Preach Grace Until You Believe It: Depression and Mental Health.

I have a lot of thoughts about Robin Williams, and the response to Robin Williams’ death, and various ideas about depression and mental illness.

I was not planning on writing about any of these thoughts — and maybe not even sharing them — because I generally think there are enough people wiser or better informed than I, and I never want to be that person whose words cause harm, or add to the noise.

But tonight I had this clarity to share some thoughts, because there’s a chance others may need them, and while I cannot be responsible for all discourse and how it shapes people, I certainly am responsible if I have hope and do not share it. And I have great hope (but that is a post, and probably a book of many volumes, for another time).

While I have much I could say about Robin Williams, whose work I loved and whose attitude and ethos I greatly admired, I don’t know that I have enough of a grip on the situation and how I feel to write a cogent piece. (Me using the word “cogent” is the first sign.) I’ve been struggling with some physical infirmities that make even basic typing painful, as well as with overall pain that has made basic mental processes that were once easy for me very difficult. (I used to be able to think fast, as if I had constantly just had an espresso, and now, when the pain hits, I think slow, like I just woke up and will never see a cup of espresso ever again. It’s not only hard to function and write, but it’s also hard to realize I’m in one of those stages where everything is foggy, because I fully expect to be able to write, express myself, or do complex math at any time. However, I cannot.)

So, I haven't had the strength, energy, or will to write anything for months, but gosh, the Christians got me fired up tonight.

My brethren in Christ, as I’ll call them, have been my target before. I don’t seek this out or try to dismantle people or ideas that I know are under God’s sovereign control, but I’ve also seen great effects in my life when I pick through why some things in Christianity happen the way they do. These observations have helped me and some fellow Christians see the world in a way that moves us closer to living lives deep in the love of Jesus, and so I share them, even though I know I am picking on a behemoth of a body that is both flawed and good in many ways. As a final note, I’m not a super Christian, and I need all the help I can just to freaking look at Jesus, accept His love, and not live like a moron every day.

The first thing that caught my attention in the conversation that arose about depression and mental illness after Robin Williams’ death was the amount of people who urged others to get help if they were struggling. This is a usual thing — this outpouring of sympathy for all sufferers and offering aid the only way we know how. Attempts were made not only to help individuals but also to destigmatize an issue that is difficult to understand or talk about.

All the chatter looking to help, though, in some ways fueled the problems at the core of depression and mental illness — that people don’t know what’s going on and don’t know how to talk about it. This is not bad; trying is good. Learning is better.

A couple things that were said that stood out to me, and what I’ve learned: Telling people with mental illness or depression to "seek treatment" or "talk to someone — they want to listen" is maybe not the best terminology.

People who are struggling with depression or mental illness do not want to be told that what they are suffering from or dealing with is something that needs "treatment." They want to be addressed as a person. Calling it treatment pushes it into the arena where, if you admit you have dark thoughts, you feel that all you have ahead of you is a scary future that includes antidepressants, psych wards, and people not wanting to hire you for jobs. Conversely, telling someone to maybe “find someone who can help you” instead introduces them to a relationship where someone loves them or cares for them. That someone may be a doctor, and they may get treatment. But they’ll enter that world of getting help feeling like it’s something good they have done for themselves and the world, not that they’re an issue that must be neutralized or solved.

As for the other one — telling people to talk to someone, and assuring them that people will listen — is probably just naive. They’ve probably tried to talk to people. And they either couldn’t express what they were dealing with, the person they were talking to didn’t know how to help them (or, as often happens, just didn’t have the immense amount of time needed to listen to them, or was overwhelmed by an area outside their expertise, even if they could commiserate), or — as I often suspect — the people they tried to talk to haven’t listened to them or helped them, and that’s why the person is depressed in the first place. So many people who go through dark times do so because they feel alienated from people, and their attempts to close those gaps are met by people who implicitly or explicitly communicate that they need to clean up their crap before they can do life together. It creates a cycle where the worse a person feels, the less they can summon up the basic social skills needed to just be around other people, much less be a good friend. And let’s face it — when people are busy with life, they tend to weed out the people who carry too much “crazy,” who “just don’t make me feel better,” or who are a drain on their time or emotions. So it makes sense that depressed people aren’t talking to people — because people, normally and very understandably, don’t want to or don’t know how to talk to depressed people.

So, don’t assure people someone will listen to them. Instead, encourage the person to talk to someone with the goal of making a plan, even if it’s just a two-step plan, such as getting the person another trusted person they can talk to. That takes the pressure off the listener to relieve all the person’s need to be heard, and it takes the pressure off the person to not drive this listener away, too. It’s OK to admit that we all can’t help each other the way we’d like to, but we can help a struggling person find the next step even if we can’t help them right away ourselves.

That’s the docile part of this piece.

The real cranky showed up when I started reading not what well-meaning people were writing and posting about depression and mental health, but how Christians had decided to bless us with their knowledge.

I will pick on one I saw that I particularly did not like: A link to an article that explained that depression is not a disease — it’s a choice!

I did not read the article. I did not click through and see whether any of the points had merit. (My issue is not with the article’s content — it is about the attitude of people posting such an article.) I am simply going off the person who posted it and their comments in posting it, which were along the lines of “all this sadness and all this talk about mental illness, but people need to remember we can’t act like this is a disease because people just need to make better choices.”

There’s just so much crazy going on in my head right now that I’m not sure I can give a summary of the outrageousness of that kind of comment. There’s the obvious — the preachiness. There’s the ignorance — that [insert anything you want in here about how good intentions to raise your child are ultimately flawed, how the government is ruining this country by helping poor people, or how a story of God’s goodness in this world shouldn’t be supported because of someone’s lack of doctrinal integrity] because your personal beliefs on something don’t line up with this person’s ironclad view of a Word of God that’s actually very complex and nuance-oriented, they can say you’re just wrong and thinking of things incorrectly. There’s the arrogance — people are depressed, so let’s tell them how to think and see the world! There’s the shallowness — that there couldn’t be another way, another contributing factor, than just living right and perfectly all the time.

But I’m just going to shoot from the hip: Good job, Christians. Way to kick people when they’re down.

I've got a real beef with when tragedy happens, and Christians' first response is to critique however the secular world says to care for those people. This does not come across as helpful Christian advice. It comes across as attacking the people who are in the tragedy.

It does not matter if depression is a disease or not. Are people suffering? Are people shaken by what's just happened? Are they looking for deep answers?

I have yet to find any Christians who are experts in mental health, but I know plenty of Christians who should be experts in hope. Can we maybe use what we know about the Bible to strengthen people and lift them up in this time instead of crapping on how they're trying to make sense of it?

I mean, for God's sake, how on earth are people supposed to get to the truth unless we tell them? Sitting there and picking on whether depression is a disease or not is not only foolish and a waste of time, but it makes us look like snotty rear ends.

Hooray! We know something scientific! And meanwhile, the entire world is swirling around in sin and hopelessness, and we're critiquing one link in the mighty chains that ensnare us all.

You know, maybe depressed people are depressed because all the Christians are posting on Facebook and not taking time to listen to them or love them or learn what it's like to feel like there really, really is no hope. They may have gotten to that place because they were told once that their feelings were a choice, and if they kept feeling that way, they were wrong. Then, those feelings continued — for whatever reason, whether it be prolonged grief (normal for any person), physical imbalances (pretty real and documented for making normal "down" feelings get increasingly worse and create a snowball effect biologically), or even what we can call "sinful choices," just to throw you folks a bone — and they had nowhere to go, because all they knew was that they were wrong to feel that way. Probably wrong to just be, too.

Don't tell the Christians, but we're all wrong. It's called sin. And you know what? God knows about it. He even knows whether these people who say they're depressed or mentally ill are making bad choices or not. He knows whether they should "get their act together" or whether they're "allowed to feel that way." He knows whether they’re in sin and why they can’t just make the choice to get out of it. He knows that even if depression or mental illness is not a disease that slowly kills you, people in that situation do not feel they can make choices to get out of it (especially if they’ve already tried) — they feel controlled by it.

And, while I would love to sit here and debate the merits of all of this, disease vs. choice, my basic Christianity has taught me this: God's grace covers it all.

GOD'S GRACE COVERS IT ALL.

God's grace covers the people who can't keep their crap together and make the "choice" of not being depressed. God's grace covers the people for whom it may be a disease. While we're on it, God's grace covers all the people who are messed up and just can't stop sinning. His grace covers the people who are addicted to anything — yes, drugs, alcohol, women, men, but also work, approval, money, food, and any other form of self, self, self.

So why does it matter that we diagnose the sin or the root of the sin if God’s grace covers it all?

Shouldn't we just be helping people get to the doctor and know that they're not only allowed to be forgiven, but are forgiven?

(The only unpardonable sin is believing you can’t be forgiven, a key belief for many with mental health concerns.)

There’s a liberating way to tell these people that life — in any form, not just depression — is a choice, but it’s by driving them to the choice of grace, not picking a petty fight with one of the few caring communities that is trying to figure out how the heck to treat all these down people. Sure, depression is a choice. So is everyone’s pet sin, and following God. Knowing they’re choices you should make doesn’t make them any easier to make. And if people start treating depression like a disease — well, maybe they’ll fly through treatments until they get to the only one that works. (Terming it a disease does not mean releasing people from culpability. It does not have to be regarded as controlling, and certainly not terminal (a fear some people have, thinking that leads to suicide). Calling it a disease also opens people to taking steps to fight it, such as good ... choices.)

For those who still disagree, who say it is important that we clarify these things and make sure that people aren't thinking incorrectly about things that are sin and are choices that people should make, to make sure everyone acts right, I think it is very nice that you find grace so dangerous that we must make sure people come to the throne of grace appropriately. If we start letting anything go, after all, the kids will misbehave. People will sin. People may realize that all their crutches and attempts to be OK don't work, and they need something more than themselves.

