I grew up seeing everything other people had that we did not. New shoes, vacations, nicer clothes, the things that seem small when you are an adult but can feel enormous when you are a child. After my mother and father separated, life became even harder. We depended on welfare, food banks, and clothing banks just to survive.

 

There is no shame in needing help. I understand that now. But as a kid, I did not experience it that way. I felt embarrassed. I felt humiliated. Somewhere inside me, I made a promise that I would never live that way again, and that someday my children would never have to feel what I felt.

 

That promise became one of the first bricks in my tower.

 

As I got older, I started chasing things without really knowing what I was chasing. I went into the medical field and started making money. Then money was not enough. Status began to matter too. Eventually I became a doctor, even though being a doctor had never really been some childhood dream of mine. I just kept moving forward, letting one opportunity lead to another.

 

One achievement became another.

One brick became another.

 

The people at Babel wanted to build something so great that their name could not be ignored. Looking back, I understand that desire in a way I probably never could before. I had spent part of my childhood feeling small, and somewhere along the way I began trying to build myself into someone nobody could ever look down on again.

 

When I got married, we wanted many of the same things. A good life. A home. Vacations. Security. Children who had opportunities we had not always had ourselves.

 

We shared the picture.

We just never really built the road together.

 

That became the beginning of the song:

 

               We had forever in a picture
               But no road beneath our feet
               We both knew the life we wanted
              Just not what it would take to keep

 

We worked. Then we worked some more.

 

I believed taking care of my family meant providing everything I possibly could. I worked long days, nights, weekends, and whatever else it took. My wife worked hard too. Daycare filled the gaps. Sometimes my children came to work with me because work had become such a large part of where I lived.

 

The strange part is that family was the reason I believed I was doing all of it, but somewhere along the way, the thing I was building for my family began taking me away from my family.

 

             “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
              Matthew 6:21

 

That verse hits differently when you realize treasure is not only money. Treasure can be whatever receives the best of your time, energy, attention, and heart.

 

I could look at every hour I worked and see sacrifice. Someone beside me could look at those exact same hours and see absence.

 

I was saying, “I am doing all of this for you.”

They were hearing, “Everything else matters more than you.”

 

That is where Babel became personal.

 

For me, the different languages in this song are not different spoken languages. They are different definitions of love.

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One person says, love means I will work until there is nothing left of me so you never have to struggle.

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The other says, love means I need you here beside me.

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Same dream.

Different language.

Same home, worlds apart

         

           I was counting every sacrifice
          You just saw an empty heart

 

That may be one of the hardest truths in this song. Two people can love the same family, want the same future, and still become completely disconnected because they are measuring love differently, and stress never stays where we think we left it.

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It follows us through the doorway. It sits at the dinner table. It gets into marriages, conversations, and eventually into the lives of our children.

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             Pressure followed through the doorway
             Put its weight on every room
             Every promise got postponed
             Every laugh got swallowed too

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There comes a point when people stop asking when you are coming home. They stop waiting because they have learned not to expect you. Meanwhile, you can still be convinced that every hour away is another brick in the future you are building for them.

That is the tower.

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Looking back, there is a stretch of roughly fifteen years of my life that almost feels like a blur. I know I lived it. I know there were accomplishments, trips, money, work, and family moments, but so much of it disappeared inside the chase.

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I was constantly reaching for tomorrow.

Tomorrow when the business grew.

Tomorrow when there was more money.

Tomorrow when everything finally felt secure.

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 I kept carrying home tomorrow, while each day came all undone

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Eventually, you have to ask yourself how many todays you are willing to trade for tomorrow.

Today my life looks different. I do not make the money I once made. I am not chasing the same titles or trying to prove myself in the same ways. And there is a different kind of peace in that.

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Tower to Heaven is not a song saying success is wrong. Working hard is not wrong. Providing for your family is not wrong.

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The question is much more personal:

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Why are you building, and what are you leaving on the ground while you climb?

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Sometimes we build because we love our families.

Sometimes we build because we are afraid.

Sometimes those two things become so tangled together that we cannot tell the difference anymore.

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For me, Babel is the moment we realize we have climbed so high that we can no longer hear the people we started building for.

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Babel wasn’t in our language
It was what we couldn’t hear

              I said love was giving everything
             You said love was being here

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Maybe restoration begins when we stop adding bricks.

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When we come down from the tower.

When we listen again.

When we remember that the people beside us were never supposed to become the price of the life we were trying to create.

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I spent a lot of years chasing heaven somewhere above me. One of the greatest lessons I have learned is that sometimes the things we spend our entire lives trying to reach have been standing beside us all along.

 

             I came down from the tower
             Put my feet back on the ground
             Spent my whole life chasing heaven
             While my heaven was all around