Steele - half-life / die already: How I Died and Lived to Tell About It

To Kaysie
My better half.

Last time around, I thanked everyone who had played a significant role in my personal history. That was when I thought I might only write one book in my lifetime. Now that I am on a roll, I think Ill keep the acknowledgments restricted to the key players in this particular narrative alone.

Kaysieone book could never do our journey justice. I cannot imagine life or faith or the present and future road without you. You are my muse, my conscience, and my Huckleberry all rolled into one gorgeous package. I love you forever.

Morgan, Jackson, and CharlieI hope that someday when you walk down your own hard road, you will see that your imperfect parents did so with honesty, a passion for Jesus, and an overflowing love for you.

Roger, Susan, Kathy, and the Believers Church Staffthank you for your willingness to create an environment that allows us to walk through the toughest stuff arm-in-arm with those who want us to come out the other side healed. Your love is the very picture of Jesus.

Matt, Mike, and Jasonthank you for shoving me into the straight and narrow. I couldnt beg for better friends.

Eric Leethank you for the amazing illustrations throughout the book (exhibits AN). They exude wit and painfulness and I do believe you are a creative genius.

The Steeles, the Dodds, and the Steelehouse teamthank you for your undying love and support.

To all those who went through the marriage intensive with Kaysie and Ithank you for your intense vulnerability, kindness, and acceptance at the single-most pivotal window in our lives and marriage. You made all the difference.

And Zacharythanks for helping with that pile of leaves.

(Exhibit A)

Most authors have writers block.

I, on the other hand, have writers neighborhood.

I rarely have moments where I am stuck without words. On the contrary, I tend to have far too many to juggle into sense. I get lost within the nooks and crannies of all the different paths between where I currently stand and where I want to go. This, of course, makes sense in my writing because it is also true of my life. The roads are plentiful and seemingly open to my own interpretation. However, the moment I avoid a dark alley in favor of a wide sunny street, that is the moment a meteor fells a redwood into my path creating a startling new detour. My life, therefore, has often been circular: I face the same issues and frustrations over and over. I take a left turn and end up in the roundabout deceiving myself with perpetual movement while I am, in fact, just as stuck as if I were standing still.

To this end, entire sections of my life have cycled around and around to a frustrating conclusion that looked suspiciously identical to the first chapter. Days and weeks and months of intended change fueled by pain and effort fast-forward to an end of the calendar year defined with zero growth. The question begs: What is it going to take for me to transform? I dont truly comprehend what this transformation should look like, but I do know that I should not come out of the cocoon as a caterpillar.

Everything dies. And to be honest, everything should. Well, everything except the battery in my Toyota Highlander. Certainly I have experienced pain when someone or something dear to me died before I felt ready. But most of the pain in my life has come from things I kept on life support long after I should have let them go. This is the problem in question. Not timely death, but rather, playing dead.

In the world of roadkill, there is a creature called the possum (or opossum if youre Irish) that daily masters the defense mechanism called playing dead. Certainly youve seen photos. The possum has the ability to let its body instantly go limp with its tongue hanging out like a slug and its eyes skewed cross near the top of its lids. I believe it even emits a smellof course, its possible that all possums smell like death to begin with. To all observers, this insinuates that the possum now belongs in a Hefty bag. This keeps enemies away.

I, for one, am grateful that this has not caught on with human beings. Funerals are tragic enough without the individual in the casket hopping to his feet fifteen minutes into the ceremony and yelling to the back of the room, Is the tax guy gone yet?

The possum, however, will take this position the moment an enemy or a Volvo crosses its pathand it tends to work quite efficiently. This is because possums believe the failed concept that if you can convince the world that youre too beaten to live, the beatings of the world will stop.

And I had lived much of my life that exact same way.

I had lost my edge and, at times, my footing.

The myriad of hardships that had walloped my wife and I had tempted us into a regular routine of rolling over, eyes glazed, hoping the antagonists would beat something else that moved more frisky. And so I faced my next crisis, my next decision, and continued to find myself right back where I started.

My life, as stated, is circular.

Why cant my life come equipped with a GPS system like NeverLost, a talking navigator with the insight to interfere with my choices? A clear, calm voice of a woman that gently nudges me (accompanied by colorful maps) into the exact unforeseen turns on my path toward a perfect resting place. Of course, my optimum NeverLost would need some improvements over the model currently on the market. Something about having an audible voice in my car causes me to relax a little too much, to assume I dont really need to pay attention to my way because someone else is currently doing so. To this end, when the NeverLost lady (who, for brevitys sake, I will call Gwen) states next turn in 2.9 miles, my mind begins to wander, wondering why she didnt just round the total up to three miles and deciding that Gwen must consider herself too good for that sort of thing. How dare she talk down to me and what does she know about math (this digresses for a few moments) until finally, she declares: You missed your turn; recalculating journey in that same over-enunciating hooked-on-phonics voice that has a hint of flipping me the finger. She KNOWS it ticks me off. Dont even go there, Gwen.

Oh, the recalculation of the journey. How I know this process well. It isnt pleasant, the recalculation: the doubling-back and revisiting what was not really all that welcome a visit in the first place. And yet, I (and more than likely you) consistently end up in places I thought I was through with, repeating behavior and frustrations that indicate zero growth has taken place in my life.

This never ceases to perplex me because I WANT to do right. I desire to make correct choices. I made a decision a long time ago to follow Jesus Christ with the entirety of my life. That decision was a joyous moment, but the thirty-something years of follow-through have been less than stellar. There are daily deterrents that attempt to shove me off the side of the roada myriad of billboard-size distractions that would like nothing more than for me to take an early exit. So, while God continues to say, Wait, Mark. The Grand Canyon is just over the next bend, I find myself saying, Maybe, but just four hundred yards off this highway I can visit the worlds largest exotic llama farm.

Perhaps if my NeverLost took a terse attitude in her approach to my direction, I would find myself on a shorter path through the subdivision. If I created the next version (say Gwen 2.0), I would give her a reeeeal voice. Not that Gwen 1.0 doesnt sound feminine enough. She simply doesnt have the essence of humanity that I need. She doesnt warn me five times before the turn with a shrill of RIGHTHERE RIGHTHERE RIGHTHEEEERE because I am distracted.