What will we do if the humans — the good, Christian humans — aren't in control anymore and sin is just running rampant, with God's grace running rampant behind it?

That's a good question. I guess it depends on whether Christians can fulfill their real duty and help those people swallowed up by sin — help them toward grace. That's how they find it, you know. Sin helps the schoolteacher of the law point people to their need for a Savior, but it is our job to explain that there indeed is a Savior. If it’s a choice, someone has to be there to help those people make the choice (or even know of it), and you usually don’t get close to people by telling them that if they just made better decisions, they’d be fine.

We’ve all had times when we haven’t exactly been the love of Jesus to people and instead just told them to get it together — or, the more common, explained and prescribed acts that come after salvation and a changed heart to people who still aren’t in touch with the love of God or what that love really means in their lives. It’s hard to know what to say and when, but sensitivity — and listening instead of telling people to act — has strong echoes of Jesus.

Whether Robin Williams died of a disease he couldn’t control or made a poor choice is an issue I don’t think many Christians will disagree on. The Bible is clear about our freedom and the great choice all people must make. It’s also clear, however, that the way Christians lead people to knowledge of such freedom and choice is not through preying on suffering and correcting (unsaved) people’s thought processes. It’s by showing them the love of God and telling them of His saving grace — introducing them to a higher affection. What He does with their beliefs after that is up to Him.

If you're maybe feeling that you spent some of your time assessing people instead of pointing them to God with the love that God has shown you, don't worry: Grace covers it all. Even those whose attempts at dispensing truth could have come off more lovingly.

God's grace covers those sinners — and He probably covers the depressed, too.



Links worth considering:
"What the Church, Christians Need to Know About Suicide, Mental Health"
Russell Brand on Robin Williams
Anne Lamott on Robin Williams

Lasting Impact.

I wrote a book about concussions, a topic I thought was boring and overblown until I started researching it. There's a lot going on, and a lot worth learning, especially for everyday athletes and kids playing sports.

Check out some blurbs that describe what it's all about on NESN.com.

Download the book from Barnes & Noble here, or from Copia or Scribd for other e-formats.

There Really Is a Tree.

Very rarely do you get to write for work the things you consider most worth writing about. Here's something I wrote that just scratches the surface of meaning.

412.

I’ve always loved numbers. When I was a kid, I would borrow the Money section from my dad’s USA Today and add up lines upon lines of stock quotes. I loved played Monopoly, I was great in math class, and the back of baseball cards were better than the front.

Digital clocks were one of my favorites. I had all sorts of games I would play whenever I saw time displayed. One is to “cast out nines,” which is a trick you use when checking division problems. Basically, when all the numbers add up to nine, they cancel each other out. So, 4:50 was an even one, as was 8:01 or 2:34.

I would also count the lines that made up each glowing number, and I knew which times of day had the perfect number of lines to make up perfect 8s with no spaces wasted. 3:18. 8:47. 2:34 (again!).

Now that you know I’m crazy, let’s move on to those glorious times in life when certain numbers gain a special meaning. It may be your birthday — seeing 10 and 31 anywhere makes me smile, because Halloween is when I was born. I’ve always liked 21 (the first day of winter, and the first of summer — and the day my grandmother was born), and 3 and 7 always worked out for me, probably because I was raised reading the Bible.

In high school, 24 became my lifelong favorite number. It was the jersey number of my hero, and the number I wore when I played basketball. I would forever use it for passwords or pins.

But the newest number for me has been 412 (a variation of 24, mind you). This number popped up sometime when I was working a sad job at a sad newspaper. At first, I couldn’t place it, but I was seeing it everywhere.

I was supposed to be at work at 4:00, but I usually rolled in around 4:12 (which, technically, was 4:07 because my clock was five minutes fast). When I went to bed, it was often 4:12, too, the time I finally unwound from a long day at work.

Whenever I saw 412, it gave me hope. It seemed to say that God was there, and that He was keeping track of me, and that even in the mess, there was a sign. It was my snake in the wilderness, my fleece in the dew, my raven by the stream.

The number 412 soon got an unfortunate cousin in the number 146, which was the “tube number” of a very inept coworker of mine. (We used a DOS-based editing system, and each station was assigned a number. Mine was 245. His was 146. When you saw 146 pop up when you tried to get into a story, you groaned. When you saw an article that originated at 146, you groaned. Eventually, when you saw 146 anywhere, you groaned.)

God gave me a lot of 412s at that job, but I also got a lot of 146s. No matter how many time I saw 146, though — often waking up in the middle of the day after my night shift (1:46), there was a 412 when I rolled into work.

For every 146, there’s a 412.

I wrote that on a piece of paper and hung it in my cube, and no one had a clue what it meant but me. I knew, though. I knew every time I saw those numbers, and I knew it when 146 walked over with one of those things he always did and jumbled my day.

For every 146, there’s a 412. It works in math, and it works with God — except, maybe, during the times when God is so amazing that He lets you see 412 more than you see 146, even if there’s an equal amount out there. (I haven’t seen a lot of 146s since I left that job.)

The cool thing about these numbers popping out and surprising you is that it often happens when you aren’t expecting it, and that’s what makes me say it’s from God. I’ll be having a crappy day and will be praying that He’ll show Himself to me, and all of the sudden my savings on a grocery receipt will be $4.12. I’ll be muddling through a day at work, and then I’ll see it’s April 12 (4/12). I don’t go to work at 4:00 anymore, and I don’t go to bed at 4 a.m., but I still see so many 412s.

(I realized later that the place where I probably picked up “412” was from a Switchfoot song called that. And, yep, the words describe my life around the time of 412 perfectly.)

I was working on my checkbook tonight, thanking God for the three-paycheck month yet wondering how I was going to pay my car insurance and my rent and that credit card bill that just keeps getting bigger. I had enough to cover it this time, but the margins keep getting thinner.

Last week in church, my pastor had talked about a tithing challenge. Apparently, some people who weren’t raised in repressive Judeo-Christian households haven’t had the 10% rule drilled into them, and they need to be reminded to give their firstfruits, and a full tenth, to the local church God has placed in their lives. (Just kidding. I’m aware this is a complex topic, but I couldn’t resist.)

I’ve always tithed, although sometimes I didn’t have a local church, or I had to move money around. Recently, though, I’ve been in a pickle. I stopped tithing to my local church for several months this past year because my work schedule changed, and I worked every Sunday. I was also feeling disconnected from the church in many ways, so I had welcomed the schedule change as a way to take a break and reassess. Since I was not actively involved in the church, I did not consider it my local church, and I instead invested my tithe money in some missionaries I already supported otherwise who were dealing with a shortfall on their monthly support.

When I returned to the church this spring, I started tithing again — but not 10% to the church. I didn’t really know what to do, in fact. I wasn’t going to cut back on the missionaries; I had prayed and asked God to keep providing enough that I could give them this extra amount. But I also couldn’t afford to tithe 10% to my church, because the amount I was giving to the missionaries was already about that much of my salary.

If I tithed and kept my promise, I would be giving away 20% of what I earn, right off the bat. And I’m in a living situation where my rent is about 60% of what I earn. I would prefer to still be able to buy food.

But then the pastor got up and talked about tithing, and the challenge, and I knew what was right. It’s just money. I don’t need new clothes, and I haven’t spent anything on myself in forever (and I don’t really intend to, if it’s between spending on me or God). This means no more eating out for lunch, or not letting my car break down, or skipping some things I would like. But it’s just money. And, as the great C.S. Lewis says, you’re not really giving if it doesn’t hurt in some way.

So tonight, thanking God for my three-paycheck month, which took care of the old car insurance, I added in this week’s deposit and went to write my check for my church. I totaled up how much I made and cut off the last digit. I wrote the check for what is a very big chunk of change for me.

And then, as I ripped off the boring, cheapest-you-can-buy check, I saw the number: 412.

Of course my step of faith would be written on the 412th check I had ever written from this account. Of course it would be when I was asking God whether He would really hold me together through this. Of course He would open the door for me to give a 412 when there wasn’t a 146 in sight.

I once used my 412/146 thought in a song I wrote, the theme of which was grace. The main line to that song, in which I tried to capture the incredible feeling I had one night when I realized something God had done just for me, was, “I didn’t need it but You gave it anyway. I need to remember that.”

I have trouble remembering sometimes. But that’s why God made clocks, and numbers like 412.

Bright and Scary.

I’ve been doing a lot of driving, usually up and down Memorial Drive, next to the Charles River, black like glass.

I’ve long told myself that I like to drive there because I love Boston, and this is me enjoying the city. But it’s really because I love water, and dark winding roads that are split by yellow lines, and tall, beautiful trees that cover the road and disappear into the sky.

In short, I love driving on Memorial Drive because it reminds me of where I grew up, not where I think I like to live.

I drove Memorial Drive again tonight, and it was a good drive. Usually, I drive because I’m conflicted, and I need my hands turning the wheel and the music going to help my brain calm down. The past two nights, I’ve driven because I’m free, and I need time to sit there and love it, and to tell God thank you even though I don’t know how I came to be at ease.

I have big decisions coming in my life, big choices that have to be made. I didn’t how to make them before, and I still don’t know how to make them now, but the difference between driving in angst and driving in freedom has been just a few nights, and some well-placed words from friends, and some pure grace from God. I have long sought and prayed, and it appears that this time the road’s bends are going to end a different way.

The crazy thing about tonight was that, when I left a friend’s home and took to the darkened streets, a thunderstorm was coming. I’ve always loved thunderstorms — we get really good ones up where I’m from in the Adirondacks, where the air is thick and hot and sticky and then suddenly starts popping out big, wet raindrops. It was like that tonight, and I put the windows down as the drops began to fall.

The best part about thunderstorms, though, is the lightning. When real lightning comes at night, oh so close, it lights up the entire sky. For that brief flashing second, everything is like day and perfectly clear. It’s awesome.

