Dear Amos

Dear Amos

We’ve talked about it before, but school is tough.  You are an energetic, strong-willed fellow, and the restrictions of kindergarten are seriously messing with your style.

Quite frankly, you’re often a challenge.  Whether it’s homework, bedtime, fighting with your siblings, or just getting dressed, we have, well, differences of opinions when it comes to how you should behave.  Many times, those differences are exchanged in a way that is a bit loud.  There are tempers flying in both directions, stomping, slamming . . . our neighbors are probably going to be happy to be rid of us.

Despite all this, there is this amazing amount of compassion and empathy that you have; it’s almost breathtaking to see it in action.

The other night, bedtime was nigh.  This is a time fraught with tears and stress in every household with young children, but especially in those in which the entire load falls on one parent — in this case, Momma.  Right in the middle of everything, Owen, who was playing on his bed, slipped and hit his mouth on the metal bed frame.  According to Momma, there was blood and tears and screaming and chaos everywhere.

Once she determined that he didn’t need to go to the hospital and everyone had calmed down, you grabbed the iPad and sat down with Owen.  You put your arm around him, turned on the Alphabet app, and the two of you cuddled together.  A little bit later, when everyone was finally getting back to bed, Momma started crying during prayer time.  You climbed into her lap and just held her close.

This parenting thing is hard a lot of the time.  There are books, but, at the end of the day, we just have to muddle through it.  And Amos — you’re the one we’re learning on.  We fight, yell, argue; you refuse to eat, stop running, being five.  But these other moments just to go prove that your Uncle Tre was right.  You have the softest soul.  That’s not something we can teach; the best we can do is hope to nurture it, to fight the things that will try to harden it.

It is true that whether or not we win that conflict has a lot to do with you too, but if only one of my prayers ever comes true, I hope that it is the one that guards the compassion, empathy, and goodness that God gave you.

I love you and I am so proud to be your Daddy.

Dear Vera

“But . . . I love you, Daddy!”

You said this, hurt and angry that I wouldn’t give you more dessert, or let you watch another episode of Shaun the Sheep, or whatever you were trying to get from me.

You are a precious, outgoing thing who instantly likes everyone you meet, and you take great joy in telling the barista, or the checker at Target, or the person sorting the fruit at the grocery store exactly what kind of adventure we are going on that day.

I also don’t want to subscribe so much to your three-year-old mind.  Right now, your emotions seem to be centered on eating carrots, playing with your babies (dolls), twirling, and wearing dresses that twirl.  But I was struck and horrified at how easily you threw around your declaration of love to get what you want.

See, your love is a precious thing, something you cannot give away so easily.  I know that I have several more decades years before I have to worry about to whom you are giving your love, and I am confident that you will make the right choice.

I also know that sometimes you cannot make the right choice until you have made the wrong one first.  Sometimes, making that choice hurts.  I don’t think I can save you from the lesson, but I will always be there to listen and understand.

I want you to fall in love.  There will be a time when you think you have, and maybe you’ll even be right.  But I mostly want you to be in love with a person who loves you almost as much as I do.

But what I must impress upon you most of all is the danger of using your love to get something in return.  You cannot use your love as a commodity to be traded, just like you cannot give something away to receive someone else’s love.  That kind of love isn’t love at all; love is not transactional.  Love just is, or it isn’t.

Just like my love for you doesn’t change, whether you are going to bed on time, pushing your brother, painting your Momma a picture, or jumping into my arms to throw your arms around my neck, you must learn that love cannot be bought or sold.  It can grow or lessen, but perhaps that is a lesson for another day.

Love,

Daddy

I Am Part Of The Problem

Over the last few days, I have had some pretty strong opinions about the World Vision hoopla.  I was shrill.  I grumbled.  I scolded.  I lectured.  I called people “bad” and said that “the church had never been lower.”

Well, one of my oldest friends very pointedly told me to cut the crap (more or less). By focusing on the few (but loud) angry voices, we were missing all the good that was still being done.

And he was right.

10,000 people canceled their sponsorships.  10,000 children that had food are now at risk again.  That’s a tragedy.  But, do you know how many children are sponsored through World Vision?

Depending on your source, somewhere between 1.2 and 3 million 4 million.

