Rob in Space

Hooks & Ladders, Catch & Release

2010-07-15T02:21:00.000-04:00

My own emotions.

My emotions are my own.

I own my emotions.

It would be an understatement to say that my emotions and I have never been comfortable with one another. We were not even on speaking terms for a large portion of my life. Thoughts about my emotions or just about any expression relating to how I felt about something were always unsettling to me and have typically been closely held secrets.

Verbalizing my personal feelings (cue Jaws theme) always came with an ominous sense of cracking the lid on Pandora's Box. Hearing someone "else" relating "my" feelings to still another person twisted my gut. I was horrified if people didn't express a particular feeling or thought of mine exactly the way I had "meant" it.

Living in a box, I was living in a cardboard box. My own emotional origami puzzle box.

As a child I often hid behind our refrigerator to avoid contact with people visiting our home. By high school I matriculated into a generally social being, but most people were kept at a cordial long arm's distance. In college there were some good close friends with which I talked, shared and laughed.

But as college went on, and especially during my junior year, an increasing emotional pressure came to bear that I just couldn't shake. After that year, I withdrew from school and worked as a mechanical assembler for a local technology company. My best friend from college had transferred up to the University of Colorado. We split the cost of an apartment near the campus. During that year my friend's dad, having just given up his alcoholic habit, decided he could not deal with life and violently committed suicide. Their were some initial attempts at talking about it. But I felt mostly helpless and inadequate and didn't know what to do or to say or give in the situation. As time passed, the friendship withered in a wasteland barren of communication. Distance and pain became the prevalent emotion. I struggled in my own private world, and my friend - who certainly had more on his plate than me - did the same. Neither talked with the other about our dissolving friendship or much of anything else either.

I didn't understand how and what went on in that friendship and why it degenerated to such a degree. And why was it that in many (most?) of my other relationships, there was a prevailing sense of distance and disconnection in my life.

Close to twenty years later, much has changed. I married the love of my life, we together have six children. There has been stumbling and learning and some growth in many areas of relating and life. But just in this past year the eyes of my heart have opened enough to see at least one part of my unfolding emotional puzzle box. Something I had missed completely, which - for me - is key to relating to anyone. To borrow a term from that great cinematic movie for the ages "The Incredibles" I would call it "The Now."

"I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now" Edna

My definition of "The Now" would be: communicating what you are currently doing, presently thinking and how you are really feeling right Now, at this current moment in time.

I am sure this is patently obvious for everyone but me, but I spent most of my life avoiding The Now's emotions. My default mode of operation was to hide my thoughts and personal opinions. I was so good at it that most of the time I could not tell you what I was actually feeling at a given moment even if I wanted to. Weird but true. I did not know what to do with negative emotions. Pain, anger, disappointment, dismay, betrayal, indifference, unfriendliness, loneliness, misunderstandings, cutting remarks, the silent treatment, my response to the sin in my own life and so on really hurt.

I shoved the pain down, pushed the hurt aside, and just attempted to ignore it.

My approach to The Now's emotions has many problems and consequences. For starters: There is no free lunch. In this case that means you can't push away the negative emotions and still genuinely experience the "positive" emotions to any great degree. If you numb yourself to the one you numb yourself to the other as well. But by far the most important problem with stuffing The Now, is that it is not how God designed us to operate. He gave us our emotions, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. We are to Love God and Love people. Love is a decision and a commitment, but it is wrapped up in an emotional package. A "love" without the commitment is ephemeral at best, a colorful rainbow that's gone in a moment. But a "love" without emotion is stark, plain, duty. A heavy concrete block.

I do not like to hurt. Emotions can hurt. Therefore, I do not like emotions. Written in black and white like that it looks as ridiculous as a standard philosophy 101 logical fallacy: I have ears. An elephant has ears. therefore, I am an elephant.

I am learning, however slowly, that pain is not all "bad." A physical example: If I hit my thumb with a hammer it physically hurts and my emotions scream. But the experience can teach me. If I listen. "Be careful next time!" "Ow! Easy with the hand." Yes, it would hurt. But lessons about prudence, empathy for fellows at thumb smashers anonymous and even some practical "How Tos" on caring for a thumb injury could be learned.

If I listen

Leprosy would be a further illustration. The thought of Leprosy fills my mind with ragged people missing fingers and limbs, their bodies rotting away around them. But those visible signs of Leprosy are not from the disease itself at all. Leprosy causes areas of the body to become numb. Because the person does not feel what is happening to those parts of the body, they fail to notice and address things that happen at those locations. Physical injuries or the signs of infection go unnoticed. Secondary diseases can then take over and destroy the parts numbed by the Leprosy. Without the feeling of pain or irritation, no notice or care is taken. And body parts die.

The Now, for me, has been currently fleshed out by purposing to do my best to express - In Love - what I am feeling Right Now. I cannot express how hard this generally is for me. Being honest with God and myself (about myself) and particularly in my closest relationship - if my wife says or does something, and it hurts - everything in me screams to say absolutely nothing. I strain to keep the lid tight on the box. Bad things will happen if it is opened. The problem is that's what I almost always had done and it was not the truth. When I express a hurt, especially in my marriage, things do immediately get worse. But then, eventually, they get much better. There is certainly an instantaneous hurt registered on my wife's countenance. Especially given that I have not conducted almost any communication of this type for most of the previous 17 years of marriage. But we talk about it. Pray about it (and, yes, stew about it and pout about it.) But with much trembling and effort, there is new understanding, and a deeper level of intimacy. It has been hard and it hurts and it has been worth it.

Very privately, I purpose to let myself feel the pain of hard situations and not push the hard feelings aside. As a result I have experienced some of the weirdest conversations with myself driving to work. A thought or emotion comes up (related to any number of tough things) and my auto-responder immediately starts shoving the feeling aside. I find myself consciously saying "No!" and stopping the suppression process. I then find myself almost - like with good food at a meal - "tasting" the emotion. Letting it settle and actually - gasp! - feeling it. It is amazing that I can "hurt" and be Ok. I don't know where it all goes or leads. But those raw feelings have provided prompts to pray and to think and to talk. It they certainly cause me to rely on God.

The Now and this whole process has been a ladder to help climb out of my box. It's a big big box.

A couple other corollary lessons as well:

Just because I feel something, it doesn't mean I'm right, it just means that is how I am feeling. And you are allowed to respond to my emotion with your emotion as well (this is very hard for me to take, but I am learning.)

And further, I have discovered that I express my emotions, often, with a large, wickedly barbed hook attached. When My Feelings are made known about something between me and another person, I expect that person to change their behavior toward me because of what I have most generously shared. This is a grievous evil and desperately wrong on my part. If the person doesn't change in response to something I specifically shared I have found I hold that against them. I pray for forgiveness and repent and desperately trust God to show me when I have done this and when I am tempted to do this again.

To bring my emotional epistle to a temporary wrap:
I spent so much of my life catching my emotions and keeping them "safely" locked in the box. And then when I have released some feelings, I find myself attempting to hook the people. Trying to catch them and keep them from misusing the precious emotional information I have shared.

I want to release both to my God. He's big enough to handle my precious feelings, and he's more than able to bring myself, my emotions and the people around me to the places He wants them to be. It's still hard, and it still hurts.

Here's to climbing further out of the box.

John 8:32 "...and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." NASB

By Faith

2009-02-09T13:17:00.016-05:00

Faith, for me, has always felt somewhat uncomfortably vague.

Perhaps I should say, the phrase "without faith it is impossible to please God" has always been one of those statements that has always made me uncomfortable. It's a sock that has worked its way off your foot into the front of your shoe or the rock under a sleeping bag.

I understand commands and rules. I am comfortable with the Ten Commandments, loving God, and loving your neighbor. Not meaning, by any measure, that I do any justice to obeying those commands, but I agree with the concept of rules and that when rules are broken, consequences for the disobedience should happen.

But "without Faith it is impossible" means I can obey a rule and still not please God. The obedience must be done in "Faith." And, actually, it seems that a person can fail, and please God, if they are living a life in "Faith" before God.

Simple examples of faith I understand - to have faith in a chair you must sit on it. Just saying "I believe the that chair will hold me" doesn't cut it, I must actually act and sit down in the chair for it to be faith.

It makes sense to me that mere statements of belief and genuine faith are not the same thing. Day in day out politics represent incredible (infamous?) pictures of this truth. It's an endless saga statements and sound bites intended to communicate or imply beliefs with little or no action or follow through - especially if polls turn out to show a different public opinion. And although it's easy to take shots at those in the public arena about this, this type failure is true in all our hearts to some degree or another.

But living by "Faith," to truely live by it has not been as clear in my life as I would like.

Another snapshot of faith lies a few hundred feet from the back door of my house.

Visitors to our home taking a tour of the back yard would proceed past a trampoline, some struggling fruit trees and various gardens, until reaching a "well used" removable sectioned wire fence that marks the end of the backyard "proper." They would then see the land sloping down before them into a forested tangle of ferns, vines and muck. And at the edge of the swampy undergrowth a large oak tree growing in a massive left leaning arc would appear out of the jungle. That was the tree that had caught my eye when we first bought our home.

I had earmarked it for the construction of a swing.

When, in the fullness of time, swing construction was at hand, I took a baseball, duct taped a length of nylon string to it and proceeded to the tree. As that tree grows just at the slope's base, I positioned myself about half way up the slope, took aim at the desired rope swing's attachment point and hurled the ball. I quickly looked around - in embarrassment - to see if any family member had seen the throw because I hadn't even come close. Either that tree was tall or (and) my arm was pretty weak. Over and over I threw, taking a good portion of a half hour to get the ball over the tree truck. At last! . . . oh no! Note: when throwing a ball with an attached string, keep a grip on the end of the string. Up over the tree went the ball and the string with the end of the string following after. Muttering to myself, I retrieved the ball from the swamp and threw for several more minutes. Finally! the ball went over the trunk as I stood - triumphant - holding the end of the string. Using my baseball string as a guide, I pulled into position my official rope swing rope and attached it to a handy section of two by six lumber that I had fashioned into a workable wood seat.

I positioned the seat high enough to clear the slope while swinging and then set about constructing a launch platform for the swing - which attached to a tree about three quarters of the way up the slope. After a few days cutting, drilling and screwing the platform was ready for takeoff.

And (or) a crash landing - it all depends on your perspective.

The platform consists of two levels. The lower one requires a Tarzan approach: holding the rope, jumping and then swinging oneself onto the seat. The upper platform allows the person to be seated on the swing before liftoff, but does require a "small" jump along with a "little" free fall. The effect of that swing has been variously described as a little "Six Flagsish." Which makes me happy. Once launched, the swing rushes one down the slope and then soars out over ferns and greenery with oak forest all around. It's exhilarating (or terrifying.) And the first time off can make your stomach jump from your toes to your throat.

Now, the rope used to fashion the swing has a strength well over 1,000 pounds and there are two (and now four) lengths of rope that are attached to the seat. The platform is solid. The seat is solid - not huge - but not flimsy.

That platform is where this further picture of faith displayed. Because everything that is there will, without question, hold you throughout your ride. I will even get on and swing, showing before your eyes that it will hold a heavier person than you most likely are to be.

The first time visitors come to the swing, some get straight up on the platform, get ready, get set and immediately jump. (although if they don't emit some kind of sound my kids are disappointed.) Others get up, get set and get setter and get still more set and then eventually go. Yet still others get up, get set and then come back down. And then there

's some that say, "Nope! No way, There's no way - I'm not doing that."

It is a picture of faith to look at those responses to the swing.

Some go, not even thinking about the support. Some see the support, trust it and go. Some see the support, get into position, but in the end don't trust it enough to go - and get off. And some aren't even going to consider the whole proposition.

In my life faith is ever more clearly being seen like my swing. God want's me to believe and act - trusting that His support will be there when I am doing what He wants me to do. It's not about "obeying the rules." It is, instead, trusting in the God who set up the universe to know how He made it to work. And to choose to do things His way, because I believe He knows what He's doing.

And for those who have the Faith to jump, he promises Joy in the ride.

Laws (Physical, Scientific, Logical and Biblical) & a 2 Year Old

2009-01-21T13:19:00.010-05:00

Laws of Motion:

Law Number One:
Movable objects at rest will be put in motion. An immovable object will be climbed to attain a better launch point.

Law Number Two:
The Force exerted on a movable object is directly proportional to the perceived wrongness of the action and is inversely proportional to the time available before I think Mama will catch me.

Law Number Three:
For every action there is an equal or greater verbal reaction from my siblings.

Laws of Thermodynamics:

Law Number One:
I am the total energy to destroy any sibling's creation in my universe

Law Number Two:
I am the cause of all increases in the entropy of my world

Law Number Three:
Only when my current activity is nap time (absolute zero), can the household attain minimum entropy (maximum order.)

Logical Laws (Finite State Machine, household lab application):

If a light is on, I turn it off. If I turned it off, I turn it on...
If a light is off, I turn it on. If I turned it on, I turn it off...
If a door is open, I close it (hard). If I closed a door I open it..
If a door is closed, I open it. If I opened a door, I close it (hard)...

If the refrigerator is closed, I open the door... and then hang on the door handle and swing back and forth on the door until Mama gets to me (see "Laws of Motion, Law Number Two.")

Application of Biblical Laws:

Is in current, blatant, continual violation of wisdom law/proverb Number 27 Section 14
"He who blesses his friend with a loud voice early in the morning, It will be reckoned a curse to him."

Rejected Holidays, Pneumonia, and a Happy New Year

2009-01-07T13:18:00.005-05:00

I've decided that my body has rejected holidays. Or maybe it just can't figure out what to give and so it gives me the best malady it can muster, just so I know it hasn't forgotten me.

Thanksgiving gave me an ear infection with fever, chills and a cough. I got an anti-biotic quickly enough to get me going just in time to get back to work.

Christmas gave me the same (so I thought), until the Sunday evening following Christmas I realized I couldn't take more than a (very) shallow breath and dramatically discovered that laying down or getting up reduced me to extraordinary fits of violent, spastic coughing. My visit to the Doctor's office started with getting my blood pressure and taking my blood oxygen level. When the oxygen level came back low (94, they want at least 98) the nurse said, "take a deep breath."

"You're getting all I've got."

That got me a trip to Mr. X-Ray.

Front shot, arms out:

"Deep Breath"

I took "deep" as a relative measure, as in, deeper than not breathing

Cough Cough

Side shot, arms up:

"Deep Breath"
Erp, Squeak, Rasp, Cough Cough..

Trip to the examination room.

Ten minutes later, the good doctor walks in: "You have pneumonia in both lungs." I wish I could remember verbatim what he said next, but essentially he told me that I was not going to work for several days and if I was 85 he'd be worried about me, but as I wasn't 85 he wasn't worried.

Hmmm.

Exit the good doctor.

Ten minutes later, enter the nurse practitioner carrying my paperwork and then lobbing this shot over my port bow: "If things don't continue to get better taking this medicine you WILL come back immediately because that's when you go to the hospital."

I didn't quite know how to reconcile the two interactions. I guess it was supposed to be taken as, "You're OK, but this is serious don't mess around with it."

I do not like the word 'hospital.'

Pneumonia was an interesting experience because I felt 'fine.' Sure, I was in a constant state of being on one side or the other of a dose of the "good" cough medicine or ibuprofen (along with my daily anti-biotic.) And, yeah, I was tired and sitting felt very good. And I could take a two to three hour nap at the drop of a hat. Well, there was that inconvenient inability to take a deep breath, and I did have my once (OK, or twice) a day coughing fit during which I really couldn't breathe.

But I felt 'fine.'

Thursday I stopped taking any medicine other than the antibiotic and Sunday after the Monday was my final antibiotic dose. Friday and Saturday were really bad, going through medicine withdrawal.

And Monday I was at work.

Then, Tuesday, I freaked out in the afternoon because my ears were still aching and not "normal" and I had the nurse practitioners voice in my head saying "If things didn't keep getting better" and ending in "hospital..."

Did I mention I don't like the word "hospital?"

My wife got to relate to a normally very stable husband who was suddenly acting distinctly randomly emotional. And did a great job. She graciously called around and today I had appointment with an ear, nose and throat doctor who extracted my body weight of wax out of each ear and said, "Ears are the last thing to feel right after a respiratory infection."

