Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen...

Sixteen years ago I became a dad.

I guess maybe, in my heart, I was always a dad. But sixteen years ago it became tangible. At exactly 10PM on May 7^th, My wonderful daughter Morgan –my precious Daisy- silently entered this world. She never cried. Not even once. She was a quiet new life as she is even today. Quiet. Thoughtful. Introspective. Always churning over the fertile ground of her heart, and her surroundings.

She’s had a tough road these last 6 years as my life unraveled. I won’t go into details because they aren’t necessary here. Let’s just say she has dealt with more than any little girl should have to as she transitioned into adulthood.

But here she is...sixteen. She’s more adult now than child, and I am proud of her.

I’ve done my best to “train her up in the way she should go...” an oft-misquoted Bible reference that speaks of really knowing your child and the way their heart is “bent” and what it is they were put here to do.

I’ve done what I could do toward that end. She loves art. She lives and breathes music. Great music too...not the Justin Beiber, GaGa, nonsense that the brainless horde clings to. She listens to stuff that I end up loving. She reads great books and loves great art. She has talent. Real, honest-to-goodness talent, not just what a blinded-by-pride dad claims is great.

She has a loving, caring, compassionate soul, and people like that are often bruised by a world that is exactly opposite of those qualities. She loves and loves and loves. She has character and principles and integrity and her soul is not for sale. She knows who she is and what she believes. To say I am proud of her is like saying the Mona Lisa is a “pretty good picture.” I am bursting. I am amazed. I thank God every single day that she has become what she is in the face of circumstances that surely could have made her turn to drugs, or drink, or behavior, to dull the pain she has felt.

She has wounds. She has things that hurt her that I am trying to fix, and damage I am trying to repair. But through it all she remains grounded.

Sixteen years ago, life really began for me. Before her arrival, love was something I had locked away in my soul, showing it only to a chosen few, in measured doses. But when she came into this world that Thursday night in 1998, the door to that part of my soul was torn from it’s hinges. The limits were removed. I have never loved anyone as I love my daughter.

I have two years left until she goes off to college and out into the world to find the target she was created to hit. Two years to finish the job, shape this arrow into the perfect instrument of flight and then –on that great and terrible day when I hear God whisper in my ear: “That’s her target...let her fly...”-  I will pull my bow with shaking hands, line my sights through tears, and send her on her way. That day will be here too quickly. Like these first sixteen years have come and gone too quickly.

Daisy...I love you. You are the one thing I look to in my life with pride and happiness. You are what every dad hopes he has in a daughter. I would breathe my final breath to you and consider it a privilege. I would set my own dreams on fire to light the way for yours to come true.

Your is the world, and everything in it. Your future is in your heart, and together, we’ll mine it from it’s depths and plant it in a fertile field and watch it bloom.

Oh...the places you’ll go.

I love words. Love them like an artist loves oils. I love the best written words and the best spoken words and the ones that others miss.

The best words I’ve ever said are “I love you” when I said them to my daughter.

Happy Birthday from your dad.

Six years as a homeless dad...

Yesterday marked six years of homelessness.

It’s not something I’m proud of. I didn’t celebrate with dinner and a cake and party favors. It’s humiliating. It’s embarrassing. It crushes my soul. It makes me cry.

A lot.

Six years ago, I was hastily loading every single thing I owned onto a friends open trailer and driving them to a barn where he said I could store them for a while. It was an all day job and it was made longer by the hurt of what was happening to my world and my fatherhood. I had no idea where I’d go. No job prospects, no friends with an extra room or a couch I could crash on. Six years later none of that stuff remains. I have no beds. No furniture. Not even silverware and dishes. Nothing.

About six weeks prior, the mortgage company I had worked for, for the last four years, folded it’s operations and moved out of Tennessee. Within another year, they’d be out of business altogether, bankrupt and the owner slapped with a two-billion dollar federal lawsuit.

It wasn’t just the fact that the company I worked for was gone. They were all gone. I couldn’t just latch on with another mortgage company because the entire industry was imploding. In one year, the entire industry went from about 600,000 employees, to about 100,000. That’s 80% of the entire mortgage workforce gone...looking for something else in a collapsing economy.

I’ve detailed my life over these last six years so there’s no need to do it. But there are some highlights...or lowlights.

Since 2008 I have worked for FOUR companies that ended up going out of business. FOUR! How many people can make that claim?

I graduated from College while still homeless. I thought it would give me a chance at a better future but this economy is far to damaged to provide opportunities for anyone with qualifications. And we have a president who wants it that way.

I remained here in Nashville when I could have gone to one of the few areas in this country that still have employment opportunities, but that would have required me to leave my daughter behind. I could never do that and the events in her life over the last 4 weeks have borne out the fact that I was correct in that decision. Me staying here likely kept her alive.

I wish I could rightly describe what this life feels like. What it’s like to wake up at 3 AM and break into sobs because you snap out of the fog of sleep and realize “I am someone’s dad and I’m homeless.”

I wish I could express to you what it feels like to drift from place to place when it’s raining and you can’t work, because you have no place to call your own.

I wish I could tell you how demeaning it is to be entirely dependent on public restrooms and showering at the gym, having to arrange your work day so that you get a shower before they close at night.

I wish you could understand what it’s like to open the door of your car and feel the rush of shame when you realize someone caught a glimpse of the inside and they surely realized you are living in there.

I wish you could grasp how all this feels when you have a daughter and she knows you are homeless and she tries to encourage you because you stayed in her life and you did this for her sake. But she really needs you and needs you to have a place to live so she can escape the hell she is living in.

I wish you could understand what it’s like to literally feel the days escaping your grip.

I have doubted God. I have wondered where He was and why He wasn’t answering. I have shaken my fist at Heaven and spit at the ground. Then, always, I have broken down in tears and confessed that I still believe in Him and trust Him that somehow...this is part of His plan.

There is nothing left for me to try. Nothing I haven’t done. I work 14-16 hour days as a carpenter, hoping to scrape together enough to move my daughter and I to a new town that promises a new start. I need to succeed this time. She needs me to succeed. I need a place to lay my head.

I need a home.

It’s day one of year seven.

I hope not many more of these days remain.