I was never that fussed on having children. I know you’re not supposed to say that, but kids just never registered on my life’s ‘to do’ list.

As the years rolled by after our wedding day and we were unable to get pregnant, my concern was not that we would go through childless, but that my wife, Danelle, would go insane. She had so set her heart on being a mother, that to not be able to get pregnant was the worst fate she could imagine.

In the end we had 10 childless years as a married couple, which meant we had lots of holidays, lots of space in our lives and the chance to smash the mortgage a bit more than couples who did the ‘kid thing’ early. I enjoyed the freedom of those years and as a bloke who had never had much experience of children I quite literally didn’t know what I was missing.

It wasn’t that I was ‘anti-kids’. I was agnostic about children – unsure if they would add or subtract to our lives, or if I would even like being a father. If Danelle had given up the pursuit for children before we launched into the IVF process I think I would have been quite content to spend my life childless.

But we did go through the IVF process and became pregnant on our first attempt. Even then it still didn’t register for me in the way it did for Danelle. I knew that somewhere in the distant future we were going to have a child. I hoped that would be something I would enjoy, but it felt like anticipating a holiday in Mongolia. It could be good, but you never know…  Danelle moved from despair to elation as we prepared for this child while for me it was business as usual but with pre-natal classes thrown in.

Then it happened.

Around 8pm one night we rushed off to hospital and spent the night there before Ellie was born early the next morning. If ever there was a ‘before and after’ moment in my life then this was one of them. After the birth the nurses needed to take Danelle away for a bit of ‘after-care’ and they asked me if I’d like to hold her while they were gone.

‘Sure’ I said, but I was completely unprepared for what came next – for the torrent of emotion that stirred me, melted me and confused me all at the same time.

I had a daughter and now I was feeling things I’d never felt before. It was like someone had flicked a switch in me and suddenly activated ‘dad mode’. I didn’t even know I had a ‘dad mode’, but I knew now I was happy to be a dad and I wanted to be a good dad. I was glad my first child was a daughter as I grew up in a home where men shook hands and cuddling was for girls. I genuinely wasn’t sure how I would manage cuddling a newborn boy, so having a girl felt like a win.

I remember doing some random reading about the development of girls one day as part of my job as a youth worker and one of the pieces of research that left a mark on me was the finding that teenage girls will rarely go ‘looking for love’ in all the wrong places if they know without a doubt that they are loved by their father. I wanted her to know that anyway, but this information made me a little more intentional about it. I did not want her ever wondering if ‘daddy really loved her’.

And while this may sound simple and unspectacular, from the moment she could understand words of some form I began to tell her about ‘all the little girls’. I would go into her room at night, pray with her, cuddle her and then I’d look in her eyes and ask her a question:

‘Hey, have I ever told you about all the little girls?’

‘No?!’ she’d say, without fail every time (and often with a degree of mock surprise). This was my cue to tell her one more time.

‘Well… if I could have all the little girls in the whole wide world and put them in a big, big, big, long line, up and around the moon and back, and if I was only allowed to choose one little girl, to be my little girl, my best and my favourite, my kindest, bravest and most beautiful by far, do you know who I’d choose?’

‘No?’ she’d say (without fail every time) and then she would look directly into my eyes and wait for the answer – the same answer as every time.

‘I’d choose you – every single time.’ I’d see her eyes smile, and she’d hug me. I’d like to think that smile was from the security of knowing without doubt that her dad loves her – that he always has and always will.

As a child she would often ask me to tell her about all the little girls – sometimes several times a day. Over the years as Ellie got a little older and matured into a beautiful young woman, she didn’t ask as much to be told about ‘all the little girls’ and now as a teenager she doesn’t ask at all, which is fine and appropriate.

But there are evenings even now, when I will randomly wander into her room and ask her ‘Hey have I told you lately about all the little girls?’ and she will stop what she is doing and look me in the eye and say ‘I don’t think you have.’

And that’s my cue.

(published with Ellie’s permission)

It was October of 1980 and I was in year 11 at Scarborough Senior High School. I was an A grade English student and had always done well at both assignments and exams. We were about 3 weeks away from the end of year exams when a friend approached me in the courtyard and said excitedly, ’Hamo, I was just in the English office and I found the exam papers sitting on Teacher X’s desk. No one was around, so I took one. Do you want to see it?!’