"See me in six weeks."

So I guess things are OK.

Happy New Year

(cough , cough, just kidding, sort of)

I Hope You Dance

2008-11-06T12:32:00.003-05:00

This past weekend we were able to attend a wedding reception.

Yes, we did actually plan on attending the wedding itself as well, but that involves driving on the road that goes to the wedding, and not on the ones that don't. By the time we had realized the error in our collective navigation and were able to reroute ourselves to the appropriate location, we were just in time for the reception and had completely missed the wedding. I would have said we were lost, but we were able to turn around and retrace our route...

And truly, other than enduring many more renditions of "when are we going to get there?" it was a wonderful scenic drive through the Alabama country side - watching the landscape roll by in an endless tapestry of rustic autumn colors.

In addition to enjoyable conversations with friends and the generally fun atmosphere of a wedding reception (which in this case also included the first fireworks and fire-engine sendoff for a bride and groom I have ever seen) there was dancing at the reception.

I grew up not knowing the first thing about dancing. When my schools had dances I would just not go. And if I did happen to be at one, I would spend my time wishing I'd actually ask someone to dance. But I almost never did. Standing on the side of a dance floor, watching other people dance, and kicking yourself for not having the courage to ask is an absolutely miserable way to spend a couple hours of your life.

Later on, during my time at the Colorado School of Mines (in Golden), the Campus Crusade for Christ group at the University of Colorado in Boulder would host an annual "50's" dance at CU's huge Glenn Miller ballroom. It was a lavishly done "big deal." Hundreds upon hundreds of students would flock to the ballroom decked in their poodle skirts, black rimmed glasses and other 50's garb and swing dance into the night.

A contingent from "Mines" would drive the 20 or so miles up the road to join in the festivities as well. My housemates at the time then asked "The Question" - would I go with them to the dance?

"No"
"Why not?"
"I can't dance"
"Oh, come on you'll love it"
"No, I'll hate it"
"Why?"
"I can't dance"

And then came the kicker: "What if we teach you to dance, will you come then?"

"What? You can't teach me to dance"

"That's not the question, If we teach you to dance, will you come?"
"But you can't"
"That's not the question"
"But"
"If we teach you, will you come?"
"There's no way you can teach me to dance"
"Stop dodging the question: if we teach you to dance, will you come?"
"If you can teach me to dance you'll have done a miracle, it can't be done"
"So, you'll come?"
"IF, you can teach me, and I don't think you can"

Thus began Rob's Inaugural Dance lessons. We pushed back the couches in the living area of the house we were in, and a couple of the girls from our "Mines" Campus Crusade group came up to provide "partners" for the swing dance class. My housemates then worked to teach me "Swing Dancing 101." It was actually remedial swing dancing because I was truly terrible. I stepped (hard) on my partners feet, randomly went the wrong way, had zero sense of timing and was just flat bad. The ultimate was when I planted an awkwardly flailed elbow on my partners chin hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.

Everything stopped for several minutes with me and my housemates wondering if she'd still be willing to continue on as a partner to the swing dance crash test dummy...

Amazingly, in spite of the bumps and bruises, she persevered through a few more nights of dance training. And wonders of wonders it sank in! The whole swing thing actually began to make sense. I certainly wasn't a dancing wonder, but I was able to follow the beat and lead correctly through various swing steps/moves and could chain enough moves together to make swing dancing a very enjoyable activity.

And we went up to the 50's dance and had a great time. I even asked a few people to dance and they did (actually shocking to me.) A most enjoyable part was watching what other people were doing and then trying to copy them or to ask them to teach that particular step or move. Once I had the basic skills, adding to my repertoire wasn't hard, it was in fact really fun.

And now, because of those friend's encouragement, and my - however grudging - willingness to branch out and learn something new and awkward and uncomfortable. I was able to (I got to!) request some swing music at a wedding reception and could dance with my wife and one of my daughters. I was able to dance with my wife at our own wedding reception. And I was able to take her dancing when we were dating - some of our most enjoyable memories.

It brought to mind the words of a semi country/pop song of a few years ago sung by Lee Ann Womack called "I Hope You Dance." A stanza in that song goes something like this:

I hope you still feel small When you stand by the ocean

Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens

Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

Dance

I hope you dance

If you are given an opportunity that you aren't comfortable with, but the discomfort isn't due to the morality of the situation (God says "No"), some innate danger, or other obvious problem (my parents said "No"): Give the opportunity a chance.

To not try things merely because of timidity, embarrassment, awkwardness and so on, will drastically suction the enjoyment out of life. Are there calls for prudence and discernment? Absolutely. Live your life with wisdom. But step out of fear. Perfect love casts out fear. Try something and you might fail. But don't try, and you've failed by default.

And who knows, you may even learn to dance.

I hope you dance.

Backpacking

2008-10-26T22:30:00.000-04:00

I grew up not camping.

Our family would occasionally go to a mountain or lake-side cabin - genuine "cabin" cabins, not mansions on the mountain-side "cabins." But we didn't go to a place, set up a tent and camp overnight. We did hike numerous trails in the Colorado mountains: Rocky Mountain National Park, Indian Peaks Wilderness, Grand Mesa, and many other random places in between. But they were day hikes, frequently bringing a fishing pole along, and ultimately driving home to sleep in your own bed at night.

As my brother and I grew into our high school and college years we started backpacking. In particular we would trudge ourselves (and as many people as we could convince) each year over Pawnee Pass usually around the first part of July. We would pack all the necessities required for a couple days and nights in the mountains of Colorado on our backs and head for Pawnee Lake - on the other side of the pass.

Now the Pawnee Pass/Lake hike is not particularly long (only about 6ish miles.) And the first two and a half miles are spent walking up a level, beautiful valley by Long Lake and ending at picturesque Lake Isabelle. But after that point the trail proceeds to gain and then loose over two thousand feet in altitude in just over three and a half miles. The trail head begins at just under 10,500 feet, Pawnee Pass tops out at over 12,500 feet and Pawnee Lake is right under 10,900 feet. So after Lake Isabelle, almost a half a mile in altitude is gained in the two miles it takes to reach the high point of the pass, and then over the next mile down to the lake almost all of that altitude is given back again.

The pass itself is a broad half mile long saddle above timberline. Boulders are sporadically strewn about a tundra grass meadow and rocky mountain peaks are pushing toward the heavens as far as the eye can see. It is gorgeous. The first time on the hike is the most interesting. When approaching the Pawnee Lake side of the pass you keep looking for the trail down, and all that is seen is the 'horizon' of the edge of the saddle. Only in the final few feet does it become apparent that the path down to the lake is a dwindling array of switchbacks carved into a tumbled down rock slide/boulder field/cliff face - 1500 feet almost straight down. And way down at the bottom is Pawnee Lake.

Some noteable items from our trips:

Friend Joining Us: "What's that thing you are putting on the bottom of your back packs?"

My Brother: "That would be a sleeping bag"

Friend: "Oh..."

I talk non-stop when terrified. My brother doesn't speak when terrified. In my younger days I didn't talk, and my brother couldn't stop. So this was a very interesting phenomena. It became especially apparent during midnight alpine thunderstorms. With lightning flashing so close and loud that the light was blinding in spite of pillows, sleeping bags and hands over our eyes.
I can to do the portion of the hike from Lake Isabelle to Pawnee Lake with severe stomach flu (I cannot, however, talk at the same time.)
Mountain peaks at dawn, mirrored in a lake still as glass, are breathtaking.
Cutthroat trout in a mountain lake are either hungry or they're not.
Get over the pass going home before noon. Do not get caught in a thunderstorm at 12,500 feet with a metal frame pack on your back, being the tallest thing within miles.
A campfire, however small, is a wonderful source of contentment.
It can snow, significantly in the mountains in July.
Remember that nylon is very slippery, to wit: If a nylon tent is pitched on a slope. Gravity will inexorably drag a person in a nylon sleeping bag down into a bunched mass at the bottom of the tent. And, after inchworming back up into proper sleeping position, gravity will cause a repeat performance - again and again, over and over, over the course of a night. As a further note: if inchworm's brother is in an identical nylon sleeping bag and hasn't moved the entire night, inchworm will suspiciously/angerly reach under the gravity defying sleeping bag to reveal the sticky foam sleeping pad that is keeping the brother in a blissful stationary sleeping position. Inchworm will then demand, "Turn that thing sideways!" Afterwhich both sleepers stay glued into prime sleeping position to finish out the night.

Anyway, backpacking was all I really ever knew about "camping." So when my wife (when we had three children ages 5, 3 and 2) said "let's go camping." I looked at her in bewilderment. She looked at me and said, "wait, we need to re-define 'camping'."

But that's for another post.

A Weekend in the Life of our Back Yard

2008-10-13T13:15:00.004-04:00

We got the cover on the pool. This process is not nearly so exicting as getting the cover off. It takes about a half hour (with numerous helpers). All that's really required is to make sure the pool's not currently green and to dump a bottle of algecide in the pool before applying the cover. And I am not sure what's being really implied in the statement, "wow daddy, the pool is really blue."

We did some yard clean-up. I brush hogged the more unkept edge portions of my back yard (i.e. I ran an electric weed trimmer with the help of two 100 foot extension cords.) It's amazing how much ground you can cover with that arrangement. (that could be a little more than 125,000 square feet if you think about it too much. I didn't think about it that much, and didn't cover that much ground either).

In the process of taming my yard near our more well behaved garden, I bashed my head on some low hanging ornamental pear tree limbs. This precipitated a trip to the garage for a pair of large pruning shears and a bow saw. This immediately resulted in a loud and ringing "un-supervised" daddy emergency warning signal to the rest of my family. The close proximity of tree modifying tools and "daddy" tends to result in massive family centered branch removal projects that highly involve my children.

I was greeted (not several minutes later) with a tall glass of water from my nine year old daughter asking, "daddy, mom wants to know if you're being supervised well enough?" A little while after that, this same daughter said, "mommy, I'll finish (name of some bonus chore here), you go out and supervise daddy."

All told I did have about a 15 minute (times 4 children and 2 parents) heap (or is that a passel?) of branches to haul to the burn pile. But, in comparisson to some of my previous Arbor day modification projects, this was a small bundle of twigs. I guess the supervision must have worked to a degree.

I resumed my trimming, got to our south facing fence and promptly ran into an old scrub stump. It was an interesting amalgamation of sucker Maple and Mimosa. Not terribly big on the top, but the same could be said for an iceberg. An hour or two later with the help of a pick axe, a maul, a shovel and a saws-all, I won.

In the process everyone else got to rake and haul leaves and other random bits and chunks of yard debris. Assorted children probably worked the hardest on their haggling skills - trying to get mom to define how much yard work consistituted being "done."

The yard looks much nicer, the pool looks more covered, my back is much sorer and my children are done with yardwork - for last weekend.

Can't wait for camping this weekend.

Musical Truth

2008-10-01T21:25:00.003-04:00

A couple months ago I received a call from my mom wanting to know what I thought about a Karaoke singing game that she was thinking about giving as a present to two of my children (who happen to have birthdays about a month apart.) My parents are ardent singers who have a passion for singing. They like singing well, singing harmony, singing with family, singing with friends - they just truly enjoy singing.

It is one of their great sadness's to see the art of singing just not cultivated these days as it was when they were growing up.

My family has been not that different than our American culture in that way. We sing, at church. We sporadically sing at home - having small children "Only a boy named David," "The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock," "Six little Ducks that I Once Knew," "Amazing Grace." But we certainly haven't worked on singing and don't really have a particular talent with it. We're not tone deaf, but people certainly don't flock around when they hear us sing either.

My wife and children are also occasionally blessed with my "renditions" of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" or other such highly classical pieces. Especially when I add my own words to them:

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world,

Pink and Purple, Blue and Green they are precious as you've seen

Jesus loves the little children of the world

...

Periwinkle, Chartreuse too, and a pretty Mid-night Blue

...

Khaki, Tan and Olive Green, Camo so you can't be seen

Jesus loves the little children of the world

So, a karaoke game? Well... Okay, I am sure the kids would at least somewhat enjoy it.

But the game arrived and was dutifully given on the first of the birthdays. It came with a microphone, and with somewhat less than usual "setting up" on the computer, various hymns, choruses and other more contemporary Christian songs were emerging from the computer's speakers with the words scrolling along in time for a person to sing with.

But then we noticed how the game worked. The words came along on a musical staff, and the computer would show you a little lighted cursor, on that same staff indicating what note you were singing. If the cursor glowed or sparkled orange you were on pitch. When you were on pitch you had a numbered point tally that accumulated. If you were "off " the cursor was blue - and no points accrued. You could watch the cursor raise or lower with your pitch. As the words scrolled across the screen they would be on the note that they were to be sung. If you sang the word with that note the cursor would be bright orange. If you were particularly on pitch the cursor would kind of explode orange and distinctly sparkle. If you didn't, the cursor just stayed blue.

It was humorous to watch myself (and my family) as we initially sang. We would certainly "hit" some of the notes. And we would certainly "miss" many as well. It was particularly humbling when I saw how poorly I "held" my notes. I would be initially "On," sparkling orange and happy and then my voice would crack, wobble, warble or otherwise go off key. And I would watch as the "dumb" cursor displayed my inept singing in patent, flat "blue."

Before you sang a song, the game would even tell you what kind of a score you needed to get Silver, Gold or Platinum distribution.

My first songs were good enough to be "distributed to friends and family."

After our first couple of songs my wife and I "retired" downstairs while the girls kept singing and warbling.

In a few minutes one of my daughters came down mad. Not out of control, but her internal vegetable plate was very well steamed. "I don't like the scores the game gives me."

"Why not?" I asked. She said, "It's not scoring me high enough."

And I laughed. I told her that if you sing well, you will score well. But none of us sings well at this point. I said, "we're all terrible right now."

She backed up and was almost stunned: this child isn't used to being "bad" at anything. "We are?" "Yes," I said. And I explained that with practice and if she and her sister's worked at keeping the note cursor "orange" they would score well. If they didn't, they would score like daddy had.

With a few broccoli knocked off her plate, and with some serious questioning in her face, she trudged up stairs to bed. But over the next few days and weeks she and her sisters worked on their singing, with the help of a little orange musical cursor.

And lo and behold, she and her sisters started to get Silver and Gold and Platinum on their songs.

It was amazing, when you truly sang on pitch, you scored well. When you didn't - you didn't.

It didn't matter how well you thought you sang. It didn't matter how well someone else thought you sang. It only mattered if you were actually on pitch (at the right time.)

The game was and is about musical truth. And that truth wasn't relative, it was absolute.

There's something to be learned from that little musical game. There's what I think, there's what you think. There what I say, there's what you say. There's what I do, there's what you do. But what counts is what is true. If anything I think, say or do isn't true, it is of no worth. If anything you think, say or do isn't true, it is of no worth.

There is Someone who knows what that the true pitch is, and how well we each are singing the song.

And He is also the solution for all our wrong notes.

A German Blast from the Past (Part 1)

2008-08-05T12:59:00.006-04:00

As a junior in high school my family hosted a German exchange student for the entire year. Jürgen was also a junior and attended school and all the other activities that I and my family did that year (a family vacation to Yellowstone, and a trip Jürgen and I took to San Jose California come to mind.)

Jürgen learned how to play basketball. One-on-one (or 21 when my brother was around.) He rapidly learned that to get (any) rebounds or generally have any shot at winning - he must be much more physical than he was at first.

He learned.

He also worked very hard on his English. He didn't just want to speak "precise" English, he was after the vernacular that was everyday language at our house. And he got it right, slang and all. After about the first four months the only phrase that he couldn't quite "get" was "right on!" It's interesting how specific inflection and enunciation are with a expression like that. If it is too precisely stated, said too fast, or maybe too slow, or with the emphasis just slightly off - the phrase just doesn't work. He became so fluent that when people met him for the first time later in the year, they had no clue he wasn't from Colorado.

