My home is the most valued possession I have besides our precious photos and priceless family heirlooms. I do love my guitars, amps and studio gear, but you can’t sleep inside of a guitar case or keep food cold in a speaker cabinet. Our biggest monthly outflow of money is toward the mortgage. As my father-in-law says, a car that’s filled with family is carrying precious cargo. Our home is the same: it holds my loved ones. It is a protective shell that shelters my family from weather and creates a needed, private barrier from the world where we can retreat. Brenda and I take great measures in caring for our home because the investment is so immense. It’s a high priority in our lives.

You can tell a lot about a person by how they live. I think it’s true that the way a home is maintained testifies to the condition of the owner’s life. A humble dwelling that is well kept shows a heart that is in order. Even a mansion that is disorganized and disheveled reflects the inner life of it’s keeper. The size, expense, or location of the home is immaterial. Sometimes the opposite is true–we hide disarray with a mega-clean exterior, trying to avert the eye of the beholder from the true lack of inner cleanness. This idea may sound over-wrought, but I believe it.

When I was traveling, I lived in hotels, buses, cars and vans. Brenda and I have lived in trailers, apartments, rental houses, and even stayed with friends for a while as our home was being built. There is nothing more gratifying than owning your own home. It is amazing how we care for the things that we work hard to acquire. Free stuff doesn’t generate the same pride. I am also amazed how people let their homes pile up with junk, inside and out–the front yard looking like the Munster’s at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. I am not saying that everyone has a perfect canvas from which to paint a storybook castle. Some folks will never own their own home, by choice or otherwise. But if you nurture what you have, you are living the good life. Brenda was talking to a gentleman the other day who lives in an enviable part of Nashville. He said that his home looked like a movie set on the outside but was full of problems on the inside. What a perfect analogy of many people’s lives.

The news came yesterday morning that a family from our church lost their home in a fire. I can’t imagine what they must be going through right now. We will pray and help to establish a place for them to live while they rebuild their home and lives. Even as we hold tightly to the things we value on earth, they can be snatched away in a second. In reality, the home we build is made of people, not wood, nails, brick or drywall. I am grateful for this little bit of heaven that God has entrusted to us here in Spring Hill– thank you, Lord, for my home.

Back in the summer of 1976 gas prices hovered around 60 cents per gallon, the Bicentennial inundated the media, and I got my first car for my 16th birthday. My grandma took me to the DMV to take the driving test on July 10th. After the second try, and a day later, I walked out of there waving my ticket to freedom. It is a hallowed rite of passage for teenagers to finally break from the nest and wander the dangerous streets of the city, running errands for nerve-racked parents who are waiting at home for the engine rumble in the driveway to signal a safe return. Certainly a blissful time for the 16 year old, but one of trepidation for the parent.

I was fortunate. My folks found a car for $600 (lots of dough for my parents to fork out to their kid) and it was sitting in my driveway a few weeks before my birthday. Until I became a legal driver, I spent hours sitting silently at the wheel of that monstrosity–a 1965 Dodge Polara. I guess my parents felt I was more safe in the event of an accident because the old girl was so solid. The Dodge was extremely long–you could be going 55 mph, hit a pothole, and count to 10 before the back wheels would bump! I mean, it was looooong–a gas hog, too! She was light brown with near-perfect upholstery. The owner before me probably was an old lady who only drove it to church on Sundays. As a physical specimen, the Dodge was mint. We had to do a few minor repairs on the engine, but she was ready to rock the highway when I got my license.

I was financially responsible for the insurance, gas and upkeep. So, with my job at the animal clinic, after expenses, my first priority was to install a cassette player. There was no place to fit my new stereo into the ancient dash configuration, so I left it sitting open, wires and all, on the hump between the driver and passenger seats. The rear speakers seemed like a mile away as the music reflected off the glass from the rear deck. I dreamed of how cool I’d look driving into the Buena Park High School student parking lot–stereo blaring and friends in tow. It was heaven. I was ready to take Fullerton by storm!.

