My wife woke me about 45 minutes ago in a panic: Our foyer, where I have my desk and computer station set up, has a slight dripping leak about 1 in 5 times it rains. Today, however, our foyer was soaked — and along with it, my brand new aluminum Macbook, purchased just days ago.

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So I had an old metal filling. It cracked my tooth. I went to the dentist to get it fixed.

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After more than a week of technical difficulties and a lot of second-guessing, In 3rds is online and ready to rock! My old posts (from Slowly Drifting/Part-Time Pundit era) are below, but in the switch I lost all the images. There are a few new features, and I plan to unveil more over the coming months/years/decades (will blogs even exist in 2041, when I’ll be hitting my golden years?).

Today, however, it’s time to watch football, eat pizza and pretend all my other struggles simply don’t exist.

So, I just got done sending out a Spencer’s-related spam on Facebook (VOTE FOR SPENCER’S IN THE BEST OF BOWLING GREEN CONTEST, TAKES JUST A SECOND AND COULD MAKE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE FOR A CHILD IN NEED!), when I saw this at the top of my “news feed”:

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Exhibit A: Five days ago, this little guy was a virtual unknown. The facts were, it was a “he,” it was kicking around in my wife Shelley’s belly, and it was to be released at a to-be-determined date.

Now, he’s Owen Andrew Shepherd, a 7-some-pound healthy baby boy, spending his time sleeping and eating and occasionally crying, here in my own house.

We got little sleep last night, as Owen couldn’t decide if he’d had enough to eat. He’d cry, we’d get up and try to feed him, and he’d fall back asleep. We did this a few times over, before he finally decided to give up and submit to slumber… at 5 in the morning.

I want him to have everything: A happy childhood, an intelligent mind, a fit and coordinated body, a high-school sweetheart and college education and six-figure job and a house with granite countertops and an undermount sink. And I fear he’ll miss out on at least some of it, due to some unforeseen error on my part.

And, of course, I want him to know the Lord… but if fathers are children’s primary examples of God, I feel very sorry for the little guy.

Exhibit B: Two years ago this Saturday, I was feeling a little of the same for this guy, Lewis Christian. He had a traumatic entry into the world, marked by 10 days of only supervised parental interaction due to a blood infection. It was traumatic, too, for us, as we wondered how God could mar such a beautiful moment with such a stupid circumstance.

Two years later, I still love this boy with all my heart, and yet he frustrates me as few other things do. He’s yet to say a single word, and this causes all kinds of problems for Shelley and me. His only ways to communicate are to cry/yell/moan, and to grab your hand and drag you around. The big problem with this is that he doesn’t understand (or pretends not to understand?) any attempt to tell him no, or to divert him to a different activity. Still groggy from last night, I was met with a Lewis who, after waking and watching “Elmo’s World,” wanted immediately to go outside and walk around the block in already stifling heat. If I tell him no, he cries and whines and is generally not fun to be around, so I’m more or less forced to give way to his will.

I want everything for him, too, but more than anything my concerns for him are in the here and now: God, why won’t you give this child a voice? Why won’t you give him the will to use a spoon on his own? Why is his mind so quick and his manipulative instinct so sharp, and yet his communicative skills nearly nonexistent?

There are no answers here, at least not yet. And that makes me—God forgive me—hopeless. Hopeless. Hopeless in the face of these two miracles, these two God-breathed lives that are so utterly connected to me. My own dreams seem shattered to a million pieces, and that would be OK… if only my vicarious dreams for Lewis and Owen would show themselves on a march of progress. But Owen’s too young, and Lewis too frustrating. I’m being honest here, not righteous.

I’ve suffered little, I suppose, and Shelley probably feels these things far worse than I. Maybe you feel them, too, whether you’re childless or fruitful, married or single. Maybe we all feel it, somewhere, at some time. But it’s rather new to me… My only real hope, for now, is that this is simply God’s inoculation against something far worse. But the needle is thick and the sting is real, and I’m left reeling in both bone and blood.

FXHL+NTRSTS in Lampasas, Texas (Derek absent, as he’s behind the camera)

So we’re finishing Day Six of our eight-day tour de force… Going on the road is a real gamble, as you have to rely on people you’ve never met, in towns you’ve never visited, to set up and promote the shows you’re going to be playing. The show in Houston, for instance, was pretty successful though no one there’d heard of us; the next night in Austin, musical capital of the Southwest, was more or less a flop as far as actual concertgoers and merchandise sales are concerned.