Even taking the lower number, that means less than 1% of sponsors immediately canceled their support.   Over 99% did not.

Honestly, that’s pretty amazing.

So why did the collective blogosphere lose their collective minds over less than 1%?  Well, there still is a real justice issue here.  There were bad actions that needed to be addressed.  Angry voices said that “World Vision was trivializing the Cross” or that they “don’t believe in the Bible.”  Leaders encouraged their followers to treat children’s health and nutrition like pawns in an angry, Western game.

But listen – one thing is terribly true.

We are yelling about things to people who agree with us about an issue that is too complex to be decided by yelling.

We were not celebrating the fact that several million children are being fed, medicated, and educated by World Vision.  We’re not blogging about the villages, towns, and regions that are being transformed by this aid.

We’re trying to get pageviews.  Sure, we believe in what we were saying (I am not accusing anyone of intellectual dishonesty, here), but there can also be a bit of self-congratulation from anyone (from any side of whichever spectrum you reside on any issue) for believing in the way that you do and for not being for/against/with/without whatever those people over there (who are very, very wrong) believe.

Good conversation can be inspired by good writing, and I urge you to stop reading me and go read good writing.  My last two posts were neither good writing nor conversation beginners.

And that makes me part of the problem.

 

10,000

This is as low as I can remember the Church ever going.

Sure.  We rallied around Chick-Fil-A and Phil Robertson, letting them know that we supported their rhetoric against the gay community, making them more popular in the end (while telling our gay brothers and sisters that while we “love” them, because Jesus told us to, they’re still icky).

Sure. One of the leading voices of the modern church, Mark Driscoll, claimed that, despite Obama’s insistence that he is a follower of Jesus, he had enough insight into Obama’s soul that he knew that Obama neither believed in Jesus nor followed the Bible.  Cue thousands of RT’s, likes, etc.

Sure.

But.

10,000.  10,000!

That, according to Jamie Wright (The Very Worst Missionary) and Matthew Paul Turner (Jesus Needs New PR), is the number of children dropped from World Vision’s sponsorship rolls following Christianity Today’s decision to publicize the fact that they would now hire married, openly gay Christians.

10,000 people decided that they would rather let a child — not a theoretical child, but one whose face adorned their fridge and with whom letters were usually exchanged — starve, instead of sending money through — not to! — an organization that held a belief that was different than their own.

Suddenly, I am far less angry at World Vision.  They had to reverse course; their entire mission is helping those less fortunate, the displaced and downtrodden, the least of these.

No, I’m angry — still — at the people for whom these children weren’t real, but were merely a feel-good pill, a picture to look at and feel like they’d “given back.”  I am angry that 10,000 Christians decided the best way to speak out against something they did not like was to throw the needs of children by the wayside, to treat them like 10,000 bargaining chips.

I’m even angry that a few such people, after World Vision so hastily backtracked, called to see if they could get “their” child back, saying, “It’s all good, now bro.”

I sincerely hope that none of these 10,000 people have closeted gay friends or family, because those people were just told, in no uncertain terms, that if their homosexuality is discovered or revealed, they will be thrown out and cast aside like so much garbage.

No, I don’t think we have ever been lower.

 

Great Job, Everyone. Really. Show Those Gays That We Don’t Need Their Help!

I do not have time to be doing this right now.  I have two websites to edit, I have to pack for my Portland trip, I have a long list of things to do around the house, and I have a blog post to write for a very special birthday.

But this World Vision thing.  Honestly, I just can’t even.

On the slim chance you do not know what I am talking about, World Vision, that fantastic organization that serves thousands of impoverished communities around the world, made a sudden and, depending on how you look at it, brave or foolish change to its hiring policies.  Basically, they decided that while they were continuing to enforce their standards on fidelity and abstinence (depending on one’s marital status), they would also allow legally married homosexual couples to work for them.

(You can read the original announcement here.)

Obviously, the reaction from both supporters and opposers was immediate and very loud, with progressive Christian leaders rejoicing and conservative Evangelicals basically throwing so many tantrums. Worse, a few Evangelical leaders called on Christians to withdraw their support from World Vision over the matter, essentially telling their followers to literally take food and medicine from poor children’s mouths and communities. World Vision was forced to retreat, and they have since retracted their statement.

