[five minutes after bedtime lights out]
Sullivan: Mom?
Carla: Yes?! [long pause]
Sullivan: Why, when, or how did burritos originate?
In our house, blankets have names and genders.
Date: January 18, 2017 at 3:12:43 PM EST
colleague: FYI no issue with Gus Mady, he just wasn’t tilting his cab panel back enough to get the hinges on. =) he called a apologized a hundred times. He’s super nice.
me: Good. I’m glad you asked again.
colleague: me too. and thanks for you help too
me: You’re welcome. Glad he and I spoke. I probably wouldn’t have the chance to meet him at NTEA if I didn’t field his call.
colleague: divine appointment!
me: That makes me think: I’d like to treat all encounters as divine appointments—to treasure each human interaction as an opportunity to communicate with someone of unsurpassable worth, a bearer of the image of God
colleague: PREACH!
I decided the above exchange was worth spending some work time on. I haven’t known what to say when people assert that a lucky encounter is a divine one. But now I do.
Whenever I go to the library with the kids, I feel like a failure as a parent. It has something to do with their choice of reading.
Hymns are the way to catechize the kids.
“I need your loving” = the family! I can feel the difference if I concentrate exclusively on them and don’t just move them around the house like furniture.
I’m floored by Sullivan reporting today that he is bored with home life—and sad about it.
Éa: So when I was on my way home from the park, and old man and an old woman were walking on the path and they said, “Are you all by yourself?” So I told them, “Um, no my mom said my brother and I could go to the park and she’s just right over there,” and I pointed to my house.
Carla: But I didn’t know you were going to the park. You didn’t tell me.
Éa: I know. It was just the easiest way to get a worried old man and and old woman out of my way.
We are ready to send Everett and Oak home. But we’re not. I’m sure these are the typical feelings of a foster parent. Life is going to be different. Quieter. This evening without them because they’re with Mommy and Daddy makes that sure. But as Everett would surely reciprocate, “I will miss you, Everett.” And I will miss you, Oak. We still have three weeks with them, so let’s make them count.
We asked Éa and Sullivan today whether they’d like to foster again. Sullivan said, “I’d like a year.” And Éa said, “Yeah, in like, five thousand weeks.”
A home is fuller if you’re stretched for the sake of relationships. Let us dig in to more people. Let us “love [our] enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Then I will live without regret.
What could be better than co-ambulation with your mother?
— Scott, suggesting to Carla that she join Sullivan on a midday walk
One thing that pleases me—well, two: First, Mommy and Daddy snuggles. And second, rock dust on my hands.
— Sullivan
I belong to the family between 5:30 and 8:30.
I’m grateful for a day at home with no agenda or calendar items whatsoever. Just what we needed after a week dealing with Janet’s death. I’m sure the record of days will encapsulate it.
I will highlight one part of it, though: I’m grateful that the topography of State College includes the snow-covered hill at Penn Hills Park, which we Stilsons tobogganed down for two hours this sunny afternoon. Oh, and Carla and I had an attention-grabbing wrestling match on the slope, in which she attempted to pin me but could barely get me on the ground. I love a playful, feisty wife.
I’m grateful for Josh, who helped me shovel Janet’s driveway yesterday afternoon in preparation for the arrival of some relatives.
Today I’m grateful that somebody thought to invent space heaters, a very small one of which I just purchased and which I expect to arrive Tuesday. I’m getting chilblains on most of my fingers with it being winter and me working in the basement. I mean, some of my fingers look deformed.
I’m grateful for the Peters, whom we visited tonight on my whim. (OK, we had to go to the South Hills for milk from Meyer Dairy.) The long time that passes between when I see them outside a church context means conversation is always a little stilted at first. We just don’t know what to ask each other about. But they’re always welcoming, and once you get going, it’s always so warm. The kids still love going, too—although I’m not sure why: There aren’t many kiddo-friendly things to do there. But give Sullivan and Éa an elliptical machine and then a long sofa with crawlspace behind it, and they’re set for at least one evening.
Finally, I’m grateful for the confidence I feel having just finished Colossians that Paul both wrote it and doesn’t contradicts Jesus much.
