Category Archives: Tim

Daily Life, Silliness, Tim

An Inadvertent Lock-In

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When I was a bit younger, churches used to have ‘Lock-In’ events for their youth groups. Kids would show up on a Friday night and at some point the youth leaders would lock all the doors, trapping everyone inside. Kids would stay up all night playing games and talking and generally having the run of the church.

The sleeping bags and pillows were just for show, to confuse the parents. Nobody actually used them, of course.

Now that I’m sort of a grown-up, I wonder about the wisdom of such events, even back in that day. As our culture has turned away from any semblance of personal morality, I suspect such events would require a much higher number of chaperones, or maybe a very small church and a very small youth group.

Today, we had a different sort of a lock-in. Kathy’s friend Nancy came to visit, and soon after her arrival, we discovered that the front door wouldn’t open. Apparently the lock mechanism in our recently-changed front door lock became jammed, and the bolt would no longer retract. The first thing that crossed my mind was to check out Rhys from Strongholdlocksmith for an emergency locksmith expert to get here.
Always eager to show off my skills as a handyman, I leaped into action. “Get me a screwdriver thingy,” I told Daniel. “Not a minus, but one with a plus.” My kids never seem to know the proper names of the tools. Quick as a jiffy, I had the doorknob off. “Go catch the other half of the door knob,” I told Sarah.

But at this point, my ingenuity failed me. Even with the doorknob off, the bolt would still not retract. It was at this point that Nancy’s true duplicity was revealed. She had engineered this whole situation just to give her husband a chance to show off. Before I knew it, his van was in the driveway.

"Now, see, Tim, this thing here is called a Phillips screwdriver."

Dave rang the doorbell, cruelly underscoring the fact that we were trapped inside. “Come in,” we caroled helplessly. After a few dozen doorbell rings, he relented, and came around to the back door. In less time than it takes me to write this paragraph, he had the door open, and the lock mechanism repaired, using only a common toothpick. My wife’s friends are always showing off their husbands like that — it is a nauseating parade of wisdom, competence, charm and good looks.

After fixing the door, Dave offered to make a few adjustments to my personality, but he didn't have the right tools.

Grinding my teeth in rage, I thanked Dave as graciously as I could, and went back to work. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t work in the city more often …

Tim

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Daily Life, Tim

No Picture Tuesday

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Today I went straight from work to a meeting at church, and didn’t arrive home until 10 pm or so. It was a long day. After nabbing a fresh, hot Mesa Manna roll with butter, I went looking for my family members.

No one was on the ground floor. Apparently the Rapture occurred, but the rolls were still warm from the oven, so it must’ve been recently. This was a relief, since I had been meeting, just fifteen minutes prior, with our senior pastor and a bunch of the church leaders — it would be kind of embarrassing if Jesus called all the believers home, and none of the elders were taken. It would have been particularly embarrassing for our Pastor, who has been preaching on Revelation lately. I can just see him in the pulpit, next week:

“Well, I notice that our congregation is a bit smaller this week. I have some good news, and some bad news. First the good news: the prophecies about the Rapture were all true. Now the bad news … ”

Of course, since I was apparently also un-raptured, I was now facing seven years of tribulation — but at least I had a warm, buttered roll. But (as you may already have guessed) it was a false alarm — my family members were all uncharacteristically in bed or otherwise occupied upstairs. Thanks to Kathy’s recent phase of pretending she is a morning person, our household is much quieter in the late evenings.

“Did you blog?” I asked my wife, accusingly, when I tracked her to her lair.

“No,” she admitted, shamefaced. “By the time I remembered, I was already in bed. It was either blog or read my Bible … ”

Kathy often tries to hold the moral high ground in these little interchanges. I charitably refrained from asking her why she didn’t read her Bible in the morning, now that she is “such a morning person”. (I am often charitable that way, leaving unsaid those snippy little comments that lesser men would blurt out, or, even worse, mention in a blog.)

“So, did you at least upload any photos of our fascinating and meaningful life?” I wasn’t very hopeful, by this point. Kathy snuggled more deeply into bed, and shook her head.

No photos, therefore no fascinating and meaningful life. As we often say, “If it didn’t make it to the blog, it didn’t happen.”

Today did have a few interesting events, though. I had my annual review at work, in which it was discovered that I was ‘High Achieving’. This is, apparently, not quite as good as ‘Low Exceeding’, but considerably better than plain ‘ole ‘Achieving’. They used to have a numerical range, from 1 (“here’s a cardboard box, pack your stuff”) to 5 (“you walk on water and found a way to double the company’s annual profit”). Apparently the numerical rating scheme was too hard, and some of the managers were having trouble with the math, so they went to a three-tiered scale: “Not Achieving, Achieving, and Exceeding”.

