Talking when I should be listening...

One of my favorite musicians, Mark Schultz, wrote an amazingly impassioned song called “Can You Hear Me?”  It’s about a man who is praying in desperation because his young son is very sick and slowly dying.  He would do anything, even trade places with his son, if God would only answer his prayers and make his boy better.   At one point, perhaps in frustration, he calls out to God:

Can you hear me?
Am I getting trough tonight?
Can you see him?
Can you make him feel alright?
If you can hear me,
let me take his place somehow
See he’s not just anyone,
he’s my son.

Now, I’ve never been to the brink described in this song, and perhaps you haven’t either, but I’m sure we’ve all felt similar feelings of angst in our prayer life.  We rely on God’s multitude of promises to get us through, such as “wherever two or more are gathered…” and “you shall have the desires of your heart…”   and when we come to God, we want answers that will satisfy our frailties.

For the last seven years my wife and I have been struggling with some very serious behavior issues with our oldest son, who is now 13.  Two years ago his actions drew us into the realm of legal entanglements, a place we had hoped we would never have to go.

We have prayed and prayed, from every angle we can possibly think of, but the progress we hope for just doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.  As a matter of fact, things with our son often seem to be getting worse.  Fortunately, my wife and I have a very big God who has blessed us with a strong marriage.  Without Him and his blessings, we never would have made it. 

Still, sometimes when I pray for my son I find myself wondering and asking God “What am I not doing right?”

Our other son, Kieron, is a 12 year old miracle-boy.  I see him this way because of the things that I have seen happen in his life, things that could have only come to fruition by the grace of God.  Kieron is a child living with autism (Asperger’s Syndrome, to be exact) who has progressed so beautifully beyond all the initial expectations since his diagnosis at age three that it can be qualified as nothing short of miraculous.  More on that in another installment.

Kieron is a budding lexicographer (not to mention meteorologist, pilot, neurosurgeon and superhero) and he likes riddles and puzzles of any kind, but most of all he LOVESword puzzles.  He is the consummate punster, just like his dear old Dad.  

He brought an especially cool little poser home from school recently wherein his teacher challenged the students to make as many words as possible using only the letters in the word LISTEN.  The carrot at the end of the stick was that each student would receive bonus points on the next test for completing the puzzle, one point for every five words they created and a whopping five points if they could find another word that used all six letters. 

The Asperger’s in Kieron often brings out an unflagging tenacity that I sometimes envy.  He will stay at a task to the exclusion of all else until that task is completed.  Sometimes it’s quite maddening for us as parents because along with the amazing stick-to-it-tiveness often comes some pretty serious frustration.  Once Kieron’s mind is made up about something there is little, if any, room for deviation.  That said, Kieron had set his eyes on those five bonus points and God help whatever got in his way.

He worked the letters for more than two hours.  There were some tears that we had to help him through, but eventually he made 53 words.  Some of them were short, like I-S, and some had five letters, like t-i-l-e-s, but the grand prize, that six letter word just would not reveal itself.

After another hour I heard a loud shriek from Kieron’s room and then a blaze of running footsteps just before he burst into the kitchen, his face beaming and a well worn piece of notebook paper in his hand. “I did it, Dad!  I did it!” he shouted with pure, infectious joy.  His smile was ear to ear.

“Let me see!” I nearly shouted in my own excitement, sharing his unbounded happiness- and tinged with no small amount of fatherly pride.  He handed me the paper he had been working on. It was this sad little scrap that bore scratch out after scratch out and at least three scars where it had been erased nearly clean through.  Amidst all the chaos there it was at the bottom of the page, written in proud little letters:  S-I-L-E-N-T.

After all the jumping up and down, chest bumping and fist pumping that would make anNFL touchdown celebration look like child’s play, Kieron said something that just opened eyes:

“I guess you can’t make LISTEN without S-I-L-E-N-T.  Isn’t that cool, Dad?”

Wow.  I was speechless, which is no small accomplishment.  My “eureka” moment had just come from the mouth of my son.  From the mouth of a babe came the answer to the questions that had been draining me for all these years.   

It wasn’t that I hadn’t been praying enough:  my problem was that I hadn’t spent any time at all in silent humility at the feet of the Maker of the Universe!   I had been determining for God the manner in which my wants would be met and the way that the answers would come.  I had been bringing my soup sandwich of prayers to God in relentless waves of loud, clanging bells and actually expected Him to do my bidding.  My problem was not the volume of my prayers, which could have filled books.  My problem was the volume of my voice.  My mouth was open when my ears and heart should have been.   You cannot really L-I-S-T-E-N without being S-I-L-E-N-T.  When we surrender, truly surrender, our hearts and mind and soul and strength to Him, there is no room for the sound of our own voice.  There is only room for our silent humility.

The sudden peace that filled me was incredible.  A little confused at my reaction, Kieron asked, “Are you okay?  Why are you crying?”