I drove toward home, but when I got there, I turned down Memorial Drive instead, slipping along the curves in the dark night with the raindrops falling. The lightning was striking, more often and more often, and the whole river was being lit up. My path down Memorial Drive was getting me closer and closer to the source, closer to where I could see the white arcing down, closer to where it could be really dangerous.

It was so bright, and so scary. It was just like the freedom I just found. In a minute, everything is so clear and you just want to run into it, but at the same time, you know you’re flirting with something that could go very badly very quickly.

But I had a different card in my deck tonight as I drove down Memorial Drive. When you’re driving toward lightning and you think to yourself that you wouldn’t mind if your car got hit or something, because you’d just find a way to repair it, that’s a good sign that you may finally have peace. And I do have peace. I’m driving toward lightning, and I have all the peace and wonder I’ve ever had when I was a kid or a carefree teenager or a person who knows she’s not bound by expectations or what she could lose.

The thunder is loud, and the lightning is outside now. My only wish is that I could get in my car and drive straight toward it, right away.

Testimony.

I was baptized Tuesday, May 21. Long story short, I was scared of putting my head under water when I was a kid, so I stalled on getting baptized, and then I didn't do it when I was older (and slightly less afraid of water) because I was embarrassed because I was older. I thought about it a lot, though, and decided that being obedient and getting a little wet was the least I could do for a really amazing God. This is the story I told at Ruggles Baptist Church on Tuesday, when my pastor from Reunion Christian Church baptized me.

I’m a writer, and I’ve always been a writer, and no matter what place I live or what job I have, that’s who I’m always going to be. I think, all the time, and I love to tell stories and talk things over with people. The way I see and understand the world is through the lens of words.

The reason I want you to know I am a writer is because that’s the simplest way I can tell my story. I could have brought any number of poems or lyrics or essays or novels up here, but there’s only one story I like to tell anymore. Rather than trying to describe my life and the hundreds of times God has done something in it, I want to tell you about Newbury Street, and darkness, and the place where I learned that it wasn’t a mistake that I turned out to be who I am.

I moved to Boston chasing dreams, like many people do, but in the grind and demands of life, things became very dark. I remember having been here for a few months and walking the streets, alone among crowds and staring up at what should have been beautiful buildings. Instead, my heart was heavy, and everything I had come here for — to share hope, to talk about Jesus, to show a lost and dying world that God made sense — that was all empty to me. I knew the truth; it set me free; so why was I wandering? Worse yet, nothing had meaning. Nothing could interest me. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t write, because I had nothing to write about.

I got in contact with an old professor of mine and told her I had no reason to write, and she and I talked in very academic terms about being “distanced from the source” and all these other big phrases that basically said that if God wasn’t real to me, nothing in life would be, either. That was nice to know, but it didn’t help. She then suggested she send me a chapter of a book she was writing called How Literature Helped Save My Soul. That is a fantastic title, so I agreed.

When the chapter arrived, I went to Newbury Street for my customary cup of coffee. The chapter was about Jane Eyre, and how this professor related to Jane Eyre, and how God had used Jane Eyre to teach this professor when she was a teenager that just because she was different and quirky and artsy and smart didn’t mean that she was in some way wrong, or that God had made a mistake. Instead, it meant something even better — that Jane could have a connection with God that few others could experience.

When I read that chapter, something inside of me died, and I was overwhelmed with a feeling that, despite being saved since I was five years old, I had never felt before. I remember writing in the margin of that printed-out chapter, my hand shaking, “God loves me.” God loves me. I wasn’t a mistake, and this wasn’t just something people had to tell me. God was telling me He loved me. For the first time in my life, I knew it was true.

Love isn’t the only thing I’ve discovered in this city. God has come and found me again and again, and He’s taught me that words like peace and joy have real meaning, too.

But the funniest thing that has happened since that day on Newbury Street has been that the professor didn’t heal me, persay. I still don’t write an awful lot. But that’s because, whenever I sit down with the guitar or the pen or the typewriter or the computer, I often find myself sitting there and just smiling at the wall like an idiot. How can you capture that? How can you put God into words? Sometimes you just need to let it all go free.

When we are no longer bound by the chains of who we think we have to be or the way we have always defined ourselves, Christ can become big in our lives.

Colossians 2:10 says, “You are complete in Christ.”

And if we are complete, then we can revel in 2 Corinthians 5, which tells us that, now that we know God’s love, hope, peace, and joy in a personal way, we can tell others what we’ve come to know so well ourselves: “Become friends with God. He’s already a friend of you.”

That’s what I want you to remember about this today.

What Is Freedom?

When I woke up Saturday morning, my lingering feeling was this: Freedom.

On Thursday night, the most tense events Boston has seen in decades began to unfold in the city’s surrounding suburbs. Police had been investigating the Monday bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line all week, and on Thursday, they finally released footage of who they deemed to be the suspects.

The tape was grainy, the photos not exactly clear, but it was enough to know that if anyone had seen these two guys — who looked to be no more than local college students — they would quickly be caught.

Still, in a week that had been one big, long chunk of mourning and disbelief, no one was ready for anything to happen. Things had unfolded so slowly, and even those who watched the video three or four times before heading to bed Thursday night figured the pieces would begin to come together slowly, here and there, before an arrest was made.

Instead, the suspects shot a police officer at the MIT campus in Cambridge, carjacked an SUV, and drove into the night, leading police on a chase that wound through local neighborhoods until it devolved into a bomb-throwing firefight in Watertown in the middle of darkness.

On Friday morning, residents of Boston, Cambridge, Watertown and several surrounding suburbs woke to the news that one suspect had been killed by police, but the other had escaped — driving over the other suspect, his older brother, in his haste — and was somewhere in the area. Residents of those towns were told to stay indoors — no, commanded to — as Boston, for the first time in history save for extreme weather situations, told its citizens that they were not to step foot outside. A manhunt was on. The city had been shut down. Everyone was to stay put while the cops did their jobs.

The locals were only too happy to obey. While a typical Massachusetts resident will forge ahead through 12 inches of snow, danger is something else, and Monday showed just how dangerous these two were. With the police clearly on edge about the entire situation, and with them having already chased the culprits for some eight hours, there was no question everyone would stay home.

But as Friday wore on, it became difficult. While people can plan ahead for a snowstorm, packing away food and such, an impromptu day in the apartment gets old fast. While the news was coming in rapidly for hours, with more details surfacing about the suspects, that soon slowed. Cabin fever set in, with questions: If they haven’t caught him by now, could they?

Around 6 p.m., the lockdown order was lifted by a downcast police chief, and that was where the fear that had eased away earlier in the day came back. They were admitting they didn’t have him but telling everyone to go back on the streets. If it wasn’t safe before, why would it be now? Everyone was fine being brave and returning to their regular lives on Monday and Tuesday, but that’s because the bombs had gone off, the victims rushed to hospital, and the debris cleared. This danger was still in process.

I decided to take a walk. I wanted to do something, and I especially wanted to do something where I could come back and find that maybe something had changed. I knew my neighborhood was safe, but my feet and eyes needed to help. A quick swing around a few blocks confirmed it: People were out, and music was playing. It was quiet and eerie, a few stray raindrops falling and a storm coming in, but it was safe. Even the wail of sirens across the river, and the many red and blue lights, didn’t shake me. The entire police population of Massachusetts was here. They just had to keep working.

But I did wonder what we do now. If this kid was still out there with his guns and bombs, what do you do? It’s brave to go out after an attack and just keep living, but it’s foolhardy to charge into an area where danger hasn’t yet been contained. I felt complete confidence where I was, but I was already thinking of what areas I would avoid, and how many days it would take before we turned grumpy on the cops and asked them why they hadn’t nabbed this guy right away.

By the time I returned home, however, I learned that the recent batch of sirens I heard were fresh for a reason — shots had been fired in Watertown, and they had found the suspect again. Within three hours, which flew past like minutes, they had him in custody. Danger averted. Life restored. Heroes praised. Celebration commenced.

I did another swing around the neighborhood then, this time to see the people light on their feet and smiling. Crowds bubbled up around Boston — huge, cheering gaggles of people. Bars were packed; impromptu parades were held for the cops as they drove home.

That was it. They did it — we did it. The story had ended the way it should. All the cliches about Boston proved true, and our officers were truly the finest.

One of my roommates turned to me in this and asked about the patriotism showing up on the TV. She asked why this was a victory for America, and whether people were right to be waving flags and saying the usual pro-U.S. things they say at a time like this.

I tried to explain that this is a victory for America because the point of terrorism is to paralyze life, and to alter regular, everyday democracy. She was concerned that this kind of patriotism is what gets people so mad at us in the first place, and I concurred, but I said that stopping it in the face of something like this would be wrong. For all the cheesiness — and, let’s admit it, misguided or cheap patriotism — at such a time, people have the essence of it right. People who attack America and its ideals are attacking the ability to be free — to create laws, to spread good, to have democracy, to glutton ourselves, to spend hours of our days watching sports, to defend our amendments, to be uber-American, all the time.

It’s hard for me to explain how I grasped the American-ness of this moment, and why it was right to celebrate the U.S., but let me just say this: When September 11 happened, and everyone talked about what terrorists were trying to do and how you counter that by going back to normal life, I didn’t really get it. I lived through September 11, at an age where I comprehended what was going on, and I read news and analysis every year after. It was only that to me, though — test cases, and information.

But on Friday, I lived the threat of terrorism, and I lived the American response. Fear and danger are not tolerated in this country. Our law enforcement is geared to go crazy when terror tries to dominate us, and to take it down. They aren’t just defending our homeland, and the ideals and values of this country. They’re also protecting us — little, insignificant us, the ones who want to hop on a train or walk down the street without fear. I still believe America is that place because of what I saw this week. The people who protect us do not mess around.