Some of the lasting memories from that time included a late night youth retreat discussion that revolved around Jürgen attempting to tell us Americans what his name would sound like without the Umlaut (Jurgen instead of Jürgen.) We just couldn't hear it at all, both pronunciations were absolutely identical to our English hearing ears. After about the forth or fifth attempt the conversation just dissolved into hysterical laughter. We were complete basket cases in learning the finer points of German elocution.

There was also the time we both took the bus home from school and when I called my parents - in a panic - to see when they would be home to take me to basketball practice they said, "but you drove to school this morning ..."

During our trip to Yellowstone he had more fun and got more amazement from the drive through the barrenness of Wyoming than in the national park itself. He took pictures and pictures and pictures of "nothing." Jürgen by a population "4" sign, Jürgen in front of miles of nothing. Pictures of virtual ghost towns. You name a picture of "nothing" and he had a picture of him in it. In Germany, although possessing expanses of "rural" places, there are always people and dwellings around. Wyoming, on the other hand, has hundreds of square miles of "nothing." And "nothing" is evidently quite interesting if you have always been around "something."

Anyway, this past week (23 years later), Jürgen and his ten year old son came for a visit. My wife and children had heard stories, but were in eager anticipation of his arrival. Jürgen and his son initially flew into Denver where my parents met them. They got to stay with my Uncle Maury there as well and took in a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

to be continued...

Last Week

2008-07-31T13:04:00.005-04:00

Began with a business trip to the Chicago area. I and a member of our lock assembly crew travelled to a new jail construction site to replace small o-rings in 224 locks in two days.

I disassembled:

Remove cylinder cover, place to the side - just so
Remove lock side plate screws, place in cylinder cover - just so
Place side plate next to cylinder cover - just so
Remove funky lock piece (actuator) place on side plate - just so
Remove plate and spring from lock cylinder rod
Place spring in cylinder cover - just so
Place little plate on actuator on side plate - just so
Remove dead latch spring, place inside other spring - just so
Remove five lock body attachment screws
Place screws on cylinder cover - just so
Move remaining lock assembly and removed parts over to other guy

"Other guy" removed the lock's air cylinder, replaced the o-ring, and did some re-assembly. I then finished the assembly process and stacked the locks for re-installation in the door frames.

Just so.

I rapidly rediscovered (yet again) that I can successfully do exactly one thing at once. To wit: Toward the end of our first day (around lock 100) one of the on-site installers asked me about a problem they were having with a different lock.

My brain seized. My current sum total synapse activity consisted of "Remove, Remove, Place, Remove, Remove, Place, Place, Remove, Remove, Place, MOVE." Ting! "Remove, Remove, Place..." I was an old fashioned typewriter: finish one line of your letter and Ting! Bash the carriage back to the next line's beginning and resume furious typing. (I just realized that 'old fashioned' and typewriter are completely redundant, apologies to all readers who just said "what's a typewriter?")

It felt like swimming upstream in setting concrete. Just processing the installer's question and attempting to actually think/solve/analyze took an amazing amount of effort and time. During that time I had to put down the disassembly tools and very deliberately stop all physical activity because I could literally not think and do anything else at that point. Thank goodness I wasn't chewing gum.

After the business trip (we did get all the locks done, and actually solved a few other problems as well on the way), I had a day at work to do an expense report, answer, solve, engineer and email various workish things.

On Thursday night we left for the "State" swimming meet.

Three of our girls had qualified either in relays or individual events and all were very excited. We loaded up our van and headed out on the 3 1/2 hour trip up to Scottsboro. The next day two of the girls did breaststroke, one of those also did freestyle and all three participated in the Medley Relay. There were tears having not achieved some goals incentive's, but it was all in all a good (and not too hot) day. At the end there was a team pizza, coke and dessert party at a park nearby complete with a merry-go-round. In essence the swim team tanked up on pepperoni pizza, cookies, brownies and soda-pop and then had the older ones spin carb-loaded masses of smaller swimmers as fast as they could on the merry-go-round.

Hmmm.

Friday at 3am (yes, in the morning) Abi began visibly displaying the effects of a stomach virus. Soon after Katherine's system decided that she had to have it too. A bit later my wife said, "I don't feel well, how's your stomach feeling?" My system then woke up enough to realize that it needed to join in the fun as well. For most of that morning I, My wife and two daughter's lay in curled up nausea on the motel room beds while the other's were stuck watching Saturday morning cartoons.

We had to scratch (cancel out) from all the Saturday swimming events and eventually were able to drive the 3 1/2 hours home. I hardily do not recommend spending any of your Saturday's in that manner. Fortunately all four of us began to feel better as the day wore on. Unfortunately, our almost two year old decided, Sunday night, that he had been left out of the festivities and needed to participate in the fun as well.

But so goes a week in the life of our family.

A Visual Update on the Garden of Misfit Plants

2008-06-15T10:05:00.007-04:00

Some visuals of our gardens on fathers day.

Lest anyone might think that working the earth and fertilizing the soil is unproductive.

(Three year old provided for scale and with the season's first zucchinis)

And just to show that the more obedient plants weren't to be out done by their unruly neighboring garden: Here's a basket of tomatoes picked the same morning from the Garden of (more) Obedient Plants. - Six year old added because he could lift the basket.

Have a wonderful fathers day.

Things I know

2008-06-04T13:14:00.003-04:00

God is real, and He created it all.

My wife loves me

A child that loves sweets

Each day is a new day

Finishing a thing is a joy to me

There is always something to fix

A child that loves very sour things but will never admit that they're sour

If it's not chocolate why bother

Exercise makes me feel better

I can live for days on praise from my wife

A child who loves words

I am a sinner

A smile from a child lifts my soul

A child who's kind, sweet and terrible

I am forgiven

I love a consistent routine

I am random

A child who's nuts

I value being valued

Summer in Alabama is hot

A child who builds

There are times to talk

There are times to not

On a Pool Cover Part 2

2008-05-20T13:08:00.005-04:00

"The Year of Spider Man" concluded:

"So... how are you getting it off there?"

Hmm.

That was a good question. I was basking in my pool cover actually being suspended in the air above the pool to dry, and I hadn't even really thought about getting it down.

Well, I could get it down easily enough - back into the pool. But the whole point was to get it down dry. Dry.

Hmm.

I decided to marshal the troops. Shortish, youngish, smallish troops who somewhat resemble me. I positioned them on either far end of the cover to hold it up as one side of the cover was released from its rope web attachment to the fence.

Did I mention that the cover is heavy?

I must not have learned much from the previous year's attempt at lifting the cover. One year's growth hadn't increased the family horsepower enough to keep the cover lifted. As I loosened the web of suspension, despite the valiant efforts of all involved, gravity - the Kryptonite of this process - inexorably dragged the cover back onto (and into) the pool.

By the time I extricated the entire cover from my web the whole cover was more or less (really more) thoroughly re-wetted. I and my troops draped and re-draped it over the fence and left it to dry as best it could. Eventually I dragged it onto the yard for folding and then storing when my family was off erranding somewhere. And I slunk back into my house to lick my wounds.

I was however able to earn a (slight) commendation from my lovely wife: "How on earth did you lift the cover onto that shelf by yourself?" I chose to take that to mean that I was wonderfully strong and, well, really strong and, well, I don't know, but it was the only remotely encouraging part of that year's episode with the cover.

Year Three, or "The Year of the Sort-of-Tight Rope:"

I started hearing, "Daddy, when are we going to open the pool?" in early April. By the end of April it began to feel like a road trip, "Daddy, is time yet?" "Daddy, how warm does in need to be to open the pool?" "Can we swim today?" "Well, when can we swim?" "Daddy, it's warm enough, I won't be cold" "Are we there yet?" "Are we there yet?" "Daddy, I need to use the bathroom"

Ok, all but the last one or two or three.

One warm afternoon I decided that the cover's time had come. Only I hadn't thought much about the process this time, not that thinking had helped me much the last two years anyway. It occurred to me that at the end of last year we had draped the cover over the fence to finally let it dry. But the pool fence is so short that the cover had to be repeatedly folded over. What if I rigged a rope over the fence line, but much higher than the fence line, kind of a clothes line on steroids?

Yeah, that could work. The cover would be off the pool, but would dry vertically - not taking up any yard space!

I rounded up two long 2x4's, a couple of those garage organizing hooks with the large wood threads made to screw into rafters, two pulleys, some 1/2 inch diameter nylon rope and two of those ratcheting shipping straps. I didn't even try to explain my plan this time, but as I was dragging my collection over to the pool deck I did get a raised eyebrow and a "when there is something we can help with, let me know" from my wife.

I screwed one organizing hook into one end of each 2x4 and attached a pulley to each hook. I then ran my rope through each pulley and used the shipping straps attach my 2x4's to fence posts on opposite ends of the pool. Using my pulleys and some creatively knotted loops, I pulled my rope line to where it was hanging just above the fence. Good enough.

I started disconnecting the cover from the pool deck, and which triggered an immediate, "can we go swimming now?" Soon I had most of my troops arrayed and we dragged the cover off the pool and started pulling it over my improvisational clothes line.

Did I mention that the pool cover is heavy?

My rope immediately sagged onto the fence. No problem, I yanked on my pulley system some more to put more tension on the rope and raise it a up a bit. Each time more cover was pulled over the rope, gravity would pull it down, and I would tighten it more. Then I happened to look up and saw the Achilles Heel of my contraption: one of the organizing hooks was bent almost to breaking and the hook's threads were about to pull out of the wood altogether. I took that to mean that I shouldn't tighten the rope any further.

My wonderful clothes line started out at about 9 feet high on each end, and ended up about at about 4 feet one inch high in the middle. Or in other words, my wonderful contraption had gained me a whole inch of height compared to just draping the cover over the fence to begin with.

Oh well.

Instead of re-draping the cover over the line (which would have finished yanking the hook out of the wood) I allowed the cover to run out on the pool deck on one side and onto some of the yard on the other. I had also failed to wash it while it was on the pool, so I washed it as it was. Let it dry overnight, folded it up and -with the help of my beautiful bride- stuffed it on the top shelf in the shed the following evening.

The children rejoiced and went swimming, or more accurately they rejoiced, jumped in the pool and then screamed "It t ts, c c c c ooooo ld d d d."

Ahhh, the sound's of almost summer.

On a Pool Cover Part 1

2008-05-07T13:30:00.015-04:00

We opened our backyard swimming pool for "business" this past weekend.

"Opening" our pool involves removing the pool cover, un-winterizing and starting up the pool pump, vacuuming the pool, and messing with the water itself (balancing the pH, adjusting chlorine levels and other items.)

Easy enough.

Other than the pool cover.

And removing and storing the pool cover isn't difficult per se, but the process is, well, awkward. It is one of those things that must be done, but I am not at all graceful in doing it. I've yet to contrive even a mediocre method of getting the cover off the pool and then cleaning, drying and folding/ rolling/ origamiing the cover into a package and ultimately putting it away for the season.

Getting the cover off the pool is OK - one advantage of a large number of children.

Cleaning the cover goes well - the beauty of a pressure washer.

And after it has dried I can fold the cover well enough.

But getting in and between these items, especially the drying part, is a lesson in how to provide endless humor to the rest of your family.

My wife's face should be photographed each year as she listens to my broken half sentence explanations of how I am going to "do" the pool cover each year. The resulting collage of pictures could be titled, "Studies in Incredulity" and subtitled "You are going to do What?"

Our pool cover is very good at covering the pool. But it doesn't fit well anywhere other than on top of the pool. It is large and heavy (a thick polyester type material reinforced with heavy nylon webbing.) And unless an experiment on mass mildew growing techniques is desired, the cover can't be folded and stored immediately after being taken off the pool, it must be cleaned and dried first. And to dry it needs to be somewhat up in the air. That is the trick: the entire pool cover held up in the air so all that all surfaces can dry.

This is my problem.

Did I mention the cover is heavy and large?

Each year of the cover's three year existence has seen a different method of solving this problem:

Year One, or "the Year of the Chairs:"

I scientifically arrayed several plastic 'outdoor' chairs along with six chairs from our patio set and miscellaneous items from my children's outdoor toy collection in an area of yard roughly the size of the pool cover. The idea was for the pool cover to dry, laying on top of my precisely engineered array of junk. After which I would remove the chairs, fold up the cover and store it away. Sounded good to me.

The cover is heavy...

We detached the cover from the pool, and quickly found out that one middle aged guy along with his beautiful wife and children did not have nearly the horsepower required to lift the cover up over and then set the cover down onto my array of chairs.

The best we could manage was to drag the cover off the pool, across the yard and then pull the front edge over and then onto the chair array. This study in gravity and friction toppled all the plastic chairs and toys and most of the patio chairs, dragging them along as we moved the cover into place.

I ended up hunched under the cover frantically resetting all the chairs and simultaneously transferring the wet sand and dirt the cover had acquired from the yard into my head and back.

When I was "done" the cover was suspended over the yard by my collection, except where it wasn't. The cover draping itself over my array of large bric-a-brac looked something like an upside down egg carton.

Washing it in this condition was a unintended experiment in how to form and drain mountain lakes and rivers. I was constantly pulling here or tugging there to try to drain the lakes and dry up the rivers. Eventually the cover was dry and I pulled my support structure out from under the cover and folded it up and heaved it onto a shelf in our shed.

Year Two, or "the Year of Spider Man:"

The spring of that year saw my dad and I build a sorely needed chain link fence around the pool.

Remembering the previous year's folly, I decided to not attempt to wash and dry the cover over the yard but instead to utilize the new fence and some rope to suspend the cover several feet above the pool itself. It made so much sense to me: I would be conserving space, not taking up any of the yard, and the pool is exactly the right size space for the pool cover. Explaining this particular scheme to my wife got (far and away) the academy award for "Best Utter Disbelief Facial Expression by a Person in a Supporting Role."

Also, in a flash of brilliance, I realized that I could wash the cover while it was still on the pool, rather than waiting until I removed the cover. Out came the pressure washer and the pool broom. In short order the cover top was clean.

Now to the lifting of the cover. The pool cover has a series of nylon webbing straps terminated with metal rings to secure the cover over the pool during the winter (picture a fat, flattened, dark green centepede with twenty or so short black legs.) I fastened a clothesline rope to a post in the fence. I then ran the rope through the cover's nearest nylon strap ring. Proceeding down the pool deck, I ran the rope around the pool fence top bar and then through the next ring in the cover. I wove a rope web between the pool cover and the fence. Every four or five loops I would terminate the rope at a fence post and start with a new rope. At the end of each rope I rigged two metal snap rings to form a rude pulley setup to aid in the lifting of the cover.

With my web woven, I worked my way around the pool deck (ducking in and around my web, tightening the rope pulleys. And roughly, slowly it worked! Gradually I had my entire pool cover suspended (yes, in the air!) above the pool. Although slightly droopy in the middle, the entire cover could now dry and not use up any of the yard, chairs, toys or anything! This was great!

And then my wife asked the (obvious) question: "So... how are you getting it off there?"

Roots, Rocks and the Garden of Misfit Plants

2008-05-05T22:45:00.000-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I was tilling up a section of yard for an auxiliary (ancillary?) garden. Our garden "proper" has tomatoes, peas, lettuce, radishes and other members of the vegetable kingdom that tend to stay where you plant them, are typically well mannered, and generally have some sense of personal space. This "other" plot of ground, however, has been reserved for squash, watermelon, cantaloupe and their like. Vegetation that starts exploring the moment it is planted, has no problem ignoring boundaries, and contains no sense of personal space. It is a garden for misfit plants.

Kind of like the island of misfit toys.

Our home has a rather large back "yard" - which the previous (and original) owners had left to go more and more wild as they grew older. Over the past few years we have been steadily reclaiming the more adventuresome portions of yard and have even made progress in taming the "jungle" of oak woods and brush behind the back fence. The particular spot that we have reserved for the misfit melons and such had previously been possessed by an old maple tree stump and various species of small sucker trees and scrub brush.

I had removed the majority of the scrub and sucker shoots three years ago, but the old (large) maple tree stump remained to become a pet project of my dad's during my folk's extended fall and spring migratory stops at our home. After several chainsaw blades and days of shoveling, prying, roping, block and tackling, and quality time with a pick axe, the stump finally gave it up for the team and was hauled one massive mangled puzzle piece at a time to the burn pile.