Boy, does my desire to journal nightly wax and wane.
Anyway, today I am grateful for the time Éa and I spent before a magnetic board at Schlow Library with magnetic letters. She was sorting the letters when I walked up, then we started a game in which I would spell a new word to her and she would read it. I got to introduce her to words like “anodyne” and “arachnid.” She enjoyed it—and read everything very well. Later, after I had gone upstairs to pick up a LEGO architecture book for Sullivan and a copy of Wally Pfister’s film Transcendence, I returned to find she had spelled the word “xilafone” all by herself. She was just so chipper and engaged about the whole thing. I like Éa very much.
I am also grateful for rebound from a first hour-and-a-half at work today of distraction (Michael Shermer, Keith DeRose, John Piper) that started as I wanted to corroborate Ethan’s report that members of ISIS are converting to Christianity because they have visions of Jesus. I found new clarity and decisiveness to stay on task and be efficient at work—and it felt great.
Finally, I am grateful for the continue distillation of Christianity in my head and heart as a Way and not a set of beliefs. I still hold those beliefs and them galvanize my commitment to the Way, but my priorities lie in imitating Christ (or our distilled, inherited version of Him), not believing the right things about Him. Meanwhile my confession that my beliefs might be false strengthens my commitment to them.
Sullivan won the closest game of Sorry! conceivable this evening on our date.
I am grateful for the opportunity to help Janet in her time of need. But I want need not to be! Carla has visited a few times over the past several days because Janet has been loopy because of some medication she is one in connection with her perma-asthma that set in this winter like last. Apparently, MRIs at the hospital today may have revealed lymphoma.
I am grateful for the resilience and emotional maturity Éa displayed upon getting her ears pierced at Ikonic Ink downtown today. It hurt, but she displayed (and was multiply congratulated by onlookers for) stoicism while Miranda the “piercing artist” was doing her work. When it was done, she cried honest, quite-but-unashamed tears in Mommy’s arms. May all my children know what to do with their sadness and pain.
And may more families make family outings at tattoo and piercing parlors?
I am grateful today for a son who grows in maturity and relatability. It was my honor to bring him to Panera this evening to share in a cherry pastry with him. We agreed it’d be good to learn computer programming together as father and son. I set a reminder for myself to look into the best, most child-friendly among the free starter courses that are cropping up seemingly everywhere online these days. We also played chess with a Super Mario set that Schlow Library had on hand.
I am grateful today for the evening of dress-up, make-up, dancing, and bathing together that Carla tells me she and Éa shared. I am glad they got to enjoy one another.
I am grateful for Greg Boyd, whose God at War Travis is reading at my recommendation while I re-read Satan and the Problem of Evil. Travis texted me this evening to chat briefly about how much he enjoyed Boyd’s use of quantum theory in the opening pages.
I am grateful for the loving effort Carla is putting forth these past few days into making Christmas cheery for us all by overcoming her distaste for shopping and spending the better part of today and yesterday shopping. We had decided after last Christmas that we would do 100% of our Christmas shopping locally. We probably won’t end up doing 100%, but the decision does mean Carla has been all over town: Jo-Ann Fabrics, Goodwill, Ross, and Target, to name a few.
I am grateful for our tenant Apoo’s eagerness to share Indian dishes with us. We had her, her husband Vijay, and her father Raju up for dinner this evening so we could meet her father. We shared garden vegetable quiche; she shared chicken biryani. Carla and I overate because everything was so tasty.
I am grateful for the culturally show of fatherly tenderness Raju made by touching Éa’s face when she caught her hand in the globe while fighting Sullivan over it. Perhaps it is purely cultural and doesn’t carry the same meaning in Telegu India as it does in Pennsylvania. But his willingness to touch a child he had just met simply because she was a child who was in pain was touching. At the same time, I wonder if it babies children too much. Nevertheless, I think there is something to learn there.
I’m in no mood to journal: I feel disappointed in myself today for underaccomplishing, mostly because I didn’t make time to exercise today and haven’t managed to wheel back to get any post-launch work done on Frank’s website.
