My young friend is wanted for attempted murder.

I have a young friend who is accused of shooting someone. When I first heard this I was just sad. While I obviously don’t condone shootings or anything like that I immediately thought of all the good times I had with Dejon.

I care because I know Dejon. I’m not going to say he’s a perfect kid or anything. He’s done some things and made some mistakes but so have I. He’s probably done some things I know I wish he didn’t. But I know Dejon grew up with many of life’s cards stacked against him. He’s already been shot twice, he’s grown with people who should have influenced him for good encouraging him towards many of the activities people look down on him for now. Like I said, I don’t condone or excuse anything, I just know a different part of him than what a lot of people see. I know his primary Nik and my co-workers Jesse, Kallie, Steph, Sam, Abby and my boss George know this part of him. And I want you to know it as well.

In the news report explaining Dejon and Tim are wanted for a shooting, people are allowed to comment at the end. People started making harsh, and in my opinion downright immature, comments and others started firing back supporting Dejon and Tim. It’s the easy thing to do, look down on someone and build yourself up by making them look smaller or completely defend someone you see being attacked.

While those comments (and others people made) make me mad and sad I’m not here to fight one side or the other. I don’t see people who mess up as completely innocent or as a waste of a person or a “savage” as one man described these two. I just think people can know others better and not judge them completely by one mistake or a picture seen in passing. Like I said before, I want you to know the good side of this kid which most people never take the time to see.

Dejon and I went to Young Life Camp at Frontier Ranch last year and I got to see him spend a week where he just got to be a kid, away from the worries of the world, and he loved it. We both did. He enjoyed camp right along with the other kids who didn’t have a past like his, hadn’t been to jail, and didn’t have scars from bullets in their chest and leg. He flinched a little whenever the fake gun shots of the western themed camp went off which reminded me of  his past. Camp was something else for all of us and was a place where I’m reminded to see people as they were intended to be seen.

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And I wish you could see Dejon at his best, I hope he remembers those times too, and I hope maybe all the people arguing can just agree on the fact that pointing fingers and degrading each other won’t get us anywhere. Knowing someone enough to blur the line between the “us and them” way we often see life is a better way. A life of empathy changes things while a life of hostility and judging just widens the gap between everyone. Sooner or later I think this will happen and life will make more sense to us all.

Above all Dejon, if you happen to read this, I hope you know, no matter what you did, all that stuff from camp a year ago is true. You are still great and loved and good. I’m sorry more people don’t see the good in you, the way God see’s you every day. I hope you can feel the love. Hopefully I get to see you again soon.

Final: 785 miles, $3,450 raised for kids to go to Young Life Camp and not a single bear.

It was just over a month ago when I was biking across Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The purpose was to raise money for kids from the Dale House Project and from the greater Holland area to go to Young Life camp. I had never done anything like this before. Most days were well over 100 miles and at night I spent time with families I had never met before. The month before had been full of training and fundraising.

The second day of the trip pretty much summed up what the whole experience was like. The first day had plenty of setbacks and turned out to be 164 miles. The second day consisted of a headwind of 15-18 mhp for most of the 100 miles. Headwinds frustrate me more than hills or heat or rain. A good strong headwind feels like pressing equally on the break and gas pedals in a car. Maximum effort with minimal results. That day my legs hurt, I powered through, I yelled going up hills with the wind blowing strong in my face. I pushed as hard as I could only to see the speed on my computer dropping consistently. I dropped my wallet and had to back track. Finally I started praying for the wind to just ease up a bit.

Every time I finished a prayer the wind seemed to pick up, almost mocking me, and putting more resistance on every pedal. Finally that day I snapped. I was sick of the wind, sick of praying and biked harder than I think I ever had. I’m sure my jaw was clenched as I pushed and pushed as if to defy the wind. To overcome everything.

This is what I mean everything was like. Instead of making life easier by giving me what I wanted it was kind of like God may have just been saying. “Stop it. Stop asking for things to be easy. Stop being a wimp”

I felt that in the last leg of the day tuesday. When God seemed to maybe say “You think you’re in shape, you think you know how to push yourself, you think you know strength in weakness but Travis, you don’t know how I’ve made you. You don’t know how amazingly well I made you. You don’t know really what you can do but I can show you and teach you through testing. Maybe if you stopped asking for it to be so easy all the time you might even see”

After everything shook out and the trip was done I didn’t feel much sense of accomplishment but more so wonder of what I might be able to do. The trip was very hard at times but I know I could have tacked on another 20 or 40 miles onto most days. The trip could have been 1,000 miles and it still would have happened. And after the next trip I’m sure I’ll still have the same sense of curiosity.