I discovered freedom in the most real way Saturday morning, when I went to the corner store and bought The Boston Globe and a Coke and then walked down my street, through a park, across a busy road (I jaywalked!), and next to the Charles River. I looked across the river and watched dozens of cars zooming down Interstate 90 and Storrow Drive, and I glanced behind me and saw the newly rebuilt Boston University bridge, and the beautiful Prudential Center Tower (it casts it shadow over Copley Square) in the distance.

No one in Boston had to think to himself or herself, “I’m going to go out today and be brave so the terrorists don’t win.” We’re from Boston. We’re workers. How many days have I come home tired and stressed and thought, “I just want to lay down, or cry, or read,” and instead, I move on to the next thing and just keep working? That is Boston. That is a distinctly Northeast spirit. We don’t work to make a statement. We work because there’s things to do, and we’re Americans, and we’re going to keep doing them until the job is done. That’s why we were back at work on Tuesday, and those are the people I saw driving Saturday. It’s less a gigantic statement we’re all struggling to make and more the way of life that we will not let die.

I don’t know what’s behind terrorism or what people are thinking or what America is or what they’re trying to do to it. I don’t know how our patriotism plays into the terrorism equation. I also don’t know that it matters.

But I do know that Saturday morning, I was super-patriotic. I wanted to give out high-fives and talk about it and jump around and shout. I knew what had challenged us Friday, and I knew what had been done to overcome it. All this stuff I read for years — I understand that on a firsthand level now. I got this crazy sense of what it means to be an American, and why that’s not bad. I was smiling. I was ready to go again.

I was free.

My backyard

I used to worry that I would leave Boston without ever really knowing my neighborhood.

When I lived in Lynchburg, I knew nothing outside of my college campus, how to get to Wal-Mart, and where to go if I wanted a long, winding drive on a sunny afternoon. That’s the way I wanted it.

When I return to my hometown of Schroon Lake, I’m always surprised how little I know of the Adirondack region besides the roads I always traveled as a kid.

When I moved to Boston, I decided I would discover my city. I drove the streets of Cambridge (where I live) and walked the avenues of Boston (where I worked, went to school and enjoy my free time).

Now I can say that this all happened in my backyard.

Here’s a map that gives you an idea of how the manhunt that started Thursday night and continued through Friday connected to me. It’s purposefully understated.

MIT area: This is where the 26-year-old police officer was killed around 10:30 p.m. Thursday. I had dinner in that area of Cambridge at 6 p.m. Thursday. I then drove down Cambridge Street and looped back into the Kendall Square area as I tried to unwind from a long and stressful week. The shooting was at the corner of Vassar and Main streets. I walk there all the time and drove past it Thursday night. The police were searching on Cambridge Street. That’s the first street I drove down Thursday, around 8 p.m. I saw the restaurants and stores that were being shown on Friday morning’s TV coverage.

Cambridge Rindge and Latin: This is where the second suspect, the younger brother, graduated from high school and was a wrestler. It’s a 15-minute walk from my house and next to the main branch of Cambridge Public Library, which I frequent to read and check out books. Finding a parking spot is hard if you miss the afternoon window and get there after Cambridge Rindge and Latin lets out, because the street and big park-like area in front of the library are filled with teenagers. I walk past them all the time and think, “Man, they must think I’m old. These are high school kids.”

There’s also a Starbucks almost directly across from Cambridge Rindge and Latin that I basically live in. It’s right next to the Broadway Marketplace grocery store. If you get a nice seat next to the window, you can look to your left and see Harvard’s campus and to your right and see the beautiful architecture of Cambridge Rindge and Latin school.

A lot of kids from the high school play at the YMCA in Central Square where I go to play basketball after work. Some of them, innocently enough, asked if I went there, too. God bless those kids.

Shell station: This is at the corner of Memorial Drive and River Street. I pass this Shell station every single day on my way home from work — River Street is how you get from Boston (or Allston or Watertown) into Cambridge. It crosses the river, hence its name. It is parallel to Western Avenue, which is how you get out of Cambridge. I regularly stop at this gas station and buy milk, orange juice, candy or a New York Times. The shopkeeper and I are on friendly terms.

This station is where the suspects carjacked an SUV, or ditched the guy that they carjacked the SUV from. It has since been cordoned off with police tape. We saw photos of police searching the station Friday morning. It is a five-minute walk from my house — just a few blocks.

Western Avenue/Arsenal Street: Police reportedly chased the suspects in the carjacked SUV into Watertown. That means they drove down Western Avenue (how to get out of Boston) across the river. This road becomes Arsenal Street, which leads into Watertown. Along the way, the suspects were reportedly throwing explosive devices out the window. A four-mile stretch was shut down Friday morning, with police reportedly searching for more explosive devices.

That is the exact route I drive to work every morning. It’s a five-minute drive with no traffic, two minutes if you don’t hit the lights. It slows down considerably during morning rush hour, especially when tractor-trailers decide to park on half of the street. School buses have also made me late to work before. That’s the way you go to get to where I work, though — one straight route.

The shots that everyone saw on national TV on Friday morning — Arsenal Street, the surrounding areas, the lights, etc. — is as familiar to me as my bedroom.

Arsenal Street Mall: This area is where police gathered Thursday night and Friday morning after chasing the suspects into Watertown. This is where all the TV cameras congregated, and where most news gathering happened. They fanned out from here into the Watertown neighborhoods.

This is where I get coffee or lunch with my co-workers. We walk across Arsenal Street and down its sidewalks.

480 Arsenal St.: This is the address of NESN, my company. This is also the address that I woke up to Friday morning as the epicenter of the chase and manhunt.

There’s a lot I can’t say — just know that this is where all the cops and TV cameras were, and the street addresses given out later where they were reportedly looking for suspects — those are right behind NESN. That’s where my mind and heart was for most of the morning.


More people contacted me Monday asking me if I was OK than have on Friday. That’s likely because people don’t know the geography around here. Today has obviously been much, much scarier. We’re inside, with our doors locked. This is our backyard.

It’s more than my backyard, though — this is my neighborhood. This is where I work and live.

This is where I walk up and down the river, and this is where I drove last night to blow off some stress. This is where I buy my newspapers (I’ve dreamed of being able to walk down the street and buy anything since I was a little kid), and this is where every inch of my life happens every moribund day.

“Boston” has never referred to the land from the North End down to Jamaica Plain and Dorchester. You tell people you’re from Boston even if it’s the suburbs, because we’re all part of Boston – the city limits just can’t hold the amount of people who live and work around here. Watertown, Cambridge and Somerville are part of Boston’s transit system. We’re all in one town.

These are my neighbors and my friends. So today, of all days, pray for Boston.

City on a Hill.

Some saw marshy land. Others saw three big mounds. Most saw frightening weather, dangerous creatures, threatening forests and little hope that any new society could be formed, or that God-honoring life would ever prevail.

John Winthrop saw Boston, and he called it a City on a Hill.

Boston had three hills already, so the moniker fit, but Winthrop meant it for something else. He was nodding to all the symbolism that a new group of settlers striving for freedom for their faith could want.

“Ye are the light of the world,” Matthew 5:14 says. “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”

Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wanted Boston to be that city.

They looked for that city on Monday, the people without hope but plumb with fear.

They had seen it from above, from the sweeping view of the Prudential Tower, where the big Boston Public Library leads to Copley Square, with long Boylston Street and its shiny Apple store sneaking up on the left side.

They had seen it from the ground, when they looped in and out of the streets in the Back Bay, never knowing what curious brownstone they would find down this public alley or that.

They had run it from the south, watching the scenery grow from the trees of Hopkinton to the commerce-lined streets of the Back Bay, the stray statues and signs of the city’s great history appearing along the route.

But that city was gone Monday.

People don’t come to Boston for comfort. They didn’t come for it in the 17th century, and they don’t come for it now. Boston is a city for serious people, where the best of the best are so good that they critique even mere excellence. Boston demands champions of its sports team, presidents from its suburbs and hills from its runners.

But Boston isn’t just about crafty settlers fighting to survive, or idealistic freshmen thinking they’ll put this postage-sized city — from Paul Revere’s house down the Citgo sign — in their pocket. Boston was founded as a city of hope, and it’s that hope that can’t be forgotten as the minutes crawl away from a day everyone wants to forget.

The story of the original settlers, and the Founding Fathers, is often reinterpreted today. Schoolchildren get one version, and politicians give another, depending on how they’d like to defend the Constitution or advance propaganda.

But whatever the political views, or the fascination with tales of whether Revere or Sam Adams are as noble as people have made them to be, the reason for Massachusetts being settled in the first place is not contested. People came to this land for freedom — freedom from tyrannical rule, sure, but really freedom to practice what they believed to be truth.

The first residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony believed in hope: “A hope that makes us not ashamed” (Romans 5:5). They believed in peace: “A peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). They believed in grace: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). They believed in a God Who keeps His promises: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

From this original belief, and the specific doctrines to which these settlers held, has grown not only a varied city but also a vibrant state and a powerful nation. The new land began with the idea that there was a God worth counting on, and that the words He gave — hope, truth, peace, grace — had real meaning in real, difficult life.

Boston has morphed over the years into a city of its own. It’s now known for tolerance and diversity after a hiccupping couple of centuries during which its citizens battled in real-life case studies over religious tolerance, racial turmoil and increasing societal demands.

It has great pride in its universities and sports teams as well as some of the best research in the world in numerous fields. It has birthed unique political events, and it continues be a forbearer in matters of religion, even as faith in the city appears largely disfigured from what first landed on its shores.

But in becoming the city it has become today, as different as it looks, Boston has not necessarily failed to be the city it set out to be.

Boston is still a city on a hill.

Boston is a place that millions of people look to for inspiration, opportunity or guidance. It is the destination of teenagers’ dreams, it is the fulfillment of minor leaguers’ promise, and it is a haven for countless endeavors and ways of thought.

In establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop moved to create a city that would be a shining light to the world — a place that would speak of what could be, and that would invite new generations to make a fresh start. Centuries later, Boston does not run — save the blue laws — on puritanical rules. But it has done just what Winthrop envisioned: It has become a city that creates a space for people to see the goodness of God reflected in His creation, namely the people He created and the joy, hope and excellence with which they live their lives.

On Monday, people saw their city knocked off its hill. No longer was Boston a place to gather the runners from many nations for what many of them call the best race in the world. No longer was the marathon a proving ground for everyday men and women who wanted to inspire their communities and raise money to heal everyday pain. No longer was the city a spot where people could celebrate the beauty of God’s creation, and the good that remains in a world much wrecked by hurtful actions, mistakes and decay.

When the blasts shook Boylston Street on Monday, they took more than a race away — they also robbed the city of the hope and joy it was reflecting, and it left many to wonder whether God had disappeared, too.

A major theme — no, the only theme — of the Bible argues urgently that this cannot be the case.

Bad happens, the Bible teaches, but God redeems. Man fell in the Garden, but God provided a way to rise. Mistakes tear apart relationships, but God provides a way to bring them together. Entropy racks the world, but God promises a new creation — and He promises that it can start right now, on this earth.

But in that theme lies one very disconcerting fact: Every seed must die before it grows.

And that is how we arrive at that nasty philosophical point that is often given to try to dull the pain, but that seems horribly wrong and unnecessary. Why must the unthinkable happen for people to band together and triumph far more? Why must there be death to provide a rich life? Why must people have pain to see God in a new way?

John Winthrop can’t tell us, and even Jesus asked for a lot of faith when reconciling the wreckage of this world with the reality of fallen man and the promise of a patched-up future. The Christian doctrine, while understandable on paper, always faces the biggest hurdles when it comes to people’s gut.

But, whatever your creed, they were onto something when they stood on those principles to start this colony that became this city. Whatever your beliefs — whether you see good from God or not, and whether you think Winthrop and company had it wrong all along — know this: The tenets on which they founded this city, and the grand faith or ambition that Boston could always be a sign to the world of resilience, hope and a better tomorrow — that has never passed away.

“Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live by obeying His voice, and cleaving to Him, for He is our life, and our prosperity,” Winthrop said in 1630.

First responders rushing to the scene. Bystanders scooping victims from the blood. Citizens helping stranded runners. Police doing their jobs. The entire state standing in defiance, and promising to help and fight back.

Boston has chosen life. It may be living by many different creeds, and in a very different age, but Boston is still reflecting the goodness, joy and hope of the God for which this colony was made. Whether God is acknowledged or not, His redemption is being lived in this city, as hope swallows up hate.

Even in the darkness, Boston remains a city on a hill.

Boston.

“Were you at the marathon?”

“No.”

“Are you OK?”

“Yes.”

No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.

Those are the words you fire off in the heat of the afternoon, as the news rushes in, as you try to figure out what happened. Those are the characters you type, hoping they’ll make it through a suddenly communication-embargoed city.

Cell lines are down. Text messages are failing. News is hard to judge.

No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.

My roommate is running in the marathon. Do they have a list of the runners who have finished, so I can have some idea where she is?

No.

I’m listed as her emergency contact. We joked about it the night before. “Sure — I’ll tell my boss to let me leave work so I can come peel you off the course when you flop over,” I told her. She laughed back — a good sign she was ready to tame the mental beast of this one as well as the physical, after her first marathon had thrown her for a loop.

Now, real emergency. Real, real emergency. Horrific emergency. Do I have her mother’s phone number?

No.

The co-worker had come over, the Sox having wrapped up a win in very 2013 Sox fashion. Did you hear there was an explosion at the marathon?

No.

“Very 2013 fashion” — 2013 won’t be owned by anyone else now. It will be owned by singed blue and yellow, by the tattered streamers over the plaza I walked through Sunday. A mother from my church wanted to show her children the finish line. We walked down Boylston, past those shops. We saw them unfurl the flags. “Can you tell what countries they belong to?” I ask the children.

No.

I could tell Germany and Australia. I could tell South Africa. We stood in front of the finish line, looked up at the grandstands, pointed at the library. “Have you ever been inside there?” I asked.

No.

“It’s beautiful,” I say. “It’s like a European castle, with this big courtyard and these giant lions.” A library built to be the finest, to hold the finest, in a city built to be the finest, to hold the finest.

What I left out is that this entire area is one of my favorites, the beautiful church and the beautiful square and the beautiful Gothic light posts hanging out. I would have coffee over there so many times on my long, midweek days off as a sports freelancer. I went into Marathon Sports back there to help my runner roommate pick out racing clothes. I would walk this side of Boylston, that side, around the library and through the square, on my many trips from Park Street through the Back Bay to the Fens, all on foot. Boston is a walking city. Boston is a running city. Have you walked it?

No.

It’s spring now. We’ve started it twice and stopped it twice, our nice days engulfed by that tattered edge of April that won’t less us move on. Boston folk are used to the cold, the rain, the winter, but after the messy last few months, don’t tease. Spring should be here to stay.

On Monday, real spring was here, at least in the minds of much of Boston. Twitter flooded with Boston Marathon well-wishers, and I was clicking on things I never click on, caught in the spirit. I remembered working for the daily paper that covered Hopkinton, and the runner profiles we churned out in the weeks leading up. I remembered a pair of Stoneham citizens I interviewed who were running in memory of a brother. I remembered the feeling I get when I step out of the Cambridge YMCA on a cold day, with no coat and just shorts as the heat from my basketball playing fights off the cold. The runners would be feeling that way today, no matter what April threw at them. They would conquer it in mass, gliding on the asphalt, whether spring was ready to stay or not. Could it be any more perfect?

No.

And then it struck, the details that I didn’t want to try to put together as soon as I knew — just moments after it happened — that something horrible had happened. The historicity, the fact that it was my city, the stats and figures and explanations — I don’t want to know. I just want it to stop. Will it stop?

No.

There was crying on the phone with my mother, longer text messages to the brothers since we couldn’t get through to each other on the phone, and finally, jogging up the steps to my Cambridge home, where I opened the door, ran the length of the apartment, and hustled up the final set of stairs to see her there, real, in person. The roommate. There was a dinner of salmon and asparagus — what was supposed to be my little feast — that I made for her that night, that I made with delicacies I had bought at a ship-shape rate at a Boston institution, Haymarket, just two days before. There was lounging in front of the TV, watching 30 Rock, doing what you do when you don’t want to talk about it, read about it or hear about it anymore. Would it stop?

No.

She gave me her parents’ phone number. I gave her the number of mine.

I looked away from photos, knowing so many were so worse off than me.

I wandered back to my computer a few times, scrolling through Facebook to see how everyone was doing. A former colleague from the daily paper, with whom I had complained about marathon coverage many a time, was celebrating his first non-Marathon Monday at JFK Library (you know the rest). Friends from college had friends running Boston. Buddies from graduate school, and pals from my current life, all checked in. I had seen the pictures, the horrible pictures. So many people were hurt, so badly. Was anyone I knew hurt?

No.

And then it started. The outpouring. The boasts that Boston was different. The cheesy memes that said you don’t mess with Boston, with the mascots of its four main sports dressed for battle and staring down the camera. I smirked at that one. The earlier ones — the ones where we act like only in Boston would first responders rush to the scene so well, where something unique about us is what made this day different than just a tragedy — those were hard for me to believe. Really? Really, in the face of this, could we know such things? But this, this silly little picture, touched a nerve.

It was then that I realized what was so revolting about this whole thing. They attacked us — whoever this was — on Patriots Day, on our day to celebrate the incredible history this little city has had. They attacked us when the charity runners were going through, when the families were gathered together. They attacked us on our first day of spring, on our day to stick our noses up to the cold and say that we will have sunshine from now on. They attacked us in Boston, a city where the dirty looks and crankiness are so common and so us that a day outside its cynicism — albeit the kind of cynicism that only comes from chasing after excellence, and greatness, and worth — makes me long to be back in its safety. You think you can come in here on Patriots Day and take away spring and hope and promise?

No. Not in our city.

My friends were changing their profile pictures to the Boston skyline, but mine is already set on a cityscape of the Pru and the John Hancock Tower, shot straight down the Mass. Ave. bridge, with a sticker-covered pole framing the edge. That is my gateway, taken on a perfect spring day, as I walk the hundreds of Smoots into the city and hang a left on Boylston to trek wherever I can go. Are you going to mess with that? Are you going to mess with our city?

No.

Were you at the marathon? Are you OK?

I answered the text messages, but I don’t know what’s going on more than anyone out there. It was a day of turmoil for me, so much more than can be captured in scattered thoughts.

But humanism and Boston bravado aside, I know this. We live here because we all believe in something bigger than ourselves. You don’t come to Boston for a comfortable life, or to just paddle along in an OK career. You come here because you want to be something, to see something, to do something, to go somewhere.

That’s why we're cranky. It’s also why we run.

And wherever this goes, it’s also why we’re all getting up Tuesday, and looking to see what we can do to help, to heal, to move on and move forward. That’s what marathon runners do, after all.

We will clean our streets. We will lift our broken. We will shake our heads at the sources of it all.

But most of all, whatever our story of Marathon Monday 2013 is, we will know how to answer the questions.

Is Boston a city on a hill?

Is this nasty, unconscionable act going to be answered?

Will its people keep running?

Yes.

Preach Grace Until You Believe It: The 99.

The difference between Lucifer and Michael is attitude, and perspective, and choice. They both believe the same things, but one accepts that truth.

One of my Bible professors once used the metaphor of a man on a ship to explain grace. The man was on a cruise where fancy meals were served in beautiful dining rooms. But he, being poor, stayed down in steerage and ate moldy bread he had brought with him. Near the end of the trip, he found out that the nice meals were free of charge — they were included in the fare — and he’d been eating the moldy bread for no reason.