But Ethan and I had a stimulating conversation about how to live our lives following Jesus while we watched Sullivan and Everley take swim lessons and Éa and Anthem clamber around the bleachers. Unfortunately, it makes me want to get Carla to quit her jobs so we can more readily foster children.
Being a Christian family man can be confusing (see 1 Corinthians 7:32–35).
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that it was the day Sullivan and Éa enjoyed their first feature-length film: the delightful-in-concept-and-execution Monsters, Inc. We watched it at the Peters’ house after church because Josh and his new girlfriend Esther were watching it. They kids sat on our laps most of the time. Carla provided some commentary and educational questions for the kids along the way to help them process.
I’m currently dissatisfied with my evenings. Maybe I just need to rush through the bedtime routine so that I have more discretionary time? Maybe it’s as simple as journaling a pick of the day only when I feel like I have something to journal.
It makes sense that if I’ve spent all day working on stuff and getting things done that I had preconceived to get done that I then spend some time in relaxation and recuperation. Part of the problem is that I don’t fully engage with what I’m doing when the kids are around. I have a slight feeling of guilt when I pursue something other than them.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you about three things that happened while dining at Luna II Woodgrill this evening with Carla, Sullivan, Éa, and the Doroshes:
- Sullivan learned about such Marvel characters as Mr. Fantastic, Thing, Thor, Lizard, Wolverine, and Black Cat via a coloring book the waitstaff had provided and via my answering his questions about them as he leafed through. It was strange to help him be introduced to characters. I don’t want Sullivan to open comic books and fall in like I feel like I did as a youth, but at the same time, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. So I didn’t. I did wonder, though, what effect his seeing the buxom Black Cat will have on his perception of normal busts in women as he hits adolescence.
- In talking with the Doroshes and Carla, I learned that if you learn of a funeral and you know the deceased or the deceased is someone very close to someone you know, you should go. How well you know the deceased isn’t a factor in the decision because (1) your presence will add comfort the grieving, (2) it is an opportunity to bond with fellow humans, and (3) you will be reminded of your own mortality, which for me, at least, is always a healthful, inspiring thing. I missed out on this evening’s effective Antioch International Church reunion because I stayed home to tend Sullivan and Éa instead of attending Justin Carr’s funeral.
- I decided to start calling the Doroshes Uncle Pete and Aunt Betsy. Éa and especially Sullivan are always eager to see Pete, and both kids were very liberal and energetic with their hugging of them both. Incidentally, I also let Pete violate my pet rule for who pays when dining out with out-of-town guests. It should be the hosts (us), but I let him pay because Carla had already accepted his offer and because, well, he insisted so nicely.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about January 11, 2015 in my life, I would tell you it was the day I discovered a way to do something about the goosebumps I felt the other day reading Psalm 33: get out the new Kala KA-T] ukulele my mother gave me for Christmas and start making music to God, learning the instrument as I go.
I discovered this as a I sat on the love-seat in our living room this evening, clumsily strumming along with the chord sheet for “Jesus Is Yours” up on my computer, which sat on the seat of the rocking chair across from me while the kids drifted off to sleep in their bunk bed and Carla watched a television program on her computer from the living room sofa.
In time, I hope to write my own songs and perhaps sing-pray with this uke.
I would also tell you that today was the day I was proud of Éa and Carla for working hard enough on learning to read to be able to read the words “creek,” “shrug,” “wreck,” and “recent,” which my dad spelled in bathtub letters perched on a wooden rack and displayed to her via Skype.
I would also tell you that through the same exercise with Sullivan, the kids learned what the word “conscience” means—a word Carla had suggested my dad spell to try to stump Sullivan, and incidentally the word that got me booted from my fifth-grade spelling bee.
Finally, I would also tell you that I enjoyed a game of hide-and-seek with Sullivan and Éa at the Peters’ house—an excellent house for the game—after house church today. I would tell you about the inviting peace I sensed upon entering the Peters’ den, where a wood stove roared, and the joy I felt by hiding from the kids by sitting under Carla on a recliner in the middle of the Peters’ living room.
The thing I’m most grateful for today is all the music-making that happened in my house, especially the “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” with Matt and the three Christmas carols at the piano right before bedtime with Carla and the kids.