At one point, I asked a girl on a date. I picked her up and we had a picnic in a park near her home. I felt like a million bucks. When I drove my date through her neighborhood on the way home, she slumped down into the spacious area in front of the passenger seat. I thought she had fallen, but actually she was hiding and didn’t want her friends to see her in this big, old car. I had never thought of my car as embarrassing–until then I was proud. But now I was self-conscious. In an instant, I looked at my new ride as a land yacht. It was certainly gigantic, but it now seemed hideous. I wanted to get out and just walk away. It was a moment that intensified my lack of self confidence. These times can be devastating. I felt like I was wearing the coat of many colors Dolly Parton sang about. I was proud of it until someone’s opinion convinced me otherwise.

Over the next few months I forgot and left the windows open too many times as the car sat in the driveway over night. Rain soaked the pristine interior causing the seat fabric to eventually disintegrate. But still, she was my rolling freedom train. When I got a job at a paper box factory the next year, I drove all over Los Angeles making deliveries, dodging oncoming cars, curbs, fire hydrants, and pedestrians, nervously navigating the mysteries of the big, forbidden city. The Polara was a friend to me and gave me my first sense of adventure, ownership and responsibility. It helped me learn to care for an object of value. That car got me through high school and into my first stab at college. I left home in January of 1980 to make a new home on the road as a musician. By that time I think the car had been sold. Looking back, she was abused. But it was a time of learning–of tasting the fruit of hard work. I tend to prefer smaller cars, mostly because of the savings in fuel expense. But I will always cherish my land yacht and those magical times that summer.

Just like my beloved 1965 Dodge Polara–except mine was brown.

The Stones sang it and I believe it: you can’t always get what you want. I caught myself watching one of those technical school commercials on TV the other day. You know, the ones that are usually broadcast during the middle of the day, designed to reach out to the high school drop-out who learned too late that pumping gas has a limited upward mobility. The graduate being interviewed for the commercial was holding his two little girls in his lap saying they, like he, could accomplish anything they set out to do. When I heard the father say those words, I became frustrated because the statement is not true. Let me explain…

Just because I desire to do something doesn’t mean that I can or should do it. There are many factors involved. First, not everyone is created equal in regard to ability or intellectual aptitude. I could never become a physicist, for instance, because I was not born with the intellectual capacity to become one. I know it’s not “fair” but life is not fair. Second, there are biological differences as well as physiological differences to consider. I will never become a professional basketball player (really?). There are obvious differences with regard to gender. I am amazed how male and female compliment each other and I celebrate the specialization that each gender brings. But, I will never give birth to a child (whew, I’m glad that news bulletin has been released)! This brings me to the third point: we are not all psychologically and emotionally equal. To accomplish the task of a funeral director there are unique demands. Those of a preacher, a physician, a lawyer, all have unique psycho-emotional parameters that are required to serve adequately in that discipline.

So, when we say that we can do whatever we set out to accomplish, we are fooling ourselves. The best thing we can do is embrace the abilities we have been given. In raising children, one of the greatest gifts we can give them is to nurture the unique gifts and abilities that become apparent as they grow. Many parents try to live vicariously through their children and attempt to coerce them into disciplines or professions with which they themselves wanted to participate but, for some reason, did not. We can help our kids get on the right track by encouraging them to recognize the skills with which they excel. Sometimes their talents are right under their noses–too obvious for them to see– but we must nurse those talents through reassurance. One way I knew that playing music would become my chosen profession was that I always felt content while I played and sang. People always said I was good at it. I felt God’s joy when I played. Opportunities to play and sing came to me increasingly over time. I am still playing and singing professionally today.

God has a plan for each of us. He loves us equally. His love for us is not based on our talents, gender, looks, behavior, status or ethnicity. We can discover the life He has created for us if we allow our unique gifting to flow and, more importantly, we return them back to Him for His glory.