The formerly overgrown tangle of stump and brush now appears as a smooth, level plot of ground; an ideal location for the new garden of maladjusted melons!

But then, as my arms were being yanked from their sockets by a rototiller futilely attempting to unearth yet another section of buried tree/brush/sucker roots, I was re-reminded that our lives are determined not by how things appear, but by what, in reality, is really there.

Although, on the surface, the stump and suckers had been removed, underneath there was still ample evidence of their existence. And though much pain and agony had been done to remove the stump, still further work was needed to make the ground suitable for a garden. The barely covered roots had to be identified - usually by the rototiller - and removed, with a shovel, pick and an axe. Furthermore, much fertilizer and organic matter needed to be added to the remaining sandy soil to give the garden plants something to grow on.

This garden plot reminded me of another garden plot. As a child we lived in a house that also had a well situated plot in the back yard for a garden. But upon breaking ground for that garden we found rocks, rocks and more rocks. The first year of that garden's existence saw something like 15 pickup beds full of rocks removed from that one plot of ground. The next year another four or five, and the following year two or three. The end result was a bountiful garden. We found out later that the exact spot that we had chosen for that garden had previously been the neighborhood rock dump, unbeknownst to us. Although that plot had seemed to be perfect for a garden, underneath the surface were tons of rock that needed to be exhumed before a successful garden could be planted.

Our garden for misguided melons also made me think of myself. I am not a person who wears his emotions on his sleeve. Most often I have a calm exterior and take most of what happens in life in stride - maybe more of in 'amble,' my wife has more of a 'stride.' But just because my surface seems placid doesn't mean that my life is truly that way. There are roots and rocks that lie just under the surface waiting for the plows of life to come along and hit them.

Some of my roots:

Personal injustice. If I feel I have been wronged it can twist me into some fantastic emotional balloon animal or fanciful psychiatric piece of origami. It can take days, weeks or months before some particular variation of this root is untangled, dug up and dealt with in my heart.

Personal Politics (being used). If I feel someone hasn't been genuine and has instead used (or attempted to use) me for some ulterior end. I emotionally remove them from my universe. They physically exist, but I do not ask them for advice, the time of day, or anything in between. This is a very difficult root to exhume for me because it involves choosing to trust someone whom I feel has proven to be untrustworthy.

Misunderstanding. I am a peacemaker at heart. Peacemaking usually involves a person (or people) owning up to their stuff and apologizing and asking for forgiveness. With misunderstanding there are all the emotions of being wronged, but in the end no wrong was done. And what do you do with that? Let it go. . . Right. . . I understand this. But this is akin to telling me I am over weight (which I am), and so need to eat less and exercise more over an extended period of time. I understand this. But practicing both these understandings, is very hard for me to do. And therefore a troublesome root for me.

The "laundry day" bed at the end of the day. Frivolous I know. But at a day's end, walking into a bedroom with a bare mattress and sheets on the floor, can boil all the impatience in my life's stew right to the surface. A smelly, distasteful root.

My root list goes on, but it is enough to say that I have my many and various roots.

And you have your roots too.

And your spouse, friend, co-worker, brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle, etc. all have their unique collections of roots as well.

Some people proudly display the visible twisted stumps, scrub brush and sucker plants of their lives in full view for all to see, complete with no sign to indicate any removal work will commence any time soon.

Others have lives that seem straight out of a master gardeners dream. Beautiful and serene. They display no visible issues.

But in spite of appearances, we are each gardens filled with rocks and roots, visible or not. And our lives interact with and crash into one another on many levels. We each act as instruments in each other's lives. We can be tillers and be in turn tilled. We can shovel, and pick and pull. We can even plant an encouragement or a word of advice or allow another to plant in our own lives as well.

Roots grow back, rocks work their way up, soil is depleted. Life ebbs and flows. But as our lives are worked, the soil turned, rocks and roots removed, fertilizer added and God's word planted, obedience learned, and perseverance practiced, we will produce fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. A life that displays God and His love. Beautiful fruit that grows in and through the imperfect soil of our lives.

Proverbs 20:5 (NIV):
5 The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.

Some Robisms on Marriage

2008-04-09T13:23:00.008-04:00

1. If you think you really understand your spouse - then you need to rethink what you think.

2. People are male and female, this means we are different, God made that difference and anything God has made is a beautiful thing.

3. Take the time and effort to talk from your heart about how you are feeling and what you are thinking (this is very hard for Rob to do.)

4. You are a normal human and your spouse is normal human, do not burden your spouse with super expectations.

5. Many expectations you feel from your spouse are not real. Please see numbers 1 and 3.

6. Practice and put into practice the following statement, "I was wrong. Will you please forgive me." And don't add any "but"s to it.

7. Allow your spouse the freedom to be quiet.

8. Find some things your spouse appreciates and make a habit of regularly doing those things.

9. Have weekly dates with just you and your spouse (forever.)

10. Children are blessings from the Lord and many, many couples are unable to have children.

11. Children do not come on our timing, according to our schedule or with a temperment of our choosing.

Psalm 73:26 Part 2

2008-03-26T13:08:00.002-04:00

That morning the enzyme levels indicating new heart damage elevated. My wife was not stable anymore and emergency bypass surgery would need to happen that morning. The girls had a brief visit with mommy and she held our son for a bit. I asked the nurse if I had time to walk my family out to the car before my wife would be wheeled in for surgery and she said yes.

Coming back into the hospital from the parking garage, my name was being paged over the loudspeaker to come immediately to the CICU unit.

I arrived back at the unit to a very upset wife and some equally perturbed nurses and doctors. My wife was telling them in no uncertain terms that she was not going into that operating room without seeing me first, and that they had told me I had time to see my family out of the hospital before the bypass. The surgeon was perturbed that he had a lady who wouldn't go into surgery when it was an emergency situation and time was of the essence. The nurses were just generally perturbed at the whole scene.

Later on the nurses said that her anger at that time released adrenaline into her system which had actually served to positively stimulate her heart and increase blood flow, almost prepping it for the surgery. God works all things together for good.

The bypass took hours. Friends and various family members came and went from the waiting room. People prayed and spoke in low voices. And I waited. A nurse came in at one point and gave an update.

Eventually they came and announced the surgery was done and they were getting her "settled" in her room. After a bit I was allowed to see her.

What I saw were tubes, wires and other medical looking things poking into or out of my my wife's body everywhere. She had a breathing tube down her throat, was still unconscious and had skin that looked like pasty plastic. There was a red heart shaped pillow sitting in her bed with her.

And this was a successful surgery.

I understood the word successful but my eyes were in conflict with what I heard.

I don't do hospitals. I mean, I almost get sick just entering a hospital. The general hospital smell makes me light headed. But God is gracious and allowed me to be with my wife over the days following the surgery. Amazingly they never needed to pick me up unconscious off the floor even though I actually observed most of the in room procedures they performed. My wife did tell me to turn my head when they were taking out the "pre-wiring" for a pace maker they had sewn into her just in case it might be needed.

Throughout that time there were wonderful friends and family who came in and completely took care of our children with little to no input from me.

Over the next few days I lived by the digital stat machine that existed over my wife's bed. It registered her heart rate, blood oxygen levels and other stuff that meant nothing to me. As the days went she graduated to fewer tubes, less wires and forced walking. They removed the catheter for the most part to make her have to get out of bed and walk over to the bathroom.

Eventually she was able to come home. She had to sleep in a lazy boy type recliner for several weeks because her healing sternum couldn't handle being fully prone.

My mom and my sister-in-law both came for consecutive weeks to provide daily care for her and our children. Ladies from our home school group came and cleaned our house for two and a half months. Other friends came and mowed our yard. What a blessing they all were at that time.

When the time came for cardiac rehabilitation, we found out that our insurance wouldn't cover that. We were just talking about the cost, and how I thought she ought to do it, but we just didn't have the finances at the time. I went out to the mail box, and a lady from church had written a note and a check saying that she felt the God had blessed them with a little extra that month and she felt it should go to us. The check was for just $5 less then the total cost of the cardiac rehab. We felt we could afford cardiac rehab for $5.

Months later we had one of our regular followup visits with the cardiac doctor after having regular EKG's, echo cardiograms and finally a nuclear medicine test. They said, you are completely well. The EKG indicates a completely normal heart, the nuclear medicine test indicated a heart ejection fraction of about 55 which is bulls eye for normal heart function. The doctor said you can come back in ten years for a check up if you like. If that seems too long for you come back in five, but your heart is completely normal. There is no activity that your heart should preclude you from engaging in, including future pregnancies, labor and delivery.

God is so good:

God had provided a cardiac nurse living straight across the street to help immediately when she had a heart attack.
He had provided a storm in the midst of a drought to provide an immediate phone to call for help.
He filled up all the CICU beds in the regular hospital our insurance used, "forcing" her to be sent to the premier heart hospital in our region of the country.
He allowed her to stabilize long enough for a complete MRI and surgery plan to be made.
He cause her to unstabilize soon enough after so that she was operated on by the doctors at the heart hospital and not transferred to the insurances hospital as they wanted.
He provided friends and family to selflessly provide care and basic needs when the needs were there.
He completely healed her heart.
He has added two more children into our home after the heart attack.

Psalm 73:26 (NIV)

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:26 Part 1

2008-03-25T13:10:00.007-04:00

Almost six years ago I was putting my two year old daughter to bed when she glanced out her bedroom window and saw my wife walking down the sidewalk away from our house. "I don't want mommy to go!" she said. "It's OK," I told her, "mommy is just going for a walk around the neighborhood with a friend and will be back in a half hour."

The area where we were living was in a severe drought and we hadn't seen even a hint of rain for a couple months. But that evening it was beginning to storm, so they took a cell phone with them just in case they needed to be "rescued." Getting some exercise was good, getting soaked for their efforts would be bad.

About twenty minutes later I received a call from my wife's friend and in a very controlled emotional voice was told that my wife had just passed out, she needed immediate help and gave me directions to where they were so that I could bring a vehicle over to get her.

Not knowing quite what to do, I locked the house with our two year old, her two older sisters and our infant son asleep inside and then quickly drove the mini-van the block or so away to where my wife's friend directed me.

My wife was laying half on a sidewalk and half in someones yard with an unknown lady helping her and my wife's friend at her side.

I wasn't prepared at all for what I was seeing. My wife's skin was white and bluish. The lady had my wife's legs propped up as she lay on the ground and was speaking to my wife in very firm and in-control voice. My wife was responding somewhat to what she was saying but seemed dazed and sleepy.

We eventually sat her up and attempted to lift her into the van to take her to the emergency room. But she slumped in my arms, passed out and we laid her on the ground again. Our friend dialed 911 on her cell phone and I talked with the operator and an ambulance was dispatched.

Her friend took my keys and drove the mini-van back to our house stay with our children until my wife's parents could drive down and stay with the kids.

The paramedics came and took charge. They were asking questions, giving care, getting her onto a gurney and into the ambulance and I found myself riding shotgun to the nearest hospital.

My mind was whirling, what happens if she dies? Do I move back in with my parents?

Rain was splashing on the windshield and the wipers rhythmically pushed it aside.

What do I tell my two year daughter? I just told her it would be all right and mommy would be back in half an hour.

I prayed.

We arrived at the suburban mini hospital that was nearest to the incident and my wife was wheeled away to innumerable tests. They did an EKG and confirmed that there had been a heart attack and that her heart was not doing well. She was connected to IV's and they gave her a strong diuretic (I think, I don't play a doctor on TV) because she had massive fluid build up in her lungs because her heart wasn't functioning properly.

She was responsive at this point as was attempting to joke with me and make the situation lighter. The problem was that she was still tinged blue and by the actions and overheard conversations with and between the techs and doctors, she was not doing well. A doctor was telling me that there were four or five possibilities that could cause her symptoms and that they "were all bad." Among them were a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lungs, some type of cardiac aneurysm and something else I don't remember.

The final test at this hospital was a CAT scan. She was wheeled to the basement and I wasn't allowed in the room.

And I sat there just outside the door in a plastic metal legged chair that reminded me of grade school, alone. The corridor was khaki painted cinder block walls and a similarly dull tiled floor. It felt like a tomb and small sounds echoed down its walls.

Twenty minutes seemed an eternity.

Then they wheeled her out, and we were hustled back up into to main ER portion of this hospital and the cardiac doctor on duty called in a ICU ambulance to take her to the premier heart hospital in our metro area. He would have called the flight for life helicopter, but the storms had only increased as the night went on and prevented helicopter transportation.

His comment to the dispatcher was that she was "sitting on something" but he didn't know what. They needed her to get to that hospital as quickly as possible for a cardiac angiogram which would enable them to see what was happening with her coronary arteries and other structures around her heart.

So I got another ambulance ride to another hospital and the world seemed to be disconnecting from me. My wife was talking and joking with the paramedics surrounding her high tech gurney. My wife was stabilized and I was floating.

At that hospital, they immediately wheeled her away to the angiogram lab, and I was shown to a waiting room. It was empty, like most things in the middle of the night. And I laid down on the floor next to the wall and waited alone.

My wife was greeted going into the lab by a nurse in blue hospital scrubs complete with the rectangular face mask. She said, "You don't recognize me, but I'm your neighbor." The unknown lady helping my wife when this all started had been the head nurse in charge of the angiogram lab at the premier heart hospital in our region of the country! She had been called in just after the initial episode, but then asked to stay on a bit because they had a lady coming in, and in her heart she had said, "I bet that's my neighbor."

My in-laws arrived an hour or two later and waited with me. The angiogram doctor eventually came out and said that they had found the problem. The test had taken so long because initially they couldn't even find one of my wife's two main coronary arteries. It was discovered that she had a congenital anomaly of her left main coronary artery. That artery, which typically feeds the back side of heart, didn't originate from the back side of the aorta as it usually does. Instead it originated from the other coronary artery (the right main) which is comes out of the front side of the aorta. And to get back to where it needed to be it had run between her aorta and her pulmonary artery.

That meant that at any time her left main coronary artery (which feeds roughly half the heart) could have been pinched off, being squeezed between her own aorta and pulmonary artery. The aorta is always under a great deal of pressure (it is the main vessel that feeds all the other arteries). But the pulmonary artery is more typically a lower pressure vessel - except when it isn't. As during exercise, or getting up out of a chair or bed, or during the labor and deliver any of our four children (at the time.)

Her particular anomaly is considered especially rare (less than 1 in a million people) and deadly (over 99% are only found at autopsy) because when the heart is damaged the pressure in the pulmonary artery actually goes up. So in her case if her artery was pinched by the aorta and pulmonary artery, it would cause the pulmonary arteries pressure to go up - pinching the coronary artery even more and damaging the heart even more. Somewhat like a drowning person frantically clutches the person next to them and in the process killing them both. A deadly game of catch 22.

Because she had stabilized, they put her into the hospital's CICU unit and scheduled an MRI of her heart the next day to determine the best course of action for the open heart bypass surgery that would need to happen as soon as possible.

They were able to complete the MRI and plan the surgery the next day. The following morning, the nurses in the unit were unnerved by seeing our three little girls with pink hair bows and dresses walking up the hallway to see their mommy, accompanied by my parents holding our infant son. The nurses were used to dealing with people who were toward the latter stages of their life, and were usually in that unit because of their own life choices (i.e. extremely overweight and/or smokers.)

Fun Things

2008-03-17T22:15:00.008-04:00

While camping this weekend I got to enjoy hearing my three year old daughter singing:
"Al -a-bama. Al -a-bama" Over and over during a camping breakfast of slightly burned pancakes and sausages.

I had always thought the words to that tune were "La La Bamba."

It brought back memories of our second daughter - now nine - when she was about three asking loudly from the van's back seat on a road trip, "Daddy, sing the California Lipstick song!"

My wife and I looked at one another in bewilderment, the California Lipstick song? We had never heard of such a song. We puzzled and puzzled, and then finally asked her to either sing or hum part of the tune. She started singing "Super California Lipstick Expialidocious."

Oh, THAT California Lipstick song.

Everyone needs a three year old girl in his or her family.

