The Gang's All Here—Oh, No!

Though you’d never know it by our schizophrenic Colorado weather, summer has arrived here at our house. The field days, classroom parties, and nonstop activity of the past two weeks have given way to lazy mornings and the unending search for something to do. I’ve heard that boredom is a child’s best friend. It’s when they’re bored that they write, draw, imagine, create. I love this idea in theory, but in my experience, it’s also when they fight.

If it didn’t require potty-training a toddler or breaking up fights between hair-pulling siblings, parenting would be pure joy. But the incessant bickering, blaming, poking, tattling, squabbling, and screeching wears me down. A child’s home may be the laboratory in which they learn to get along with others and resolve conflict, but we’re one stolen Lego away from thermonuclear meltdown. And I’m the mad scientist running around with all sorts of theories and formulas trying to make order out of this chaos.

This summer, I vow to turn the corner. This is the summer that will be different, the one the kids will remember, for better or for worse. We will learn to harness all that energy for good instead of evil, getting over ourselves in pursuit of loving and serving others. We will work as a team, realizing and applauding each other’s unique contributions. Brooka’s older siblings will see her friendliness as a gift instead of a constant embarrassment. The girls will see Braden’s need for structure as useful instead of bossy and confining. Addison, the middle child who fights in both directions, will somehow be the glue that holds us all together.

And by the end of the summer, maybe that toddler will have potty-trained herself.

A mom can always hope.

Obedience

In Crazy Love, Francis Chan tells the story of a friend of his who was speaking at a church. Afterward, a guy came up and told the speaker, “I’d go serve God as a missionary overseas, but honestly, right now, I’d only be doing it out of obedience.” His friend’s response? “Yes, so . . .?”

I totally relate to this would-be missionary. God’s been showing me pretty clearly how He feels about the poor and that I need to be part of the solution to their plight. You could say that’s a “calling.” But it’s not like I’m suddenly real comfortable with people who are a lot different from me. Or that I’m excited to spend my days in a neighborhood that seems worlds away from my own. (In reality, they’re about ten miles apart.) I don’t necessarily feel a surge of love for the poor. I’m pretty sure if I took one of those nifty five-minute “Identify Your Spiritual Gifts” tests on the Internet, mercy would still be sitting at the bottom of my list. I wish I could say my Republican-leaning heart has totally changed. It has, a little. But it’s not my heart that’s propelling me to action. It’s simple obedience.

Chan writes: “Jesus said, ‘If you love me, you will obey what I command’ (John 14:15). Jesus did not say, ‘If you love me, you will obey me when you feel called or good about doing so.’ If we love, then we obey. Period.”

Just recently, our family has been challenged with some practical opportunities to serve the poor. None of them is something I would choose. They’re inconvenient and costly. They make us uncomfortable. They come at a time when we’re trying to sell our house and I’m trying to finish up a book project. They interfere with the baby’s nap.

Yes, so . . . ?

I initially responded by trying to rationalize my way out of them. I didn’t get very far on that road before Obedience stepped in. So we act—not out of passionate calling or great love and compassion for the poor, as much as I wish I could say that’s what it is—but out of obedience. And my hunch is that feelings really do follow actions. I’ll let you know.

Finding Time

Time management is not my strongest skill. As I fall into bed every night, my ears ring with Annie Dillard’s famous quote: “How you spend your days is how you spend your life.” It’s a little depressing to think I’m spending my life folding clothes, giving baths, and watching American Idol.

The sermon I heard this weekend provided some good perspective. The Greek language has two types of “time.” One is chronos, meaning calendar-type time, and the other is kairos, meaning seasonal-type of time. (OK, you throngs of Greek scholars reading this will know that’s Greek for preschoolers, but since I spend all my time with preschoolers, you shouldn’t expect anything more from me.) It’s a 21st-century western-culture phenomenon that we spend more time planning the hours of our lives than the seasons of our lives. But the pastor encouraged us to take a step back from our DayTimers and consider how to use our time at this particular season of life.

My season is easily defined: young kids and transition. So the question becomes, how do I honor God, worship Him with my whole life, in the little-kid season of life? That one’s pretty easy for me. Ten years spent hanging out in Kidville have taught me a thing or two, and it’s not hard to see that introducing new God-honoring, God-worshiping, God-serving adults into the world is pretty significant, not to mention time-consuming.

The transition phase—complete with words like “wait,” “sit,” and “trust”—is harder. What does worshiping God look like here? Yeah, probably a lot of waiting, sitting, and trusting—only without the grumbling.

