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Guy is just a dad of three littles who has experienced deep, deep loss in the past few years. He writes about grace, patience, parenting, and grief in tangibles. One of the things I look for in blogs to read is a sense of the raw and Guy never fails. But I also look for a deep sense of hope and Guy presses on, faithfully, transparently, and gracefully. He is truly a life that has been changed by grace. Oh, and he just finished writing a book!

18 inches of trust.

If a tree falls in the forest, yet no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Does the tree actually fall if no one stands in observation? Is there a tree actually at all?

Does it even matter...at all?

A simple yes is as profound an answer as one could give.

It all matters.

To say it doesn’t is neglect and most prideful. We were not there, the moment not experienced. Trees fall every day and they make sounds we may never hear.

Life is realized as we live it, but not defined by us. It remains in front and all around, happening and in motion. We tread heavy and dumb footed in life when all is made to be about us, our perception, our needs, our realities. These act as filters straining truth through our experiences, our condition and predicament.

A falling tree.
A burning bridge.
A collapsing belief.

Yes, it all matters. Not because we stand in observation validating truth and reality and giving just cause to all things happening, but because life is and God is. What is, life and truth and God, stands resolute and resolved. What I mean completely is that to reduce truth to a relative measurement is a rather fickle and unending endeavor. The man pontificating, closing in on truth, his, rethinking again and circling. Truth escapes with ease when all bets are off, all doors are open and nothing is tied down.

Meanwhile, life continues, always.

"Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

When we open our eyes in holy wonder, not hollow wander, we see Kingdom come, life as it sets and unfolds before us and Truth guides through thickening and thinning, and rising heights and depths descending. Too often, and too quickly, our eyes mature to a point not seeing ahead into the unimaginable good. Instead, they gaze fixed only on what can be made sensible.

Hands reach for what can be had, the allure of knowing and not needing. No different than the first mistake made when truth bent in the hearing, ringing right and free causing exit to all that God provided in Eden. The fruit of reaching, the yield of bending truth turns our back to simply trusting and living with sustained abandon.

In the distance between heart and head lies life living or dying. Life measured in mere inches. A man is made in the in between; the communication between what is heard and what is held on to. Truth must sink from the surface, the head to heart.

The longest road a man must travel is the length shorter than one stride. It is the 18 inches between the heart and the head.

And life mostly has to do with trust.

So often life is lost in those 18 inches. Truth is maligned, abused in the desert distance guessing, shaped by home brewed half truths and composite philosophies.

Question everything and all doors open for exploring to an unending expanse. Roaming wanderers hungry to know. Knowledge, the satisfying treasure said to verify existence and settle seething hearts discontent with maybe. But questions not tied into absolutes swing from empty to empty no matter how ornate. What does it mean to intelligibly ask if all you do is shuffle in circles? All is for naught.

Life must be accepted.
Question to find not to lose. Look to have, not leave.

Trust is a journey both into oneself and out of the shifting wasteland of one’s life as center and end.

You are neither center or end in life. Begin there and trust becomes a necessary result and normal activity in all facets of life.