That brought to my mind my own difficulties when singing Jingle Bells at Christmas as a child. I could never figure out what a "Horsopen" was. Everyone would sing that word in the song and they all seemed to know exactly what they were singing about. And I was just clueless; I had no idea what we were singing about. I was a monument of private embarrassment when I finally saw the song in print and it was a "One horse open sleigh." My face is still red.

Back to three year old girls:

Our oldest daughter, at about three or four, was playing a card game with us and was very pointedly analyzing each of us as we played. The intensity of her concentration could have powered all the appliances in the house. Her gaze was absolutely riveted on each person each time they drew a card from the stack in the middle of the table and placed it into their hand.

When her turn came around she was ready: She set her hand of cards down on the table, very deliberately licked the index finger of her right hand as she had watched everyone do before they drew a new card, and then just as deliberately drew a new card from the stack with her Left hand.

We could not stop laughing.

It was also about this time that she went fishing with "Pop," my dad. When they first got to the fishing spot she threw a rock into the lake. He sternly told her, "No, No, don't do that or you'll scare away the fish. If you throw another rock into the lake we're going home." After that warning, they had a great afternoon together fishing. When it was time Pop told her, "all right, let's go, it's time to go home." Our daughter said "wait!" And then ran, got a rock, and threw it into the lake.

And she went happily home, with Pop laughing all the way.

Have a wonderful week.

Proverbs 15:13 (NIV)
13 A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit.

Failure

2008-03-04T20:50:00.003-05:00

I grew up being good.
I mean, I was good at things.
I was smart. I did well in school. I won academic awards.
I was musical. I played violin and I did well. I would get the highest ratings in competitions.

I even tried art, and won first place with a water color painting in a district wide art show.

I was good at soccer too. Without even knowing what I was doing, I placed very high in a city wide individual soccer skills competition and would score goals and more goals for my teams in my younger years.

But I also remember playing basketball:

First with my dad and brother growing up. And later in Jr. high and high school. And I was a miserable failure. I mean, I lost, continually for years. I didn't start for the teams I played on (or if I did start it was for the C team or Jr. varsity).
In my final years of high school I "graduated" into being the defensive stopper. What that meant was that I couldn't handle (dribble and pass) the ball well enough to be the point guard, or shoot the ball well enough to be the "shooting" guard. And my genetics were short enough that I wasn't close to being a forward or center.
I was "good" enough to come into the game when our really good players were tired. My job was strictly to harass the other teams guards into making mistakes for five to ten minutes a game. It was also my job to pass the ball to someone else on the team as quickly as possible if it ever got into my hands. I was a "good" defender, which is like being "fast" for a catcher in baseball - you're still slow.

I liked basketball I really wanted to be good. I would practice hours on end of shooting and dribbling. But basketball wasn't like some of my other endeavours. I wasn't good. I practiced and sweated and worked, and was a failure.

And relating to people:

I wanted to be a charismatic and attractive person, someone that people wanted to be around. My brother was like that. He was fun and funny. Humorous and engaging. People crowded around him and just wanted to be near him. And I wasn't like that. I was shy and bashful. When I spoke I stumbled over my words. I was generally overweight, and as I got older I became the dreaded "nice guy." Nice guys are well, "nice." But they aren't attractive or magnetic to people. I was furniture in a room. Nice to have around and make use of when needed but replaceable and not terribly important overall. I (sort of) tried to be engaging and charismatic but I was a failure.

And then college:

I spent three years at a prestigious engineering school. I even made the Dean's List as a freshman. And then after three years I couldn't hack it. I dropped out. I had now even failed school. I was a failure in academics.

And there was a girl at that school I liked:

A fun and engaging and attractive girl. But when asked, sShe told her Bible study leader that she might possibly date my friend Rick, but never me. She went as far as to say that there were two things she would never do: be a missionary in Africa and date me. I was a failure in a relationship before I had even had one.

And I found myself working as a mechanical assembler for a company called Particle Measuring Systems (PMS.) I sat on a stool eight hours a day with drawers full of screws, assorted tools and put together contraptions that I had no idea how to use.

Forty hours a week I listened to co-workers talking about women, drinking escapades and combinations of the two.

At Christmas time that year I attended a Christian conference for college-age people. I don't remember the main speaker or a single primary point from the conference. During one afternoon there were short seminars on various subjects about missions to different countries, relationships, Christian leadership, apologetics and many others. I don't even remember what seminar that I was attending. I do recall that that particular seminar was going to be a video presentation. And while waiting for a late arriving T.V. /video cart to appear, the seminar "host"chose to read a quote by a former secretary of the U.N. (I think). That quote - greatly paraphrased and mangled I am sure - said something to this effect: "We have young Christian people aspiring to be missionaries to all corners of the globe, to be pastors, and leaders in Christian organizations. But these people need to know that we need Christians in all aspects of society: We need Christian professors and teachers, Christian professionals - engineers and doctors. We need God's salt in all parts of society - not just the obviously Christian ones."

And a light went off in my heart:

"I could do that."

God touched my life at that moment. I have no other way to decribe it. It was as if God's hand thumped my forehead.

"Wake up!"

And I realized that I had been doing most of what I had been doing in my life up to that point because I felt other people wanted me to do those things. Not that, in my case, there were people overtly manipulating my emotions and life to get me to go their way. But I had never really looked at my life and said, "God what do you want me to do?" Until I asked that question - and was open to His answer - my life just drifted along and I felt like a failure.

In the following months I re-enrolled in college and eventually achieved an engineering degree. But I worked for that degree because of what had been revealed at that moment in my spirit. I could be a Christian and an engineer, and that was just as much of a calling as any person who has been drawn to the mission field in Africa or Asia or the Middle East.

I also ended up pursuing and marrying the girl who was never going to date me. (At this point we have six children and are wondering if God is ever going to send Africa our way.)

I have actually stepped out personally and have begun to engage people and not just hope that they want to be around me.

And I have begun to realize that the point between failure and success isn't if you fail at something, but it's in who you serve and why you choose to do what you do.

If God asks me to do something and I do it, and that thing "fails," it doesn't mean that I am a failure, it means that I was faithful. I did what I was asked to do.

If I don't ask God what He wants me to do next, then I am failing. I am failing to continue to walk with Him.

If I don't do what He asks me to do, then I have failed.

Proverbs 4:18 (NIV):
18 The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.

Thankfulness

2008-02-21T12:57:00.002-05:00

This past week I have been enduring some version of a head cold, sore throat and general cruddiness. This morning I gave in and called in sick.

My normal morning routine is rushed from getting up later than I intend to squeezing in exercise in the shed, to shower, breakfast, reading a chapter of Psalms and the day-of-the-month chapter in Proverbs with the children and then getting out the door to work.

Today, I was laying in bed - awake - feeling sleep deprived and generally bemoaning my poor sickening circumstance.

I eventually rolled out of bed into some sweats, wandered to the kitchen table and found myself immersed in my families normal morning routine. The one I don't see because I have previously left for work: Our oldest child busily emptying and reloading the dishwasher, having drawn that chore this week. A daughter practicing some more difficult portions of a new piano piece. Another seated at a table starting her schoolwork and absently twirling her hair. The five year at his "desk" sporting a faux felt dented cowboy hat while contemplating a workbook. The smiling three year old jumping across the tiled kitchen floor. Her denim and pink plaid dress hanging away from her body - giving the appearance of a blue and pink bell(e) playing hopscotch. Our one and half year old -still in his footed pajamas- alternately racing toy cars through the carpet and orbiting his older sibling's domains, punctuating his flight through the family solar system with a few counter timed low notes on the piano to help his sister.

And through the gunk in my head and the sleep in my eyes my soul smiled and sighed. There was such peace and pleasure during that snap shot in time. The joy in the smile of a three year old girl. The impulsive akwardness of a toddler. The beauty of music. The fun in a favorite hat. Even in the duties of school work and chores, there was loveliness in a happy spirit and a good will to work.

I am thankful to God for a day being sick.

1 Thess 5:18
"give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

An MGB and Coming of Age

2007-09-10T21:52:00.000-04:00

The summer after my freshman year in college found me in Siloam Springs Arkansas hanging out with my brother. We shared a campus housing apartment at John Brown University with a friend of my brothers and did odd jobs to provide income for a month or two.

My brother's friend worked at a dairy counting down the days until his wedding, my brother was doing odd roofing jobs and I among other things re-caulked a log house.

It was my first extended stay anywhere south of Colorado and I was introduced to things like June Bugs, bugs in general and midnight tennis. Actually midnight tennis incorporated all those things at once. It was amazing to see the number of flying creatures surrounding the mercury lamps illuminating the tennis court. And it was predicable to watch our tennis game degenerate into "June Bug lacrosse" as a particularly large, low flying June Bug kept circling our game at altitudes from eight to fifteen feet in the air and sounding like a world war one bi-plane that was about to lose its motor. The motor would "catch" and the June Bug would soar up to his desired fifteen foot cruising altitude. His motor would then sputter and cough and he would drunkenly glide to within tantalizing reach of our rackets.

Our transportation at that time was a bright red 1970 something MGB. A small English two seater roadster with a very manual convertible top. MG's are fun, "cool," and finicky at best. This particular model was even more temperamental than most because we had actually built it when our family was still living in Grand Junction Colorado. An associate of my fathers had completely taken apart his MG to rebuild it, and then, at the height of dismemberment, lost interest in the project. My father had bought the "car" for $1000. He now had a project to work on with his boys, and we had a MGB body and suspension with four wheels attached to it and nothing else attached. We had seemingly a thousand zip lock bags of loose parts along with an engine, transmission, windshield, hood and the like and a Hayne's do it yourself car manual on MGB's.

Our standard working protocol when working on the car sounded something like this: "Where's that wrench?" "What wrench?" "The wrench I was using that you just borrowed!" "I don't have it." "Yes, you do!" "No, I don't." "Well were is it?" "I dunno." "Get up, you're laying on it" "No I'm not" "Yes, you are!" And then everyone would get up look around for a few minutes until the wrench was found. After resettling back to our work, about ten minutes later someone would say "Where's the screw driver" "What screwdriver"...and on.

When we were "done" it was disconcerting to have several bags of left over parts and no known place to attach them. It became common for us run up to some stranger with an MG in a grocery store parking lot and ask him to open the hood for us. "Oh, so that's where that goes" "Oh man, we had that backwards" and on and on.

Eventually we were able to use up most of the parts and the car was a blast to drive or ride in, except when it wasn't (running that is.)

This was our, or more correctly, my brother's transportation at that time. As he was getting more roofing work, an MG just became more and more impractical. My father then made him one of those "dad" offers. Dad had bought a 1960 something Chevy pick up truck that would be much more suitable for the roofing work and would swap it with my brother for the MG.
Only one problem: dad and the truck were in Berthoud Colorado and the MG was in Siloam Springs Arkansas. Due to my brother's need to continue roofing, the plan was made for me to drive the MG to Russell Kansas where I would meet my father and swap the MG for the truck and drive back to Siloam all in one day.

This was a drive of about three hundred miles one way that would take me through Tulsa Oklahoma, Wichita Kansas and then other less populated Kansas destinations like Newton and the left turn onto interstate 70 in Salina. The route was mostly highway, but for me this was heady stuff. There was a significant task at hand and I was being trusted to hold up one end of it.

Bright and early on the Saturday swap morning I headed out. I had the passenger's seat loaded with cassette tapes and was marking the time by the number of tapes that were run from the seat through the tape player and then deposited on the passenger seat floor board.

About seventy five miles past Tulsa it happened. The MG made like that June Bug and sputtered, coughed and then died. I was sitting on the side of the Cimarron turnpike in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma sitting in a lifeless MG. There were no cell phones at this time. There was nobody else, no traffic, no gas station, no nothing.

I was at a loss. I tried the ignition. Nothing.

Great.

And I prayed. I sat there and I prayed because I didn't know what else to do. My heart was pounding, I would have probably cried if I had thought it would help. And I sat there for about a half hour wondering what to do.

A few cars zoomed by, but not many. I didn't attempt to flag anyone down.

And then on a whim I turned the ignition again, and the MG roared (OK purred) to life. Relief and thanks to God poured through my veins.

I put the car in gear and my journey continued.

Some eighty to ninety miles later, I had just entered the middle portion of Wichita, when it happened again. The MG died again. I was on the side of interstate 135. Wondering what to do. And I prayed.

And a guy in a flower delivery van pulled over and offered to tow me to the only garage he knew of that might be open that day. Not every morning in Wichita do you see a flower delivery van rope towing a bright red convertible MG roadster down Interstate 135 in Wichita. He pulled me to a gas station/garage and I profusely thanked him for his help. I was at a place that actually worked on cars, they would be able to diagnose and fix the car and get me on my way.

Only the garage guys wouldn't be able to even look the car until Monday and didn't think that they could do anything quickly for a 1970 something English (foreign) MG.

Wonderful.

So I sat in the parking lot of the garage and pondered and prayed some more. It came into my head that the car might be either vapor locking or having some other fuel line issue (fuel pump?) that seemed to "correct" itself when the car cooled down. As being towed and then sitting at the gas station/garage had burned over an hour, I thought that the car's problem might have been "corrected" again.

So I tried the ignition.

Nothing.

Actually less then nothing, the starter didn't even turn the engine over. But this was a "known" feature of the MG and I knew how to deal with this one. One of the advantages of a small two-seater roadster is that it can be push started by a single person even in a flat gas station parking lot. I took the car out of gear, opened the door, got out, put one hand on the door the other on the steering wheel and pushed. In no time the car was rolling at a steady clip. I jumped into the car slamming the door closed, pressed down the clutch, threw the car into first gear, popped the clutch and the MG coughed to life once again.

As I pulled out onto Interstate 135 leaving Wichita I thought I must be insane. I had been at a garage that could had fixed my car (albeit on their time table) and I was driving away from that safety net.

Normal interstate highway trips are a lesson in controlled boredom, especially driving through Kansas. Figuring out how to pass time while mile markers pass by. This trip had gone so far from normal that every cough, sputter and hiccup the MG made (which are the normal sounds emanating from an MG) caused me to jump.

Being preoccupied with wondering when the car was going to die again, I missed a turn on interstate 135 as it passed through Newton. I found myself off the interstate in residential Newton without a clue as to where the interstate had suddenly gone. I am not certain how one can actually exit an interstate and not know it, but I accomplished this incredible feat in the middle of Kansas.

I panicked. I pulled a u-turn on the residential street I was on and began rapidly attempting to retrace my route and find the lost interstate.

And I rapidly got pulled over by one of Newton's finest for doing 45mph in a 25mph residential area. The lady officer asked for my wallet, and I realized I had left it in the truck of the MG and could I please get it out of the trunk? She allowed me to extract my wallet from the trunk, tell her my story of woe, and then went to her patrol car. I used the trunk as a seat and waited for my fate.

After what seemed an eternity she came back, only gave me a warning and graciously gave me directions out of Newton and back on the interstate.

I made it to Salina and took the turn West onto I-70.

Only 60 something miles left to Russell. I came over a rise and a magnificent (and horrifying) site greeted me from the Northwest. A massive thunderstorm was barrelling towards me over the plains. As I was in a convertible car, the top was down. As this was an MG, the process of actually putting the top up would take at least fifteen minutes. The convertible MG top had snaps and buckles in abundance and large doses of grunting, pulling and shoving were required to convince the top that it was actually designed to cover that car.

And I didn't have fifteen minutes anyway.

I decided to drive on through the storm with the top down. One of the other features of convertibles in general is that one can actually drive through significant rain storms sans top and not get more than a misting from the rain. The windshield actually removes most of the rain drops.

Just as the storm struck in all its glory, it hit me: the car was going to die in the middle of that storm. With all the certainty of a prophesy from God I knew it would happen.

And it did. I was about ten miles outside of Russell, lightning flashing, thunder rolling and torrential rain pouring down and the car died. I frantically got out. Unfurled the cover from behind the two seats, pulled enough of it over to at least cover the majority of me and the car's interior and waited out the storm.

As the late afternoon sunlight finally began streaming out from under the last vestiges of the thunderhead, I got out and attached the cover to the car. The car had waited its required thirty minute rest and I was able to push start the car and finish the last ten miles on the journey to Russell.