I couldn’t believe someone would be so bold – so stupid… If he got caught he was history.

But that question, ‘Do I want to see it?…’

What a question to ask a competitive and often unscrupulous 16 year old. I wish I could say that I hesitated, pondered his offer and declined, but I didn’t hesitate at all. Instead I just said ‘Show me!’

And he did… And it was the paper… the actual questions that we would all be facing in 3 weeks time. I had them in my hand and I now had the opportunity to absolutely blitz this exam! If I couldn’t get the top mark for the year group then there would be something wrong.

If it had happened today I would have taken a photo of the exam with my phone, but instead I had to borrow it, take it home and copy out the questions onto a piece of paper. Even photocopiers weren’t readily accessible in 1980. I wrote the questions down and returned the paper to my friend, Brian – yes his real name… The weeks that followed had me practicing my answers to this exam and literally memorising my responses to the questions. I wrote and rewrote my answers so many times that I could do it in my sleep. For one piece of descriptive writing I even ‘pre-wrote’ the answer on a sheet of paper of the same kind as would be used in the exam, slipped it up my jumper and took it in with me, dropping it out onto the table while no one was looking. That one answer got a 10/10 and a rave review from the teacher marking it.

I didn’t get caught. No one spilled the beans and we made a ‘clean getaway’.

Awesome!

I finished up with a 92% for the exam which I have to say was a tad disappointing all things considered. Worse though was that my nemesis Fiona Watson managed to get 95% without cheating. I think I wanted to beat her more than I wanted to get a good result, so I was utterly bummed. Still 92% was a decent outcome and with exams over the summer surf was beckoning.

We all farewelled school for another year, but in the back of my mind was a nagging voice saying ‘You cheated…’ It wasn’t loud, so I managed to ignore it, but it just kept on quietly tapping on my conscience. Much like a dripping tap, some days it was all I could hear.

You cheated. You cheated. You cheated. You cheated. You cheated. You cheated. You cheated. You cheated. You cheated.

You get the idea.

At this stage in my life I was a ‘fledgling Christian’, which is another way of saying I sucked at it. Sometimes I was driven by a desire to follow Jesus and his way, but equally often I was subject to my more base desires and unable to resist the lure of the temptations around me. This was one of my darker moments.

I did know that I needed to do something to make things right. But what?

As the holidays ended I decided I would go back and see the Head of English, tell him what I’d done and take whatever consequences there were. I wasn’t going to dob anyone else in. I’d just cop the heat for it and take whatever consequences came. Suddenly my 92% was looking very shaky but I knew I needed to do this.

So on day one of year 12 I went to the English office and asked to see Mr Nelson on his own.

‘Yes Andrew, what I can help you with?’

‘Well, I cheated on last year’s English exam.’ I thought it best to cut to the chase.

‘Right,’ he responded, waiting for me to continue. At this point I realise now that he had no idea at all what I meant when I said cheated. How do you cheat on an English exam anyway?!

‘You see, one day when there was no one in the English office a friend of mine went in and saw the exam papers sitting on the desk and he took one, and he showed it to me and we studied it before the exam.’

I was confessing this with fear and trepidation, just wanting to get it off my conscience and make things right. I hadn’t given a thought to what reaction this might evoke in him, other than anger at my cheating. He caught me off guard with his response.

‘Well Andrew, thanks for coming to see me and letting me know.’

‘What will happen now?’ I asked.

He shook his head, looking as if he didn’t care, but (as I later realised) actually because he was in a bind. If I were to lose marks people would know and would want to know why. And the answer would be simply that ‘someone’ was careless enough to leave a stack of English exams on a desk in an unlocked office and a bunch of year 11 boys now had inflated grades as a result. Explain that one to your boss… HIs silence was simply him digesting and processing where this could lead.

Eventually he said, ’Nothing Andrew. The marks will stand. Thanks for letting me know.’

‘Ok,’ I said and left, wondering what had just happened.

What had just happened? I had followed an inner prompt to set things right regardless of the consequences and I’d done it. At the time I didn’t understand why I wasn’t punished. Later, when I was working as an English teacher, in the exact same school, the moment came back to me and I smiled. The same principal was in office as would have been there 12 years previous and he would not have seen the funny side (if there was one) of the stolen English paper.