 

When I first read Mr. Stearn’s letter, I was thrilled.  I thought that World Vision was taking a brave but risky stand, and I wanted to show my support.  However, one thing I never thought about doing was moving my sponsorship dollars from Help One Now to World Vision.

Why?  Because I do not sponsor little Lamar to feel good; I sponsor him because I felt called by Jesus to help him.  I didn’t look over our budget and decide that we should massage our egos and do a little extra for someone.  Honestly, things are tight and we could use the $40.  But I made a commitment to him.  He is a real person, a real child, and he and his community depend on me to help them get the things that they need to survive.  His community should not suffer because some other organization did something that I like.

World Vision’s sponsorship model differs from the model used by Help One Now in that, in Help One Now’s case, sponsorship funds go to the child’s community at large so that every child benefits.  In World Vision’s case, the sponsorship dollars go to that particular child (and perhaps his or her family). So, canceling your support has a direct impact on that — your — child.

In the past two days, it has been estimated that over 2,000 people stopped sponsoring their child because of World Vision’s initial decision.  I do not know if we will ever know the exact number, but let’s stop and think about that for a second.  Over 2,000 people decided to stop feeding, clothing, medicating, and educating their sponsored child because they were afraid that the guy who answered the phone might have a husband instead of a wife and they might get gay cooties through the phone or something.  Remember: they have (hopefully) been praying for, writing letters to, and receiving letters from their child.  And yet, at a drop of a hat, because they got offended, that child is back to starving.

Great job, internet.

Let me be even more clear: if you canceled your sponsorship over this issue, you are a bad person. The end.  This means that you are not sponsoring your child for the sake of the child, but to make yourself feel good.

Because these children are the very definition of “the least of these.”  Because now, the hot, smelly, dirty, World Vision worker that is on the ground in Tanzania, or Peru, or Laos has to look at some of these children and say, “I’m sorry.  No letters for you today, and I can’t give you any more food, either. Your sponsor got mad, took his ball, and went home.”

And, for the record, if you cancel your sponsorship because World Vision reversed its course on this, you are also a bad person. Nadia Bolz-Weber reminded us, “The critique of pulling support for charity due to an employee hiring practice I disagree with has to cut both ways or it’s bullshit.”

At the end of the day, World Vision’s announcement should have let to an amazing set of conversations as churches, charities, non-profits, and NGO’s have to start navigating this world and its changing social values while staying true.  Instead, we just stuck our thumbs in the eyes of gay people everywhere.

And we wonder why young people are leaving the Church in droves.

Ben Moberg wrote a devastating post highlighting the pain this is causing the gay and lesbian community, saying: “this is what I’m hearing: No, you aren’t even worthy to serve hungry children. You are so deeply unwanted that I will let a child die if it keeps you away from me. From us. From the body of Christ. I will spare no life if it keeps you far away.”

Sigh.

I can’t even.

 

For better, more nuanced takes on this, please read:

Jen Hatmaker (“The church has never, not for one millisecond of its entire history, been right about everything. This sobering fact should give us pause and inject some much needed humility into our ethos.”)

Nish Weiseth (“When you withdraw your sponsorship, the person who pays the price is an undeserving child.”)

Rachel Held Evans (“Deliberately cutting off funding to your sponsored child affects that child and her community. If you didn’t think that money was actually making a difference, then why were you sponsoring to begin with?”)

 

PS: I read a lot of articles and blogs over the last few days, and if I inadvertently quoted one without the proper attribution, please forgive me. 

 

 

 

A Path Without a Map

We are walking through this new life now, aimlessly . . . wandering a path without a map.  For what is a husband without a wife, a son or daughter without a mother, a sister without her sibling, a grandchild without their grandmother?  

But we are not without.  

We are a father with his children, and his children’s children, and their children after that.  We are brothers and sisters with a father above us and children below.  We are children with siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, sons, daughters.  

Yes! We are with.  

We are with the strength you showed, the wisdom you learned, the stories you told, the advice you gave. We are here, recipients all of your selfless, secret generosity.  

We are with each other.  

 

They say our loved ones never leave us, that they live forever in our hearts, but of course that’s not the whole truth.  When a husband can no longer grasp the hand of his wife, when a daughter cannot call her mother, when a father will never hold his son again, when a friend says a final goodbye . . . well, our hearts are a poor substitute.  