The speaker also talked about putting the “big rocks” in the jar first, because if you first fill it with sand and pebbles, the big important rocks can’t squeeze in. I’m challenged to figure out what the big rocks of my life are—both ideally (what I want them to be) and realistically (what they actually are). If you followed me around for a week, you might think my big rocks are reading People magazine, picking up toys, and standing at the counter grazing on whatever food remnants happen to be there. But you’d also see some Bible reading, journaling, relationship-building, exercising, and a whole lot of kid-cuddling. A transition season is a good time to figure out this big-rock business.

I’ve got a lot of work to do. Better manage my time well.

True Confessions about Germs

I was sliding my toddler into a restaurant high chair the other day when one of the women I was with offered me hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes. I shrugged and said, “Nah, I don’t pay much attention to germs.” You would have thought I’d said I don’t pay attention to my children. Or my weight. The preschool moms all looked at me like I was a public menace.

I use public restrooms without a thought. I take my children to the McDonald’s play area in January. I freely share lipstick and group desserts. I’m not even remotely concerned about the Swine Flu. Is there something wrong with me—or is it everyone else?

I have several close friends who are germophobes. One has teenage children who have still never seen the inside of a public restroom. I once used 17 public toilets in less than 36 hours—while pregnant. Another friend travels to hotels with her own sheets and once rode a motorcycle from Las Vegas to Moab with a bottle of Clorox between her knees. She knew she’d need it eventually. I jump into hotel sheets thinking, “Cool! This is probably the cleanest bed I’ve slept in all year!”

It’s not that I enjoy contact with other people’s bodily fluids; I really just don’t think about it. And it’s not that I’m an unclean person. I get grouchy without a daily shower and find it hard to function without clean hair. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get worked up over germs. I have learned to fake it, however, in order to find my place in this germophobic world and avoid being ostracized by preschool moms everywhere.

I feel comfortable gauging one’s stance on germs strictly by the number of children they have. Two or especially one: CODE RED! Feign germ concern. Bring out that rarely-used bottle of hand sanitizer. Inactivate the three-second rule. (These are also the people with which you do not send your four-year-old to the bathroom with her seven-year-old sister. Under Code Red protocol, you must accompany them yourself.) Three kids: Code orange. It could go either way, so best to play it safe. Avoid overt offenses such as sharing utensils or crawling on the floor. Four or more kids: No code necessary. If you manage to get out of the place without leaving anyone behind, who cares if they took a few extra germs with them?

Admirer or Follower?

I listened to a message awhile back that described the difference between being an admirer and a follower. Michael Phelps has a lot of admirers—people who follow his swimming career, root for him in the Olympics, buy his book that will inevitably appear in stores one day. But a follower of Michael Phelps—someone who wants to be just like Michael Phelps—gets up at 5 seven mornings a week to train in the pool. They spend more time in the pool than with their family and friends. They learn every detail of Phelps’s training routine and rigidly follow it. The gap between admiring and following, simply put, is commitment, and putting action behind that commitment.

Another word for “follower” is “disciple.” Francis Chan writes in Crazy Love, “The last thing Jesus told us was to go into the world and make disciples, teaching them to obey all He commanded. He didn’t add, ‘But hey, if that’s too much to ask, tell them just to become Christians—you know, the people who get to go to heaven without having to commit to anything.’”

I’ve been a “Christian” all my life (and the “born again” variety since I was 10), but it's taken me awhile to comprehend the depth of this whole “follower” thing. Following costs. It costs control, security, comfort—and other things I’m quite chummy with. Jesus says, “Pick up your cross and follow me.” I wish it were something more fun—like “Pick up your new Nike running shoes” or your “sweet silver convertible,” but it’s not. It’s a cross. In other words, it’s hard. But the longer I live, I see that control is highly overrated, security is an illusion, and comfort gets boring after awhile. Instead of being bummed about the hardship of wholehearted discipleship, I’m pretty stoked about the commitment of it.

When you’re following Jesus with complete commitment, the way He requires, your life becomes an object of little concern. (I’m paraphrasing author Dallas Willard there.) What a radical concept! My Big Important Life? An object of little concern? What a relief.

When I’m focused on God’s big picture and how I fit into it—instead of on all my little frustrations and concerns—moving through life feels, I imagine, like what it feels like for Michael Phelps to move through water. It’s what I was born to do.

A Story Worth Reading

Every once in a while you hear a story that changes you. It affects the things you think about, the choices you make. It pulls you out of your own little existence and elevates your perspective. Every once in a while, you get a glimpse into another family’s life that is so intimate, so personal, that you feel like a voyeur—yet you can’t tear your eyes away. There’s something there so intriguing, so real, that you have to stick around to see how it all ends. Every once in a while you are so drawn to the story that you become a small part of it.