As I was exiting the interstate I saw on my immediate right the McDonald's that was our meeting point. Nothing ever looked so welcome as that sight. I was over four hours late, soaking wet and would have probably given that MG to anyone who had asked for the car at that point.

Just before I turned to enter the McDonald's parking lot flashing lights behind me showed one of Russell's finest on my bumper. I was stopped, in full view of my father at the McDonald's and given a $75 ticket for not stopping at a stop sign that I hadn't seen. I guess I was too busy looking at the McDonald's and searching for my dad and the truck.

After being given my signed piece of history from the officer, I related to my father the events of my day. My dad looked at me and said, "Son, today you became a man."

Now, I do not know all that is meant by a statement like that but I do know this. I had had an important task, my brother and father were counting on me, there was much adversity and I completed my task. I am sure I could have done things differently and probably better. But it had been done, and my dad had said the I was a man.

I got in the truck, drove back to Siloam.

But the rest of that day truly faded into unimportance.

God was with me and I was a man. Because my father told me so.

On Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

2007-09-03T22:30:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday my wife and I were gearing up for a family outing at the Coosada Heritage Festival where my oldest girls were to be performing ballet with the King's Praise Ballet troupe.

Along with getting (all) the children to replace the pajamas adorning their bodies with playing-in-the-park attire or ballet dresses, I was helping my wife make sandwiches for lunch at the festival.

Finding myself in the kitchen making food for my family is always an adventure, but there should be nothing interesting or remarkable in the process of producing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. My wife was getting a few other things in the kitchen rounded up. I was toasting frozen slices of bread, and layering the toasted slices with peanut butter.

And then I got a "look" from my wife.

As all I was doing was spreading peanut butter on bread I was stumped. But I didn't immediately ask for an interpretation of that "look."

This was exactly akin to when I have asked my wife where "something" is in our home. Finding myself standing at the aforementioned location of the "something," I will be completely unable to locate it. Before asking her to physically come find the "something" for me, I will at least two or three more times thoroughly rummage through and around the area to make sure she won't come, lean over, grab the "something" and hand it to me to my complete chagrin. This pause and repeated re-looking on my part has reduced her immediate finding of the "something" to about fifty percent of the time.

I assayed my current puzzling peanut buttery situation:

There were about eight or nine bread slices arrayed in front of me peanut buttered to Rob's standard of buttering. This is not to be confused with my wife and oldest daughter's standard which states that "when (peanut) buttering the entire (100%) surface area of the bread slice in question must be completely covered with said (peanut) butter." Rob's standard says that "a slice of bread is considered (peanut) buttered if a good portion of the slice appears to be layered in (peanut) butter."

It couldn't be the layering standard because we had just joked about that standard after I had buttered the first three or four slices.

Hmmm.

It had been mentioned that we were making six sandwiches. One each for my wife, myself and the four oldest children. We still had a half sandwich left over from some other excursion this week for the two year old and the baby is not yet doing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

That had to be it, something about the number of sandwiches and my current production of peanut buttered slices.

Hmmm.

My wife had gotten the jelly jar out of the fridge and was standing with a jellied knife seemingly unable to find a suitable place to jelly on any of the slices in question. "How many sandwiches are you intending to make?" She queried. "Six," I answered, looking at the eight or nine buttered slices in front of me and waiting for the other four or three slices in the toaster defrosting behind me.

And then the conundrum was solved! There are not just different standards for buttering slices of bread, there are also conflicting standards for making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Rob's standard for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich states that "a peanut butter and jelly sandwich shall have peanut butter on both slices of bread with jelly in the middle." My wife's standard states that "a peanut butter and jelly sandwich shall have peanut butter on one slice and jelly upon the other slice."

The sandwiches were finished either using mixed standards or Rob's standard (I can't even remember those details from two days ago), and we went happily off to the festival. The girls and all the ballet troupe danced beautifully and I thoroughly enjoyed my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, not even thinking once about whether or not I was having a Rob standard sandwich or not.

For inquiring minds: the peanut butter on both sides (in Rob logic) stops the jelly from making the one slice of bread gooey.

Skiing Pride and Prejudice

2007-08-23T21:30:00.000-04:00

Learning to ski generally comes with growing up in Colorado. At 5 to 6 years old I could be found outfitted in a bright blue full body snow-mobile suit with a complete head mask and bright pink skis that were only marginally longer than my boots. My skiing method was to tuck (body crouched down, knees bent) to go as fast as possible down the ski run. To turn I would fall down, get up, redirect my skis and then repeat the whole process until I made it to the bottom of the bunny hill (the smallest, beginner ski slope).

By Jr. High I had graduated to the continuously standing turn and was able to move from the bunny hill to riding the "big" lifts up the mountain and skiing the blue (moderate) and green (easy) slopes down the mountain.

My brother would occasionally drive us both up to go skiing in his later high school years. He had received the lion's share of the skiing genes in our family and was therefore a much more adept skier than myself. That being the case, he wasn't satisfied just doing the easier runs on the mountain. I was, as a consequence, taken down many black (hard) runs and various other not so easy trails, much to my dismay and sometimes very vocal displeasure.

On one such skiing trip my brother's friend had come along and the two of them decided to take an unofficial offshoot "run" that ended at a bowl shaped clearing occupied by many large boulders. Thickly blanketed by packed snow this bowl became a amateur ski jumper's paradise. At any moment skiers could be seen flying off the snow encased boulders like flock of super balls randomly bouncing off a floor. My brother and his friend commenced to join this flying circus. I became acutely aware of my lack jumping skills and courage. I slunk around the jumps, attempted to be noticed as little as possible, and felt very humiliated and small.

A very important "feature" of this boulder bowl was the exit. It was a barely one skier wide densely tree lined chute. It went steeply down for about 30 yards and then almost straight up for the last ten feet. And it was the only way back on to the official ski run. My brother took me aside as we were reaching the bottom of the boulder bowl and warned me to completely stop before going into that exit chute, because there was no way to slow down once you were in the chute. He then demonstrated what he was talking about as he exited the bowl.

My injured pride welled up and rejected his warning. Having spent my entire time on that run sulking and not attempting even the smallest jump, I decided that I was not going to do something as silly as stopping before the bowl's exit chute. And I showed him; not only did I not stop, I entered that chute with a good head of steam to spare.

Wow, there really was no way to slow down.

I hit mach speed on the down slope, rocketed up the ledge and then flew into the stratosphere skis pointed to the sky, body parallel to the ground. I had majestically entered the air space of the official ski run below.

My terror kicked in some internal gyroscope which drove my arms and ski poles to windmill wildly and caused my body to slightly tuck forward in the air. Miraculously, my body came up vertically and my skis leveled out horizontally just as if I was skiing over a huge invisible ball in the air.

I was going to land beautifully, and not die!

Just as I was completing my landing check list, with my brother standing just off to the side, one of my windmilling ski poles planted in the snow directly in front of me. Gravity and momentum drove my chin into the handle of the planted pole and knocked me out prone at my brother's feet.

A second later I came to. Because I had blatantly ignored his advice, all I received for my pains was a brief check from him to see that I hadn't separated my head from my shoulders. And then some ribbing for not following instructions.

We then skied down the run to the lift. My head throbbed and ached, my jaw felt like it had been shoved into my face for some reason, and my attitude was worse.

As we reached the lift and got in line there was a ski school in session. A brief glance showed that it was a class of Jr. High "Special Ed" students. They were all in the singles line for the lift.

This particular ski "chair lift" was a double chair. Each chair on the lift was designed to hold two people. The entrance to the lift was roped off to form several lines. Skiers would line up in pairs in each of the lines and take alternating turns getting onto the next chair that came swinging around the large overhead turnstile. If someone was by them self in the double line, a person from the single line could then join them to get the most people going up the lift as possible.

I was the third wheel in this skiing adventure and as such I was usually the single of our group. When I saw the single line filled with the "Special Ed" class I approached the lift in the most unapproachable way possible. When my chair came around I deliberately stood on the near side of the chair to make it very hard for anyone to join me from the skiing class single line.

To my horror they stopped the entire lift, moved me over and sat a boy from the class next to me. I was mortified, my head hurt, my attitude was growing worse by the second and then my new chair mate began to talk. And talk and talk. He told me all about his day skiing and what he was learning and how much fun it was and on and on and on.

I was displaying unusual grace and courtesy by not saying a single word and leaning as far out the other side of the chair as I could. I turned away from him as much as I could manage and gave every non verbal cue I could that I just wasn't interested in his day and couldn't he just shut his mouth and let me sulk in peace.

It didn't work or he didn't notice or he just thought that I looked like I was having a bad day and needed him to cheer me up. Whatever the case, he just kept on excitedly describing to me the glorious day he was having and how much fun he was having skiing. It didn't help that every time I glanced forward I would see my brother and his friend obviously enjoying my plight.

And then it happened. As he was talking, we passed the midway point of the ski lift. There was a small hut and a snowy platform there designed to let people get off midway and only ski the bottom half of the mountain. After the platform passed the ground fell steeply away. We were about ten feet past the midway platform and about an equal distance up in the air when the boy exclaimed "Oh, that's where I'm supposed to get off!" And then he jumped off the lift!

It was surreal. Because the slope was going down where he landed his body wasn't jerked at all. The force of his landing just caused him to lay backward on his skis. He then zoomed down and then up a small slope into a floppy ski fence surrounding a hut and platform that allowed people to get back on the lift and only ski the top half of the mountain.

My prejudice at that point was so great that I didn't even care. I was just relieved that he was gone. When we got off at the top my brother turned to me and said, "So where's your little friend?"

To which I fiercely replied, "He's NOT my friend and he jumped off the lift!"

Ah, the kind and compassionate words of a proud and prejudiced boy.

Proverbs 16:18 (NIV):
18 Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

2 Peter 1 (NIV):
5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. 8For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

Rules and a Door, Both Broken

2007-08-21T23:15:00.000-04:00

My brother and I played games, all kinds in any place. From Risk and Monopoly to Ping Pong and Basketball. Chores in particular, if done in tandem, were turned into games. "Weeding tomatoes" transformed into "the hammer throw." The "hammer" consisted of tall weeds extracted in deliberate bunches to pull out the largest possible dirt clod clinging to the root base. The "throw" involved holding the weed tops, whirling the clod about in a furious circle and then releasing the newly weeded hammer at the precise point needed to achieve both maximum escape velocity and an optimal initial flight trajectory. Releases made at the wrong tangent point were rather disastrous. The winner was the person whose hammer landed the farthest into the field. The tomato patch was the definite loser as it rapidly took on a striking resemblance to the cratered surface of the moon.

Our games also always had Rules. Especially our spontaneously imagineered games. The Rules defined what was allowed and not allowed and especially how points were scored. The first Rule of all invented games was that the Rules were to be followed.

Boxing was a simple example of Rules.

Equipment:

One pair of boxing gloves. Not one pair each, one pair total: two gloves. Now these were genuine (sure nuff) boxing gloves with laces to secure each glove on the wrist and forearm, but the hitting portion of each glove was about double the size of the kind that "real" boxer's use. This extra cushion made our gloves more boxing pillows than gloves. Each brother got one of the gloves. I received the right glove and my brother the left. We were both right handed, but he was 3 1/2 years my elder therefore I got the privilege of boxing with my dominant hand.

Our non boxing hands were wrapped in an assortment of socks, head bands, wrist bands and ace bandages. To this day I am unclear as to the purpose of this portion of our equipment, because, as stated next in the Rules, we weren't allowed to hit with the non gloved hand. Weird.

The Rules:

1. No hitting the head of the other person.
2. No hitting with the non gloved hand (no matter how well socked or bandaged it was.)

That was it.

The Play:

Unlike most games, we had no clear idea how boxing was supposed to be done. We would circle one other and attempt to hit with our one glove. As we were facing one another, my right hand and his left hand were on the same side, so, for the most part, we would just end up hitting the other person's glove. As the gloves were pillow like, little happened. My brother received the worst part however, because the gloves had rather long laces and I was very poor at securing mine. As a result, my glove would have a long tail (like an untied shoe lace). As I punched, my glove's tail would whip around and slap my brother in the face and make him mad.

Boxing was usually uneventful (minus the loose lace), until the day I went insane. Well, not insane really, but I definitely lost my mind and let instinct completely take over. I feinted with my glove hand and then beautifully punched my older, larger, bigger, stronger, faster, brother, square in the head, with my socked-wrist banded-ace bandaged hand.

I had just broken the complete Rules of Boxing in less than a second.

I was a dead man.

Or boy at least.

My brother, already irritated from being whipped with my glove's loose lace went berserk. The Rules of Boxing no longer applied because I had spectacularly broken them all. He was in hot pursuit to pummel me for my sin. And I, who fully realized the error of my ways but was not about to meet my due punishment, took off.

Now our "L" shaped house had all the bedrooms connected via a hallway in the bottom part of the L. The rest of the house was one large "great" room with furniture (couches) and kitchen cabinets left to define the rest of the rooms. We had been boxing in the "living room" area which was the portion of the great room closest to the bedroom hallway and there was a long couch that defined one side of that area. The couch's backside was set away from the wall several feet so as to form a hallway of sorts leading to the bedroom hall and ending at the bathroom door. My bedroom door was an immediate ninety degree turn to the right from the bathroom door.

My survival instincts told me that I would not win a straight line race with my brother so I went around the couch. Although I was slower, I was also smaller so my cornering ability equalled my brothers. We went back and forth around opposite ends of the couch until his impatience took over and he leaped over the couch to get me.

This was my chance, I broke for the bedroom hallway hoping to gain my bedroom and the relative safety of a locked door. But there wasn't time for the ninety degree turn into my bedroom. I dove into the bathroom straight ahead, slammed the door shut behind me and then rolled and jammed my foot into the crack at the bottom of the door to keep it shut. There wasn't time for the door lock.

I was hoping that a little time would help cool down the fury outside my bathroom haven.

The bathroom door was then broken off its hinges and the door with my brother riding it, landed on top of me.

At that point everything changed. Fury and flight were gone. We were now partners and cohorts because we had just broken the house. We looked at each other and the door and hinges with our minds racing. We finally settled on glue. We filled the formerly door screw occupied holes with Elmer's glue. Tipped the door back upright, shoved the screws back into their places, and shut the door.

There ended up being just enough time between the door being broken and mom or dad returning home for the glue to set. It was amazing, the door actually worked! It did kind of drag along the carpet when opened, but actually functioned.

Huge sigh of relief.

Several months later my mom called to us, "Boys, could you come here? The bathroom door just fell off, and your father and I think you had something to do with it..."

Those Who Live in Glass Houses... Part 3

2007-08-16T13:30:00.000-04:00

The prophetic power of a mothers voice...

Of the sports in which I was a participant, I was without a doubt the most valuable to my teams in soccer. Especially in my grade school years I scored goals, in bunches. I was good.

When you play sports (especially if you have some success) the playing doesn't stop at the official practice field. If it is basketball and you have a hoop at your house you practice shooting, or play one on one or 21 or horse or anything else you can get someone to play with you. If you play baseball, you play catch or pitch to a pitchback or hit something with a bat.

When you play soccer you kick a ball around, a lot. Occasionally you might get someone to kick it back to you but for the most part you end up dribbling a ball around the yard and then kicking it at or through something and imagining it as a goal (the number of balls popped discourages the use of pine trees for goal posts.)

On this particular day I had been in our front yard for a couple of hours kicking the soccer ball. After some time I had exhausted my interest in dribbling and had settled in on kicking the ball in various ways at our front porch. In this case "porch" was a somewhat loose term for a ground level cement walkway that ran along the front of the house from the driveway to the front door. The walkway was overhung by the roof of the house which was supported with four by four posts. The posts were interconnected by a two to three foot high porch "wall" constructed of two by fours. Our living room had a large picture window which looked out over the porch wall and provided a clear view of the Bookcliffs, a unique "Badlands" type rock and dirt ridge that borders Grand Junction to the north. It also provided my mom with a clear view of my soccer skills as she happened to be walking through the living room that day.

She opened the front door and had the audacity to say, "Don't kick the ball against the front porch, you will kick it through the window."

