Category Archives: Musings

Events, Holidays, Musings

Sioux Perdad

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One of the fun things that Kathy does in her work with the Mentorship program for the women of our church, is to participate in skits. Trying to make the whole mentor/mentee relationship less scary, these dramatic sketches portray problematic mentors in a humorous light.

One of the characters is a wife and mother on-the-go, who is able to do everything and be everywhere. She schedules her meetings with her mentee to coincide with a child’s soccer game. “Bring your own chair so you can sit with me on the sidelines,” she tells the woman, that she plans to mentor. “I may have to step away for a few moments during the game — the coach really needs my advice.”

I may not have it exactly right (men are traditionally banned from these ‘Mentor Moments’, so I have never actually seen the skit) but that is the essence of the character, I think. Her name is Sue Permom.

Kathy has been away for the past week, helping to care for her Dad at the Mayo Clinic (who has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma). Although my boss graciously allowed me to work from home this whole week, we were quickly ‘going under’ in terms of dishes and laundry, not to mention homeschooling. Kathy’s friends have been bombarding us with princely meals, but I still wasn’t able to keep on top of the household, so I took yesterday off from work.

At the end of the day, I was beat. I’d filled the dishwasher twice, and had done at least 438 loads of laundry (or maybe 439 — it is possible I lost count). I established my new draconian policy of throwing all clothes that came out of the dryer on the couch in the living room, with dire threats:

“If your clothes are still here in 12 hours, I’m sending them to the Goodwill!”

About 9 pm, just as I settled in to take a well-deserved rest, playing my computer game, little Sarah piped up:

“What about our Valentine’s Day box?”

I groaned. Each year, Valentine’s Day (or the Friday nearest that holiday) is a big deal at our local homeschool co-op. Each family decorates a box (some of them are pretty elaborate, the show-offs) and they make Valentines for each other, usually with a little piece of candy. I constructed a quick mental checklist:

  • Valentine’s Box — nope
  • Valentines — nope
  • Candy — nope

“Quick,” I told Sarah. “Go get that shoebox on my windowsill, and cover it in paper from that roll of butcher paper in the garage. Then you can decorate it.”

Valentine Box
“Granddad, will you be our Valentine?”

Sarah loves to decorate. After I helped her wrap the box and cut a slot in it (all the kids were concerned that the slot must be large enough to accommodate candy), she stenciled our name on it and decorated it with little pink hearts. Then I found a Valentine template in MS Word and printed out a customized valentine (squandering all of Kathy’s red printer ink). The kids formed a folding party and signed the valentines, some 50+ of them. In the morning, I went to the store and bought some candy, so that each valentine can be properly accompanied by a tasty treat.

As they were leaving for co-op, I ran downstairs.

“Stop, wait!” I shouted. “Did you remember the Valentine Box? The Valentines?”

No, they hadn’t remembered any of it. Typical of our family, I’m afraid. But as for me, at least for today, I am Sioux Perdad.

Tim

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Family, Grandparents, Musings, Silliness

Dwelling in the Shelter of the Most High

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Today has been a difficult day for me. I am not a person who is very much at home with outward displays of emotion, yet nearly everyone I’ve met today has hugged me and told me, “We’re praying for your family.” In spite of the awkwardness, I am so thankful for the way that God is surrounding us with His saints, who are so determined to show us love in a variety of ways.

Kathy is in Minnesota, helping to care for her Dad, at the Mayo Clinic. Bill continues in very poor health — the doctors still do not have a firm diagnosis for him. Hopefully tomorrow the batteries of scheduled tests will shed some light on the situation. Here in Washington, we watch and pray, checking text messages and Facebook for updates, dreading news yet thirsting for any certainty.

Kathy referenced Psalm 91 in one of her texts, which begins this way:

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

We are continually reminded that we rest in the shadow of the Almighty. Whatever happens in Kathy’s Dad’s body, God will be glorified. And so we watch and pray some more.