So while I walked away with my grade intact, what mattered more was that a teenage boy had taken one faltering step towards being a good, honest man. I had said ‘no – that’s not who I want to be’ and I had drawn a line in the sand. In years to come I would go through theological college with a bloke who was copying the papers of past students and handing them in as his own. I was bewildered, but I guess that’s where it leads if you don’t draw your own lines early.

I don’t want to hold myself up as some kind of overly virtous kinda bloke, because that’s not who I am, but I do know who I aspire to be and I also know that when I screw up I need to fix up, otherwise I will learn to overlook my flaws and accept them as normal.

Maybe you’ve got a load on your own mind, a weight of stuff that you need to repair. It takes a bit of courage to lean into that, but its also the first steps in becoming the person you want to be, rather than the person you will become if you allow cowardice and fear rule your life.

There’s a homeless man in my street.

He wasn’t always homeless but he is now. It’s winter and its cold and he’s homeless. And I wonder what I should do… We don’t see homeless people in our suburb. I don’t even know if there are any others, but to have one in your own street… well, its disturbing and unsettling.

He doesn’t ‘look’ homeless – not like the picture above. He is neat and tidy, he smiles at you and can be seen reading a book on a park bench often during the day. He could be someone’s dad, or grandad out for a quiet stroll.

I first met ‘Bert’ 5 years ago when white ants had attacked our timber floors and I needed someone to repair them. He lived in the next street, worked in timber flooring and I figured I would use a local guy. He came around to quote on the job and spent maybe 5 minutes on the quote, before producing a package he wanted me to look at – a CD and some documents.

Bert had an invention he was trying to get investors for and it wasn’t going well. He showed me his invention, told me all about it. I wasn’t interested as it seemed like a bizarre concept no one would ever be interested in. But he was convinced… obsessed… consumed by it.

I never did get the quote, or the floor fixed.

A couple of years later his house was on the market. The word around the neighbourhood was that he had invested all of his money in the invention and had lost the house as a result. It was a significant house and very sad as he had built it himself. But the invention needed to be pursued.

I heard nothing more of Bert for another 2 or 3 years. Then I got wind that he was living in a local share house with a young couple. He lasted a few months there, but drove them crazy with his constant badgering and salemanship. They had to kick him out to stay sane.

He went to another house in our own street, but after 3 weeks hadn’t paid his rent. Again he was asked to leave.

Now he spends his days on the street, lives under a tree at the top of the hill and when the weather hits he takes shelter in a half built house across the road from our home with the perrmission of the owner. He can be seen most evenings walking the beachfront and watching the sunset before walking past our home to the top of the hill, or the half built house.

I bumped into him again down the beach one evening as I was flying my drone and taking pictures. He introduced himself, unaware that I knew who he was, and asked the usual questions about the drone – how far it can fly, how much it cost and so on. I answered him and chatted for a few moments, but with an aircraft in the sky I needed to pay attention to what I was doing. It was then that he began his sales pitch.

I politely declined and told him I needed to concentrate. He mumbled under his breath and took off.

Then I left home yesterday with Lucy my dog to get a quick evening walk in before sun-down. He was already walking up our street. I said ‘Hello Bert’ and he stopped to talk. I didn’t want to talk as rain was pressing in and I needed to get the dogwalk in before getting drenched.

We chatted briefly and I asked him when he would be finding a home again. He told me he is waiting for the invention to be taken up and to become profitable. Then he will be rich. He launched into telling me again about the invention and his ideas for changing the world. In his Eastern European accent he is hard to follow, but I got the gist of what he was saying. I told him again that I wasn’t interested in his invention and I excused myself. By that point he was ranting and railing about the environment and ecological destruction etc etc… He continued at volume as I walked down the street.

Maybe he’s just eccentric. Maybe he’s a little crazy. I don’t know for sure and it seems no one can get past his obsessive talk to who he is. He has been rude to people, harsh and even a little aggressive at times.

He has evoked curiosity among some neighbours and nervousness among others.

At our local coffee shop last week he became a topic of conversations between an older lady and myself. She is also a Christian and lives at the top of our street. We both looked at one another and said ‘We have space in our homes… but… but…’

What would Jesus do? I’m really not sure. Sure – he’d want to help the man. He’d love him. I just don’t know what that looks like.

I left a $50 note at the local cafe last week to help with their food bill as he sometimes drops in there for a feed. But was that a way of ‘helping’, or just a way of appeasing a burdened conscience? I never know for sure.