We got done playing here in Abilene, Texas, a couple hours ago (the last band is rockin’ it out right now), and though there was a good size audience, our music didn’t seem to connect with many of them. Mostly high-school and young-college-age kids here… and I wonder if it’s the music or the image: Older guys with beards, who aren’t dressed “cool,” and who don’t do much cool dancing/headbanging/whatever on stage. I was talking to Kyle from Interstates (our touring partners), who has been in the indie rock scene for nearly 15 years now, and we decided performing is a little bit hopeless for us. Not that it’s impossible to find some good shows here or there, but how do we appeal to people like us? WE don’t go to shows.

But driving through parts of the country I’ve never seen… that’s been the fun part. The van has continued to work despite it’s age and abuse; the band has kept up good spirits and had hardly any cross words, despite sleeping on floors and eating very little. It’s also neat, in a bittersweet way, to be away from Shelley and Lewis. It makes me realize how much I do love and appreciate them, and how much they add to my life, and I get a double-shot of pleasure: Thankful to be on tour, able to drive around and play music for a week; and thankful to be nearing the end of it, headed home to reunite with my love and my son.

P.S.: Yes, the above picture is a bit like “The Last Supper,” not only because of the surreal sort of focus but also because Topp looks a lot like Westerners think Jesus did. Texas is a weird place. Wonder what Oklahoma’s like? I’ll find out tomorrow.

Starting this Friday, Foxhole is officially on tour. (It starts Friday in Louisville, and hits Bowling Green on Saturday… CLICK HERE for info on the BG show or any other).

It’s far from the glamorous, drug/booze/sex-filled scenes you’ll see in TV and movies. Who knows… maybe some bands actually do this stuff. But for us, it’s more of a brief road trip, through entirely random places, dotted with performances and sleepovers with people we’ve never met before. Our tour bus is actually a van—a pretty shoddy one, at that, with no AC and just enough seats for people and which gets all of about 10 miles per gallon on the interstate if we’re going downhill. Our venues include a church, an old theatre, a couple clubs, a cafe… it was supposed to include a grocery store, but somehow that prime spot fell through.

Anyway, reflecting on the few brief jaunts we’ve taken—some for days, some for just a weekend, and at least one trip to Michigan and back for a single show—brings a bunch of great memories. There were crappy parts; in fact, when in the middle of it, it almost seems like one continuous journey through irritation and despair. But good memories tend to crowd out bad, and thank God that they do. If not, I’d have had good reason to ditch this whole rock-star idea a long time ago.

Top Five Tour Memories

FIVE: “Your mom’s a nice van!” | It’s hard to fathom that I’ve been in this band, with three of the same people and a rotating cast on drums and in the auxiliary spot, for almost eight years. When we started, we didn’t know how to play our instruments, nor did we have any clear idea of what we were trying to accomplish. That didn’t stop us from recording and self-issuing an EP, and in Summer 2002 we hit the road for two weeks of shows.

It’s worth noting that some of these turned out to be something other than “shows” as I understood that term. One place a freelance “agent” “booked” for us turned out to be open mic night at a bar that usually featured country acts. Having driven all that way, we went ahead and played, and a younger couple that happened to be there did buy a CD from us. So we made $6, gross, on that show.

Anyway, on the first night out we played near Hell, Ohio… in fact, our van broke down in Hell. While waiting for it to get fixed—which took all day—we hung out at a roast-beef restaurant next door, juggling and eating Equal packets and generally bemoaning life. The show that night? In some dude’s garage. Surprisingly, there were a lot of people listening to music in Hell, and so the show wasn’t too bad. It was the beginning for us… the beginning of driving a long way to play music for a few people, of spending our own money in an attempt to share our music with the world.

FOUR: Rockin’ the art museum | On that same tour, we stayed with my friend Taylor’s brother, Wil, and played with his band True Solar Holiday in Roanoke, Va. … Well, that’s not quite right. We actually showed up late; he and the venue had given up on us, and when we walked in everyone else was walking out. Wil (the funniest guy I’ve ever met, period) tried to get the crowd to stay; meanwhile, we went ahead and set up our stuff, then played a show—mostly for Wil, who was one of three of four people left.

The good part of this memory is the camaraderie of staying with he and his girlfriend, Anousheh (a gifted songwriter and singer herself), staying up all night and talking about music, movies, and our general philosophies of life (Nathan, who’s no longer in the band, trying to tell Wil about Jesus, and Wil telling him straight to his face that it was the second-stupidest thing he’d ever heard). The next day we went with Elizabeth (a nice girl who did the art for the band) and Graham (in the most ridiculous metal band I’ve ever heard) to a river-rope jump and then to a posh art museum.