I hated that story for two reasons: One, that stinks. Two, I know what it’s like to eat the moldy bread — to miss out on God’s free grace — and I hate to hear about it. But I especially hate to be told that it is essentially my fault that I wasn’t upstairs. How was I supposed to know? When I tried to leave my bread and go up, why did I feel regret and turmoil?

And why, Bible professor, do your lessons about grace always make me feel so unwanted and unable to access said grace? Why do they make me feel that something in my power is what’s keeping me from going upstairs? Real grace is from a God Who comes into the galleys and pounds on the doors until we leave our mold and follow Him. But we are often taught instead that He is a captain holding His caviar aloft with a tiny fork, waiting for us to wake up and shaking His head when we don’t.

I have often waded through the guilt from this approach, and my conclusion now is that grace, for us, is less about grace and more about the mental and emotional hurdles that keep us from it. Whether we don’t believe it’s true, believe that we can’t have it, or believe that the God behind it actually wants something from us in a sinister way, we fight it. It’s not banquets or moldy bread — it’s childhood heartache, legalism, broken relationships, or the waste of the world. These things tell us that, even if grace is real, it’s not there for someone like us.

I’ve often heard Christians who come from works-oriented backgrounds (read: poor understandings of grace) say that they are “one of the 99.” This refers to the parable where Jesus leaves all else behind and chases one lost sheep. When that soul is found and returned, the rest of Heaven — presumably including the 99 — rejoice.

The bitter Christians say they are one of the 99 — one of the good ones who lived “correctly” and never got to see the real love and grace of God because they were minding their business and doing right while He chased the bad ones. They lament not being able to experience God fully, and that them being too spiritually aligned has ruined their relationship with God to some end.

But the catch here is that these types of people aren’t one of the 99. They can’t be.

The real 99 understand grace. The 99 are in love with God. The 99 are the ones who get it and can’t help but be thrilled when another comes over — because they know that they themselves didn’t climb to Heaven. They, too, were carried in at some point, just like No. 100 is being embraced on his or her way through the door.

These Christians who think they are “one of the 99" are likely far worse. Far from being right with God, they have the most polluted view of their Savior. They know what truth is, but their actions question the basics of Who God says He is.

They’re outside the fold, or down in the basement of the ship, and they’re not coming in or up. They’re focused on whatever grieves them so — whatever lifestyle they feel bound to live to “please God” — and, because they’re so focused, they have little chance of seeing the God waiting patiently behind them, or knocking on the door, or holding the giant billboard telling them that the only thing keeping them from grace is themselves.

That makes the faux 99 the most bitter of all, because not only are they outside of the grace, as they thought, but they’re not pleasing God via another route, as they thought, either. He doesn’t want whatever they’re doing. He wants them to have His grace. But they’re so handicapped that they misunderstand grace to the extent that they don’t even know how to accept it.

These 99 are actually the one — but they’re the one whose head is still in the brambles, whose Shepherd is still waiting.

The difference between the 99, and the one, and the ones who are yet to become the one, is just one thing: acceptance. Do you accept that grace is what God says it is — wonderful, free, waiting to be given — or do you insist on making it whatever you have twisted it to be? Do you hate it for the mangled ways you’ve seen it in your life, or do you choose to believe what God says it is?

The difference between Lucifer and Michael is not what both know to be true. They both know Who God is. They don’t argue with His love and mercy. The difference is that one accepts, and believes, and acquiesces to God’s will. The other will fight it and hate it forever, no matter how badly it ends. Grace requires only the submission of one’s will, but for some, that is too much.

What turns us from the sheep whose head is stuck in a bush, or a person stuck eating moldy bread, is the same. We so desperately want the right, but we’re so desperately twisted in our attempts that we must be stopped. We have to be kept from trying, through our efforts, to access grace. We must be prevented from bleating our views so loudly that we can’t hear God’s. We must be rescued, pulled away, by a loving God. We won’t ever know to go upstairs — or know that we’re living or merely toiling outside the fold — unless Someone literally saves us.

The moral of the story is not the stupidity of the sheep, or the haplessness of the sea traveler. It’s also not how much we don’t want to be the servant in the parable of the talents, who thinks badly of his master and hides the blessing he was given, even though he knows he should be a thankful, joyful go-getter. It’s not how much we’re the nine who walked away when only one came back to thank Christ, and it’s not how we’re eternally the older brother, either. These, again, focus on us, and how we have always felt inadequate to change our hearts.

The point is that, even if we’ve only once been these people (and we all have, a hundred times over), we have thus fulfilled the one requirement for grace. Christ didn’t come to save the perfect, and those of us who in some way think we have done any good, and especially enough good that we’re somehow out of the reach of God’s full grace — well, we are the most lost of all.

Whether it be someone who has never found God’s grace, or those who know it and call themselves Christians but feel that grace has evaded them on a daily level, we all stand to be rescued again.

Call yourself the Lucifer, and say you’re one of the 99.  Stay downstairs, paralyzed by the supposed middle ground. Know you’re unthankful, and unknowing of what to do with God’s greatest gifts.

Then turn around. You are not in a catch-22. You are not living in a world of regret, where you could somehow keep yourself eating moldy bread and miss out on the banquet of God’s grace. You’re not the vengeful servant, and you’re not one of the nine that walked away.

Because, if you’ve turned and looked behind you, you’ll have done the one thing required to find grace. You’ll have stopped looking at yourself, and you’ll be looking at God instead. He is the point of all this, after all — not the sheep, not the passengers. Now, accept.

The Limits of Ambition.

30 Rock ended tonight, and that demands 5,000 words and a copious amount of cheese. But I'm going to limit myself, because if 30 Rock taught us anything, it's that you don't have time to give everything its due, and what it really deserves.

30 Rock has been with me my entire adult life. I discovered the show when I was looking to kill some time the summer before I started graduate school in Boston, and I quickly became addicted while catching up in Season 2, watching a half-dozen episodes a night. It stayed with me through graduate school, where I struggled to unite my goals and hopes with the possibilities and prejudices before me, and it continued on until I entered the job world, which was even more depressing.

When 30 Rock really got into my soul, though, was when I began my time as a young professional. You could only smile every time you heard Liz Lemon say, "You really can have it all!" because that was the battle we all were fighting. Home, work, school, friends -- Liz showed me how to balance, how to fail, and how to really not let it bother you that you can't balance and that you fail, even when you still really care.

The amount of similarities between Liz and I is astounding -- as it is, I'm sure, for any 20-something girl. Liz and I both have a distinct German heritage, which made me especially enjoy those bits in the show, and we both have the same personality, meaning we both tend to have to work with people of another type of personality (the freaking Tracy Jordans of the world). Her family structure, workplace decisions, and hapless love life were also familiar. The only thing I always lacked was a Jack Donaghy, but now that I think of it, I think I do have a Jack in my life. It's either a blend of my brothers or that ambition demon that sits on my shoulder.

Ah, ambition. That's what it was all about, wasn't it? Wesley Morris wrote a great piece for Grantland on 30 Rock, and while he had many fine points about the overall show, and especially its implications on race and the larger TV culture, my favorite parts were when he revealed how the show so truly reinforced that it was a mockery of itself. Tina Fey is a great writer, and a great actor, and Alec Baldwin, the other stars of the show, and the writers behind it are all excellent. But in their excellence, they chose to glory not in what we could do if we could create our own perfect world, but rather to glory in how we create just something in a world that is never perfect.

Morris calls 30 Rock "a farce about the pragmatic limits of ambition," and he couldn't be more right. The show is all about ambition -- Jack's amibition, Liz's ambition, even the skewed ambition of the Tracys and Jennas and Kenneths. It's ambition not necessarily to be the best, or to claim some great something, but rather to take that untouchable thing you've always chased. Money and fame (Tracy and Jenna), happiness by triumph (Jack), or the perfect job and perfect world (Liz) -- it's all each person's desperate heave to get that thing, only to find that life doesn't allow it, or that you can't keep the other things you've gained (like people) when you're chasing that ambition.

As the great Conor Oberst says: Ambition is a loaded line. But we've all got it deep within us, even though it manifests differently in everyone. In 30 Rock, it played out in every life in varied ways, and in those ways, it showed a true amalgamation of real life.

The show's final episode tonight summed up the characters' pursuit perfectly, but it also did it in a way that was very 30 Rock. That is, it mocked the face of regular TV writing, made fun of culture, turned the tables, and threw curveballs. Yet, also in true 30 Rock spirit, it did not do it in a mean way, or to give a sense of loss. Instead, 30 Rock gave its supporters one final nod of the head to its true theme, that even amid the crap and everything not working out the way it should, good still happens.

That's the lesson of life, and the lesson of ambition if handled properly. Ambition is a demon if you can never tame it, but it's a joy when you can chase it and then settle for less, not feeling any loss in doing so. Liz long lamented that she couldn't actually "have it all," but when left with less than having it all, she discovered she had gained what she really wanted. Jack couldn't ever fulfill his ambition or find true happiness, but he discovered enough of himself that he finally found peace, which is what he was really looking for all along.

30 Rock fulfilled the John Lennon-bred cliche that life is what happens to while you're busy making other plans, but it did it in a way that affirmed that, if you pay attention to life as it's happening, even when you're chasing those other plans, you can have both the life and the hope for the future plans. You really can have it all.

Liz chased her dreams of a good show, and of having a family, and she never ended up with utopia. But she was able to discover richness in the pursuit, and to find at the end that she had what she was hoping for -- not a perfect family and a stress-free life, but a family, and a life. During her long, tiring road, she hated all the struggles with Tracy and battles to get things to just go right once. But she also loved her night cheese, and that funky middle-of-life area she got to live in for so long. When she finally reached her dreams, she knew she had to move on and take them, because that was what she had been aiming for all that time. But it didn't diminish that she knew she loved what she left behind, which is something that many people never pause to realize. They're too busy hoping to get to the next stage that the good parts of the struggle never show through.

