Craig Brain

I don’t know where to begin this conclusion. 

It feels like a daunting task. I am not a naturally gifted, empathetic writer like Levi. I don’t have profound, deep thoughts like Craig. 

One thing I know for sure, though, is that my husband is a different person from the nineteen-year-old I met in 1995. 

Of course, he would be different in appearance. His hair was as long as mine when I met him. Later, when he proposed, he sported a bleached-out bowl cut. Then it was jet-black. Then highlighted and manicured. I think dreadlocks were the only style I never saw (thank God).  

Excerpt of Jeanette Gross via Craig Brain.

“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!” Psalm 30: 11-12 

I saw this most clearly after they asked us to become as children for an entire day. Grown adults, playing games, gift-giving, feasting, and laughing that culminated in a dance party, where the weeping we’d done that morning was literally turned into dancing.  

I felt all of the vindictiveness fall away from me. All of my anger and unforgiveness and self-pity and insecurity and overcompensation and the need to prove my worth…removed. 

I buried it. I held a funeral for every negative pattern I’ve inherited, or created. Every generational curse I’ve embodied. I stood in a graveyard and delivered their eulogies. 

Pain is an incredible teacher. 

If only it didn’t hurt so much. 

It occurred to me while reimagining all of these journal entries for this project that I haven’t written much about my mom. 

The definition of “take for granted” is to fail to properly appreciate (someone or something), especially as a result of overfamiliarity. If the truth is that I’ve taken advantage of my mom, it certainly wasn’t intentional, but it’s painful, nonetheless. It’s crazy to think that something as incredible as “overfamiliarity” could result in anything other than acknowledgment, appreciation, and praise. And yet, I sometimes wonder if it is precisely because of her consistent presence in my life that I haven’t given her the credit she deserves. 

Our constant need to capture and share every waking hour of our lives is making us miss it entirely. Everyone wants to show everyone else what they’re doing. We want to say we’ve been there. We’ve done it. In the process, we miss being there. We miss doing it.

We share the present at its own expense, scrolling through comments about a moment we posted but missed as much as everyone responding with their woes on our feed.

I get excited about seeing other people get excited.  

The trip my uncle afforded my dad and me inspired our family to pay his kindness forward to one of our friends – David Dean. In 2016, the Cubs made it to the World Series for the first time in over one-hundred years. I don’t know a bigger fan than David, so we sent him, his dad, and his son to the game. His wife sent us a videotape of him opening the letter with the tickets, and watching his disbelief turn to joy stirred something inside of me that I’ll never be able to describe.

All I knew is that all I wanted to give that to people as often as I could. More and more. I wanted to keep fulfilling people’s bucket lists.   

Every adult, to one degree or another, functions from negative patterns that were ingrained in them during childhood. To break free from those patterns - to establish new, healthy ways of being - we first need to identify what they are.

In other words: we're diving headfirst into the deep end.

If you've made it this far into the Craig Brain journey with me, then you've likely gathered how much of an investment I make in self-discovery. Personality tests. The DISC. The Enneagram. Myers-Briggs. Kolbe. Etc.

I love tools. I've dedicated much of my life to learning how to wield the ones I've managed to get my hands on and to create usable tools for others to use, as well.

One night, my wife and I were talking about what we should do for our twentieth wedding anniversary.   

We decided it'd be fun (and far funnier) to throw a massive celebration for our nineteenth, instead. Who the hell throws a random nineteenth wedding anniversary party?  

We had a blast. We invited all of our closest friends to meet us for a few days in Las Vegas, Nevada, told them we'd be hosting a costume contest, and offered the winner $1,000 in one-dollar bills, which we presented to them at dinner, crumpled up inside of an old briefcase.  

I'll start here: I was a virgin when I married Jeanette. She wasn't. Given the "purity-ring" idealism I'd been raised with and the resulting expectations about the way life "should happen," I almost allowed that reality to ruin our dating relationship before we said I do. How many people are in the same boat, struggling with what should be in the face of reality? Are you going to talk about it? Are you going to sweep it under the rug? Are you going to separate in disgust or open yourself up to understanding and forgiveness, and move forward? 

Beyond our situation, what we’ve learned through our work at XXXchurch is that wives, in general, have a difficult time believing that they live up to the women their husbands see every day – on the street, on a billboard, watching porn. The comparisons eat away at a woman’s confidence because at the end of the day, she wants to be the subject of her husband’s visual fantasy, and it crushes her to see him looking elsewhere for what she is designed to give. 

In 2014, I wrote the following email to a woman at the Tourette Association of America.

--

To Whom It May Concern,

First, though I am writing this letter to you today, I would ask that you do not share the following story publicly. At least for the time being.

Last week, I wrote a friend of mine – a renowned storyteller and videographer – with the idea that my wife Jeanette and I have been considering:

sharing our son’s story.

And, inevitably, our story. As parents, painful as it is to admit, we didn’t do this right. You’ll see what I mean in the ensuing pages.

In conclusion to this story, I have attached a brief write up as penned by Nolan, detailing his experience. The combination of our narratives should give you a clear picture of what the past few years have been like.

We haven’t shared this story with anyone. Given Nolan’s current acting and modeling career, we’ve been cautious. We don’t want to ruin his shot at growth within the industry he loves. How, then, can we share our experience in such a way that it doesn’t come across as crippling, but rather: empowering? At this point in our journey, it is finally becoming the latter, but the road has been long and lonely. Only a few people know about what I’m here to share, which I would assume is similar to many of the stories you hear.

Hotel properties, in my opinion, have the best spas, and especially in tourist-trap cities like Vegas. Jeanette and I enjoy the Aria and the Palazzo, and of course, the Cosmo was where my "official" Spa Day encounter with the Lord took place a few years back.  

Anyway, this time around, Jeanette and I decided to try out a new place. We each scheduled appointments for a massage and a facial at the resort we were already at, but when we arrived, the desk clerk informed us that they'd accidentally overbooked their beds. They had a space for Jeanette but asked me if I would be willing to take my session in our hotel room, instead.  

I obliged. The next thing I know, my wife's off in her spa-world, and I'm stripped down to nothing but a pair of boxers and a bathrobe, following an attractive young woman back across the hotel grounds to a room that isn't mine. I felt uncomfortable and all-too-aware of myself and my surroundings, massage table ready and music playing lightly into an unfamiliar atmosphere, intruded upon by some mostly-naked guy who is most definitely giving off "the appearance of evil" (old platitudes die hard).  

Our education system is broken, and with over one trillion dollars in U.S. College debt, I think it’s a waste of time and money.