle trap we who hold these truths so dearly can fall into. We can turn grace into a theological concept to be “right” about, rather than a living, breathing way of life I get to live with others. We can talk about grace correctly; privately building a compelling system and still not get to enjoy living in grace. If we’re simply switching one theology of the head for another, we miss that grace’s ladder is up an entirely different wall. Grace is a call to a way of life with others that frees love-even to the unlovely.

Finally, I cringe at the language which says, “She gets it,” or “he doesn’t get it.” We can turn this beautiful grace into another system of law, complete with a prescribed set of “grace rules” and buzz words you must embrace to be initiated. We here at Truefaced have coined more terms than a mint, but we have no corner on anything, let alone grace. It will look different in every culture. Everyone matures at their own rate, prescribed by the God of grace.

This is a beautiful time in our history where the prisoners are tired and they can’t take it anymore. They are asking questions. Those who grew up in moralism, legalism and performance-driven worlds are attempting to re-read the Scriptures through a lens of grace. We, full of failure, immaturity and clumsiness have a precious opportunity to take them by the hand into freedom. We want to make sure what they find is more real than what they left.

John for Bill, Bruce and all the gang at Truefaced.

If you know Carly, there may not be a person on earth less appropriate to honk at. She is incredibly kind, thoughtful and sacrificial. Driving panicked on those streets, she broke into tears at the meanness of the driver. It frightened her, violated her. Something happens to a father when he hears such news. It doesn’t matter if this father is a believer or not. The first thought is usually something like this: “I will somehow discover the identity of this person and set up a hidden horn near the front door of their home. I will blare it for several hours and then stop, giving hope that the ordeal is over, only to start it up again in the middle of the night for them and their neighbors to enjoy. (It’s your fault if you decided to live in a neighborhood next to such a person.)”

I’ve noticed over the years that my first response is sometimes not much different than my first responses were before I was a believer. But there is something deeper now in me, something stronger, something that always eventually seeps through my being. It is love. I am a new creature, fused with God Himself. I really am! In spite of all my mess and failure. I am “Christ in John!” And eventually it shines through. Rarely in the timing or display I would expect or want. Love doggedly waits for my old tapes to yell, scream and cry out “Unfair!” Love doggedly waits for my fear and shame to rise and fail. Love doggedly waits for my blame to run out of steam, for my desperate attempt to control the situation, enact justice, fix my daughter’s wounded heart. Love waits. And then, when I have plotted, manipulated, fixated and schemed my way into a realization that I am just desperately needy of God to do something-then love moves.

-Love calls my name to a higher way, a truer, more authentic, more vulnerable response.
-Love reminds me that I cannot always be there when Carly gets hurt, but He will.
-Love reminds me that He can (and will) use even this stupid, mean event to make her
even more beautiful.
-Love empowers me to see that the woman honking on her horn is full of pain and deeply
needs Jesus.
-Love frees me to forgive that woman, so I can be free to love again.
-Love actually slowly begins to free me to care for that driver.
-Love convinces me He’s in control and loves all that concerns me more than I do.
-Love teaches me to run to my God, the One who loves me most, to tell Him my sadness,
and pain in not being able to protect the ones I love.
-Love allows me to talk about it, so I don’t stuff the pain inside and act out of my shame.
-Love directs me back to my daughter to let her know how proud I am of the beautiful
heart God has formed in her.
-Love gives me words to communicate the depth of my sadness that she had to go
through such pain.
-Love instructs me to remind my daughter that God stands with His arm around her even
in the midst of cruel nonsense that hurts her heart.
-Love reminds me to tell her there is no event He will not redeem.
-Love employs this event and allows a family to draw closer to each other to protect each
other’s hearts with God’s comfort.
-Love allows me to not forget how deeply this world needs Jesus, especially in this
season.
-Love brings me to peace, so I can stay present for those who need me to be fully there.

I love this God. I will follow this God. I will trust this God. I will praise and worship this God. I will teach others of this God’s love. I will depend upon the love of this God to heal me. I will continue to model this God’s life of grace to my family and friends, even when I am in my own pain.

…I love this God.