But for now I can say it is good. Roughly $3,450 was raised. Around $2,500 will go to the DHP and $1,000 will stay here in holland to send kids to camp.

Thanks everyone for all the support, encouragement, and help. And no James Sa, there was not a single bear fight/attack/sighting/non-confrontational gathering.

Book Review: The Other Wes Moore

“Two kids with the same name living in the same decaying city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison for felony murder”

I just finished this book today and it resonates so much with what I have seen and lived in the past two years. The story, as stated above, is about two guys around the same age, both fatherless, from the same hood, with an eery amount of similarities growing up but an ever more profound difference of where they are now.

The whole story ends up begging one question of the ways the two men turned out.

How?

Where is the promise of hope and a future? How did one kid get out, become a hero and a leader while the other fell into the victim of circumstances a detriment to society and a villain? It’s a sad and scary story highlighting many of the troubles of youth in America.

I loved Wes’ accurate and humble portrayal of his own life, mistakes and grace given to him while recognizing the same of his friend and counterpart of the story. In the end there are no real answers but a lot of questions worth thinking about to be applied to ourselves and others. To be honest it’s a book I’ve lost some sleep over but I’m glad because it’s been so important to think about my personal decisions and how I approach life but also how I give grace to others like me. How the murderer’s in jail are like me or you or your friend. It made me appreciate my freedom and grieve others entrapment to a life they never viewed as something long term. It challenges the cocky attitude I have sometimes; being proud of where I am rather than grateful of where I am not. Wes states it well when he says “The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his”.

Unlike many books I have read and appreciated (Love Wins, Irresistible Revolution, Crazy Love) this books digs into something more intimate than attempts at answers and walks through the real lives of families and individuals. If you are involved social work, teaching, Young Life, race issues, psychology or want a lesson in empathy I highly recommend this book. It’s also just an all around good true story.

I must say it was one of my favorite reads over the past year. A book I’m sure to revisit.

Check out Wes’ website here for more information.

How being a Young Life leader helped me be, be with and reach homeless people.

I remember when I became a Young Life leader. It was right at the end of May 2008 when some guys from the Fraternity I just joined encouraged me to check it out. By the end of June I had gone through a fast track of training and in July I went to my first ever Young Life camp. Ever since then I’ve been hooked. I have been to camp 4 times since then. I’ve crossed off Timberwolf, Castaway, Frontier Ranch and Pico Escondido from the list of YL camps to go to. All along the way I was slowly learning something a guy by the name of Tony Dilaura introduced me to way back in 2008 when I was just a young starry eyed 20 year old going through training.

That one thing was to “earn the right to be heard”.

That one thing has become the basis of whatever I do now with my life.

It started in Young Life and continued there throughout my time in college.

After college earning the right to be heard was really put to the test when I worked with and lived with kids at a group home. These were kids that had grown up in abuse, neglect and abandonment. For some turning to drugs, gangs, guns and anger was the answer while for most it was just their life how they had always known it.

These kids were looked down on, outcast, institutionalized and corrected by others who “know better”. People wanted to talk to them so much telling them what to do but it didn’t seem like many times in these kids life people had taken the time or put in the effort to earn the right to be heard. I was thankful to be a part of a group of people at The Dale House where a relational life where earning the right to be heard was emphasized to be a way of life rather than an exception.

Eventually the decision came to take this to where I couldn’t see it going before. To a place where there is no high school lunch room, there is no sporting event and no best week of your life at camp. A place where very few even go let alone want to listen to the people’s story who are there and take the time to earn the right to be heard.

There were a surprising amount of similarities in doing Young Life and living with homeless people. I’ve experienced the same challenges whenever my intent has been to earn the right to be heard.

The first time I walked into a high school to do some contact work I thought…

What if they don’t like me?

What if I’m not funny at club?

What if I’m the one that doesn’t fit in?

What if I can’t find the right kids?

Walking out to the streets of Denver to pursue the homeless left me with similar feelings…

Where do I go?

Who do I talk to?

Where am I going to sleep?

Where am I going to eat?

Whether it be Young Life at a high school, working at a group home or becoming homeless to reach people I wondered the same horrible thought I think we all wonder…

What if I’m terrible at this?