“I’m okay, Kieron” I said with a little manly sniffle.  “You have noooo idea just how okay I am, now. Great job!”   He ran off, happy as a lark and with no idea just how much he had helped me.

I watched him disappear up the stairs and thought about the people who had told me that he would never be able to tie his own shoes or even dress himself.  The boy who at one point had no future as far as they could tell had just completely shifted my prayer life and made me a better man and a better father.

I looked up to the heavens and said the only thing that came to mind.

“Isn’t that cool, Dad?”

***In case you were wondering, according to Scrabble’s on-line data base, there are 67 words that can be made from LISTEN and there are four words that use all six letters.  You now know one of them, but can you get the other three without using the internet? 

What I don't Want...

My friend Bob is a gregarious man and an ordained minister to boot!  He loves his calling, but especially enjoys performing wedding ceremonies because it makes him feel great to be God’s vessel in joining two people in holy matrimony.  When he can, he likes to keep in touch with those he has wed and find out how their lives have unfolded. 

In the several years Bob has been officiating, he has also been called upon to perform the occasional funeral service as well.  Funerals are in many ways much more challenging than weddings, but Bob finds it fulfilling to be able to provide comfort to people during a difficult and confusing spiritual time.

Bob knew the day might come when he would be called to perform the funeral services for someone he had joined in marriage.  He knew it would be a difficult day because of how close he felt to those he had married, but most of them were very young and that day was far into the future.  Or so he thought.  He had no idea the day would come so soon or just how hard it actually would be. 

A little more than five years ago Bob married a young couple, the groom then 23 and the bride 21.  The two were very happy and they were blessed with a vibrant little girl, born in 2006 and a strapping boy, born just last year.  Bob and the couple became friends as he watched their marriage mature and their children grow.

Two weeks ago the young groom was found dead, the victim of an undetected congenital heart defect.  No one ever saw it coming and there was no time to prepare.  Bob said it was the hardest phone call he ever had to take.

At the funeral, Bob did his best to comfort those who mourned.  He finished the service and was about to close the casket when the five year old daughter asked him to wait a moment.  She came forward with tears in her eyes, clutching a tattered and well loved blanket.  She asked Bob to lift her up, which he did.  She handed Bob the blanket and asked him to put it in the casket before he closed it because she didn’t want her Daddy to get cold.

How can you hear a story like that and not bawl your eyes out?  My prayers today are not only for that little girl, but for my little girls as well.  I find myself being selfish for them.   I don’t want them to have to face what that little girl faced.  I want watch them graduate, and go to proms and college.  I want to help them avoid mistakes, and help them when they don’t.   I want to bring them up in the ways that I should. I want to reject passivity, lead courageously and guide them spiritually. 

I want to do this and do this right.  If I thought I had motivation before, I don’t know what to call what I feel right now.  I just don’t want to be a fool anymore.

Half is the New Empty!

As anyone who has passed a gas station recently can tell you, the price of gas is back on the rise…again.  Some sources say it may hit $4.50 per gallon in the Baltimore area by Memorial Day.

Beth and I did not make any New Year’s Resolutions this year beyond the big one:  We Are Going to Get Out of Our Own Way!  This is a task big enough without the burden of yet more resolutions left over from New Year’s that would probably fall off to the side by March anyway. In simple terms, getting out of our own way will entail unburdening ourselves…of ourselves and the silly things we do.

Ever play fuel gauge roulette?  You know, the game where the low fuel warning light has come on and you try to see just how far you can push it before needing to get gas becomes having to get gas…or worse.  One of the things Beth and I are trying to work on is avoiding fuel gauge roulette in our expansive fleet of two minivans, both of which are constantly on the go, what with family scheduling for work and four kids.  Sometimes the gauge hovers ominously at, or beyond the BIG E as a budget issue, or from just plain laziness.  Hey, we’re from Jersey. We don’t pump gas! And Beth has a plaque on the wall to prove it! 

Filling the two vans to brimming would cost about $200, which at certain times of the family budget cycle might as well be a million.  So, we throw twenty dollars or so at a shot in the tank and go on our merry way.  Now, it’s funny how two college edu-ma-cated people fail to realize that 20 bucks today means twenty bucks three days from now and 20 more three days from then.  Somehow, to our frazzled parental minds, $60 bucks at one shot is just waaaay too expensive.   We would rather pay 20 bucks three times!  Go figure- cuz we obviously don’t.  So, the tanks remain near the BIG E and we bite our nails and hope.  We spent our lives hovering on empty.

Enter the new paradigm  (to Vader’s theme-duh duh duh da dee duh, da dee duh) where we try not to be our own worst enemy!  No more fuel gauge roulette!  So, we bit down hard, drove to the nearest self serve and inserted the quivering, terrified debit card into the pump.  We filled up both tanks and decreed “Half is the new empty!”- meaning we throw 20 bucks in the tank three times a week every time the gauge gets to the midway point.  Hey, we’re not changing the world here- these things come in steps!