And yet, when they dance across our minds at the most unexpected times, when a sound or a smell or a particular turn-of-phrase causes  a memory to lift itself up from the depths of the almost-forgotten, we smile.  When my aunt calls me “Kenny,” when I hear someone say, “Well, bless Pat,” when I see my sister wearing her pink because she wanted to fight alongside you, when I hold my mother and my father and my wife and my babies just a little bit closer and a little bit longer than necessary . . . 

When I see angels.

 

We will tell stories long forgotten.  We will laugh and joke and drink and hug and we will cry, for we have lost; of that, there is no denying.  And we will move on; we will exist in this new reality.  

But we will not forget; no, no, no, we will not, for you are all around us.  You are in my father and my sister and, yes, even my daughter. I see you in my aunt and my uncle and my cousins.  

This summer, I will make sun tea.  I will put a little Sweet N Low in it, and I will taste my childhood. I will call my grandfather and inquire about his life and his cat.  

Your cat.  

I will listen to the memories and marvel at how little I knew you, how little I had plumbed the depths you contained.  Yet, I will remember.  I will wear the shoes you bought for me. I will remember visiting with you in your camper after your traversed the country to meet your niece, your friends, and me, your grandson.  I will remember Christmas–how your house was decorated with trees everywhere and how I hid candy in my stocking and my room and behind the books on your shelves.  I will remember the first next door neighbor we had in Canada commenting on passing through a small town in Michigan and noticing a Christmas tree on the second floor porch of a white, two story house on Main Street. I will remember stacking wood in your basement, of throwing clothes and toys and trying to fit my brother in the laundry chute that ran from the upstairs to the basement. 

Oh, have I not told that story before?  

I will remember mowing your lawn.  I will remember how you put your cats on leashes and threw them outside on your porch–the porch that my strong father and my strong uncles built under the supervision of my strong grandfather.  

And I will remember how you met people and made them your friends.  You took them under your expansive wings, you surreptitiously gave them the help they needed, and then you delighted in how well they flew.  You were able to make friends with anyone you met; that is what makes us the most alike, I think. I learned that from my father, but he learned it from you.

 

And I will hug my father ever tighter.   

 

Gramma, you might have been the strongest woman I ever knew, and if anything, you taught us all that strong women are a treasure worth seeking. You taught that lesson well, for my father and my brother and my uncle and I all searched until we found someone strong like you.  My sister is strong. My cousins are strong. My aunts are strong–because you were strong.  

I know that you are dancing with Bonnie Jo and Dee and those that you missed, and I can’t wait to dance with you too.  

I love you, I’m so thankful for everything you gave to Grandpa, to Dad, to Mark and Barb, to my cousins and my siblings, for the tractor that you secretly gave to the man who needed it, and for being so generous that it bordered on the bizarre (i.e., you once secretly gave someone a tractor. Seriously–A TRACTOR!) 

Love Always …

The Deuce.  

 

Dear Amos

“Daddy, I’m 5!” was how you greeted me this morning.  It was amazing, actually; you shouted that from mid-air as you had launched yourself to land on my spleen to wake me up.  

Five! Can you believe it?

The memories I have of that day, the day you and your cone head came screaming into the world, are just as clear as if they happened yesterday.  I remember coming home from worship rehearsal and having your Momma tell me that you were growing inside of her.  I remember the day the nurse hooked your Momma up to a weird and spooky machine, pointed at a little speck on a screen, and said you were going to be a boy.

I remember hearing you laugh for the first time.  I remember the first time I came home from work and hearing “Daddy!” as you raced to the door.

I remember watching you hold your sister and your brother for the first time, remember hearing you sing your favorite song . . . “I love Sissy.  She’s my best friend . . .”

I remember the first time you said, “I love you, Daddy.”  

You are difficult and strong-willed. You know what you want, and you loudly and repetitively demand it. For a long time, we didn’t know if you would get to go to a regular school.  We thought so, but there was that lingering doubt.  But, you are smart! The day your teacher told us that you are going to regular Kindergarten, your Momma cried.

So did your Daddy.