THREE: Signing autographs in Minsk | Outside of Foxhole, I’ve done very little performing. One exception was in 2003, in Minsk, Belarus, where the girl I was courting lived as a missionary. She played too, and so we set up a couple shows—a rare occurrence in Minsk, much less with two Americans. The funny part was that, at the end of one of the shows, literally every girl there wanted my autograph. (If I hadn’t been performing with the girl I’d wind up marrying, I’d probably have ended up in a lot of trouble.) Worth noting, too, is that our trip to the first show was delayed by a opposition protest in the streets, complete with police (militia) in riot gear, after which a few people disappeared. Belarus is still a dictatorship of sorts, but change is coming.

TWO: Naptime’s over — now, some rock! | A show in Owensboro, set up by a friend (to protect his identity, I’ll simply call him Brandon Andrew Miles, and we’ll call his band Stellar Kin)… which was populated mostly by children under the age of 8. How he came up with this idea, I’ll never know… but those kids sure did love the rockin’ anthems of Stellar Kin! Our music, which is a bit more nuanced, didn’t go over quite as well. We radically re-evaluated our sound after this, and are hoping our next album gets some buzz through cross-promotion on Disney Channel.

ONE: To the future! | As with romance, the best part of touring is often the anticipation. Getting amps fixed, guitars restrung, practicing in large concentrated chunks (tomorrow will see me head to Nashville for practice beginning at 10 a.m. and probably lasting until late afternoon)… the fun is in the planning.

[audio http://rjustin.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/murkville_mixed.mp3] “Ooee” (from forthcoming “Murkville” compilation, also included as bonus track on new vinyl version of “We the Wintering Tree”, soon to be available from Burnt Toast Vinyl)

I don’t get out much.

Used to be, whenever there was a “good show” (performance by a band I liked) anywhere within a couple of hours, I gathered a few friends and went. These days, it takes a free performance by Radiohead or something equally rare to get me to a show. It gets me down sometimes… I wonder if I haven’t lost the capacity for spontaneous fun. But it’s part of growing up, I guess… two jobs, a child and a lot of extracurricular nonsense make “spare time” hard to come by.

When I was just starting in college and beginning my life as a rock star, I liked to “chat” with the artists I went to see, when and if I could pull it off. And, invariably, I tried (subconsciously, I think) to steer the conversation toward how I am in a band, too! and attempting to get some sort of verification that I was really someone.

Looking back, I’m certain, the people on the other end of this conversation just wanted to get out.

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This is how I feel, nowadays, when people—good, fine people who have no ill intent or hidden agendas—try to talk to me about coffee, particularly ®Starbucks®. It usually starts like this:

Hey Justin, have you heard that ®Starbucks® is doing xxx?

Uh, nope, haven’t heard that. (I attempt a subtle but direct signal of disinterest.)

Yeah! They’re facing competition from xxx and so they’re trying xxx to get back some business!

Oh, that’s interesting. (I attempt, again, to signal that this is, in fact, NOT interesting.)

Well, you know, I went the other day and this new xxx thing is really pretty good!

At this point, if Shelley’s around, she tries to steer the conversation, as Mr. Lebowski would say, “into the mountain.” This rarely works, but shifts the conversation like so:

Oh yeah (snark snark)! I guess I can’t say “®Starbucks®” around  you, huh? (Snark snark!)

No, it’s okay. (I attempt to convey that, just maybe, there is a whole world of things we could talk about vis a vis ®Starbucks® that would illuminate this instigator and somewhat justify my by-this-time-irritated demeanor.)

The conversation ends here, generally… and I get the feeling that both sides go away extremely unhappy. Me, confounded that I had to endure this yet again and pissed off generally with the state of coffee knowledge; the other person, flabbergasted at my aloof demeanor and thinking that I think that I’m better than them.

But that’s not it at all. It’s that, No. 1, as someone in the coffee industry, I don’t really care about a layperson’s perspective on a corporation that is wholly different from my operation, save for the fact that the earthborn product we sell is the same; and No. 2, that the person doesn’t see that ®Starbucks® is in some ways a legitimate threat to my livelihood, that the idea that ®Starbucks® IS COFFEE is a hindrance to what I’m spending my time and hard-earned money (not that of shareholders) on.

I don’t mind that people go to ®Starbucks®. It is what it is, the Wal-Mart of coffee (although the clientelé may be, on average, considerably better dressed), and it’s not likely to disappear anytime soon. It can even be seen as a help to a business like mine, helping move “boutique coffee” into the mainstream. But I’m a husband/father/entrepreneur with considerably meager means… the David to the drive-thru Goliath. I’m out hunting down my business, armed only with the slingshot of a quality product and knowledgable staff, while the big bad wolf is drawing in prey by means of neon signs and slick plastic interiors and genius marketing.