This got us to thinking:  are we treating our walk with God in the same way we treat our gas tanks?  Are we playing roulette with our spiritual gauges?  You know, the game where we get so low down from our Sunday spiritual high by Thursday and become the people that kept Gandhi from becoming a Christian?  Somehow we get the feeling that on some days, we are those people.  This little light of mine needs fuel to let it shine.  Sometimes we don’t need a bushel basket to hide it- because we have failed to refill it. 

By waiting to come to God until our spirit tanks are hovering at the BIG E we have failed to stay connected to all that he has promised us. (Ephesians Chapter 1).  Gods filling station is always open and is always FULL SERVE.  There’s no need to wait until we are rock bottom and out of sorts to come in for a refill.  We don’t have to pump our own- the Spirit He has promised is on duty 24/7.  We should trust our spiritual cars to One who wears the stars- as a crown! 

Sometimes it is our time budget that denies us the refill because we allow life to get in the way.  But waiting until we are running on empty does not fulfill the Great Commision- it puts us out of commission.  Why do we wait until the needs are so dire, that our souls are weeping and bleeding, to reconnect with Him?  It’s time for a fill up- and time to make half become the new empty.

And so it begins...

We wanted to get this initial post up for New Year’s, when everyone makes their resolutions.  But, somehow, once again, we got in our own way!

We are tired of being in our own way. We start projects with all the vigor of “DIY to the Rescue”, but then fade, gloriously but without sticking the landing.  Picture a wounded, yet somehow confident, Kerri Strug flying down the approach, ready to make her heroic Olympic winning vault…and  then flying over the horse, missing the pad and breaking her other ankle.  That’s us.  

We chase four kids around, pursue two careers, car pool, raise elderly parents, care for the house…yadda yadda yadda.  The same things everyone else does.  We’re no different. We’re not complaining about anything…other than ourselves.  We are a 550hp engine with a bad clutch-  lots of power, plenty of noise and very little forward progress. These four spinning wheels are getting a little old.

So, tired of ourselves, we have engaged a process.  Thus, inspired by the successes of friends (WE LOVE YOU ANGIE HAUBE!) and the renewing of our spirits, we are ready for something new, something better.  We are ready to get out of our own way.

We didn’t get in our own way overnight, and we don’t expect to extract ourselves from our own foibles overnight, either.  We are not looking to throw darts and hit numbers, nor are we goal oriented in any other way than we just want to get the kids’ bathroom finished. 

Sometimes the things we over-educated parents need to learn don’t come from self help books, or gurus, or New Year’s resolutions.  As a matter of fact, we resolved not to make any resolutions at all.  Sometimes life’s best lessons come from the most unexpected places- like the mouth of your six year old.

When Paul wrote about putting away the childish things he probably didn’t mean for us to think of that as something connected to a singular transition, something we do once and forget about.  Putting away things which aren’t doing us any good, or are even hurting us, is a continuous process.

Sure, we all make the jump from “kid-dom” to adulthood and can’t wait to sink our choppers into the things that await us. Our dreams and aspirations for the next stage fuel our jump to what’s next.  We imagine the grandness of growth and just can’t wait to get to where we are going.  We all had things we had to give up in order to make the transformation complete.

Our darling daughter, Emmie, is all of six (and going on twenty seven).  The other morning in the rush to get everyone ready for school she absolutely refused to leave the house with her favorite lunchbox.  She used to carry this thing around all day long, like a treasure to behold. It was her prized possession.  This poor, battered box had received some serious lovin’ along the way!

When we would go to Chick Fil-A she wouldn’t eat her meal unless it came from the lunchbox. She would carefully remove the food from the bag, or tray, put it all in the box and close the lid.  Then she would open the box like it was Christmas morning and exclaim, “Look what I’ve got!  

Now, and very suddenly, she was ready to abandon the thing she had once held so dear.  “Darling, I thought Dora was your favorite?” I asked. “Daddy,” she replied very seriously, “Dora is soooooo toddler.  I’m in first grade now and I just can’t do Dora anymore.”

Sometimes when we get to where we thought we were going it hits us that the grass is not so green.  Other times the transition produces positive results that are beyond our best dreams.  In either case we have probably brought with us some baggage that we don’t really need anymore.

Our walk with God is an on-going process of building, tearing down and rebuilding. With each stage we enter we have to put away some of the things that are no longer relevant.  These things that once seemed so important, so self-defining, are no longer necessary.  In fact, these very things that we hold so dear may, in fact, be holding us back. 

Sometimes we have to give up our lunchbox.  

Our train is leaving the Station of Mediocrity.  Not sure where the next stop will be, and we are sure there will be many whistle stops along the way, but we are hoping that the end of the line is in a place where we are not in our own way ever again.