Enough Already!

We'll, after many years (15) of hoping, our family has finally experienced what a white Christmas in Portland is like - horrible! Just so all of you can relate, we have made a short video of me (Mike) hard at work shoveling snow... so I could get to work.
Really, it has been fun. We had somewhere around 24 inches in the last two weeks. There is still about a foot in our yard, a foot of slush on our neighborhood roads. This will be a great memory for us as we leave this beautiful city behind, at least for the short-term.

When are we moving?

Finally received a call from work informing me that I (mike) will be starting training on Jan. 5th. I should be in Burbank, CA for one week, then shipped over to Phoenix, AZ for two weeks. Once training is complete, work is giving me a week off to move the family down to Flagstaff. This means I will have about 2 weeks to find a place for us to live, train, and keep up with school - whew! Please pray for us as there are many details we just have no idea about. God has taken us through this before, we just need to relax and trust.

"This is Dangerous!"

While on vacation in Eastern Oregon, my family and I decided to take a canoe ride down the Deschutes river. After putting on life vests, and getting a brief set of instructions about the trip, we shoved off into the slow, smooth water and headed downstream behind a host of other canoers.

I did not realize how tippy a canoe can be until I started rocking the boat for fun, which immediately freaked out my entire family. My three year old son was in the front with my wife, and although I thought he would get the most fun out of the trip (he's crazy!), he ended up being the most frightened, and declared with unwavering confidence, "This is Dangerous!"

As the trip progressed, my son's fear gradually moved into the uncontrollable world of panic, evidenced by his shrieks of fear and screams of "No, No, NO" every time the boat rocked from the unstoppable side affects of paddling. At one point we were going through a beautiful canyon with shear cliffs on one side of the river and grass choked beaches on the other. Ahead of us we could see two canoes, one occupied by an elderly couple, and the other by what appeared to be their grown children. I felt sorry for them because although the scenery was breathtaking, and promised peace, the noises coming from my boat, and which were ricocheting off the cliffs sounded more like the sound track from "The Shinning." I'm surprised the local police were not waiting for us we climbed out of the canoe with our whimpering 3 year old son.

By the way my son had screamed, you would have thought that he was traumatized for life. His soul was surely permanently seared by the rocking of the boat, and his dreams would forever be haunted by the sound of lapping water and the feeling of a rocking boat, but as soon as his feet touched land, he was a changed little boy. The screaming stopped immediately, and by the time we were on the bus headed home, he was talking as if nothing had happened. I think he was a little embarrassed over the whole thing. In an effort to forget the incident (something I will never do) my son looked up into my face, smiled a wonderfully sweet smile, and said, "That was fun."

A Father

Last night my youngest son woke me at around 3:30 a.m., he had to go to the bathroom...again. He's in the midst of learning how to use the toilet, and he had an accident, his whole bed was soaked, pillow, comforter, sheets, everything. I have not been sleeping well lately, but last night, I was sleeping better than I had in a long time. I did not want to get up.

My son usually wakes me at around 3:30 a.m., he needs help going to the bathroom still. His nightly entrance consists of turning the hallway light on, slamming my bedroom door open, and shouting,"Dad, I have to go." Sometimes I get up, and sometimes my wife gets up, but last night I knew it would be me.

As I lumbered out of bed and stomped to the bathroom, I tried to suppress my frustration. When would this end? When would I be able to sleep through the night without interruption? It felt like never, and the eternal task of cleaning up fed my distaste for the moment. After ripping the soaked sheets off the bed, and grabbing new jammies, I met my son in the bathroom. "I hate this," I thought to myself as I pulled his little shirt off.

It was then, in the midst of my sleepy frustration, halfway through redressing my small son that the words penetrated my thoughts as if they were whispered by unseen lips directly into my ears, "Whatever you do unto the least of these..."

Immediately, in an instant, I felt my selfish wants and desires leave as new energy and compassion filled me, filled me so completely that I saw, more clearly than ever before the implications of my action on my son, and on how my son would see his God; his Spiritual Father.

As his earthly father, I am the most powerful being my son knows. I am in essence, an image of God to my son, and what I do every day, what I would do in that situation would help to form how he looked at his spiritual Father. Would I represent a God who loved the fact that he came to me for help in the midst of a small meaningless mistake, or would I represent a god who resented the interruption, a god who would have preferred that he lay silently in his urine until morning?

This time...I chose the former; to represent the God who was glad to see this little man in the middle of the night, happy at the chance to spend time with him, delighted that he chose to seek my help rather than trying to fix his problem alone.

Friends

Our church was pretty empty yesterday because a lot of the women were away at retreat (see previous post). I came into our meeting area and sat near the front...alone. Soon, others began to wander in, no one seemed concerned about starting on time, it was a good feeling.

One of my friends saw me sitting alone, and joined me, then another, and another. Soon there were four of us on the same row, sitting next too each other. I looked at them, thought about their friendship, how we all had spent considerable time together over the last several years. "These are good men," I thought to myself. "Men anyone would be proud to call friends."

As our row filled, the joy of community overwhelmed me. Even though few words were said beyond a quick greeting, we all knew each other pretty well, and just begin near these guys was somehow uplifting.

It's good to have friends...

Retreat

Sara is on retreat, and I'm in purgatory....a temporary holding place for me to be "purified" by the ever demanding cleansing power of three young children.
I knew it was going to be tough, but even with a plethora of junk food, lots of videos and a detailed schedule, I'm still exhausted, and quickly loosing any sense of purpose. Last night was the worst as my energy for dealing with petty differences just simply ran out - I sent my wife a text message expressing my frustration, and her simple response came back several hours later, lol (laugh out loud)...

After the kids were finally in bed, but still continually calling to me for various items (water, candy, light adjustment, music adjustment etc.), I went out on the back porch, sat in a chair and just stared at the clouds, visible as the city lights reflected off their water molecules. I found satisfaction in their quick march across the sky, "At least they were able to accomplish something." I was only on the porch for about 5 minutes, but it was enough for my own thoughts to realize they could peek out from behind their hiding places, and resume their normal positions. Sanity crept back into the center of my soul, and I took a deep breath...life is good.