I’ve been touched by such a story the past 14 months. It’s the story of a 13-year-old boy with one of the rarest forms of cancer. It’s the story of a family of nine, and how they choose to walk this very personal journey publicly. More than anything, it’s the story of real faith in a real God in the midst of real crisis.

These are real people, a family I have grown to know and love in the past year. I’ve known David, the dad, for a decade, but this year I’ve gotten to know his wife Renee. In attempting to help them, we’ve been blessed to get to know their youngest son, who has become one of Braden’s closest friends. And about a month ago, I got to meet Ian, the star of this story.

The story came to a climax yesterday morning when Ian died. But a good story never ends with the climax. It ends with the epilogue, defined as “a short section at the end of a literary work, sometimes detailing the fate of its characters.” There’s no wondering about Ian’s fate. We know exactly where he is, and it is a very happy ending (“beginning” is a more accurate word). But God is still writing the story of the rest of this family. I invite you to join with the hundreds—thousands, maybe—who are following it. If you start from the beginning (clicking on the headline of this entry will take you to their Caring Bridge site), expect to spend at least a day reading. And expect to be changed.

If You Don't Get It, You're Not from a Small Town

Between the late 1800s and mid-1900s, both sides of my family tree took root in northeastern Colorado, in a one-stoplight town called Akron (yes, perpetually confused with its more famous namesake in Ohio). My parents met at Akron High School in the sixties. My dad’s parents owned the only clothing store in town, and my granddad served as the town mayor for years. My mom’s father ran the family business he married into, a grain elevator, while his wife taught music lessons. My parents married right out of high school and attempted to move away for a time, but family and farmland soon brought them back, allowing my brother and me six or seven years surrounded by grandparents, extended family, and small-town life. My dad was the high school football coach; my mom taught—you guessed it—piano lessons. Although we moved to Oklahoma by the time I started fifth grade, Akron was my home, too, just as it had been for my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and even one great-great grandparent who lived long enough to pose for a rare five-generation picture with my brother.

Our stint in Oklahoma was short lived, and I started eighth grade in another small town just 90 miles from Akron. I returned to Akron for long weekends, holidays, and large chunks of the summer. I went to football games there and attended their prom with a childhood friend. I cruised Main Street and drove 100-miles-an-hour down the single runway at the Akron airport late at night with a car full of Akron teenagers. Eight years later, the maid of honor in my wedding was the freckle-faced girl who came up to me the first day of kindergarten, at Akron Elementary, and asked if I wanted to be her best friend. (I took that commitment seriously!)

In the past twenty years, my trips to Akron have been limited mostly to funerals. I buried my dad and grandparents one by one, enduring the blazing heat, blowing snow, and tireless winds so common on the plains of Colorado. The cemetery sits on the west side of town, and a couple times a year, when the wind and the clouds are feeling cooperative, you can sort of make out the Rockies, a reminder that you’re actually still in Colorado.

I returned to that cemetery again last week, this time accompanied by a husband and four children of my own. The children said goodbye to their last great-grandparent, the only one any of them have ever known, the one who sent generous Christmas and birthday checks, signed simply, “Love, Great-Grandpa” in beautiful script. We learned that day that my grandpa—known only to me as a farmer, a golfer, and a lover of horse races—also loved poetry and opera. We learned that as a kid, the third-oldest of eleven children, he was instructed to sit out on the porch after dinner and wait for Jesus to return. When that didn’t happen, and when life threw its curveballs as life always does, my grandpa lost his way for a while. But death has a funny way of bringing us full circle, and my grandpa spent the last weeks of his life doing little besides waiting for Jesus. He’d wake up from a sound sleep and holler out, “When?! When am I gonna die already?” He was actually willing Jesus to come get him, and with his affairs in order and his goodbyes said, he got what he longed for. He died peacefully in his sleep last Wednesday at the age of 88.

Grandpa chose to be cremated, so there was no cemetery burial. Still, I wasn’t going to miss a chance to drive through the Akron Cemetery. After the service, my family trekked out there with my mom and my uncle and aunt from Los Angeles. There we experienced small-town life at its finest, chatting about the townsfolk, comparing burial plots, reminiscing, noting things like, “Wow! Aunt Kate’s been gone almost twenty years?” and remembering. I took pictures of my sweet little girls sitting on my dad’s headstone in their flowery Easter dresses. But mostly the kids ran wild, tumbling and hurdling over strangers’ graves, horrifying Kevin, who finds cemetery entertainment an anomaly. But this is Akron. This is what you do here. It’s what I grew up doing.

I love being from a small town.