I spent much of last Friday at the hospital with my son, who decided to use his bicycle as an airplane. Long story short, he needed stitches. Multiple stitches. So off we went, him to be sewn up and me to pass the time in the waiting room.

As I am not a fan of neither feeling ucky nor being poked and prodded, hospitals rank just above funeral homes on my list of Places I Wish Not To Go. It isn’t the germs that bother me, not the echoes of coughs or the abundance of wheel chairs and gurneys. It’s the despair, I think. That thick dark cloud of inevitability that seems to hang over everyone and everything. Going to the hospital makes me confront the fragility of life. That’s something I’d rather not consider.

I brought enough work to keep my mind off things. I knew the waiting area had a television, but the possibility of watching Sportscenter all morning quickly evaporated when I was told the only channel offered was HGTV (according to the nice old lady with the clipboard, anything else may be construed as “controversial.”) I had a notebook—1,000 words a day every day is what I was taught, even when you’re sitting in a hospital—and my i-Pod—the new Trace Adkins album? Gold.

I was ready, oh yes I was. The only pondering of life and death that day would come from my characters rather than myself. Yes sir, I was going to mind my own business.

The only thing I didn’t take into account was that there would be other people in need of the sort of modern medical technology that only the local hospital’s radiology department could provide. Though the waiting room was relatively empty when we arrived, by the time my son’s name was called, it was nearly full. And five minutes later, I had company.

The woman who sat down beside me with the crutches looked eighty but swore she wasn’t a day over fifty-seven. We exchanged hellos and I resumed my scribbling. She asked what I was doing. I said work (never say you’re a writer, I was taught that as well). She nodded and leafed through a ten-month-old magazine for exactly thirty seconds, at which time she sat it back down on the wooden table between us and asked what was wrong with me.

“I don’t think you’d have the time,” I joked.

She chuckled and touched my arm—eighty-year-old women who swear they’re not a day over fifty-seven love to touch arms—and said, “I mean what brings you here?”

“My son’s getting some stitches,” I told her. “You?”

She tapped the crutches and then felt her leg. “Busted myself. Fell down the stairs. I blame the cat.”

“Cats are evil,” I said.

She gave me a knowing smile.

“Cats are not evil,” said the woman across from us. A sling was wrapped around her neck which made her left arm form an L. She looked as though she were leaning on an invisible fence post. “I have three, and they’re darlings.”

“Bet your cat did that to your arm,” I said.

“Nope. I fell out of a wheelbarrow.”

“Pardon?” the woman beside me said.

“Yep, wheelbarrow.” She looked down at her arm and up to us. The look on her face was a mix of embarrassment and pride. “My son said I was too chicken to let him push me down the hill in it. Guess I showed him, huh?”

“Guess so,” I said.

The man to her left had been listening this whole time under the guise of being immersed in his sports magazine. I doubt any of us thought he was actually reading it. Hard to do with a neck brace.

“I did that once,” he said. “Made it down our hill just fine. Shut that cocky son of mine’s mouth up, sure enough. I don’t take chances anymore, though.”

“What happened to you?” the old lady beside me asked.

“This?” He pointed to the brace, just in case she were asking of anything else. “I got up off the couch. Seriously. All I did. Felt something pull, just…pop goes the weasel.”

I never got any writing done. It was better to sit and talk, I think. Better to be reminded of the fragility of life, that strange thing that seems so hard but is instead so soft. I was reminded of just how clumsy we all are and how we can get hurt even when we take no chances.

Because our existence is but a thin strip of breath upon which we teeter and totter and, eventually, will tumble off.

The thing about living at the foot of a mountain is that it’s often windy. Sometimes it’s little more than a gentle breeze that will tousle your hair. Other times it’s enough to make you pull your ball cap down a little tighter. And then there are the winds that don’t simply blow but rage. Like the ones last Wednesday.

I was outside the next morning surveying the damage, which wasn’t all together bad. The only things out of place were a few of the Christmas decorations—two bows that had found their way into the rose bushes, a strand of lights that had been blown from the tree, and a toppled Nativity scene.

The bows and lights were simple enough, though I had to impale my thumb on a thorn and smack myself in the face with a tree branch in order to set aright what the wind had blown askew. Mary, Joseph, a wise man, and a shepherd had dog piled the holy child to shield him from harm.

I stood the shepherd up first, brushing away a few leaves and a clump of mud. Then the wise man, then Joseph, and finally Mary. Then I stooped down to brush off little Emmanuel.

Halfway into my crouch, I stopped. In a strange act of contortion I didn’t believe was possible, I both furrowed my brow and bulged my eyes at the sight before me. Because there, right there where the swaddled babe was supposed to be, was nothing.

The rusty gears in my head began to lurch and churn, the results of which seemed to be subtle variations of one question—And what’s that mean?

And what’s that mean? The dog pile didn’t work.

And what’s that mean? My Baby Jesus is gone.