In the midst of all this, life continues. We went to church, and I taught most of a Sunday School class. My parents came over after church, and we celebrated my Dad’s 74th birthday. It was very pleasant to connect with my parents again, and to watch my Dad guess each of his gifts before he unwrapped them. He also makes a big deal of saving the wrapping paper, presumably a holdover from his childhood on the heels of the Great Depression. We enjoyed an ice cream pie together and had a sweet time of prayer together for Kathy’s Dad.

Seventy-Four, and Still Silly
We made him blow out the candles twice, as is our custom.

It is hard not to feel guilty or shallow when the normal things of life interpose themselves in front of our concern for Granddad. And yet, I don’t think God wants us to wallow in fear or worry. Where is the balance? How much time do we focus on prayer for the healing of our beloved one, and how much do we go on with life? If we are able to trust easily, does it mean we don’t care about Granddad? If sorrow and tears predominate, does it mean we don’t trust God?

Last night, Daniel pulled out one of his last baby teeth, after much wiggling, in the Albertson’s parking lot. Back at home, he asked me:

“What should I do with it?”

“Put it in a little ziploc bag,” I suggested, not sure where this was going.

Later, as he was heading to bed, he asked me where he should put it.

“Why, do you still believe in the Tooth Fairy?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

I thought it would be funny to see how he answered that question. As an almost-14-year-old, he certainly couldn’t claim a belief in the Tooth Fairy, especially since Kathy and I are not particularly careful to perpetuate such childhood myths. Yet he clearly wanted to be paid for the tooth — I was eager to see his angle.

“No, but I believe in … Money!” Daniel gave me a big, cheesy grin, dangling the ziploc bag suggestively.

The Tooth Fairy is a bit notorious in our household. It is not unusual for kids to place hopeful teeth under their pillows for days at a time before attracting her notice.

“Times are hard,” I tell them, when they complain about their tooth being overlooked. “She is probably working the East coast this week — I hear there was a hockey tournament last weekend, and the poor Tooth Fairy is just swamped. Hang in there, maybe tonight will be your lucky night.”

When I checked on David and Daniel before I went to bed, I was amused to see that Daniel left nothing to chance. On his desk just beside the door, he placed his tooth (in its sanitary little bag), and left a note with an arrow, pointing at the tooth: “Right here, Tooth Fairy!! X marks the spot!” Around the tooth, he bent a glowstick into a circle, literally highlighting the tooth for even the most nearsighted of fairies.

Tooth Fairy-ing for Dummies
Apparently Daniel has no high regard for the intelligence of the Tooth Fairy.

Naturally, the Tooth Fairy made no visit that night. I want my children to learn to be persistent, and to persevere. As Paul told the Romans:

Let us also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us. — Romans 5:3-5

It warmed my heart to watch Daniel’s silliness, and to have something to laugh about.

Pie with Grampa
… and a piece of ice cream pie with Reese’s cup pieces and an Oreo crust never goes amiss.

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Musings, Silliness

Tears and Laughter

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This morning, I got up early to drive Kathy to the airport. She’s traveling to Minnesota to be with her Mom and to care for her Dad, who is very sick, being treated at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

We’ve been praying and praying, and Kathy has been teary-eyed as she thinks about the uncertain future and her Dad’s health. It has been a sober and serious time for our whole family.

Sometimes I am amazed at God and how he brings joy and laughter into our lives, even at the darkest of times. This was one of those times.

Heartfelt apology
Joshua wins this round in the Great Sock War.

Rachel and Joshua went off to Winter Camp with the youth from our church … clearly, I should have watched them more closely as they were packing, yesterday afternoon. Although Joshua’s feet are bigger than mine, he takes great delight in stealing my socks (probably because I don’t run around outside sock-footed, and so mine aren’t all stained and hole-y.)

You have to wonder at the mindset of a boy who takes the time to write a note like that. I especially enjoyed the underline in his text:

I Took Your Socks. I’m Not Sorry.

To think that people say I’m the quirky one!