So no, I’m sorry, I’m not all that interested in what ®Starbucks® is doing this week. I don’t go there—and I don’t mind if you do. But I’m too busy trying to provide for my family to think about the neat new ways some rich guys in an office building found to make another penny per cup.

There’s something about a rainy day, in a colder-than-the-outdoors office, with no actual work to do, that makes one ponder the finer things. Not “fine china” fine… maybe “finer” isn’t even the right word. But the small things that make life just a little better.

Today, that’s 12 ounces of rich espresso, diluted with a bit of water, touched with a bit of cream and accented by a dash of turbinado sugar (it’s grown in volcanic areas of Hawaii).

There are some days—growing more frequent as my responsibilities continue to multiply—that I wish I didn’t own a business at all. There’s taxes to do, systems to improve, business to build; it’s all so damn tiring. But then I walk in and half the customers say “Hi,” and I grind a few beans and push a couple of buttons.

And there it is. Real, honest-to-God pleasure. The pleasure of the unnecessary. The pleasure of a beverage whose roots I know well (but not well enough), whose journey I can trace on a map with geographical certainty.

And a beverage whose true beauties, if it weren’t for me, might not be known by a few accountants and lawyers and artists and other downtown folk. Most of them, admittedly, don’t notice those beauties. But I’ve opened a few eyes to the lesser-known qualities (and opened countless sleepy eyes by sheer virtue of caffeination).

So here’s to a small Americano. You might think that it’s free, for me. But I’ve paid for it many times over… and at this moment, it’s worth every penny.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and purify us from all unrighteousness.

— 1 John 1:9

When I was just turning 21, I “gave my life to Christ.” At least, that’s how it’s put in evangelical circles… Truth is, God took my life away from me. Gone was any lasting desire to do the things I had done… deceit, licentiousness, hatefulness chief among them.

Soon after, I began to smoke.

“Hmm,” you might be thinking, “that seems like a weird thing for a new Christian to start doing!” And looking back, it indeed seems very strange. I can’t remember any real motive, it was just something to do while I sat around reading and playing music. For at least a year or so my smoking was pretty calm… a clove cigarette (expensive, stinky kind) or two a day, no big deal. Right?

Fast-forward some six years, and I’ve probably smoked thousands of cigarettes. I was probably up to a pack a day before Shelley and I got married in 2003, and have struggled ever since in attempts to quit. A week here, a month there, I’ve gotten away from the stuff, but it always calls me back. It’s an addiction, and that’s what addictions do.

Meanwhile, my attempts to break my habit have been overall unsuccessful, and stresses as of late have had me enslaved again. Our church situation is almost nonexistent… we’ve been going to a cool little place and hearing God’s word preached clearly, but haven’t built any real relationships. Our friends (and people we WANT to be our friends) are generally well-meaning but do little if any reaching-out to us… if we don’t call and arrange something, it doesn’t get arranged. I’m trying to run a business, make a “real” living at the newspaper, raise a child, nurture a marriage, make music… and hopefully stay sane through it.

That’s the part that’s not working: the sanity. And cigarette after cigarette tells me it’ll calm my mind.

Anyway, I know (and have known) that my real sin here is in hiding… being addicted is more a disease than a sin, but pretending not to be is deception. I have hidden this from most people—how many of you are a little surprised to hear it?—have stretched the truth about it with everyone, even Shelley. I hate that I’ve done it, and yet I know that in mere hours, I could rationalize it again. And to rationalize is to desensitize, and how long does God and my rational brain and the medical consensus have to push-push-push until I get the drift?

SO: Beginning this day, I’m out of the closet. I am an addict—and I’ve no wish for qualifiers—but now it’s in the open. I’m praying for deliverance from this addiction, and I know from experience that God won’t hand it to me on some heavenly silver platter. Instead, everyone reading this has the chance to help me.

I won’t be blogging here too often, because I’m going to be breaking my addiction through an experiment in openness… it’s called Ashes of Addiction, and I’m going to chronicle the ups and downs of my struggles. If you want to help, then please visit every so often.

I pray each of you will forgive me, for my various hiding and/or lying and/or whatever… I’ve sinned not just against God but also, in a way, against anyone who thinks they know me. I ask, meanwhile, that you pray for me. That God would grant me victory over addiction, and give me something glorifying to do toward His work.

PS: Next time I’ll write something funny here. I promise.