I know that sounds dramatic, but it is nevertheless true.

However, the life of this book would have died on those first yellow, legal-sized tablets stuffed in a folder, or in the leather-bound faded journals at the top of my closet or on the processor of my first Apple Powerbook Duo Dock computer, if my story wasn’t also your story.

My story is your story because we all live with an acute awareness of relational pain and our first and strongest response is to run. And I did. I ran and ran until I was utterly exhausted.

That exhaustion challenged me to put pen to paper and finger to keyboard where I learned to “Stay in the Room” long enough to negotiate both the work and wonder of truly satisfying relationships.

Ask yourself, does your mind wonder and ache from the weight of runaway relationships? They start as a promising and hopeful walk with an acquaintance, then a friend, and become a slow, almost accidental step in the other direction. Initially, the distance is small and unacknowledged, but soon it becomes deliberate and disappointing. Finally, there is nothing left but a whimpering regret filled with empty questions:
• What did I do?
What did I not do?
• Why didn’t they understand me?
Did I really not understand them?
• Why did they change?
Did I change?
• Why did they give up?
Did I give up too soon?
• Is it really over?
Can we start over?

We all deal with damaged and broken relationships. When those first moments of disagreement and frustration surface, we either pretend, hoping the differences will disappear, or pout, expecting the other person to read our minds. As the distance grows, misunderstanding leads to analysis, then anger follows with a desire to “win,” resolving nothing.

Typically, this is when we put on our running shoes. We want to run from this person who doesn’t understand us, who has unreasonable expectations of us or worst of all, has betrayed us. So, we run away from the confusion and the pain and start over, pretending that it will be better next time. Only it isn’t and it won’t be until we learn to invest in “Stay in the Room” relationships.

After decades of living, listening and loving people into what I call “redemptively reconciled relationships,” I invite you to put away your running shoes and find a soft chair and a cup of coffee. I invite you to dig deep into your relational regrets and uncover a set of personal principles that will both clarify your past and steer your future. I invite you to experience what can happen when you embrace authenticity, define boundaries, understand compatibility, develop discernment and build enthusiasm.

The coffee is on. The chair is waiting. Come and stay.

Memories flow like running water when Father Time turns the page on a New Year. While we struggle with the words, we do not miss the sentiment swirling around our annual rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.” Each year we bid a simultaneous farewell and greeting to what was and will be and within that tension of reminiscent hope, we pause, or at least, we should.

We pause to listen for a heartbeat. It is that rhythmic contraction of the heart that unconsciously allows us to be at the very least, conscious and reflective and, at the very best, self-aware and discerning. Each year on this day, unlike any other, we are invited into the challenge of self-awareness.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that we live in a time of ever-weakening self-awareness. I call it the age of “shameless blame.” Perhaps now more than ever, I long for a healthy sense of shame. Honestly, I never thought I would say that.

But then again, I grew up listening to Merle. Country legend, Merle Haggard’s music was a prominent part of the stack of vinyl 45s my mother regularly rotated on the spindle of her stereo. His hard-driving, no-frills Bakersfield (California) Sound not only shook the Nashville establishment in the 1960s, but his music also displayed a rugged authenticity needed for times like ours.

I am reminded of Merle today, January 1, 2018, as I read the story of Johnny Cash’s first-ever prison concert, tenderly dramatized in the movie, Walk The Line. On this day in 1958, Merle is a 20-year-old San Quintin inmate serving a 15-year sentence for burglary. He later identifies the concert by the “Man in Black” as the turning point of his life and career.

I grew up listening and living Merle’s brand of music through my mother’s enduring admiration of his hard-living anthems. On the eve of this New Year, I find his songs of the 60s are a roadmap to the rugged authenticity needed to escape this weak and worried age of “shameless blame.” Just review some of the words from his classics in the 60s:

1965 “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers”

“From now on all my friends are gonna be strangers
I’m all through ever trusting anyone
The only thing I can count on now is my fingers
I was a fool believing in you and now you are gone.”