Your strong-will and singular focus is balanced by your tender, tender heart.  You are compassionate, you worry when your siblings cry (unless you caused it), and you can be very generous.

Your Uncle Tre once said you have the softest soul, and your Momma agreed. She spoke the best blessing over you, saying that she knows that you will grow into your will and that God will use your personality–all of it–for something amazing.

The thing is, though, that He already is. You changed our lives and you brighten the day of everyone you meet.

I love you so much, and I am so lucky that God trusted me with you.

Love, Daddy

 

To My Grandparents

I am a very lucky person.  Even as I sit closer to 40 than 30 (just typing that phrase may have prompted a trip to my cupboard for some distilled and fermented Irish cereal grains), I have all four of my grandparents living.  Very few people get to spend so much time with their family like this, learning from them, seeing love and marriage play out over 50+ years.

It isn’t fair, really.  I shouldn’t be so blessed as to have one grandmother, let alone two who were put on this earth to be grandmothers (and yet in different but equally awesome ways). And then, I shouldn’t be so blessed as to also have two of the most fun and grandfatherly grandfathers.  I mean, my dad already hung the moon and my mom is already the smartest person I know . . .

Last summer, I got to introduce my youngest son to his two great-grandmothers and watch one of his great-grandfathers cuddle him quiet.  I got to hear my grandmother sing a song to him and wonder if she sang the same song to me so many years ago.

Like all good things, though . . . well, our family may be about to learn that we actually aren’t going to live forever.

And we are not ready for the lesson.

I am scared for what comes next.  I am not ready to say good-bye (though I am desperately trying to figure out how).  I am not ready to enter this world of loss from which I have been so mercifully protected.

And I am certainly not ready to see my parents lose a parent.  My mind can’t go to losing one of my own; it’s like a long hallway that I refuse to even enter.  But my parents are already 2/3rds of the way to the end.  The very thought makes me want to crawl up on their laps again, pull up some very old Sesame Street, and fall asleep where it’s safe and innocent.

Of course, I have been blessed beyond belief.  Until just a few years ago, my maternal and paternal grandparents lived about 2/3rds of a mile from each other.  I grew up eating vegetables from their gardens, strawberries from the plants along the garage, sneaking cookies from the freezer, and jealous of my cousins who lived in the same time zone as they did.

I remember being a teenager, and my grandmother’s cat (who was older than I was) finally allowing me to pet him.

My kids stand on a stool in the bathroom that my grandfather made for me; it has “Kenny” carved in the top.  Every night, when they brush their teeth, I marvel at the passage of time and the legacy I have been given.

To this day, one of my favorite things is being awake late at night and having the dishwasher going.  I always remember it being like that at my grandmother’s house.  I slept in the basement; she would turn it on right before everyone went to bed.  After it had been running long enough, I knew that I head upstairs and troll around the kitchen for snacks.

I remember the books that lined the shelves; after one visit a few years ago, some of those books now occupy my living room.  I remember both of my grandfather’s woodshops — one in  the basement and one behind the garage.  So many tools and sharp things . . . and if only I had paid a bit more attention when they puttered around, doing handy things.

I remember the camping trips, how much I hated them, and now, how excited I am to drag my own kids out to the god-forsaken wilderness (and I wonder where I’m going to get the sweet motorhome that my grandparents always traveled in).

But mostly, I remember their generosity.  If four other people in this world are as selflessly giving as my four grandparents, I wouldn’t believe it.  I could tell story after story, and I know that I owe them more “thank-you’s” than I could ever repay.

And, if all that wasn’t enough, they raised my parents, who are . . . well, they’re just the best.

So, Grandma, Grampa, Grandma, Grampa —

Thank you.

Love,

Kenny

Dear Vera

We are officially looking for a new church.  It is not a mental place that we came to lightly; lots of tears, prayer, advice, counsel, sadness, and hope went into our decision.

Looking for a new church is the worst (of the white-people problems, that is).  We don’t know where to start, and we are committed to keeping an open mind, but we do have two things that are very important.

The first is a good children’s ministry.  That is pretty much a no-brainer, but we want it to be somewhere that you and your brothers want to go every week and to be a place that helps to teach you Biblical lessons every week, rather than just being a glorified babysitting service.