He’s a strange duck, that boy. Of course, that leaves the whole weekend in which I have free run of his room … bwahahahaha!

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communion_tray
Musings

On the Night He Was Betrayed

Last Saturday evening our church, like many other churches around the world, celebrated the ordinance of communion, or The Lord’s Supper, as it is known to some.

Most people don’t know all the work that goes into communion, in terms of the filling of the cups, the placement of the trays on the altar, the orderly serving of the seated congregation, and even the devotional that usually accompanies it. In our church, the elders are responsible to receive the communion trays from the pastor, and to walk the aisles, serving the congregation in their seats. Responsibility for the devotional falls to our senior pastor, but he likes to include the other pastors and even the more reliable elders.

It should be noted that I am not one of the ‘reliable elders’; I have never yet officiated at the communion table, and I like it that way.

One of our elders is an intelligent, capable sort of man (I hope he doesn’t read this, ’cause it would give him a big head), who remembers his appointments and cares about details. He is usually given the task of rounding up a suitable number of elders to serve communion for the second service, and everything runs smoothly because of his attention.

In October, this all changed, when our church added a service on Saturday nights. I decided to support the Saturday service, and so (in spite of fierce opposition on the part of my traditionalist family) we now attend the worship service on Saturdays, and go to Sunday school on (when else?) Sunday mornings. (I don’t think ‘Saturday School’ will ever catch on.)

Communion Tray
Our church uses the ‘single-pass’ trays, with the bread in the center, surrounded by the cups.

When it came time to serve communion this week, we were short on elders. There weren’t any other pastors in attendance, and there were only two ushers present (ushers are our usual fall-back). We need four men to properly serve our church; the only other likely candidate available was a man who is no longer active as an elder, but served for many years as the chairman of our board of elders. The problem was, he is also part of the worship team, and was standing, up on the platform, in front of the congregation.

Our pastor is crafty, though, and managed to alert him through repeated calls of Psssst! during the prayer, drafting him into communion service. I wonder what the worship leader thought of all the ‘Psssst-ing’ during his prayer?

But I digress.

I like serving communion. My heart is warmed by the smiles of the people on the aisle, as they receive the trays from my hand. I hold my breath with the parents, as their shoulders slump in relief, when the communion trays are successfully passed by their children without mishap. I enjoy the sacred, secretive look on people’s faces, as they are confronted with these tangible symbols of the awesome love of Christ, who gave up His life for them.

Kathy tells me that my children are sad when I’m not the one who passes the tray to them, and glad when I do. I guess it is sort of like the way that David and Sarah used to fight over who got to hold my left hand when walking through parking lots (they liked the hand with the ring on it). Hopefully Dave (the usher) won’t read this or be hurt by it.

For some reason, I often lose a communion tray. You’d think as a programmer, I could master this basic math: two hands, two trays. Two men serving a section of pews; a total of four hands, four trays. Pass ‘em down the first two rows, then move to the third and fourth rows to receive the other two trays, repeat until you’re out of rows. It is hardly rocket surgery.

But people don’t sit in an orderly fashion. (Personally, I think they do it on purpose.) Sometimes one couple will sit all the way to the left or right of an empty row, and so the server on that side has to serve them without actually passing the tray down the length of the row. By the time we got to the back of the church, I had only one tray, and there were only two visible in play. I frantically walked back up the rows of worshipers, but to no avail — the tray was gone.

Maybe this happens to keep me humble, or maybe there is a conspiracy among the ushers to embarrass me — I don’t know for sure. The tray was eventually located, and three of them ended up in my partner’s hands, which is always fun to watch. I tried to pretend as though one tray was all I had been given, and demurely made my escape through the swinging doors at the back of the sanctuary.

As I returned to sit for my family, the pastor read this passage from the first letter to the Church at Corinth:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

I’ve heard that passage read nearly every month since I was a little boy — and because of that, I tend to hear the King James version, which says: ” … this is my body, broken for you … “, whatever the pastor actually reads. I often shudder when I think of the horrible pain and anguish Jesus felt, as they nailed Him to that cross, and as the Father turned away from the sin that was placed upon His Son.