1967 “Loneliness Is Eating Me Alive”

“And honey you’ll have to hurry or there’ll be no reason to come home.
‘Cause this loneliness is eating me alive.”

1968 “Mama Tried”

“Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied
That leaves only me to blame ‘cause Mama tried”

1969 “Workin’ Man Blues”

“Sometimes I think about leaving, do a little bummin’ around
I ain’t never been on welfare, that’s one place I won’t be
Cause I’ll be working as long as my two hands are fit to use”

1969 “Silver Wings”

“Silver wings, Shining in the sunlight
Roaring engines, Headed somewhere in flight
They’re taking you away, And leaving me lonely”

1969 “Okie From Muskogee”

“I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all”

Reverberating off the walls of our meager home on Decoursey Avenue in Covington, Kentucky, Merle’s words unwittingly settled into the texture of my adolescent consciousness. I felt my loneliness in his, I saw his Mama in mine, I worked my first job with dogged determination, and I sensed the substance of small town living as well as the pride of wartime patriotism.

Through the years, I re-acquaint myself with Merle’s music through the digital music streaming services he likely never imagined. But it is a story I read in Rolling Stone magazine not long after his death that offers my final, favorite impression. While his fans knew Haggard’s hardened, gruff image as displayed in his music, his real-life persona was different, especially as he aged. He was polite, reserved, but intensely curious, especially about current events. He became a news junkie and was politically outspoken, often taking positions unpopular in the country music world.

In 2010, he received a Kennedy Center Honor from President Obama and made news describing him as very different from the media perception. “It’s really almost criminal what they do with our President. There seems to be no shame or anything. They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he’s doing certain things that he’s not. It’s just a big old political game that I don’t want to be part of.”

Now, let’s practice that pause I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. If you were feeling warm about my reminiscing of old Merle and suddenly went cold because I mentioned a former president that may not be your favorite, a pause for discernment is crucial.

In a plea for “self-awareness,” take a moment to reflect. Why are we so incredibly polarized? Why do we so easily vilify someone with whom we disagree? Why do we blame “the other” person, party, or circumstance?

May I say it again? We blame because we live in a time of ever-weakening self-awareness. We live in an age of “shameless blame.”

We can do better. We must do better. May it start with you and me!

I don’t cry easily. Maybe someday I will. I am not proud of it. I do not think crying is a weakness. I just don’t cry easily.

Charles Dickens, in his classic Great Expectations, helps with my tear dilemma: “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before—more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”

So why do I need to confess about crying? Let me explain.

My recent tears arrive most unexpectedly, both in place and in power.

I am on the beach, my favorite place to relax. Then without notice, streams of steady tears begin, my eyes unable to contain the flow.

I am reading a book, something I do most everyday of my life. In this particular case, I am reading a book written by a friend. While he initially identifies it as a “novel,” I am relieved to discover these words in the preface: “This story is based upon (such) a memory for me, the true story of the intersection of strangers.” I am relieved because for me most novels die somewhere between fate and folly, dreams and drama.

Maybe I cry because I know the writer and hear the heart cry of his memories. Maybe I cry because the writer is skilled at his craft and weaves a tale of bittersweet reality. Whatever the reason for my tears, they come as “rain upon the blinding dust of earth” when I read the last paragraph and look up to discover my wife has “caught me in the act.”

Disguised as a Trojan horse, the book enters the city of my soul and captures me unaware of the power of my missing brother.

I tell you all of this because I want to warn you to read the book. I want to warn you in the way that a town crier alerts the community to upcoming opportunities.

I want to warn you “memories matter,” people are precious and life is faithfully fleeting.

The title of this book is An Intersection of Strangers and Paul Heagen is the writer. It is a story of two teenagers whose intersection in life is timely and timeless, opportune and enduring. It is a story of cars and kids, parents and music, wars both foreign and personal, fate and faith, living and dying.

I can’t promise you will cry when you read it, but I can hope you will.

P.S. You can contact my friend Paul on his Defining Moments website (www.definingmoments.me) or call 513-260-8330. Or simply go to Amazon to purchase.