daniel troy carmichael

Happy Birthday, Lauren Claire!

Lauren Claire, around 18 months old....made us laugh and was great joy for us from the earliest days.

 Lauren Claire, shortly before her 15th birthday, and still making us smile with her great humor and personality.

I'm her Dad, I'm glad to say. My Lauren Claire is so wonderful and we are blessed to have a daughter like her. I could say a lot but words would not do justice. Let it suffice to say that I love you, Lauren Claire, and I'm glad I'm your Daddy. May this year be the year we grow closer together and learn more fully what a God-directed relationship between a father and daughter is like.

--daddy--

An Epiphany of Dark-Ness: the crisis in my soul

This book has taken either first or second place in my life as Best Book Read (not including the Bible, of course). The other one is Wild at Heart.

(written 3/14/2008)

You are at the doctor's office for a routine checkup; you feel normal and nothing seems amiss. Clinically, yet also somehow filled with great compassion, the doctor then informs you that, while you feel fine, you will be dead in 90 days. You are terminally ill, don't know it, and there is no cure....

Is this good news or bad news?

Think about it. You had no idea, but suddenly find out you will die very soon. Is that good news or bad? I think it is good news. The truth is, you were going to die anyway, but now you know! Now, even if the outcome is the same, you can live differently the last bit of your life! You are armed with the truth and are no longer ignorant of your situation.

This is similar to how I've felt the past week. About ten days ago, on the first Monday of this month, I found our that a lot of plans I had made pertaining to earning a living were not going to happen as expected. Several different things unraveled all at once and left me feeling...well, let's not go there.

As I fired up the prayers for our situation and began the job hunt, the old curl-up-into-the-fetal-position-and-suck-your-thumb panic and anxiety feelings were right there. But I seem to be fighting this battle differently than I have in the past. I may be on the verge of a New Strength...

A good friend of mine sent me a book several days later, Kruger's Across All Worlds (ISBN 1-57383-379-7). It has been like the pronouncement of a terminally ill condition upon my life, in a good way, and for the first time in my life I am seeing that I...cannot see. The battle I struggle with is, "Will I trust the Father?" The job situation, as bad as that may be, is not the core issue. My trust in the Father is. I have known for quite some time that if I could just trust/love/know the Father, I could be content in all circumstances. But why is it so hard for me to make that happen in my soul?

The epiphany I am undergoing has to do with the outcome of the sin nature in my life and my complete inability to see outside of my darkness and pain without the Son showing me the Father. I'm not where I would like to be, but I believe I am now on the path. Here are some quotes from Kruger that have grabbed my attention (often paraphrased):

• "I have given my life to God," shouted Saul [before he became Paul], "and Jesus has the audacity to tell me I don't even know God!?" p.2
  
  
• We want Jesus to repent. We want him to drop his vision of God and affirm our own mythological creation of god. Jesus won't. So we live in the crisis of his presence.... The crisis is a crisis of vision. p. 4
  
  
• "... No one knows the Father but the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him." (Matthew 11:27)
  
  
• The problem of sin and reconciliation is far larger than the issue of our being lawbreakers.... The deepest problem of sin is that it makes us utterly incapable of knowing the Father..... And without knowing the Father's heart, we have no basis for real assurance or hope in our lives at all. If we cannot see His face, we have no possibility of living in the freedom of His abounding love, and in the security and joy of His lavish and eternal embrace. p.8
  
  
• The great disaster of Adam and Eve was not simply that they sinned or were disobedient to a divine rule. The disaster was that in believing the lie of the evil one they became blind.... their perception of reality became skewed, so skewed that they could no longer perceive the real truth about God or about themselves..... Sin is about losing our right minds, such that we are no longer able to see the goodness and love of the Father, and thus no longer free to live life in His unearthly assurance and blessing. p.9
  
  
• We have tarred the face of the Father with the brush of our own angst. p. 21
  
  
• Adam projected his pain onto God, thereby creating an entirely mythological deity, a figment of his own baggage. But this figment was nevertheless frighteningly real to Adam. p.22
  
  
• It would be far easier if sin were merely a legal matter... But such a view ... fails to answer the fundamental problem: What kind of forgiving God could be satisfied with having the guilty legally clean, yet so trapped in their wrong-headedness and anxiety that they cannot possibly receive His forgiveness and live in His joy? p.23
  