For some reason, this time, the words ‘on the night He was betrayed’ kept resounding through my head. I thought of the times I have been betrayed, and how my thoughts on those occasions were focused on vengeance, not grace. How could Jesus think of establishing a New Covenant for His disciples, knowing that the one who would betray Him, sat listening to His words?

Betrayal
“Is it I, Lord?”

As we begin this new year, and we think of all the disciplines we want to renew, it is easy to become ‘weary in well-doing’. I find it helpful to meditate on the deep, deep love of Jesus, who, even in a time of great personal anguish, still found the strength to purposefully and intentionally love me, almost two millenia before I was born.

Tim

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Musings

Much Ado About Nothing

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Several days ago, I wrote a blog post, the first in nine months or so. It was strangely satisfying, in a way that one-line Facebook status posting is not.

One problem with Facebook is that other people get to comment nearly as much as you get to write. Since I have a bunch of clever friends, they all end up sounding more profound, erudite and intellectual than I, which is nowhere as ego-stroking as a monologue.

In contrast, since I tend to write very long blog posts, all but the fastest readers are lucky to finish it before they die of old age, let alone comment. So I end up getting to trot out my banal opinions, without having to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Besides, if someone does manage to read the whole article, and responds with a thoughtful, pertinent response, we can always ‘forget’ to approve their comment.

But I digress. Indeed, my digressions often have digressions of their own, which is something you rarely see in a Facebook status (although some have tried).

Yesterday, my oldest daughter discovered that we had posted a new article on our blog. She made a big show of being shocked into heart failure, and wiped her eyes in mock joy as she related her discovery of our newest post (the first since Valentines’ Day). In my eagerness for feedback, I probed further:

“Rachel — did you actually read it?”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “I just looked at the pictures.”

“There was only one picture,” I protested, ” … and it was a picture of someone else’s sandwich!”

That’s another good thing about blogging — with any luck, no one will actually read your post, and so you can get credit for communicating deep wisdom without anyone actually discovering that you are a blitherer (the verbal equivalent of a ditherer).

About now, if anyone is still reading, they’ve given up on erudite or profound, and they’re probably wondering if I plan to communicate anything in particular. If the title of this post didn’t clue you in, let me do so in plain English:

“Probably not.”

But now that I think of it, I do have a few thoughts. I un-digress.

This Fall, our pastor (assisted by various guest speakers) has been exploring what the Bible has to say about Heaven. It has been an interesting study, and my view of what Heaven will be like has been substantially fleshed out, to my considerable satisfaction. One of the things Christians are often fuzzy on, is what will happen to those who are still alive, when Jesus returns. There are various schools of thought; some think Christians are taken up into heaven before the Tribulation, others in the middle, even some think that Christians will stick around for the whole seven years of God’s judgment. Some think the whole Tribulation thing is allegorical.

Here’s what the Bible actually says, in 1 Thessalonians 4:

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Whenever Jesus does return, and whenever He calls His people, it seems we will rise up into the air, at least to cloud-level.

Here in Washington, clouds won’t be hard to find.

Naturally, there is some concern about this. What if you’re inside a building when the archangel calls? What happens to people who are driving cars, or operating heavy machinery (like in a Nutella factory)? Is there a particular pose that is appropriate for being raptured? Is it undignified to flap your arms?

Burning questions, these.

Rapture practice
The kids and I decided to practice, just in case the Lord returns while we are alive.

There, I even put in a picture for Rachel.

One gracious commenter has asked if we intend to resume a more regular practice of blogging (perhaps to see if she needs to get a restraining order against us). The truth is, we don’t know. I’ve missed blogging, but it may be that Facebook status updates have killed blog-writing forever. Time will tell … as always, we are grateful for anyone who stops by our little blog.

Tim

P.S. Kathy has asked me to change the background to something more seasonal. But I figure, I’ve made it nine months — just a few more, and the tulips will be all the rage again.

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