Except I hadn’t factored in “old man strength.” Old man strength is a momentary, supernatural power I think God gives to men in their late 40s often all the way into their 70s, for just such rare occasions. It’s like the adrenaline-strength people have who are suddenly needed to help lift a car off someone. Well, in that moment, dad had it. He grabbed my arm, jerked it behind my back, flipped me around and spun me to the ground, all in one devastating move. Then he held me down for a few seconds, snarling something about “never trying something stupid like that again.” I was totally undone, embarrassed, angry, hurt, and impressed all in one emotion. I immediately got up and ran out of the house, not knowing what else to do. I was several blocks away before I could even register what was going on. The rain had strengthened and it was growing colder by the minute. I had no jacket, and I couldn’t risk sneaking back into the house. So I started walking…and walking…and walking…I walked from about 1 in the afternoon until after dark.

Somewhere around four o’clock the anger went away and was replaced…with deep, lonely sadness and a sense of despair I’d never experienced before. In that darkening several hours, I felt unknown by anyone; unloved and unlovable. I fully understood something was deeply wrong with me and I didn’t have the vaguest idea what to do about it. It wasn’t a repentant sorrow, only a devastating discovery without any hope of resolve. Every step I took it got worse. Sometime after four in the afternoon, on Thanksgiving Day 1970, I was hit with the full effect of my shame and that horrible sense that I was not just behaving poorly but that something was deeply wrong with me.

That afternoon sent me into ten years of lost wandering, trying to find myself, trying to figure out why I felt alone, even though I was popular and well liked everywhere I went. It took me into a maze of drugs, wrong relationships with women and dozens of drives across the country, trying to find something that would answer or take away this darkness.

That answer would come nine years and a month later, on December 23^rd, 1979, when I quit running long enough to ask Jesus Christ to forgive me and take me as His. For the first time ever, I felt known and truly loved. It undid me. I was finally home. It would take years more to discover that I didn’t have to carry and be identified by that shame from my past. But somewhere in the following years, even after seminary, and after  preaching for quite awhile, I slowly began to trust His love, His power, His new identity enough to start to reframe and reinterpret my self-story.

I still now can go there, into that dark place. Isn’t that crazy sounding? But I can. It doesn’t actually take much. I don’t expect it will fully go away in this lifetime. But I spend much, much less time there. An odd residue of that season is that I have never much enjoyed Thanksgiving. I have always associated it with great sadness and inadequacy in me. That too is beginning to change. God has been continually faithful to keep repainting my landscape and redeeming my past. The last several years I have been almost enjoying the day. Four years ago I created this game for my kids and I to play. I never thought of the beautiful irony of it until typing this sentence. We go out and walk the streets…for hours. Either after or before our Thanksgiving meal…But we carry fruit from neighborhood trees and have several hour contests through the neighborhoods to see who can roll the grapefruit or orange closest to predetermined targets. This year it will be the “4^th Annual Lynch Citrus Roll Invitational.” We walk many of the same streets I did that day, 38 years ago. I hadn’t even thought of that fact until right this moment. Wow, thank you God!

And so it goes with all of us. We are all fragile, broken, shattered from the results of the Fall. And in magic that can only be seen in retrospect, the precious, loving Friend of our souls-He is repainting our stories with richer, deeper colors. And they are in some way I cannot yet understand, even more beautiful than they could be, if the ugliness of the past had never happened.

Happy Thanksgiving friends!

From John, Bruce, Bill and all of us at TrueFaced-to all of you daring to trust the love, grace and identity that Jesus brings.

Historically, there always seems to be a speaking commitment soon following our fights. I hate that. There are really only a few options when this happens. 1)-I can try to patch things up so that we can function at the event. 2)-I can suddenly get violently ill and not be able to attend the event. 3)-I can show up to the event and tell everyone we’re not doing well and would they mind breaking into groups of three for the weekend while we each go wander alone in the woods.

We went and in general terms I told the couples that we had a rough time the day before and were even now still fragile. It actually probably allowed the weekend to be even more meaningful. All the presenters did a great job and all the couples were vitally engaged and facing their marriage with great intentionality and humble dependence upon God’s grace and sovereign protection.