The 30 Rock ending comes at a point where I'm transitioning from that blur of a life where everything is unbalanced and wrong to something that's starting to resemble the life I've imagined. Of course, it could all go up in smoke easily, but it looks as if I've left my 3 a.m. nights eating fat food in front of 30 Rock behind for good. I hated those nights so much, getting home all alone and knowing I wouldn't be able to see people the next day because they'd be working while I was free, and they'd be free while I was working. But I also loved those days, because there was a certain adventure to living that desperado life where I just had to make it happen all the time -- and then I got to go home, and be alone, and eat night cheese.

You hate it so much when you're going through it, and you know you want to -- and have to -- aspire to something more. But you also love it, because it's an excuse to not have everything perfect for a while, and to know that every crappy moment is preparing you for the time when things really will start to fall into place. Better yet, you're learning what you really do want, and ambition becomes less a tormenter and more of an impetus, a place to funnel ideas and then pick the one you decide you like after the hard slog, rather than being chained to wanting them all.

I'm going to look back on my Liz Lemon years knowing they clarified a lot of what I really wanted, and that they were fun in themselves even while adding up to what my future ended up being. But above that, I'm going to always love this time, and 30 Rock, for teaching me that ambition is not a foe. It's a tool -- a great, big, Jack Donaghy-acronymed tool whereby we strive and fall and slip and hold on and then see what matters.

Liz Lemon may be off the air, or teaching improv to senior citizens on cruise ships. But she's spawned more than that bespectacled granddaughter.

Her little children are running around Boston, further enthused and prepared to struggle for balance but loving it when it fails. Yes, Lemon: Blerg. We really can have it all.

Sandy Hook Elementary, and Salt.

Fridays are my day off, so I'm generally disconnected from the world. I usually walk from my home in Cambridge, Mass., across the Charles River to Boston, where I get a slice of amazing pizza from New York Pizza. Yes, the pizza there is better than in New York.

Then I go to Starbucks, where I bury myself in magazines and newspapers I haven't had time to read due to work. I am perfectly content to let myself get lost in old problems or synopses, knowing that the world can't have changed too much to make what I'm reading outdated.

So by the time I arrived home late Friday evening to check the news for the first time that day, I was coming up on 12-hour-old information about what happened in Newtown, Conn., at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I was quickly dismayed -- of course, by the news. But also by how I found out.

My social media feeds are sprinkled with Christians and non-Christians, blue-staters and red-staters, diehard liberals and old-school conservatives.

So what does it tell you that the first way I found out that 28 people had died is by one person going on about the Second Amendment and the other pressing legislation for gun control?

The best one was a former classmate from Liberty University, who posted a link to school killings in China, saying that happened without guns, so it wasn't time for restrictive gun laws. I also liked the many posts full of this original thought: "GUNS don't kill people -- people kill people!"

Right. Because on a day when people die, when children die, when the world has another gigantic reason to argue against the existence of God and the redemption of man, that is what we are worried about. That guns shouldn't be blamed. And that tragedy happens in repressive countries, too. (I'm sure God is pretty happy, too, that all those Chinese children died so my former classmate could have that great rebuttal to everyone who didn't like what he said about the Second Amendment.)

What does it tell you when the more sympathetic responses come from your non-Christian friends than your Christian ones? What does it say when the quickest solutions offered are about things like rules and laws, and not about the state of people's hearts? What does it mean when we are on Facebook instead of rushing to the site of the disaster, much like those parents rushed to find their children Friday morning, leaving their cars parked a quarter of a mile away, still running with the keys in the ignition, to push past policemen for glimmers of hope? Don't we, as Christians, have a greater, life-breathing hope, and a greater reason for urgency?

Christians, I am ashamed. And I ashamed again that you are most likely dismissing what I have written already. I understand that we see our freedoms being infringed upon, and our world turned away from what we believe is right, but get a grip. It's one thing to see the world deteriorate; it's another to use its deterioration to start whining about people who we think are wrong, and to suggest human solutions to fix outward effects of problems. We know a King Who says He wants to change hearts.

Since when were we called to rub it in people's faces when their sin leads them to heartbreak? Since when were we called to rub it in people's faces when other people's sin leads to their heartbreak?

Give me arguments about why we should be involved in politics and vote for this or that -- sure, I will listen. I'm not necessarily the biggest cheerleader when it comes to legislating morality, but I have voted for things that I think will give this country a better environment for good to win out. But it's one thing to carefully weigh issues and elect officials based on beliefs and creed. It's another to flood your Facebook feed with garbage about guns when hearts need healing.

If this entire country was overrun with gluttonous, arrogant, baby-killing socialist pigs, our response as Christians should still be the same as it is when we have a praying president. Love. Be kind. Share hope. Preach peace. Practice graciousness.

Be freaking salt in a world that needs it.

Do you think that it helps? Do you think that it helps when you tell people that guns don't kill people, people kill people? And not just the right wing -- left wing, you too. Do you think that it helps when we carp about mental health programs and bullies? Do you think that it helps when we act like legislation will change people's hearts?

Why are we not out there, binding up the broken-hearted? Why do we think any amount of law or crap is going to change people? Why are we content to just change outside forces and think that people won't feel pain anymore, or need our God in their lives?

People change by the power of Jesus Christ, and we as Christians have been called to share that very same Jesus Christ with a world that has no clue Who He is and what He really means. It's bad enough that we don't do this. But it's even worse that we lead people to think that Christians are obsessed with picking political fights when 20 kids get blown away at close range by semiautomatic weapons like the ones soldiers use in dusty wars in the Middle East. It doesn't matter if you're right -- kids are dead, and insensitivity will remain in people's minds for a long time.

It's one thing when Mike Huckabee gets up there and says what Christian leaders tend to say at times like this: That this happened because of a deterioration of values in life and the classroom. Personally, I may agree with him on a large scale -- we need God in this nation. But you don't say that, and you especially don't say it at a time like this, because you're not God, and you don't know that.

Being right is not the goal of Christianity. Reconciling mankind to God is, and that usually means providing help after people have messed up, not telling them they've messed up from a soapbox miles away.

We can tie everything bad back to politics. We can tie everything bad back to Christians not getting their way. We can tie everything bad back to things not happening the way we think they should. And you know what? Stuff still happens. People still get hurt. People sin and maim and die. And even if we're right -- even if we have the "I told you so" -- they're still lost unless we help them. (But please, keep track of the "I told you so" count, like any loving parents would when their kid burns his hand on the hot stove yet again. That is love.)

I took a moment from being ticked off Friday and talked to God, asking Jesus why all this had to happen, and what I could possibly do from my little, removed perch so far away. And all I could think of was when Lazarus died, and when Jesus showed up. He should have been there sooner. He could have healed him. He was about to raise him anyway.

And Jesus wept.

He just cried. He groaned in the spirit. He did that deep, guttural, heart-wrenching noise that lets someone know that you care, and that this should not have been.

He didn't chide them for not being good people. He didn't call them sinners. He didn't strategize about ways to change things. And He certainly didn't pin the deterioration of this world on a lack of gun control, mental health problems, or student supervision.

He just cried, His message to the world being that sin happens, but that He's there, and He cares.

So I cried, and then I slept on the seeds of this post for two nights and decided it was worth a shout.

I read stories of the Middle East every day, and I see that dozens of people get killed each day in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And I wonder what it must be like to live in those places, and to hear that a bomb has just killed 42 people. What do you do? It's normal, right? It happens, and you just have to move on.

I hope that random death never becomes commonplace for us here in America, where it's getting closer to that as office killings, school shootings, and other tragic events happen more and more, and at levels that were shocking just years ago. We may be getting into that type of situation.

If we are, may it shine a light on Jesus Christ, and may it highlight the followers of Him who weep when it is time to weep. May messages of hope be as synonymous with violence as the questions of why and attempts to solve the problems have been. (And remember, these "solutions" and feeble fixes are coming from people who have nothing else to trust in. It makes sense to try all they may.)

I find it odd that so many people out there think a bunch of liberals or conservatives could thwart God's plans -- that a gun law here or lax control there could ruin life in a way that 28 people dying could not. But that is where we seem to spend a lot of energy these days.

Being salt in this world is a radical idea, and difficult. I struggle to do it.

But consider this a challenge you can hold me to at any time, even if you won't pick up the call.

Redeemed.

The reason I haven't written much of worth for many years is because I want to write it all, and write it perfectly, when I do.

Instead, I've seen my time, physical ability, and mental capacity slip away more and more. And I'm not that even old and decrepit. It's just gone.

Right now, my body gives me about 15 minutes until the arms go out. I've already worked for three hours tonight. So, I'm in pain, but I want to write, because it's about time I find a way to write a little bit each day about what matters — especially if eight hours of my days are spent writing about the likes of Kevin Garnett, Derek Jeter, and Tim Tebow. (Not a bad life, but still.)

If I had to describe today, I would term it as "redeemed." Now, I've long understood redemption in its essence (as what it means for salvation) and in the grand sense (how God is fixing this world and making everything glorious bit by bit).

But God has also been showing me that even smaller things can be redeemed, like days or moments or even crappy stories.

I've been compelled to start actually walking with God — that is, living moment by moment and asking Him to help my unbelief in each instance of the day. And in that world, I am only reminded more and more what a mess I am. But rather than considering the day a wash, I've instead started asking God to redeem it, like Galatians talks of redeeming our time. God can turn the tide, and He can bring goodness.

God has turned many bad days into good ones. Second winds and bursts of energies are not accidents, and neither is the renewed attitude that comes when I acknowledge Him (Proverbs 3:5-6 isn't just a cliche), grab a hold of Him with my hip out of joint before sunrise and ask Him to bless me (Jacob!), and overall just take a deep breath and ask Him to redeem my moments the same way He redeems thoughts and lives.