And what’s that mean? Uh-oh.

I stood up and looked around. Nothing. Looked under the truck and around the corner of the house and in the neighbor’s yard and by the creek. Nothing.

A chill ran down my spine that could have either been panic or the last remnants of the cold December wind the night before. How could we have Christmas without the Baby Jesus? What now?

I entertained a brief thought that I should call in and take the day off (“Jesus is MISSING!” I would say). But I didn’t. I wasn’t worried. After all, I’d found the real one. Surely I could find a plastic one, too.

Surely. Maybe. Well, hopefully.

I didn’t get much done that day; I was paid more for eight hours of worry and dread than actual work. My children were ignorant of the situation for obvious reasons. A missing Baby Jesus would bring the sort of panic that children display in tears and snot. Which meant I would have to find him before they knew he was missing.

I went home that afternoon and searched the entire neighborhood. I knocked on doors (“Have you found Jesus?” I asked, and received many wonderful answers. And one that was not so wonderful). I made phone calls. I drove, and when that didn’t work I walked. I even resorted to calling out His name—“Jesus?” “JESUS??”

Still? Nothing.

I had given up and begun preparing my failed-father speech to the family when I spotted a hunk of plastic beneath an evergreen tree. I’d be lying if I said there was a golden ray of light shining down upon it, but it sure felt that way. I sprinted over to the tree, pulled back a dangling branch, and lo and behold, there he lay in peaceful plastic slumber.

My Baby Jesus is back where he belongs now, safely tucked just under the living room window with ma and pa watching over him. And also two carefully placed stakes holding him in place.

I just checked on him. Still there. But a thought came to my mind as I peered through the curtains—shouldn’t I be more mindful of where the real Jesus is than my plastic one? Shouldn’t I make sure that He, too, is right beside me? And in those times when I find He isn’t, shouldn’t I go looking for Him with the same sense of purpose and urgency that I did with a simple Christmas decoration?

Yes, I think. Very much so.

Because the winds rage not just outside my window, but inside my heart, too. They howl doubt and blow jealousy. They gust fear. And while those winds can never blow Jesus away from me, they’ve been known upon occasion to blow me away from Him.

Oh, and yes. If you’ve by chance read my latest novel In the Heart of the Dark Wood, you’ll notice that this tale may have a familiar ring to it. What can I say? To a writer, everything is a potential story.

I’m over at Random Jottings today sharing some thoughts about the writing process with friend and fellow author Richard L. Mabry, M.D. You can find the interview here.

Hope to see you there!

It’s often said people don’t miss what they don’t know, and that is a maxim proven true many times in my life. Like right now.

When I was a kid, back-to-school shopping involved little more than perusing the two aisles of office supplies at the local Roses, where the selection was limited and the quality was debatable. But now there’s Staples. If there had been a Staples when I was in school, I’m sure I would have roamed the aisles of notebooks and pencils with the same sense of wonder and excitement my children are displaying.

Shedding the outdoors for a classroom is now a call to arms. One look at the sheet of necessary supplies in my wife’s hand that came directly from the school officials confirms it. Pencils, notebook paper, backpack, glue, tape, composition book, erasers, and kid-friendly scissors are just a few of the necessary items. I feel like I’m sending my kids off to college rather than fifth and third grade.

Although I am at times not so patient a father, on this day and in this store understanding comes easy. My kids are regarding our trip here with the perfect blend of excitement and seriousness. A tiny seed of knowledge is being planted within them that somehow this supply shopping is no errand. In a few years it will sprout and grow into the knowledge that what they are doing is the physical manifestation of a spiritual truth. They will see this a holy rite, and a universal one at that.

Because if my children are anything like me, all this shopping and ogling over school supplies and all this excitement over starting a new year will likely one day be replaced by a determination not to screw things up yet again.

I was never a standout in school. Nowhere near honor-role caliber. Average at best. I suppose I had the smarts to do better and be more, but not the drive or discipline. What people thought of me and how I fit in mattered much more than learning the Pythagorean theorem or how photosynthesis worked. Then, and sometimes now, the things that really shouldn’t matter at all mattered very much.

For me, the best days of the school year were the first few and the last few. The first few because they always held the most promise. The last few because by then I had firmly entrenched myself in my yearly rut of getting by rather than pulling ahead, and just wanted everything over with.

But summer vacation is the Great Eraser, three months of sunshine and play that put enough distance between me and the previous nine months to suggest the next year might be mine to own. Back-to-school shopping would always cement that thought. All those fresh notebooks with empty pages waiting to be filled with knowledge? Pencils sharp and wood-scented, ready to chew on in deep thought? And of course there was the epitome of student organization, the Trapper Keeper. Those were the weapons I would wield in the battle against myself.

And it always worked for the first few weeks, after which those notebooks would be filled with doodles born of boredom and angst, the pencils would be thrown at either a classmate or the ceiling, and my Trapper Keeper would have been torn to shreds and abandoned in the bottom of my locker.