Slowly, upon our return, Stacey and I have been sorting out the sadness we can carry in our marriage. We love each other a lot and have a beautiful marriage. But we will hurt each other again…It got me to thinking…

Those of us trying to influence anyone else, trying to teach these truths of grace and trusting our identity in Christ-we want our lives to model what we’re sharing. So we can feel like phonies when we discover that our lives are sometimes as messy, broken and unfinished as those we’re asked to influence. I used to not know what to do with that reality. It always made me want to run off somewhere and make a living looking for beach glass. I did not want to even bluff like I could possibly own responsibility for teaching these life changing truths that hadn’t always changed me fast enough.

Now I’m older. And I’m realizing that such frailty, failure and futility is part of the very message we love so much. It is proclaiming that the magic doesn’t reside in John. It resides in Christ in John. And sometimes that is not an exact science. There are moments, many of them, when I can fully feel I am fused with Him, letting Him live through me, trusting Him to do mighty things in me. Then there are other times when I sincerely wonder if I even know God.

I will always display some measure of foolishness, pain and immaturity, because, well because, there is still foolishness, pain and immaturity in me! It will never nullify the veracity of “Christ in John Lynch”. I am fully righteous. I am fully fused with God Himself. I am fully a new creature. I am fully God’s adored, I have everything in me I need, I am a man unable to be condemned no matter what I get myself into…But I am still a kid. And I am not always yet willing to humbly trust God. There is still something in me that fights this health. And this new life is undoing stuff all the way back from the goofballs in my family line. Some of what I am living out will be better seen in my kids than me.

And if you catch me at any particular moment I may not look much healthier than someone without Christ. I can get just as loud or irrational as about anyone I know. But the magic continues on. God does His beauty. And Stacey, although she might not have admitted it that Thursday evening, is better and more authentically loved by me than 25 years ago. And so is everyone else I know, including my God.

It is imperative that we who carry this message, who dare take grace and identity into a religious culture of performance and self-willed sanctification, that we give ourselves the grace we promise to others. God is not ashamed, embarrassed or surprised by our junk. He just smiles, puts His arm around us and says something like, “Stick around kid. I’m growing you up from the inside out. I know what I’m doing and I’m proud to be doing it in you.”

So there.

John (for Bruce and Bill, the gang at Truefaced, and all who carry this message of hope)

even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

After thousands of years of sincerely religious people bluffing and play-acting with love, God gives His children a new heart: completely new creatures, fully righteous, without any condemnation, who can actually live out this verse without it enflaming them to rebellion, like every other command had done before.

So, you’d think we’d automatically now fully love each other, meet deep needs, affirm each other, free each other and be used of God to bring one another in from the cold.

…Well, maybe not right away.

But eventually new life weaves through and, from the inside out, we begin to find ourselves daring this new way of life-maybe one beautiful relationship at a time.

In response to our most recent café conversation at boscafe.com between “Carlos” and “Hank”,  a dear friend of mine, John Boring, wrote these profound words that left me stunned, proud and full of gratefulness. The goal of God’s instruction is love…and it eventually does win.

I’m sure there’s something I should tell you to do with this, some bow I should put on at the end of this. But I would be wasting your time, and mine. Enjoy.

“Man, listening to this conversation between Hank and Carlos, reminds me of a continuing conversation I’ve been having with a friend of more than fifty years. We were out fishing one day on Lake Powell, and I mentioned to “Newt” that I thought it amazing that we could be friends that long and never question what it was that cemented us together. So, we started kicking it around, but we were kind of reserved about it. You know, I said things like, “You’ve always been there for me, over the years. Always visited me, even when it would have been easier to not make the effort.” Newt was a bit reluctant to open up, kind of like Hank is with Carlos. So, I dropped the subject. But, when we got home again, I emailed him an eulogy that I thought I would say at his funeral if he died before me. I thought he should know how much I loved him and how much his friendship had meant to me. That moved him, big time. He wrote back with one for me, and I was floored when he said he started it about four years ago. Anyway, we then began to open up to each other, but in emails and letters. Amazing the depth of our love and friendship and even more amazing how difficult it was for us to write about it, much less talk about it in person. But, you know the really neat thing? The next fishing trip we went on, when we met at the lake, we hugged each other. First time we ever did that. Now, it’s as common as shaking hands used to be. I’ve known Newt since we were freshmen in high school, back in 1946, and we’ve always been close. But, now we’re closer than brothers because we openly admit our love and we accept that love for what it is. The highest kind of friendship, God’s love from me to Newt and vice versa.”