I was outraged. I had been out there "all morning" and had been kicking the ball against the porch for "over an hour." She just didn't know anything.

My conversation with myself continued as I continued kicking the ball at the porch. My practice finally paid off as I kicked a beautiful shot with power and grace that curved just over the top of the porch and crashed spectacularly through the small window immediately to the right of our living room picture window and the ball came to rest in the middle of our living room.

My mother's standing alongside the enumerable ensembles of prophet mothers worldwide was (yet again) confirmed. At least mom hadn't said "you will kick it through the picture window."

Proverbs 1:8 (NIV):
8 Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.

Those who live in Glass Houses... Part 2

2007-08-14T22:30:00.000-04:00

Windows are just smaller doors, children are just smaller people therefore windows are just doors for children, right?

Right...

The stage:

Our house had aluminum frame windows with horizontal sliding panes. Notable was that the window latches were Not located on the sills of the windows, but instead were placed vertically in the middle each window's sliding frame. The window latches were spring type levers which, when the window was closed, had a nose designed to catch on a shallow lip of the stationary window frame to lock the window in place. Normally, opening the window required the latch head to be pressed. This rotated the latch nose over the fixed window frame lip and allowed the window to slide (horizontally) open.

The person:

A supervised child with idle time can be annoying ("are we there yet?" "I'm bored"):

Danger Level "Green"

An unsupervised child with idle time on his hands is dangerous ("Hmmm, what to do?"):

Danger Level "Yellow"

An unsupervised child with time and a defined purpose is about to break something:

Danger Level "Red Alert"

The problem:

Once upon a time, during the days of Jr. High I was a latch key kid. I had the world (or a least a key) on a string. This string was worn around my neck and allowed entry into our house when the school bus deposited me at home after school.

One day, I exited the school bus only to discover that I had forgotten my string! My brother was working out at the high school gym and my parents would be at work for another hour or two. As I stood at the doorway and thought about my plight the Danger Level went from Yellow to Red Alert. I determined that I was not going to just hang out by the house until someone with a key rescued me; I was getting into that house and I had a couple hours on my hands to do it.

The Plan:

I cased the house. The back door was locked as well. None of the windows appeared to have been left open. Ok, now what... Hmmm. The light bulb went off in my head. My brother and I had previously discovered an important feature of our home's aluminum windows: they (at least some of the taller ones) could be opened from outside. The highly technical procedure involved carefully applied pressure on the window frame, just opposite the latch. If done correctly, and with a little luck, the movable window frame would bow in just enough to release the latch nose from the window frame lip and the window could then be slid open.

The precursor to the outside motivated window opening procedure was taking the screen off the window. The window screens on our house were held in by metal spring loops that hung on tenaciously when attempting to remove the window screens. The numerous, creatively non-square screens to be seen around our house bore testimony to our initial attempts at this non-normal window opening technique. The bent screens were also the visible reminder that this external window opening procedure was as strictly forbidden as our beach ball wiffle bat game in the sun room.

The red flags slid by my conscience, I was now in the heat of my plan and paid no attention to sense or consequences. I was scouting for likely windows when my eye saw the orchard ladder leaning to the side of a kitchen window. Ah, that was the one. It wasn't a short window over a sink, it was for the kitchen eating area and was one of the taller windows in the house.

The Predicament:

I removed the screen (already bent so nobody would notice the extra damage) and mounted the ladder. I leaned far over to my right and pushed with the precise amount of force needed to release the window latch.

That also happened to be the precise amount of force needed to unbalance the ladder. The ladder suddenly shifted and tilted. My precarious balance was violently lost and I was thrown forward into and through the window I was attempting to open. Gravity and the ladder propelled me in a forward turn and my right shoulder and side went through the window and as I fell I completed my turn and landed completely inside the house flat on my back on top of the kitchen table with the majority of the window in large shards flat beneath me.

After the adrenaline rushing through my body calmed to a small avalanche, I, violently trembling, got off the table and began picking up the glass shards and putting them in the garbage. My heart then jumped out of my chest at the sudden sound of the front door opening. And I watched my brother walk in the door.

He evidently didn't stay after school to work out that afternoon.

The Postlude:

My father stated afterward that, when he heard what had happened, the only thoughts that had gone through his mind were utter relief and astonishment that I hadn't been cut in half. Looking at the setting, there was not much room for forward momentum. The ladder was flat against the side of the house and I was leaning far out to my right. Truly, gravity and all should have pulled me down on top of the remaining jagged shards sticking up from the bottom of the broken window frame like a glass saw. But instead I was propelled completely through the opening (body, legs, feet and all) and ended up without any significant cuts or injuries that I can remember.

His and my belief was that God had other plans for me and, however it was accomplished, God saved me from myself on that day.

His mercies are new every morning (or afternoon).

Lamentations 3:22 &23 (NIV)
22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Those who live in Glass Houses... Part 1

2007-08-05T17:00:00.000-04:00

So in my late grade school early Jr. High life we had moved to Grand Junction Colorado and lived in a house with a peach orchard. And my brother and I spent much of our time outside working in the orchard and doing outdoor kinds activities.
But there was also the house. Houses are very interesting edifices. Beginning with concrete and various sizes and flavours of wood and continuing with siding, sheet rock, roofing, wiring, plumbing there's a lot that goes into a house. Oh, and windows, houses have many windows.
Ah, windows. Windows tend to be an afterthought. They are pretty much ignored unless they are dirty, or open when they shouldn't be, or if you are the decorator type and enjoy curtains and blinds and that sort of thing. Or when they are broken, windows are definitely noticed when they are broken.
Broken windows are a pane.
In the life of most houses, the broken window is a very occasional nuisance. Unless some sort of natural disaster strikes (earthquake, hurricane, tornado, etc.) most home windows remain in a relative state of unbrokenness for the life of the house.
Our particular house had lived a life of ease as a single story "L" shaped ranch for years.
Then came the "sun room."
My mom loves plants, and to encourage our family botanist my dad had a sun room built that filled in a portion of the open "L" in our house. It had large slanting floor to ceiling windows making up the south wall, and those adjustable louvre type crank open windows on the east side. Our current house provided the other walls of the room, which included sliding glass doors from the master bedroom which opened into the sun room. It was a room designed for letting in light to grow plants. It contained of a large quantity of glass.
It was also large, square and empty when it was finished. A large empty square space that was begging to be used. My brother and I answered "the call of the room" with "the game." "The game" consisted of two wiffle ball bats and a beach ball. "The game" was beautiful, simple, and we were addicted to it. He had a wall. I had a wall. If the beach ball contacted his wall I got a point, if the beach ball touched my wall he got a point. The beach ball was motivated by the wiffle ball bats. Bats which we held securely in our hands and which were swung with great control and efficiency.
"Held securely", "great control"... any reasonable person should understand the complete care we were taking right? Well mom and dad didn't understand. They forbade us to play this game - when they found out what we were doing. They just didn't understand.
We took this prohibition to be more like guidelines that meant that we weren't to play this when they were present or might find out that we were playing it.
One afternoon we were playing "the game" when my brother's bat swung in a high graceful arc and smashed through one of the two clear glass globe light fixtures which illuminated the room when the sun wasn't shining.
Great.
We cleaned up the pieces and shards. And then in true fool sharpening fool logic we decided that since we had already broken something we might as well continue playing and get all the enjoyment we could, because once dad came home dire consequences would happed and "the game' would truly be all over.
So, we continued playing. And a second graceful arc and the second light were obliterated and cleaned up. And then at the height of excitement the bat left my brother's secure grip at a high rate of speed and when through one of the louvred window panes.

I guess we better call dad.

Dad: "So you were playing the game that we expressly forbid you to play?"
Brother: "Yes"
Dad: "And you broke a light?"
Brother: "Yes"
Dad: "Then you continued playing until you broke another light"
Brother: "Yes"
Dad: "Then you continued playing until you broke a window?"
Brother: "That about sums it up"

My brother puts his hand over the mouthpiece and says with a frantic loud whisper, "He's not saying anything!"

Needless to say dad did come home, consequences were meeted out, and we never played "the game" again. But it is a vivid living example to myself of how sin and foolishness is perpetuated:

1. We don't take God at His word (Thou shalt not, truely means don't -ever- do it)
2. We practice deception (if people don't see me do it, it is Ok to do it)
3. Instead of confessing our sin immediately, we just keep doing it

Proverbs 13:20(NIV):
20 He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm
Proverbs 26:11(NIV):
11 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.

Peaches & Procrastination: A Tale of Two Fools

2007-08-02T16:00:00.000-04:00

The summer before fifth grade my family moved to Grand Junction Colorado.

Grand Junction was so named because it is situated at the joining of the Grand (now called the Colorado) and the Gunnison Rivers on what is known as the Western Slope of Colorado.

The area is dominated by the Grand Mesa directly to the East which rises 5500 feet over Grand Junction itself and is the largest flat topped mountain in the world.

The valley itself is a "high desert" about 4500 feet above sea level. The area is home to many orchards.

Begin orchestral music...

Our family bought a house on eight acres in the Orchard Mesa region of the valley with a beautiful view of the Grand Mesa. An orchard occupied around half the property and the vast majority of that orchard was peaches.

I love peaches. And peaches ripe off the tree taste like nothing else on earth. The fresh sweet juiciness contained in a peach, just plucked golden and red off the tree, is something that refreshes my soul...

Orchestral music now interrupted by the sound of a detonating bomb...

Our move to the orchard wasn't about the taste of a peach, the high desert air or a beautiful mountain view.

My father bought an orchard to teach his boys how to work.

And an orchard requires (a lot of) work, which was my dad's whole insidious idea. So to paraphrase Dr. Seuss: someone, Someone was going to have to do all this work, so my dad picked out two someones: my brother and me.

The work began slowly while school was in session. We would have evening and weekend tasks in the orchard: helping to fertilize, prune, and plant and general cleanup.

But when summer came around the Work part of the tasks truly kicked into gear.

And by far the worst orchard Work was thinning peaches.

Peach trees often produce clusters of peaches all touching each other. Left to mature, those clusters will form conjoined small unappetizing bumpy masses of a fruit like substance covered in peach fuzz. In order to get large, round, fully fleshed peaches the extra peaches on the tree must be removed so that there is space for each remaining peach to grow individually (no clusters.) The extraneous peach removal process is called thinning.

There are several thinning methods that are be utilized on fruit trees in general. Among these are spraying the budding trees with a chemical that reduces the number of flowers that form and mechanical thinning in which trees are shook or otherwise manipulated by mechanized contraptions to get rid of the extra fruit. Peaches must be, for the most part, hand thinned. Somebody going tree by tree by tree, branch by branch, limb by limb, peach by peach and individually, with your hands, picking off the clustered peaches.

Hand thinning is a lot of work. Especially when you aren't talking about one or two trees, but hundreds.

When the peaches have grown to roughly the size of a ripe peach's pit, it is thinning time! This also just happens to correspond to the time when the temperature in Grand Junction begins to reflect its desert habitat. And it is All desert.

My brother and I had clearly laid out instructions during the summer. Before dad came home from work (around five in the afternoon) we had to have finished all our chores. Not very complicated, pretty simple, not much left to interpret. During peach thinning "season" our main task was to thin two rows of peach trees a day (something like forty trees.)

Depending on our industriousness this task would take somewhere between two to three hours (although my memory is a little fuzzy on that fact). The mornings are also much cooler then mid afternoon, and so if we got right to it we should be done by about ten to eleven in the morning before the heat of the day was upon us.

We rarely -if ever- got right to it.

We played. We played ping pong, we played basketball, we drove the tractor around, we explored the dirt cliffs overlooking the Colorado River, we built tree houses, you name it - we did it, all before about 2 to 3 in the afternoon. At that point an adrenaline alarm would go off in our bodies. We would look at each other and realize that "Dad was coming home" and rush out to the orchard. We would frantically thin peaches, in the heat of the day (peach fuzz sticks amazingly well to sweaty boys), and typically get done just before dad returned home.

There was one "helper" in our thinning. It was a long pole topped with a heavy rubber half hooked knob. It was used to (gently) tap peach clusters that were out of reach. Done with some skill and patience one could properly thin those out of reach clusters about half the time. The other half would result in knocking all the clustered peaches off the tree. So the knocker was only to be used for "out of reach" clusters.

One summer's day, around noon we received a call from friends with an offer to go water skiing that afternoon.

Water skiing, hmmm, it's hot, really hot, playing in the water, water skiing, hmmm.

One catch: they would need to pick us up in a half hour. We hadn't done any thinning yet. We looked at one another and the industrial engines of our minds began to work. We said, "yes" to the skiing invitation and then rushed to the back shed.

Taking the rubber knocking pole as inspiration, we decided that we would use our own mechanical contraptions to compress our thinning time from two to three hours down to twenty minutes. We deconstructed an old bicycle pump and from it got the T handle with its attached metal piston rod (a Double Ended Knocker!) and got a nine iron out of the golf bag.

We ran to the orchard and thinned those trees in twenty minutes. We finished on time, caught our ride to the lake, and spent the afternoon in watery bliss, absolutely amazed with our inventive genius.

When we came home, dad was standing in the doorway. . . Dad never stood in the doorway.

We looked at each other in great puzzlement. "What do you think is going on with dad?" "I dunno." Dad looked at us in supremely evident fatherly frustration and said, "Gentlemen, let's go out to the orchard."

He took us to the rows of peaches we had just "thinned" that day. Summer evening sunlight softly illuminated utter devastation. We had industriously defoliated all of our assigned rows of peach trees. Broken branches either lay on the ground or hung still half attached to the trees. Nearly all the peaches and over half the leaves from those trees had be removed. Half peaches were clinging to the trees (miss-hits from the nine iron). Dad was speechless for a time (and didn't really need any speeches, our day's work spoke too well for itself).

We were marched back to the house and consequences were measured out that I don't even remember. But I will always remember our astonishment at the damage we had done, the disappointment in my father's countenance, and the realization that actions have consequences.

Proverbs 12 (NIV):
15 The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.

Proverbs 17 (NIV):
21 To have a fool for a son brings grief; there is no joy for the father of a fool.

That day my brother and I were fools, and there was no joy in my father.

"State Swim Meet" & "People Actually Read Blogs"

2007-07-31T16:30:00.000-04:00

I now must succumb to the weight of the evidence: People are actually reading this blog! My dad talked with me about a couple of things I wrote. I've gotten emails about posts, and people have commented online and in person about them. The evidence is now overwhelming - I'm under surveillance.

It's not a bad thing, it just shovels me from the study and out into the living room as it were. It is truly odd to me that "people" would actually read my random thoughts and seem to enjoy them and/or get something worthwhile out of them. This currently is for me writing practice. So, to all you "people" out there reading this, you are seeing my infant steps in attempting to write.

Anyway, onto this weekend, the Alabama Recreation state swimming meet:

We were up at 4:00AM (which is even earlier than 4:45AM) and succeeded in leaving the house before 5:00AM. This was after 4:45AM, but better than usual for us in getting our clan going. (Our extraordinary momentum actually carried into Sunday when we appeared at church BEFORE the service started!)

Anyway...

At our breakfast /change-from-pajamas-into-Flying-Fish pit stop (one and a half hours later) a crisis ignited: A swimming suit had been forgotten! When you are going to a swimming meet how on earth can a swimming suit be forgotten? There was impending hysteria, voices shrilled, tempers ruffled - and then someone actually looked into the swim bag. There was the forgotten swimsuit - right alongside all the other swimming suits. Fuse extinguished, bomb defused and calm returned with all Flying Fish suited, seated and belted into the van. We were back cruising down the road, and I was left to peacefully enjoy my bacon egg and cheese biscuits. (Which are one of life's simple pleasures.)

In less than the Google Maps allotted two hours and thirty eight minutes we arrived at the state swim meet site. We did end up turning left at the next stoplight after a Wal-Mart to get to the swimming complex. Our one-of-hundreds carbon copy blue accordion style awning was unfurled on the rec-center front lawn, and the girls were in warm-ups with time to spare.

The swimming went well, our almost toddler even took a abbreviated nap in the organized chaos of 1000+ swimmers and their entourages (families, friends and coaches) entering and exiting the pool area. When our imminent toddler awoke on the wrong side of the crib, our family went into action to see/photograph/video our two swimmers' medley relay races.