It’s a good fear to have. I think it’s a healthy thing to wonder so you don’t just go into others lives thinking you have yours all together.

This allowed me to go in quietly and to sit in silence and listen. It allowed someone to slowly lend me their story so that way I could go through it with them.

I’ve sat with so many adults and teens this past year. I’ve learned so many stories. I’ve heard terrible things. A girl’s life that has known little more than being raped, abandoned and then sold into human trafficking. A child whose parent killed themselves right after telling the kid it’s all their fault. A schizophrenic who no one has sat down to talk with in years. A man drinking alone in the rain who is so depressed he’s ready to kill himself. Another man who wishes someone saw one good thing about him rather than disregarding him because he’s homeless.

Earning the right to be heard often left me understanding a persons individual suffering better. Understanding pain better made me realize that the words I was planning on saying would fail and be cliche to the point that they would cause pain. I’ve learned that I can’t fix people. I don’t have the answers. I wish I did. I’ve tried to and I’ve failed. I’ve learned to stay quite more than I used to and just let someone know that I’m not going anywhere. I’ve learned to be consistent, continue to eat with people, walk through town with them, talk about baseball with them, go to their games, buy them their favorite magazine, visit them in the cafeteria or sit in sandwich lines with them just to be with them as they struggle so that they might not have to struggle alone. It’s not always the best time. It’s not always easy or profound. But when we join in that silence, in that waiting and sharing of pain and burden and people coming to know they don’t have earn your love… God is there.

Once the right to be heard has been earned it’s interesting how much less I have to say than I would have wanted to in the first place. I don’t need to say it because it’s understood.

I’m so glad I’ve been blessed to be a a part of so many people’s lives.

I’ll never forget it all started with Young Life teaching me what it means to earn the right to be heard.

What’s the point of talking?

Over the past year I’ve been a part of a ton of second hand conversations. Whether it be the time I was on the streets, laying down in a park, reading comments on a blog or sitting in a coffee shop I hear small parts of many conversations. Especially in the coffee shop I go to regularly. Given that it’s near a high school, college, seminary and homeless shelter there are a pretty eclectic group of people that gather here. Given the variety of people conversing I think I have heard a debate over pretty much everything. I promise I’m not trying to listen but people talk loud… and it’s interesting (not gonna not listen).

People putting opinion on top of opinion is usually what it’s all about. It’s not a bad thing since these opinions stack up from personal experience. I often wonder what those opinions are exactly. Where have these people come from? Why do they think these ways? What’s the point of talking so much? I don’t always agree or disagree or even care but I still wonder about these people’s lives that have led to this talk. More so I wonder what that looks like in their actual life. Where are their opinions turning into actions? Are their opinions and ideals even turning into actions?

I have to remember though that I am often the one having these conversations. People hear me too. And as much as I wonder about where they are coming from I can only assume they wonder the same things about me. If I’m going to wonder about others others I have to be a my own biggest skeptic. I have to ask…

Where are my opinions and ideals turning into action? Are they?

I have to make sure my life, my potential and my thoughts don’t end when I walk out of the coffee shop. When the conversation ends is when the stuff that really matters begins. At that point it’s not a matter of right living as much as it is a wonder of potential that leads to what we’re all pursuing. It’s the slight difference between setting expectations so you can meet them and pursuing ideals to see what’s possible.

I think we all have this natural curiosity to push our personal limits. Do we really follow that curiosity though? Personally I think it should be more encouraged than it is. It should be a way of life not just a conversation in a coffee shop. It takes hard work and dedication but that’s the stuff that makes a difference. I believe these conversations we have are good. They should happen more. They shouldn’t put our minds at ease though as much as they stir our lives into action that is based on the faith of what we believe in.

From all these second hand conversations I’ve gotten one thing. We all believe in a better way to live. If we didn’t we wouldn’t be talking so much.

We believe in helping others, feeding the hungry, reaching out to the lonely, being a better friend and showing God to the world. We believe that we can push ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually to live a better life. Those are just our beliefs and ideals though. The point of talking in this way should be to discover them. Once discovered though we can’t mistake them for a finish line when in reality they are just starting blocks. Beliefs and ideals just allow us something to push off of and move. They are not permission to stop moving.

Questions: How are you willing to live and show that what you talk about is not just talk? Are you determined to find out that what you believe in actually exists? How do you accomplish this daily?