That was then, and this is now! God’s doing something incredible in His Church right now! We’re discovering when we convene these conferences on creating and nurturing environments of grace-those coming aren’t only hungry to learn these truths, but passionate to learn how to incorporate such a life where they live. They are blown away and full of unbridled delight to find a room full of others who are dreaming the same dream. It’s wildly infectious. This last TF12 felt like we’d convened a partial “Who’s Who” of our heroes of grace. Many of them have stood in these truths faithfully for decades. And they were now making friendships and networks with those just discovering this life in grace. It was powerful and sacred to watch. Suddenly, we discovered we weren’t the only voices. In fact, we weren’t even the most important voices. Our friends had to see that this life works outside the teaching of Bill, Bruce and John. They couldn’t wait to talk to friends we brought in for lunch just to tell their story and listen to the stories of their new friends! It was magical.

Something is afoot in Narnia. We’re now putting together these Team Intensives quarterly. We don’t have this all perfectly packaged. We’re still learning how to best let these truths transfer. It’s fragile, messy and sacredly beautiful and hopeful all at the same time. Our next one is in February. If you have a team of folks moving in a similar dream, you could be seated with us, daring to risk the power and health of a community trying on these truths. You could imagine and dare to envision what this all could look like in your community. We’ll supply the content, the context and the coaching. You just show up with a team and an open heart. It’s a rush, it’s a blast, it’s a life-changing several days.  You can sign up a team by contacting David Pinkerton at TrueFaced. david@truefaced.com

We’ll see some of you in February. And we’ll see the rest of you at Bo’s Café whenever you like.

John, for Bruce and Bill and the rest of the TrueFaced team

I don’t know, maybe I’m just bitter. Growing up in Southern California, my dad first took us to the fair when I was about 10. I think mom forced him into it. He didn’t like it at all. He saw it as a frivolous, colossal waste of money, time and dignity. My dad was all about “educational experiences.” So we walked through rows of high-pitched, fast-talking vendors with microphones strapped to their necks, hawking towels that could permanently keep steam off your bathroom mirror. We spent long chunks of time at exhibits of campaign pins of past presidential elections. I’d love that now, but back then it was like being forced to learn the etymology of adhesive tape. Outside these stuffy convention halls, in the “real” fair, was pure, breath-taking, dangerous magic! There were rides that could terrify your soul and sights that could fill all your senses with wonder. In the 60s there were few governing policies on good taste imposed upon the Fair. Mysterious tents were prominently displayed with “barkers” out front, on a box, luring us in to see the “Bearded Lady” or the “Lobster Boy.” Dad wouldn’t let us within a quarter mile of this section of the Fair. I remember one booth sold chameleons. Can you imagine? Chameleons! Lizards who could change colors! I knew if I could just have one I would need nothing else but food and clothing for the rest of my life! I begged, pleaded and whined for a chameleon. I think they probably cost less than a buck, sold by a sketchy looking guy who might have painted them earlier in the day. My dad wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t “educational” or “practical”. At the end of my ride-less experience at the Orange County Fair, he begrudgingly purchased a bumper sticker of the Fair’s mascot pig. “You can put it on your school notebook!” I would have rather worn a shirt made out of ashtrays.

My dad was a really good man, but he lived with a lot of fear and a lot of control. He didn’t want to look foolish. I think he inadvertently passed his fear and insecurity on to me. He was a child of the depression and was always fighting against the other shoe dropping. I’m coming to grips with the reality that I guard my heart from pain, from what “could” happen, from being caught off guard and embarrassed. I’m an odd combination of a playful, humor filled wild-man, with this incongruent sense of self-protection.

Understanding and trusting Christ’s outrageous delight of me and His wonderful, moment by moment protection of my deepest fragileness has been the only remedy for this Adam transmitted disease. Grace and trusting my true identity and His complete and loving sovereignty over my life gently takes me from hiding in the corners. Such intentional love walks me away from my fear of fear, of guarding my heart from the eventuality of sadness, all the way to trusting that God will be right next to me, facing it fully with me, as I face whatever comes upon me. This alone allows me to stay in the moment, enjoy the event in front of me and love those in front of me.