Brenda and I realized after visiting Memphis, and the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s killing at the Lorraine Hotel, that we had created a pattern of visits to other like places which we call our “assassination vacations.” Not quite an assassination in the classic sense, our 2004 visit to the crater on the south side of Manhattan where the towers fell on 9/11 had all of the eerie marks of the event in Memphis. The world was changed there. And, as Americans affected by that change, we want to make a pilgrimage to the “ground zero” of those events. We also made a trip last year to Washington D.C. and Ford’s Theater where John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln. From a center section of seats on the floor I could see the box where Lincoln was murdered. The distance from the box to the stage also made me cringe as I imagined Booth jumping and breaking his leg on the boards below. We then visited the Petersen House across the street where Lincoln was taken and later died.

Brenda and I look forward to visiting Dallas in the near future to see Dealey Plaza and the historical places connected to the death of JFK. Our intent to visit these sites don’t come from morbid curiosity. Rather, we are intrigued with the bravery displayed by the characters of these historic events. This morning, as I watch another History Channel special about the tragic events in November of 1963, I am reminded that I am witnessing at a national tragedy from the comfort of the future. When each of these events happened, the nation was in a stir–answers weren’t immediately forthcoming. I remember watching TV as a kid and seeing Robert Kennedy laying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The environment was frenzied as people ran about in disbelief. Today I feel a bit unworthy as I gaze at the History Channel from my easy chair.

The nation gets thrown into a collective tail-spin when incidents like the aforementioned happen. We feel vulnerable, scared, and wonder if the tragedy will some how affect us personally. These emotions subside after time as we settle back into our normal living patterns and eventually distance ourselves from the force that swept us off our feet.

Driving by the Civil War battlefield at Spring Hill, just a mile or so from my home, I am aware that the world was changed right in my backyard. These shrines to sacrifice, be it an assassination, or a face-off at a lunch counter, rightfully return honor to those who selflessly purchased our freedom so we could one day visit that hallowed ground…from the comfort of the future.

Friday night I joined my comrades to play on the square in Murfreesboro, TN. Outdoor concerts have their challenges. Usually it starts with waking up the morning of the gig with an eye on the weather. One thing rain brings is cooler weather. But as last weekend’s post-rain outdoor baptism proved, when the sun comes back out, the rain vaporizes up into the clouds and cooks everything in it’s path. Guitars and amps don’t react favorably to these conditions–neither do singers nor musicians.

In the spring of 1980 I was enjoying the opportunity to travel and see North America in it’s entirety for the first time. When we were kids in the 60s, my folks packed the station wagon one summer and we made our way through Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon, Jackson Hole, and everything in between. The wonder that the big sky displayed in those landscapes was awesome. When a storm was brewing, the best thing to do was to find shelter and wait it out because it was going to be ominous. Zooming forward in time, this 1980 trip brought back these memories as me and the band worked our way across western Canada, slogging through the thick mud of the fairgrounds where we played. We were guests of the Hell Drivers, a popular Canadian stunt driving crew out of London, Ontario, that dazzled audiences with their car jumps, roll-overs and other death-defying feats. We also shared the stage with a marionette troupe. Needless to say, we had to make due with the summer weather on the prairie and all of it’s fickle behavior.

Not only was mud a concern, dust and heat were also enemies. Pedals, amps, mics and sound systems were always vulnerable to failure when dirt was present. We had to cover our gear with whatever we could muster so that the Hell Driver’s dust storms wouldn’t find their way into our stuff. Mic cords and P.A. cables took a terrible beating. We had to take wet towels and clean the entire length of each before rolling and packing them into their cases for travel.

Still, after all the hassles with playing outdoors, it is the most fun I ever have as a musician. It reminds me of the time, while as a kid visiting Disneyland in Anaheim, bands rose out of the ground on an elevator-like stage at the Tomorrowland Terrace. The sound of it was incredible to me as I circled above the terrace on my rocket ship. I wanted to play there one day (that dream “sort of” came true in 1981 when I played for a week or so at Disneyworld in Florida). When on an outdoor stage, I love to turn up my amp and let it get a little rowdy (we put our amps in sound-proof boxes at times to cut down on stage volume…so cranking it up is a treat!). The rain held out Friday night. The square was filled with worship and great music. This trumped all of the hassles that lead up to the event. I’ll worry about the dust later.