Personally, I liked the old scale better. When you got a 4.2, you knew right where you stood. I guess after six years working for the same company, in the same team, I probably know where I stand. I was disappointed, though — I really would have liked to get some form of ‘Exceeding’ in my annual rating. Maybe next year.

Tim

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Musings, Tim

No Moh Skin Cancer

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As a student at The College of William and Mary, I took Geology 101. The course met at the dreary hour of 8 a.m., Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I was a freshman, and I didn’t know any better during course selection — somehow I thought eight a.m. was a reasonable time for a college class. My friend Eric and I joined about a hundred others in the class, but on cold, rainy Mondays, the number of students would sometimes drop below 50.

The nice thing about Geology was that I could really identify with a rock at that time of the morning. But I must admit, apart from a ‘C’ as a semester grade, I only brought one thing away from the class: Mohs’ scale of hardness.

Moe, from the Three Stooges, not particularly known for scientific advancement, whether geologic or otherwise.

As it turns out, some rocks are harder than others, and a guy named Friedrich Mohs (not to be confused with Moe, of Three Stooges fame) invented a scale to reflect this fact. For example, Talc (a chalklike mineral) is considered to be a 1 on the scale, while Diamond is a 10. The human fingernail is a lowly 2.5, while glass is somewhere between 6 and 7.

Geologist Friedrich Mohs, 1773-1839

I share this important geological ‘nugget’ of information (sorry, just some geologist humor, there) because I was recently diagnosed with skin cancer. After the biopsy results came back, they called me up to schedule me for Mohs surgery. You can, perhaps, imagine my alarm — I had just healed from the biopsy — I didn’t want any mo’ surgery! After the nurse spelled it for me, I began to wish I had worked for a better grade in Geology.

Fortunately, the interweb (or possibly the webernet) is a veritable wealth of information on squamous-cell carcinoma, and the iterative surgical procedure they call Mohs (after Frederick Mohs, no apparent relation to the 18th century geologist) is apparently the favored way of dealing with this particular type of skin cancer, with a 97% success rate.

Frederick Mohs, 1910-2002, surgeon and developer of Mohs micrographic surgery.

Squamous-cell skin cancer is fairly common, with about 700,000 cases diagnosed annually in the United States. It has a mortality rate of about a third of a percent, or a little more than three in a thousand.

(Parenthetically, one needs to be careful about research on the interweb. Until today, I was under the impression (based on another website) that the mortality rate was a little over 3%. While still a fairly small chance of death, this is ten times more likely than the other number I read, and it caused me no small amount of consternation, to think that I might actually die from this cancer.)

Anyway, today’s surgery was successful, and the doctor seems to think they got all the cancer, and that there is little chance of recurrence, given the size and depth of the malignancy. But I ended up with a pretty dramatic bandage and wound, which I plan to milk for all the sympathy I can.

You should see the other guy!

It is interesting to reflect on how the prospect of physical death has had a sobering effect on how I view my life. I kept wondering, “What if I’m one of those who die of this cancer? Am I ready to be done with this life? Have I been faithful to God, with the time that has been given me?”

As I mentioned recently in One Month to Live, I am inspired by the story of Hezekiah. Now that it seems to me that I will not be dying immediately from skin cancer, what am I going to do with whatever time I have remaining?

I’m definitely not going to invite the Babylonians over to look at all my treasures.

Tim

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Musings, Tim

Global Missions Weekend

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Each year, our church spends a weekend focusing on Global Missions, with special speakers, extra events, and (usually) a concert of prayer as a finale. It was deeply irritating to Joshua that he would be out of town for this year’s missions event. Ever since his trip to Niger in January 2010, our oldest son has been interested in missions in general, and in Africa in particular.

Jon and Christine hope to return to Niger this summer.

“I’ll just tell the folks at church that you don’t care about missions,” I told him, consolingly.

“Thanks, Dad — nice to know you’ve got my back,” Joshua responded. It is these little moments of father-son bonding that make me so successful as a Dad.

This year, there was a missions speaker for the men’s breakfast on Saturday, and for all three services. Then there was a missions dinner celebrating the imminent sendoff of three families from our church — one to a rural church-plant project, another to a hospital in Ethiopia, and a third to Niger.

The Ayers family will be working at the Soddo hospital in Ethiopia

Whenever we have missions speakers, I tend to get charged-up about being a missionary myself. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a missionary, and (even now) I still feel the pull of it.

After the sermon by Ralph Sauers (who was very enthusiastic), two of my kids were talking about going on a short-term missions trip. It is encouraging to see my teenagers catching the vision of God’s love for the world.

Carl and Drea will be serving with Village Missions in the rural village of Vesta, Washington.

Last year I started the online application for Wycliffe Bible Translators, but I soon became fearful, and never finished the application process. I was supposed to meet with the area IT recruiter for Wycliffe, but I never made it a priority. I find there are a couple of things that hold me back from being willing to take active steps:

  • I feel inadequate.