Resting in these truths, I find myself almost longing to stroll through our State Fair and step onto the Tilt-A-Whirl and maybe finish off my evening with some cotton candy and a deep-fried Twinky on a stick. …Then again, maybe I’ll just purchase a bumper sticker.

You click on the door of the restaurant and it takes you out onto the upstairs deck, where you’re seated at a table next to the regulars. Each week some combination of Hank, Cynthia, Lindsey, Carlos, Bo, Andy and Steven show up to discuss their lives, Bo’s cooking and whatever messy stuff coming out of an environment trying to figure out how to live in grace, authenticity, and love. It’s a lot of fun. The restaurant is open for business. You can drop by and who knows, maybe you’re eating shrimp on a plate just like everyone else.

What is Bo’s Café like? We tried to describe it in a piece for the website:

“Every now and then we stumble upon a place that feels different. You might find it on a trip out of town or sometimes it might be a place you discover right in your own  neighborhood. The place kind of sneaks up on you. Maybe it’s the music, or the upstairs deck, or the smell of good food. Something about it feels…safe, real, fun, alive…authentic, unrehearsed, true. You stumble into conversations and in very little time feel like you’re becoming known. Or you can sit off in the corner with a nice drink and just be there, talking to no one until you’re ready. The place is almost always comfortably full, but rarely crowded. And there’s laughter. Not that obnoxious drunken laughter of lonely bravado, but the laughter of friends enjoying each other. You eventually get a sense that no matter what you tell these friends, they are going to care for you more, not less. But hey, we’re getting our socks on over our boots here, aren’t we? You’ll figure out that out over time at Bo’s. Nobody needs to tell you.

There are some regulars here. They’re right over there, in the middle of the deck crowd. Carlos, Cynthia, Hank, Andy. Sometimes Steven and Lindsey show up. Scattered around the deck you got your doctors and lawyers. There’s a sheet metal guy, a city council member, a couple of plumbers. Tech nerds chillin’ with hospital workers. Shop owners, students from all over town.

And there’s Bo himself, the owner of this restaurant! No matter what you order he’ll tell you he’s giving you 5-day old carp. It’s his own running joke. Don’t let his insults, intimidating size and booming Cajun voice scare you off. He’s one of the most real and kind people you’ll ever meet.

Well, wander around the site, until you’ve found what you’re looking for. There are conversations going on in several rooms. On the deck itself they don’t even mind if you enter in. Soon you’ll be a regular. You’ll see.”

See you there, friends!

John (for Bruce and Bill and all the regulars…)

“…there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from the fear of opponents, who have the laws on their side and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in the new things until they have long experienced them.”

Bruce also has recently been observing that in the 16^th century God caused a Reformation of salvation by grace through faith. Previous to that, though the Word was full of its truth, very few believed it. Now, 400 years later, most of us do not struggle with a salvation that is from trusting Christ’s work alone. He says now, in the 21^st century, we need a Reformation of sanctification by grace through faith. Though the Word is full of its truth, very few of us presently believe it. With a buck-up theology and a sin-management epistemology we are trying to be cleansed and healed from our sin by our own sincere efforts, discipline and will power. And it has the same power as trying to save ourselves by ourselves. Machiavelli says to confront such a strongly entrenched prevailing worldview, is exceedingly difficult and takes time. We would add that it also takes communities finding each other and intentionally choosing to experience these truths together. Ours is not a new order at all. It is as old as God’s intentions. But like salvation by grace through faith, at different times in history it feels like a brand new thought. So it is with the Reformation of sanctification by grace through faith.

So, I told those at the Arts Conference that it was too small a thing for them to identify themselves only as artists. They are, and it is a wonderful and beautiful reality and sacred necessity that they are. But, I said, “You rarely bring an unfamiliar or new idea into a culture with competent, didactic theological debate. There’s too much pushback. You must bring metaphor, parable, story and anecdote. You take debate and confrontation away and give a chance first for the idea to linger in front of them before there must be a reaction.”

I told them:

-I’ve helped write three books…but I am not a writer.

-I’ve helped write, direct and act in over 20 Gospel anchored scripts to

be performed in the culture…but I am not a playwright, director or an actor.