The second one is going to be a bit tricker: we want it to be somewhere that has women in pastoral roles.

See, hopefully, when you’re old enough to appreciate these notes, the idea of preventing women from being in all positions of leadership strictly because of their gender will seem antiquated and quaint, sort of like “bombing for peace” or “yelling for quiet” (something that Daddy needs to work on NOT DOING).

But the reality is that today, there are many people who, even though they love Jesus with all their hearts, have a false idea that women should not lead or preach to men.  There are pockets where this isn’t true, of course.  Sarah Bessey talked about (though I can’t remember where) the shock and despair she felt realizing that there was not a place for her “at the table” after moving from a Christian tradition in western Canada that celebrated and honored the gifts of women to a more conservative (read: backwards) interpretation of women’s roles in the South (this is not to say that this problem is necessarily one of geography, of course).

For another example, just ask my mother — your beloved Mimi. She has been a college Bible professor for well over 20 years; she is literally the smartest woman I know.  Once, before I was really old enough to fully grapple with it, your Grandpa told me that Mimi struggles with her calling, knowing that she has been given a gift and a charge to do what she does, and yet she still has to battle subtle prejudices from unexpected directions.

Do I want you to grow up and go into full-time ministry?  Honestly, I don’t.  But I want you to be exposed to strong, capable women in as many fields as possible, so that you grow up knowing that you can literally do anything you want.

Furthermore, I want your brothers to be exposed to those same women, because I want them to grow up knowing that strong, capable women are to be celebrated and encouraged, and that it is both ok and even desirable to work with and for both women and men.  I want them to grow up to marry strong, confident, capable women.  I did, your Grampa and your Papa did, and we are all better because we did so.

Love, Daddy

And It Begins (My 500 Words Kickoff)

A few nights ago, I joined the My 500 Words challenge that Jeff Goins launched over on his blog, GoinsWriter.  Basically, the idea is to write 500 words a day through the entire month of January.  If I even make 65% of it, I think I will beat my blogging total for all of 2013 (I would check, but the fear of being right is crippling).  I have no idea if I will be able to keep it up.  I hope so; I have some really good ideas for topics.  I even have the bones of two or three really good essays tucked away (I know – promises, promises).  If nothing else, I’ll have a healthy level of guilt once Feb. 1 rolls around.  

Jeff recommends morning writing.  I managed to get up this morning at 6:15; I found myself with nearly an entire hour of kid-free silence (part of which I squandered by taking a shower, but still – baby steps).  I’m not sure if I will be able to keep that up, especially since I seem entirely incapable of remembering to grind coffee the night before as to not wake the family.  But, it might be ok, since I am functionally worthless until about 9am anyway.  

I see the point of trying to write early, though.  There is a certain calm in the air that seemed like it could inspire naptime creativity.  I am always amazed at how people (like all of my darling children) can bounce out of bed ready for anything without the aid of grumbling and caffeine.  It’s a lifestyle that I secretly covet, because most of these people turn out to be likable, holistic people (once I remember that getting up early is NOT a sign that you might be the antichrist).  

The biggest thing that I’ve learned in the days since signing up and NOT writing is that my lifestyle and the family demands that I have do not lend themselves to writing.  However, if i want to be serious about this, that then forces a change to my life, my routines, my rhythms.

But that is the whole point, isn’t it? Any new habit (good or bad) comes with an intrusion into what was once the routine — a good habit doubly so.  The very nature of change, of thrusting a good habit where it once wasn’t, by definition replacing what might have been a bad habit, is a challenge. Bad habits emerge, not because one wants them to, but because they are easy, sneakily sliding into spare moments and often disguising themselves as “rest” or “relaxation.”

For example, after the kids went to bed last night and we finished our weekly “OMG the sitter will be here tomorrow judging our mess” cleaning frenzy (and folded enough clothes to stock a WalMart), I managed to squeeze in 1 ½ episodes of Friends and a repeat of How I Met Your Mother, and yet, I “wonder where the time goes.”  Is the answer to just eliminate leisure time altogether?  Probably not, but if I get nothing else out of this challenge, a simple reimagination of how much “leisure time” I feel that life owes me is probably the best — and most productive — thing that has struck my life in . . . forever.    

Huh. 550 words.  Maybe it is possible.