As I drove home from church last week I felt disturbed that a man was walking the street – my street even – in winter weather, while we lived in homes with spare rooms.

And I wonder, will we be held responsible in some way for that callousness? If there are sheep and goats, am I a goat?…

I tell myself, there is a reason he is on the street and offering him a room in your house or a key to your caravan may band-aid his symptoms, but it won’t solve his real problem. I think thats true.

But I still dunno if Jesus would say that…

So there is still a homeless man in my street.

I’ve started writing a book.

I’ve been pondering / meaning to / thinking about compiling much of what is on this blog into a book of some shape or form for ages, but for various reasons it hasn’t happened.

Some of the struggle has just been plain laziness – writing takes effort – watching Netflix doesn’t. Some of it has been a health issue which has meant sitting still has been hard, but some of it has also been that each time I have sat down to try and do it I have felt blocked – stuck – and unable to ‘find my voice’ so to speak. I have literally slammed the lid of the laptop shut in frustration because I have been unable to get going.

Last week I had a brief text conversation with my mate Phil who produced the Dad Book and he suggested organising into sections of work. That helped. I started to frame my various posts in different categories and the wheels started to turn. Those sections have already morphed several times, but that was a catalyst to get me moving.

However the ‘aha’ moment came when I was able to describe the precise type of book I want to write and who I want to write for. The book is intended to be a collation of my existing blog thoughts (15 years worth…) and more recently talks from 98.5FM and big brekkie episodes. There will also be some new stuff that has been sparking as I’ve been writing. So it will be short reflective stories of 2-3 pages in length that can be read in 5 minutes over breakfast, on the train or in the toilet (if that’s your thing…)

When I started to mentally picture who I wanted to write for, the faces I saw weren’t the faces of people in my church community – or in any church community for that matter. I think those people may find the stuff useful, but I started to see faces of my friends who don’t have church connections, but with whom I have conversations about life and faith and spirituality. These are people who want to live life well, and who are open to considering the Christian story – if it is framed in a way that makes sense.

There are plenty of ‘apologetics’ books – the ones that provide evidence and reasons for faith, so that base is well and truly covered by people smarter than me. But what I’d like to do is tell stories like this one and this one and this one – that have their focus as the kingdom of God and what that looks like and give people a vision of what life looks like when lived Jesus’ way.  I’d also include a few like this one that is more pointed, deliberate and maybe even confronting.

When Jesus wanted to communicate with people and either develop understanding or provoke curiosity he told stories. I guess he did this because stories draw people in and stories are somewhat ambiguous at times (“The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed”… “A man had two sons”…) Stories are less directive and didactic but stories have power because they often appeal to the heart. So my hope is to write a collection of stories – some mine and some I have picked up over the years that all point towards the nature of the kingdom of God, but in a gentle and maybe even subversive way.

I have often thought that I’d like a book to give to friends who are open to faith, but who wouldn’t gel with the whole ‘evidence based’ approach, but they are hard to come by.  When Sheridan Voysey produced Unseen Footprints I finally felt I had a more narrative shaped book that I could hand to people who were asking faith questions, but I don’t know of many others. So I am hoping to add one more to (very small) collection

In ‘Christian world’ we have what we know of as ‘devotional books’, those books that we can use to help us connect with God thru a brief piece of writing and a reference to a section of the Bible.

I guess this is a ‘devotion book’ for people who don’t share our faith, a collection of short reflections, unashamedly written from a Christian worldview, that could be read each day and that would give food for thought as well as light for the road ahead. I’d like to finish each chapter with 2 or 3 helpful reflection questions as well as providing some relevant part of the Bible for people to explore if they wish.

My hope is that it could be something people could give to a friend or a neighbour confidently and without cringing, knowing that the content would be engaging and provocative as well as solid – that it would fuel further conversations and if people didn’t buy into the whole faith thing then they would at least have some common sense input for living life well.

One of the things Phil said to me was that part of actually getting his book completed was ‘putting it out there’ and making it public that it was happening. From that comes the drive to follow through and not look like a guy who can’t finish what he starts. So this is me doing the same… saying I have started and I intend to finish. If all goes to plan I hope to be finished by the end of winter – 3 months. I dunno if that is overly ambitious but as a retic and turf bloke who worked a whole 2 hours last week I reckon I have the time on hand if I can use it wisely.