We have good intentions, don’t we? Every notion to make the next day our best, to rise above petty thoughts and empty words and become who we know we can be. And still every night we close our eyes with the nagging thoughts of who we let down and what we couldn’t measure up to.

Just as we can’t be the perfect student, we’ll never be the perfect people. Deep down we all know this. But we also know that just because our feet are stuck in the mud of this world doesn’t mean our hands can’t reach ever higher toward the sky. Just because we cannot fly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stand tall.

That’s what I want my children to know as they walk these aisles.

I’m renting some space today to a friend of mine. Emily Wierenga has just released a memoir titled Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look. It’s a fascinating and brilliantly told story of her childhood battle with anorexia and her decision to leave home to find God in the most unlikely places, only to finally discover Him in the place where she started. Highly, highly recommended stuff, folks. Here’s Emily’s words: Atlas Girl (Memoir Giveaway!) By Emily T .Wierenga   The smell of my hands reminds me of Africa. Of mangoes mashed, of Mum feeding me, and my brother too, and now, I’m feeding her, and she doesn’t open her mouth when I ask her to. The sky is pretty, like Mum’s pink silk scarf, the one hanging in her closet, and the windows are dirty, maybe I’ll clean them today. Mum thinks today is Sunday—funny, because yesterday was Sunday too, she thought—“and there’s church and I will need to take my blue purse with my Bible and where are my glasses?” This is what she would normally say, but suddenly she can’t speak, kind of like me until the age of four because we moved so much, and Dad says I just watched people. Just stood at the fence in Congo and watched our neighbors. Mum is trying to ask me something, but her mouth won’t work. I busy myself with the spoon and the mashed fruit. I might as well be buying baby food, for the way Mum can’t chew. I don’t have children of my own and this is something Trent wants, and “Maybe one day” I tell him. I didn’t use to want children at all, and now I’m bathing Mum, who’s had brain cancer for five years, and I’m changing her and cutting her toenails and my womb is too full of grief and wonder to make room for a baby. Funny how the two go together, grief and wonder, kind of like when Jesus died and his murderers realized he was God even as the sky tore. The sky is bleeding red, and in a month it will blaze cerulean with late August heat. The fields of corn and canola misting as combines whirr and the air, thick with the meaty smell of harvest. And Mum’s still fumbling for words, and when she does talk she has a British accent but now she has nothing and I wish, I wish she knew how much I loved her. “Bigger,” Mum says finally, and I know she’s trying to say, “I love you bigger.” “I love you biggest,” I tell her, wiping drool and mango from her chin with a cloth and it’s not supposed to be this way. I’m helping her stand, now, and she’s light. She hasn’t been this small since Africa, where she knit afghans with local women while Dad taught blind men how to plant and Keith and I played in the mud, him in his cloth diaper and me in my underwear. I read somewhere that stress can trigger brain tumors. Perhaps Mum’s grew when she found Nanny in the bathtub, dead. Or maybe this tumor is my fault. Maybe it’s from when I got anorexia, Mum holding me at night when she thought I was asleep and her crying. Or maybe it’s from all of those pots and pans flying across the room when she and I would fight. Or maybe it’s from when I left the house at 18 and didn’t look back. Mum’s diaper is poking out of her stretchy pants, the ones she always wears because they’re easiest to pull up if she’s unconscious, and there’s someone at the door and I’m helping her across the floor towards her blue recliner. And Mum is asleep in her chair even before I answer the door. Friends, this is an excerpt from my new memoir, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look, which released July 1^st through Baker Books. <em From the back cover: “Disillusioned and yearning for freedom, Emily Wierenga left home at age eighteen with no intention of ever returning. Broken down by organized religion, a childhood battle with anorexia, and her parents’ rigidity, she set out to find God somewhere else–anywhere else. Her travels took her across Canada, Central America, the United States, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. She had no idea that her faith was waiting for her the whole time–in the place she least expected it. “Poignant and passionate, Atlas Girl is a very personal story of a universal yearning for home and the assurance that we are known, forgiven, and beloved. Readers will find in this memoir a true description of living faith as a two-way pursuit in a world fraught with distraction. Anyone who wrestles with the brokenness we find in the world will love this emotional journey into the arms of the God who heals all wounds.” Click HERE for Chapters 1 and 2. I’m giving away a FREE e-book to anyone who orders Atlas Girl. Just order HERE, and then head HERE to receive A House That God Built: 7 Essentials to Writing Inspirational Memoir — an absolutely FREE e-book co-authored by myself and editor/memoir teacher Mick Silva. ALL proceeds from Atlas Girl will go towards a non-profit founded by TBM’s Joy Forney and myself, The Lulu Tree. The Lulu Tree is dedicated to preventing tomorrow’s orphans by equipping today’s mothers. It is a grassroots organization bringing healing and hope to women and children in the slums of Uganda through the arts, community, and the gospel.