  
• Reconciliation is not about Jesus suffering punishment so that the invisible, faceless, and nameless god up there somewhere can forgive us. It is about the Father's forgiveness in action, entering into our estrangement and its hell, and penetrating the fundamental problem of sin. p.29
  
  
• Jesus himself is sharing with you... "Trust me. Dare to doubt your vision of god. Believe in my Father and His love.... Get up, stand on your feet, and live in the joy of my knowledge of the Father's heart." Jesus meets us in our fallen minds. p.45
  
  
• Herein lies the crisis of our existences. Jesus Christ loves us too much to leave us lost and doomed in our mythology. Yet his presence inevitably exposes our living as bound in darkness and death.... Such exposure hurts like hell. p.52
  
  
• Jesus is not a co-dependent savior. He does not need to be needed. He will not reach into our souls and take away the pain.... To wave the magic wand would be to utterly annihilate us as free-willed persons. God grants, treasures, and guards the reality of our distinctness p.63
  
  
• He will not sweep us up and take away our pain. But neither will he forsake us in our mythology.... We live in the crucible of response. p.65
  
  
• Left to ourselves we would be free only to choose what our fallen minds perceive. p. 67
  
  
• But to receive the love of the Father, to know it, to experience its joy, we must face what is keeping us from believing. We must repent and believe, our fallen minds must be undone and restructured in truth. There is no other way. It is no use wanting heaven without facing our hell. p.70
  
  
• The strategy of evil is to attack your vision of the Father's heart. The devil is not a gentleman. He has no intention of playing fair. His aim is to destroy any proper notion you have of the Father. p.75
  
  
• The pain is telling you that the Father's Son has found you in your darkness and that you are not living in the Father's embrace, and that your life can be different. p.78
  
  
• As long as we think we can carve out our own way, who is listening to grace? ... It is the ones who know they cannot make it who get to see the Father. p.82
  
  

Succinctly, there is no way out of the darkness that is my end unless Jesus shows me the Father. Jesus, show me the Father and let me know Him fully as I am fully known by you. I dare to doubt my mythological vision of god; show me God as he truly is: loving, kind, gracious, compassionate, and, oh, so much more than I have ever dared to believe! And, for those who may read these words after me, let them, too, have their mythological vision of god shattered and displaced by a more full revelation of God the Father.

note: Thank you, Garry, for sending me this book. Jesus has reached across all worlds to find you and I in our darkness.

--dtc--

Sanctification: A Recent Revelation

A visual interpretation of the tri-fold nature of our being. Another view considers the Heart, the Will, the Emotions, and the Mind as the realm of the soul only.

(this was written February 29, 2008)

Last night at church during worship I had a personal revelation (it seems that most of my revelations and new thoughts occur during corporate worship). As you may recall, Justification happens at salvation and refers to the spirit of man and the quickening of our spirit the moment Christ raises us from the dead; Glorification relates to the body of man and is what occurs at the second advent when Christ raises up our dead bodies as incorruptible, a body like His after His resurrection nearly two-thousand years ago.

However, while on Earth, much of our battle occurs during the process of Sanctification, which refers to the soul of man and our becoming more Christ-like while alive here. The soul consists of the Will, the Mind, and the Emotions. It is in the area of my soul that I fight and wonder the most.

As we were worshiping last night, I was pondering--as I have every time of worship for over 20 years--how some people just get so excited that they raise their hands, spin around, and--like my wife--occassionally whack me in the face or land on my foot while jumping up and down excitedly! I was like, "Why is it hard for me to feel and be like that: more emotional toward my Creator, Savior, Counselor??!"

Then, for the first time, I think I began to understand something I have struggled with--almost guiltily and condemningly--for my entire saved Christian life....read on.

God has made each of us a tri-fold being. In regards to the physical, our bodies are tall, short, thinner, fatter, paler, darker, healthier, and so on. Our bodies are affected not only by the diversity God has given us (good), but also via sin and death (evil). In a similar way, our souls are equally sundry and divers in makeup: and here is where I had my "aha!" moment.

Remember, the soul is comprised of the will, mind, and emotions. Some have greater strengths of will than others (think self discipline, for example, in work ethic, or orderliness, etc.). Others have greater strengths of mind than others (think Forest Gump versus Einstein). Well, then it makes sense, that some have greater strengths of emotion!