-I’ve preached 1000s of messages over 25 years-but I am not a preacher.

Instead, I told them, “I am a shepherd and a lover, promoting a seditious new order of grace under Christ, using all God made me to be, every waking moment of my life.”

Together, this band of like-souled believers may actually get a chance in our lifetimes to see the theological culture actually shift. It’s why we do what we do and why God is introducing such as us to each other…Its all very beautiful, real and vital. And it is about time…

John, for Bruce & Bill and the gang

September 7th, 2009 by John Lynch

Today I’ve been thinking about that place in us that doesn’t change by will power, diligence or good intention. It’s our perception of ourselves. My self-perception,  historically, has seemed to fluctuate like the stock market, between an inflated sense of greatness and irrational inferiority. Case in point:

Not long ago, I was in Auckland, New Zealand. (geez I like saying that) Anyway, Bill, Bruce and I are just about done with our speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand. And this particular morning I am sitting alone in the hotel restaurant, reading the local paper. I look up to notice a young couple sitting down, two tables away. This is not just any young couple. They are right out of an international fashion magazine, dressed hip and trendy-incredibly fit and beautiful. Their clothes are sprayed on, I think. I try not to stare, positioning myself behind the paper, in such a manner as to be able to stare. He stands up to get some coffee while she stays at the table, just looking incredibly attractive and fashionable.

At some point, she notices me, not staring, and she smiles kindly at me before turning away to look out the window. And in an instant this incredibly bizarre scene takes over in my mind:

“See, I’m not stupid. I’ve seen that smile before. John, you old dog, you’ve still got it! She likes you. No, she’s captivated with you. That smile says ‘Please sir, take me away with you. I’ll dump this guy in a heartbeat. Take me with you.’ How sad. She doesn’t know that I’m married and have a life of my own-that it’s too late for her. I can’t help her.

Just about then the incredibly handsome man returns to the table. Its obvious he senses that something is very wrong. He can feel the tension, the electricity. He looks quickly over at me and then back to her. It’s clear he’s thinking, “Oops, I’ve got some competition here.”

I so much want to jump up and take him aside and say, “Hey buddy, listen, you don’t worry about a thing here. I’m a Christian. I love my wife dearly. We’ve been married 25 years. I’m not going to steal this woman from you.” Instead, I come to the conclusion that it would be better for all of us, if I just get up and leave the room…

In fairness, the illusion didn’t really last that long. But for a few seconds I actually was aware of my concern and awkward embarrassment for the guy’s obvious awareness of her infatuation with me.

How absolutely crazy is that? I’m 56. I’m pudgy, I’ve got hair that looks like wheat glued to my head with carpenter’s glue. And I’ve got a space between my teeth you could drive a pinion nut through. My feet turn out, I’ve got hair growing out of my ears and I can’t remember our last three presidents names without hints.

The truth is, when I got up from the table and turned to walk out of the room, one of them probably said to the other, “That sweet old man is amazing. He’s down here at breakfast all by himself and he found the food and everything! His grandchildren must be still asleep. He probably dressed himself. And look at him shuffling out without a walker. I hope I’m as spry as him when I get to be that age.”

When does that self-deception, that inflated view of self leave us? I’m not sure, but I’m pretty certain it’s after 56.

That inaccurate self-story we can tell ourselves, can show up at any time, in any area of our lives. It comes from the effects of shame, of wanting to re-create ourselves to be someone worthy of love. Because life can try to teach us that we are not. The only antidote strong enough to invade my dishonest self story is to trust God’s assessment of me, His assessment of my lovableness. His choice to love me and His choice to call me His beloved, His choice to fuse His identity with mine-is my only hope of breaking the spell of shame.

God knows that even if this “inflated” self- image were true, that if indeed that women –strangely attracted to tooth gaps and woodenly thatched hair- did want to run away with me; that this would not be a validation of my worth or value. In fact, this would represent an opportunity to deconstruct the life of cherished love with my wife and family that God has been weaving all these years.

In the last twenty years I have increasingly believed these truths. And receiving His love, His delight, His unchanging assessment has curbed my madness, my self-deceived charade. Most of the time I see myself pretty accurately: Christ in John Lynch! And it has made sense of this person He has made me.

…But I still do have my moments, don’t I

Later.

John