A glimpse at this finely trained process (it is a fine art:)

First, the responsibilities must be divided: my wife got the 'still' camera and went to organize (corral) one of the relay teams, my daughter gathered the crawler and I got the video camera and my walking enabled son.

Check.

Second, a prime viewing position must be secured: My wife had this easy(er) because she was with a relay team itself and would end up poolside with that team and therefore obtain a prime position. I however had to wind my daughter (holding the cranky pending toddler), my son and myself upstream against the flow of humidified, hot, and ill humored people and into a place on the pool deck to where we thought we might be able to view our swimmers' events. The poolside was lined in solid entourage three to four people deep, so we positioned ourselves behind our targeted spot a few events early and waited. As each event concluded the people in front would reach their undesired heat and humidity levels and exit their spot. And like a spring loaded snack machine the remaining entourage would scoot forward toward the pool to see their swimmers churn up the water. When our daughters' medley relays were on deck, all the snacks before us had been bought, so we were at the crowd control rope surrounding the poolside and at our targeted spot.

Check

Finally, you must be prepared for the moment with the picture equipment on and ready for action: I had exchanged the video camera for the short napped wrong side of the crib looming toddler from my daughter. He doesn't understand the screaming, whistling and yelling that the collective entourage engages in while their swimmers are in the pool. His problem is this: Why are people making loud noises to a swimmer with his or her head in the water doing repetitive (loud) water splashing/churning motions and sporting a rubber cap which covers his or her ears? The swimmer hears foaming splashing water. This frustrated our pre-toddler to no end. He let his frustration get the better of his self control and joined in the yelling himself. My daughter politely asked me if I could take him and she would kindly hold the video camera until our relays came up, because, "he's too heavy for me to hold for a long time." When the time came the child and video equipment were professionally swapped back. I turned on the camera, eventually took the lens cap off, and focused on the far side of the pool.

Check.

Everything went as planned. Fine, expertly amateur video was taken of the first relay and I was happy. BUT, I had failed to take into account the lane location of the second relay. I couldn't even see my swimmer getting ready from my current "prime" location. I rushed (OK edged, excuse me? Pardon me, I'm sorry, excuse me, Excuse me,....) to where I might be able to see her. There was a lifeguard stand and many layers of entourage all enthroned there and no one was going anywhere. What to do? I wedged myself (pardon me, Excuse me, excuse me...) under the lifeguard stand. Well, sort of wedged. There was someone already seated under the stand. I hunched under the lifeguard stand, leaned over the seated person and tried to fit the camera through the stand's steps, between the lifeguard's feet, and shoot video of the relay between the coaches and other swimmers on the pools edge. Oh well.

Overall the state swim meet was enjoyable, eventful and hot.

We all got Sonic cream pie shakes or ice cream "Blasts" at the end of each of the two days.

There was an 11th place, a 12th place, a 19th place, two 5th places and some other place I don't remember.

Our almost toddler was very grateful to finally sleep in a cool, quiet, undisturbed bed.

So was I.

Preparing to travel to State swim meet

2007-07-26T13:36:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow morning at 4:45AM my family and I get to load into the van and travel up to Madison Alabama for the state summer swim meet. One daughter will be swimming in two individual events, both she and another daughter will each be in two relays, and my other other daughter will be there to support the first two. She (the other other) is also an alternate relay swimmer ready to swim in case any relay members in her age group are unable to go.

4:45 is early.

I got to use window paint for the first time to decorate the Van windows for the occasion.

Window paint markers are rather frustrating to use for the somewhat artistically inclined. The markers are sized like some of those super sized 'sharpie' markers, but with a big sponge on the end about the diameter of a quarter and about a half inch thick. This should make someone realize that 'fine' details are not a great option when 'drawing' with these markers. The markers also don't dry very quickly. They even come with specific instructions that say "if you are using more than one color, wait for the first color to dry completely before applying second color."

Nothing drys completely in Alabama, (unless you are very patient, sometimes.)

So... if you are artistically inclined, attempt putting some fine details in anyway, and are impatient... You end up with drippy, sloppy, run together paintings on your van windows that your kids love, your wife's happy with, and I cringe at whenever I look at them.

Oh well. By the way, yellow and blue make green.

4:45 is very early

Madison is right next to Huntsville (actually left next to).
I am sure I will be turning by a Wal-Mart to get there.

Musings on Shyness and Freedom

2007-07-25T12:40:00.000-04:00

Growing up I was 'shy.'

Not just the garden variety, uh oh, here's a new person I'm going to look down and hide behind mom's skirt for a few minutes 'shy.' I was the wedge myself in the tiny gap behind the refrigerator for an hour until everyone goes away 'shy.'

In complete contrast was my older brother who was outrageously gregarious. When people were around him they were whisked into his world of jokes and tales and laughter. People were drawn like a magnet into his charismatic universe. While I hid, by myself, in my very private world, occasionally taking part in the periphery of the activities that orbited my brothers world.

At times I enjoyed my lot. I could build and play and create for hours on my own and not be bothered. And I became good at the things I did on my own: I got prizes and ribbons for schoolwork and music and art. For the most part all of them solitary activities.

But as time went on, I stopped enjoying my quiet life and began to just feel lonely.

And I began to realize that my 'shyness' was an all encompassing wall. Not only did I not talk with people I didn't know, but even when I was with 'friends' I hardly ever talked about what I felt about something. It was OK to talk academically and debate theories or ideas, but if a question became personal (i.e. "Rob, do you like her?") I clammed up tighter than a toddler on his mother's leg who's not wanting to go in the nursery.

It interesting that in book of Proverbs it states:

Proverbs 17:28 (NIV):
28 Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.

I have heard that verse most often used to encourage people with little self control on what they say to hold their tongues and be thought the wiser for it. But in my case that verse was a description of me: I was a foolish person who was thought wise because I didn't speak.

I was afraid: afraid of being embarrassed, afraid of saying something I didn't mean exactly and being unreasonably held to it, afraid of being laughed at and afraid of being the back end of jokes. I felt that if I laid my life out and people rejected me it would hurt (more.)

And I was right. It does hurt when people reject you and when you really opened up your heart. It does hurt to be on the wrong end of a joke. It does hurt to be held to something you didn't mean, and it is, well, embarrassing to be embarrassed.

But I began to learn that if you don't talk about what you think, what you feel and about who you are then nobody can accept you when you do lay your heart open. No one can laugh with you when when you've done something funny. No one can take the time to have a conversation with you about what you really meant. And no one can show love and friendship to you in your times of embarrassment.

There's a balance.

Ecclesiastes 3(NIV)
1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
. . .
7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,

We don't have to share all things at all times with all people. But if you don't share your life and thoughts and experiences (the good the bad and the ugly) no one can get to know you.

And when I have talked and shared my life with people, God has shown me freedom. Freedom to know people, freedom to agree with people, freedom to disagree with people and freedom to learn about God and the people He created outside the walls of my own very private world. Perfect Love casts out fear. Not sharing my life because of fear was a terribly lonely way to live.

P.S. Those 'most embarrassing' circumstances of your life, that you wouldn't want anyone to know about, those end up being the stories that encourage others around you the most.

Bitterness gets you Wet & Splashes others as well

2007-07-24T12:59:00.000-04:00

One of my daughters and I were conversing the other day (the exact incident escapes me) about an altercation between her and 'someone.' She was not happy, upset, in some state of (self) righteous indignation, and her countenance was showing it.
Our talk and her attitude brought to mind a most 'humbling' episode in my childhood.
The exact incident occurring at that time escapes me as well, but I was mad, upset, in a serious state of self-righteous indignation and my countenance was showing it.
It had something to do with my brother (its amazing what siblings can bring out in us).
He's three and a half years older than me. At the time I was all of five years old, so he was between eight or nine.
I remember stewing over the forgotten incident and nursing my grudge. I thought about it and fed it the table scraps of my self serving justifications for having it.
I worked it.
Pretty soon I just 'couldn't' keep the grudge inside and I was going to let 'everyone' know about it, right then.
Only problem was I couldn't find anyone.
I started a search through our house to find 'everyone' and finally located my mom and brother in the hall bathroom. They were standing and talking about something unimportant.
I marched into that little room with all the pomp and swagger my five year old body could muster. My pious grudge was oozing out of my pores.
And 'everyone' was still not paying me any attention!
So I pulled my body up as high as I could, in the efforts to make the loudest thump possible in sitting down on the only bathroom seat available... and promptly set myself down completely into the open toilet, feet in the air, knees to chest: five year old boy dunking himself in the toilet.
I had definitely made an impression! They immediately burst out laughing and couldn't stop.
My grudge and bitterness were immediately swallowed in a toilet of complete humiliation.
There is no dignified way to recover from that circumstance.
As I told my daughter, bitterness always hurts the one who is holding it inside. Sure, the bitter person (as a result of their attitude) tends to lash out against those around them. But the bitter person has to live with their own bitterness all the time.

In other words: Bitterness will get you all wet, and will splash those around you as well. (The closer you are the more splashes you get)

In Ephesians 4 (NIV) we see the following admonition:

31Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

I, personally, need to be reminded of this all the time.

Daddy's making dinner tonight!

2007-07-23T13:04:00.000-04:00

Yesterday afternoon my wife was invited to a 'Tea' from mid afternoon till sometime 'later' in the day. This meant, among other things, that I would probably be producing dinner (supper) for my children...

My wife came back 'later' and as we were catching up on the day she was relating to me some of the topics the had come up at the Tea. A main point of discussion was the art of homemaking. Among the homemaking topics was (as best as I can relate it) how the making of meals has ceased to be an art designed to foster a special family time, and instead meals have become just a quick pit stop to get food in the gullet so we can get on with the next thing.

And although this topic was meant as a challenge for older women skilled in the Art of mealtime to help train and inspire younger women in this Art, it -for this evening- brought into stark contrast the difference between daddy (me) preparing a meal for our family and mommy (my wife).

Forethought (planning) I am sure is a big part of creating special, memorable family meals:

While playing a game with my older girls yesterday, I looked up at the clock and thought, "Wow, its 5:30. I wonder what's for dinner?" "Oh, yeah I'm the answer to that question. Right, so... self, what's for dinner?"

I quickly put together a meal plan:

"Girls, when we finish this game I need you to come with me to the kitchen and help figure out what we have that I can make for dinner."

That was a loaded statement. First I recruited help from the only people present who might actually know what food we have and where that food might be located in the kitchen. Second, I severely qualified (OK, limited) the food choices by saying that it needed to be something that I could make for dinner.

My oldest daughter recognized their plight, opened the pantry door, saw the 'just add water' pancake mix, figured I could probably handle a recipe with just two ingredients, and said, " Daddy, could we have pancakes for dinner?"

I know that nutrition should also be an important part of a meal planning:

I found chocolate chips to add to the pancakes, and stated that we were also going to have eggs with them. (protein with the carbohydrates right?) My daughter slowly said, "OK, we can have eggs but only if you let me cook them daddy." I am not even to be trusted to scramble eggs. I was asked to actually mix the eggs and milk together for the scrambled eggs. It's that actual art of scrambling the eggs in the pan that I am not to be trusted with. I didn't realize you could mess up scrambled eggs.

Conversation is also a part of a special meal:

I said, "Go find a movie that you can all understand." Translation, something our 5 year and 2 year old can mostly enjoy. What ensued was five heads craning their necks to see the movie and paying no attention to their food, and me saying "eat your food, eat your food, eat your food, eat your food..." One child literally fell off their seat twice - couldn't chew food, sit on a chair and watch a movie at the same time. The second fall included knocking two drinks off the table and onto the floor.

Just as my wife wife returned from her Tea, one child greeted her, turned to watch the movie again and caught the dinner plate with an elbow.

My wife looked at me and said "So who's idea was the movie?"

My wife had a lovely Tea talking with ladies about homemaking and the art of mealtimes, and ended her day picking up a shards of broken plate and mopping up syrupy pancakes and well scrambled eggs off the floor, while repeatedly telling everyone not to walk in the kitchen in their bare feet, this included me.

I am truly blessed to have married someone who knows and practices the Art of mealtimes and homemaking.

I am skilled in the art of infamous mealtimes.

Anyone want to learn how?

A musing on Sports and Physical Competition

2007-07-20T16:38:00.000-04:00

Sports and other physical games are something that I threw myself into growing up and still enjoy when the opportunity is availed to me. On some levels I would even have been considered to be a 'successful' athlete - meaning I won races or was the best player on a team and scored numerous runs or goals. On many (most) other levels I sweated through practices and then used the gravitational force exerted upon my body to ensure the bench was secured to the floor.
My skills in various sports have run the gamut from 'good' to 'OK' to 'he tries hard.' As years went by my athletic prowess has settled upon the 'trying hard' side of the spectrum. I have at various levels played or competed in baseball, football, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, rugby, volleyball, and tennis and golf. Although tennis and golf have been strictly recreational with no real coaching - as any of my intermittent golfing scores would certainly attest.

My oldest girls are currently involved in competitive swimming. This past weekend I watched them compete in a state district swim meet. It is a study in contrasts to watch them and cheer them on. One started swimming later, isn't particularly gifted as an athlete, has worked hard, is lowering her times at every meet, but is not close to competing for any ribbons. She's a 'tries hard' swimmer. Another daughter started swimming earlier, has talent as an athlete, has also worked hard and has a general succession of second, third, fifth and occasional blue ribbons to show for her efforts. She's considered to be a 'good' swimmer.

So who's the success? Can someone who 'tries hard' but never wins (or is never even competitive) be considered successful? Does competing and then winning equal Success? What about winning with a haughty attitude. What about winning on talent, but not working hard in practice, and ignoring your coaches.

And does any of this really matter?

The Bible says physical training in considered to be of 'some value:'
1 Tim. 4 (NIV)

7Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. 8For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

The Bible also talks about a Christians body being the temple of the Holy Spirit; therefore we should live in such a way as to honor God with our bodies:

1 Cor. 6(NIV)

19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

The Bible even references a running race - but only as a example of how we should live in regards to God - we should live lives of discipline and purpose in order to not be disqualified:

1 Cor. 9 (NIV)
24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

I look at some of my own responses:

Watching the marathon runner in the Olympics who is hours behind all the other contenders, stumbles into the stadium, is cramping and staggering around the track and then collapsing on the ground and the finish. He didn't win, he wasn't even competitive, but he kept going and he finished. I find myself willing that person on, cheering with the people in the stadium and feeling that person won more than the person who won.

But that is only part of the story: If that marathon runner knew he was going to be in the race but didn't train diligently, then he didn't prepare his body for the event. And then I think that my feelings of success for that runner would have been misplaced. That person created their physical and emotional breakdown and didn't train to win. It's commendable that the runner kept at it and finished but I am not sure I should consider that to be a success.

Another aspect: I enjoy watching team sports. In particular the Denver Broncos football team (having grown up in Colorado.) When I have the chance to watch them play, I will be 'in' the game with a capital N. I am 'Up' when they win and 'down' when they lose.

But for all the enjoyment I may feel in watching my team play and win, again what is success? For the most part when 'big time' athletes win these days, they strut, they're loud and they're proud. They may have won the game, but I cannot consider that to be a success if brashness, pride and haughtiness is what they represent. And I think that my feelings of success for 'my' team are misplaced if those attributes best describe their game.

As a conclusion: The second part of the 1 Timothy passage is what I tend to overlook:

1 Tim. 4 (NIV)
8For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. 7Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.

In whatever I am doing, am I learning, teaching, and/or being trained in godliness? Are my children in their swimming learning and displaying Godly character? Am I concerned about my children winning or am I concerned that they are being obedient to their coaches and showing love, patience and faithfulness to their teammates and being diligent in their training. Am I, when I play volleyball, displaying joy and goodness? These are what should define what success is in these sporting activities.

Gal. 5 (NIV)
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

I think sports and physical games can be a wonderful training ground for learning and demonstrating the many fruits of the Spirit. But sports can also be a breeding ground for conceit, envy and a spirit that causes us to provoke others. For myself I need to be aware and watchful to nurture the fruits of the Spirit in myself and my family.