I have had many good second halves of days recently, and better yet, now that I'm looking, I see God working all the time.

And there's hope that, if God can redeem everything from a moment to a day to a lifetime, that He can redeem a writer who has never quite been satisfied with a world and a work that has often struck her as unredeemable.

Andy Pettitte

Any Christian or Yankees fan is a huge supporter of pitcher Andy Pettitte, who has been a class act for New York while carrying Christ into the world of Major League Baseball. I interviewed him the last time the Yankees were in Boston. Read the story here.

24 Oceans.

It was a number — just a number, just two digits that didn't have to mean anything but came to stand for so much.

It was 24, the jersey number of a basketball player who I wanted to be, the symbol of perfection, completion, a place I could only dream of landing.

It was an age where all the preparation and waiting would stop being, and the doing would begin. When I was 24, I would have my own magazine, I would chart my own path, and I would have my place at last in this world.

No. 24 has taken its hits in my life, but never so much as this year, when I turned 24 years old with the bullheaded expectation that nothing would keep me from making this a banner year. I would push and strive, connive and achieve, because 24 only happens once.

The funny thing about No. 24 is that it's an arbitrary number. The numbers 2 and 4 were never digits that resonated with me. I was more of a 3 or 7 type kid. And I don't know why my basketball hero picked 24, and why that had to consume me and become something. But 24 became 24, and so when I turned 24, it was time.

The year started well enough. I didn't see starting my own magazine reasonably happening, but I already managed a magazine (16-page, full color!) on my own, so that was close. Plus, I had the grand vision of jumping in the old Mustang and driving down to New York City, where I would wow the executives of Time Inc. or New York magazine with my ambition and work ethic to the point that they would give me some kind of amazing job. The year bore enough promise to fulfill its expectations.

Right before I turned 24, I was promoted at the job I had risen to from a mess of internships, freelance, and low-level full-time work. I became the night editor of a daily newspaper, which had me supervising the paper each evening and designing the front page. I got to send reporters scurrying, exercise news judgment, and make the whole thing markedly more respectable, with all my little quirks coming out on its pages, from taking care of the widows in the text to making packages that were far too effort-filled for newsprint.

Within a few months of turning 24 and running as hard as I could with that promotion, though, things began to change. I already loathed the company I worked at very much, and I had long dreamed of getting out of there. But amidst the crappiness of the job, the layoffs, and the turmoil of the industry, I thought I would be safe — at least until I could smell doom coming, and then I could take off and find a new home before anyone else.

But soon after that promotion, my distaste for the company was met with changes that even I, as a talented employee, could not stop. An unraveling began as the company changed some things, and threats emerged. One thing happened after another, with long hours bleeding into stress and disillusionment. The smarter you were, the more you flailed, for the company was bringing in new procedures meant to suit the bottom-feeders. I fought for perfection, the complete 24, and it started to break me.

Those months at the newspaper, when the company tried to implement a new system for building the paper (design, writing, everything), I found the answer to what happens when an immovable force (a caffeinated, 24-year-old go-getter who won't take anything less than perfect) meets an immovable object (a crappy company, or all the antagonists from Atlas Shrugged — you pick). The answer is tendonitis.

I had never heard of tendonitis before I got very scary, deep pains in my wrist near the tail end of us introducing a new system that was flawed, slow, and designed to kill people from the beginning. But now, whenever I hear of someone getting tennis elbow or a baseball player landing on the disabled list with fatigue, I feel great sympathy. Tendonitis blows.

Tendonitis is what happens when the elasticity that makes up the tendons and muscles wrapped around your arms starts to go. Rather than being taut rubberbands that allow your fingers and arms to react as if spring-loaded, your limbs become strung-out rubberbands, getting tiny tears and going limp. My tendons were so shot that I could rotate my arms around and hear the bones clicking together. I felt shooting pain at first, then it subsided to a deep ache, like when you've been punched a bunch of times and the bruise never goes away. It started in my wrists and worked into my elbows, then ran all of the way into my shoulders and neck.

Using a mouse caused shooting pain. Typing caused me to hunch over in pain. All of the day-to-day tasks you need to do to live — driving, getting dressed, washing dishes, picking up something as light as a shoe — brought gasps of pain.

I soon found that I couldn't curl my hands into shapes that I had used them in my whole life. It was one thing to not be able to cook or fold something, but considering I spent my life worshipping at the thrones of writing, drawing, guitar playing, basketball dribbling and shooting, driving, handiman fixing, and otherwise just doing everything on my own with basic ingenuity and hands that could figure out how to do anything, something more was quickly lost. I couldn't hold a pen. I couldn't write. I couldn't type. I couldn't design. I couldn't hold a book open. I couldn't draw. I couldn't turn a steering wheel.

I couldn't live.

Two months into what was meant to be the year that everything happened, the age that would define me, I could barely get dressed. The kid that self-righteously gutted through every horrible night at work had to tell her boss she couldn't keep trying. She couldn't keep moving that mouse with bags of ice wrapped around her arms. She couldn't be a freaking warrior, proving to the world that this was her time and place.

The details are bland now — the doctor's visits, therapy, ice baths, splints. Learning how to sleep. Spending weeks living with my parents because I couldn't function on my own. Reading more than 5,000 pages of books and magazines. Learning how to pray because I could do nothing else.

My company, which quickly realized that the very system it had implemented against many protestations and warnings was indeed crap, made the situation more Job-ian as time went on. On one return to my job, to tell my boss I was headed in to see the doctor but couldn't come back to work yet, he told me that he — a man who put up with an inordinate amount of stupidity and could weather anything — had finally had enough. He was leaving, and he wouldn't be around when I came back.

Then the company-wide emails came that explained that certain processes were moving to desks in Chicago. I came across this one day when checking my email from my parents' house. After I inquired, the editor of the paper explained that, indeed, I had just been laid off via email, prospective that summer.

As I sat and waited and iced my arms, the paper I had fought tirelessly to build up for a few months was being degraded daily, with me not even within driving distance of stopping the slide.

And so, at 24, I learned I was not God.

It's funny to write about it now, because I'm sure it seems melodramatic. I'd been dealing with all sorts of emotional upheaval, soul-searching, and general discouragement ever sinced I moved to Boston several years before. Life lessons and seeing Who God is were not new to me. But the culmination of my great expectations for being 24, coupled with my body finally cracking after years of trying to out-fight life, came in a beautifully ironic package over those few weeks.

I would have to write forever to describe the lessons I learned and how God pulled together the final pieces in the next few months to cap off journeys he had started for me weeks, years, and even decades before. Losing my arms began me gaining my soul, and it was something I couldn't have conjured up or seen, no matter the time I put into chasing joy and seeking God for so long. The lessons were wide-ranging, the fallen barriers all over the place. But starting with the days when I couldn't grip a pen, I became like the C.S. Lewis dragon that has to have himself ripped to the core before he can become a child again.

And today, about a month before a birthday that will forever sweep away my perfect 24th year, I am more whole than I've ever been.

As God usually does, He's already started redeeming the situation. If I had come out of that mess just knowing that He was God, and that I needed to chill out, and that certain things were worth living for, that would have been great. But He had me learn many more lessons, and see many more things. And then He started blessing me, as is His norm when we think all that's left is to thumb our noses at Him.

About a year to the day I got that masterful promotion, I was at a new job — a job I went to just to get out of that bad company as quickly as possible. But, it turns out this job was pretty good, too — to the point that I spent a night, a year after that promotion that I thought had solved everything, interviewing several members of the New York Yankees in the bowels of Fenway Park. I can explain why this is fantastic, but I don't think I need to. I asked to be a little god at a newspaper, and God broke my arms and gave me a one-on-one interview with Andy Pettitte, and then Derek Jeter (to name two). I think that makes my point.

So, with a month left of being 24, I sit and type with a twinge still in my arms but a smile on my face. I'm never going to be able to encapsulate in a blog post, book, or song what has happened to me in this 24th year, but I do know that somehow it has turned out exactly how I wanted.

I wanted 24 to be a year when amazing things happened, when I finally arrived, when life became worth living. And, in the true spirit of Mark 9, God has cut off my arms to bring me closer to Him.

I have joy for the first time in my life. I no longer wonder about my future or fear that I won't fulfill expectations. I work my tail off and get great results but am never shackled by perfection. I enjoy my days and the people around me, and I can say for the first time in my life that, through no ability of my own, I have finally seen how to walk with God.

So, don't be careful what you wish for. Wish for it, and chase it. But if you are the kind that has decided God will be part of your life, be aware that He keeps His promises, and He'll keep them whether you're following along or fighting Him with all your might. I have told Him many times over the years that I want Him, and this year He fulfilled my wish in the best of ways.

Could it have happened without pain? Could it have happened without feeling an inch from death and hopelessness many times over? Perhaps. (Especially considering I think most of the garbage I experienced was due to my own pride, not God trying to pull one on me.)

But I don't care, because I'm 24 years old, and God has done with 24 what I couldn't: He's made these otherwise meaningless numbers mean something very big. He's given me oceans to sweep away my hopes of castles in the sand and given me what I was looking for behind all of those empty requests: Him.

So, hello, 25. We shall meet in a few weeks. But when I set an agenda for you, be forewarned: It may look organized on the outside, with goals and plans that follow human norms, but its execution could be far different. For the picture I paint is not what I pursue — the deeper meaning behind is what I want.

After a year when God used what appeared to be the opposite of a great human experience to give me the best result I could have ever wanted, I fully expect my ideas of human advancement to be met with obliteration, and my heart to be taken forward in the same giant strides He's shown me this year.

I don't need to draw, write, eat, drive, dribble, play, and scheme to know God. He can have my arms any time.

And whatever things I feel so badly that I need this year to get somewhere or be someone, I probably don't need, either. There's not much that could happen now that would make me think I'm losing anything when God works.

24, after all, is just a number.