Also, just as with our bodies, our souls are a gift from God (good) yet are affected by sin and death (evil). However, unlike our bodies which are condemned to death and will die, our souls can be sanctified and we can change and be transformed to be more like Christ.

In regards to our worship, we can worship Jesus with our body, as well as with our soul. Worshiping God from our soul may exhibit itself in strengths of will, such as diligence in the daily discipline of Bible reading. We may worship from our soul in strengths of mind, such as the learning of knowledge in science, history, or the Bible. Finally, we may worship him in the strengths of our emotions, such as outward expressions of worship toward God, affection toward friends, celebration of nature's beauty!

It seems that my personal proclivity is to worship God first with my mind, then my will, then my emotions. Probably because, like a person with a lame leg, there is an aspect of my soul that, too, is lame--especially in my emotions. So, while I no longer think less of those who desire not to study with their mind the nature of God, I likewise now feel less condemned and guilty that I am somehow, after two decades of trying, poorly able to emote my feelings toward God as I wish it to be.

February at a Glance: Photos

A lot has been happening in my world these past two weeks so I am late (in my mind, at least) getting these photos up. Oh, and by the way, my favorite picture is the last one!

--dtc--

February 1, 2008: Katie is born!

February First started with Ashley going to be with her baby sister, Carol, in Mobile. Carol and Joe had their third child and second daughter, Katie, that day. Ashley was able to hold her sister's hand all the way through the Caesarian.

Ashley holding Katie--a proud Aunt and the first time she was able to be with one of her sisters during birth.

Grampa/Pops/Bud with his thirteenth grandchild.....what a blessing!

Mommy Carol with her oldest and youngest (sorry Carol, but it is a sweet picture!)

Papa Joe and his three children, Joshua, Erin, and baby Katie

My youngest niece

The next night, Lauren Claire, Elizabeth, and cousin Kathryn went to a Christian Concert and met one of the performers afterwards

Ashley's flowers from her little sister were so beautiful I just had to include them in here....

Ashley's Birthday Trip to California

Ashley turned the big four-oh on February 7. So, being the absolutely brilliant husband I am and with no confidence in myself to even come close to doing her birthday justice, realized that the best present was to send her to California for her friends to take care of her..... Oh, we miss our California friends so, so much....

On Ashley's birthday, her friends took her out to dinner. I see Nicole, Claire, Joyce, Ashley, Jody, Laurie, Julie, Suzanne, Holly, Jeni, Erin, Angela, and Mary.

Ashley's birthday dessert--and a candle! She is beautiful and looks radiant on her birthday!

The next day, Ashley went to the Pleasanton Farmer's Market and said hello to a bunch of our friends, such as Dale and Soteria. Here she is with our favorite olive oil vendor, Charles Crohare , who was so excited to see her! He always asks about my in-laws.

After the farmer's market, several of Ashley's friends took a tour to Napa Valley

A lovely desert in Napa

A new favorite place to eat on the road to Napa

Ashley visited our old church, Harvest Valley Christian Church, which is going through a remodel

The last time Ashley saw our old home was over a year ago. See here for a picture.

Ashley spent her last night with the Rieder's and Charis made something for her

Then Aidan made something

On the way out of town, Ashley stopped by the cool food Mecca, Trader Joe's

The last time Ashley left the Bay Area is recorded here

Ashley was able to see her close friend Amy Mineiro on her Denver layover (not the best picture, sorry ladies, but you should've seen the others)

The Remainder of February...

The remainder of February was a typical month....

As you know, Ashley loves decorating tables; here is our Valentine's Day morning table (the teenagers were still asleep!)

Daniel and our next-door-neighbor, Jacob, play all the time. We are very thankful they each have a neighborhood playmate!

At Loch Haven, Daniel was able to shoot the BB gun for the first time--and shoot with limited supervision!

Daniel wanted to learn something about the "Circle of Life" so I took him to the clearcut to look at the remains of a harvested deer.  The look on his face, the latex-glove, and the pistol on his side....priceless! 

At Dellmont, Daniel enjoys the swing

OK, this is my favorite picture this month: Daniel had to dress up for Pre-K as what he would look like if he were old. Yes, that's a comb-over and his grandmother Cheech's walking stick!

That's it! A long set of pictures, I know! Leave your comments if you want to!

Taking a Break

I'm taking a break from writing....Check back later this month!