    • It has been said that if you’re not being a missionary where you are, then why would you expect to be any more effective when hampered by cultural and language barriers? My gifts lie in teaching and generosity, and (apart from my work in AWANA) there is very little of the evangelist about me. Also, I am in my mid forties, and I’m at least 40 pounds overweight. What if I couldn’t survive in a field mission environment, because the physical conditions were too difficult for me?

  • I fear discomfort.

    • As an American with a well-paying job, I’m used to a fair bit of comfort. I like having hot showers and cold Diet Cokes. What if God’s calling comes without some of the comforts I’ve come to expect from life? What if I have to scrimp and save just to keep my children in clothing, like many missionaries do?

  • I’m suspicious that my yearning for missions work is a thinly-disguised, Christian version of a mid-life crisis.

    • Maybe God has called me simply to be faithful in the work He has already given me — the work of being a disciple of Jesus, a husband, a father, an elder, an AWANA director, a Sunday School teacher, a friend?

I would love to hear a reaction to this, from any of you who read this blog posting. Do you think I’m deluding myself, building up a romantic picture of missions work in my mind, out of boredom? Or could this be a legitimate calling of God?

Resources

Carl’s Blog
Ralph Sauer’s website
Soddo Hospital, Ethiopia
Serving In Mission

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Parenting, Tim

Renaissance Parenting

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It always strikes terror into my soul, when I hear that my wife is reading a new parenting book.

“Oh, great,” I think. “Another picture-perfect family, another book full of spiritual wisdom, another chance to show me up as a loser Dad.”

The people in these books always seem so together. Their parenting philosophies are congruent and based in scripture. Their illustrations are clever and informative. The Dads in these parenting books, especially, seem to be poweful men of quiet wisdom and grace. They always seem to know what to say, moving easily through family crises without ruffled feathers. They don’t get angry or irrational — they always seem to be in control without having to flaunt it.

Kathy's Mom always seems to know just what to say.

I guess it makes sense. Parenting books aren’t best-sellers, in the most optimum conditions — most people don’t like to be told how to parent in the first place. So perhaps only the best and the brightest are published. Still, just once, I’d like to read a parenting book by someone a bit more, well, ‘normal’. Something that had an introduction a bit like this:

“My wife seems to think that we should write a parenting book, because we’ve raised a bunch of kids and they’re all still alive, and none of them are in therapy. To tell you the truth, we pretty much just made it all up as we went along … “

I’ve decided (by the process of elimination) not to be a ‘together’ sort of Dad, but rather to pride myself on my ‘Renaissance Parenting’ technique. I borrow a little here, adapt a little there, and patch it all together into a half-baked system that mostly works, even if it isn’t very coherent, from a philosophical perspective.

A while back, Kathy read Keeping Our Children’s Hearts by Steven and Teri Maxwell (Titus2.com) and borrowed a few ideas from them.

“The Maxwells meet with each of their kids once a week,” Kathy tells me, “to catch up with them and to have an opportunity to speak with each of them one-on-one. We should do that, too.”

And so, in January, we started meeting with each of our kids on Sunday afternoons.

We borrow from all kinds of people. Early in our marriage, we were deeply influenced by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo’s Growing Kids God’s Way curriculum, which really helped us define our parenting strategy. Sure, Ezzo is a bit out of fashion these days, and if you search the internet (I don’t recommend it) you’ll find all kinds of Ezzo-bashers, but it is actually a great foundational program, which I strongly recommend.

We’ve been influenced by Michael Pearl, and Dee Duke (we strongly recommend this sermon series), the Tripp brothers (Tedd and Paul). and a host of others. Sometimes we’ll love an idea, but not be able to implement it. Other times we’ll latch onto a philosophy, and apply it in our own unique (quirky?) way.

There doesn’t seem to be any way to stop Kathy from reading these parenting books, though.

“The Maxwells have a Family Values Statement in which they list the things that are important to them as a family. We should do that, too.”

And so, I’m working on an adaptation of their Family Values Statement.

Rachel poses for a potential Keeping/Shepherding Our Child's Heart reprint, in case the Maxwells or the Tripps call us for a collaborative effort.

One thing sustains me, though. I have a dream. One day, I’ll be attending a Parenting Conference, and I’ll take refuge, head spinning from hours of parenting wisdom, in the men’s room. There, I’ll encounter the keynote speaker, who will (as luck has it) be out of toilet paper, trapped in a stall, with only seconds before he has to go on stage. That’s when I will enact my revenge: before I give him the toilet paper he needs, I’ll force him to admit that his wife actually wrote the parenting book, and that she used an imaginary stunt Dad for all the witty illustrations and wise proverbs.

“OK, OK, I admit it,” he’ll growl. “My wife made the whole thing up. I’m just an average guy with an anger problem — I never said any of those clever things. Now give me the toilet paper!”

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