I shall have bird feeders

Psalm 108:6 (NIV)

Save us and help us with your right hand,
   that those you love may be delivered.

When I am an old man, I shall have bird feeders. And a big aquarium. I will take a photography class at the community college, and I will go on long walks every day the weather permits.

The children will come visit us for holidays and, most importantly, their birthdays. We will dote on our grandchildren and always keep on hand the foods their parents won’t. We will drive to see the great sights of America — the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the Golden Gate Bridge. I will choose a favorite restaurant where everyone on the staff knows me so well they just wave when I walk in the door and five minutes later my lunch comes to the table.

I could keep going for a while here. This tends to be the sort of thing I ponder when jamming my thumb in a fussy infant’s mouth long after the sun has set. But I’ll stop for two reasons. One, Jenny Joseph covered the ground expertly with her poem “Warning,” the first line of which is “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.” And two, I’ve been made all too aware recently, again, of just how fragile and fleeting life can be.

It would be easy enough to run through a laundry list of tragedies large and small to further illustrate the point, and I’d scarcely have to go back more than a week, or even outside my family and close friends. But I could write something similar seemingly every week. Tragedy is all around — the sudden loss of life or health or security are constant, though the individuals and families so stricken are chosen at random.

The takeaway lesson is simple: none of us are promised anything in this life. Every day we have is a precious blessing that ought to be cherished and lived in gratitude. And as sure as I express that sentiment I have to admit how routinely I fall short of that ideal, arguing with the kids about getting into the car so we’re only five minutes late to church, fretting over a glitch in the DVR or grumbling because I gazed into a refrigerator full of food and couldn’t decide what to eat. I know better, but that knowledge can be fleeting at any moment.

Still, the future is not mine to decide. So when I think about my bird feeders and my aquarium and my photography class, I realize it’s about as real to me as playing second base for the Cubs or filing columns for the Chicago Tribune. If I’m blessed enough to one day celebrate a holiday surrounded by wife and our boys and their children, hopefully I’ll be fully aware of the source of that blessing and appropriately grateful.

But more importantly, I have to live every day between now and then in thankfulness for the chance to simply wake up and move about the planet. Some days are rich with joys, others laden with sorrows. And most of them lie somewhere in between, not too high and not too low, but spectacular gifts nonetheless, each and every one of them. To God alone be the glory.

A prayer for November 24:

Lord, thank you for everything I have, for each breath, each day I get to be surrounded by my family, each chance to look into my children’s eyes and make sure they know how much I love them. Help me as I strive to remember the precious nature of life, to take nothing for granted and to live in gratitude for the blessings of this life and the promises of things to come. Tell me what I need to hear and show me the path you would have me walk, and may the things I do and say bring you praise. Amen.

• • •

I didn't get into the specifics in this post; however, if you are so inclined as to click for more information, I offer this link to the clearinghouse for tornado relief in Washington, Ill., and this page about a scholarship fund for the family of our dear friends who last Sunday suffered an unexpected loss.

He cries alone

Psalm 111:1 (NIV)

Praise the Lord.

I will extol the Lord with all my heart
   in the council of the upright and in the assembly.

Isaac can be very loud. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, least of all me, since I’ve walked this road three times before. But for as much as I expected the noise, what I couldn’t guess was how unfazed the older brothers would be when the new arrival is screaming from the bottom of his toes.

To be fair, he seems to save his most curdling shrieks for the middle of the night when only he and I are awake. We’ve not yet had the whole family in the van for much more than 15 or 20 minutes at a shot, which means I’m holding my breath for our first cross-state drive to see Kristie’s family. But even around the house when he can get sort of ornery, the big boys just don’t seem to care.

Believe it or not, this guy can get pretty worked up.

The thing is, I’d be pretty understanding if they were bothered. Infant crying can be incessant and piercing, and I don’t recall Jack, Max or Charlie requesting another addition to the family. Yet so far they’ve displayed preternatural grace under pressure. They’ve almost always been patient when the baby’s needs have to come first. They haven’t shown a shred of jealousy. And when he cries, they take it as some sort of fact of nature — this from children who sometimes act personally insulted if it’s raining outside. Jack knows when it’s the right time to pick up Isaac and Charlie tries to kiss his head to make him feel better.

At the risk of jinxing the whole darn thing, the big boys’ reception of Baby Four thus far has exceeded my grandest hopes. I was steeled for the worst-case scenario, but their acceptance and understanding is making this transition into our new normal somewhere between tolerable and downright fun. I don’t even recall praying for this kind of blessing, but I’m certainly expressing my gratitude for whatever’s been making it possible.

Perhaps if I had more sleep or a shorter to-do list I could mine some deep truth from the way our big brothers have adapted. Surely there’s something almost primal about the familial bonds and they way children have almost a better sense for human nature than adults. But mostly I’m happy to still feel like this is a house where love reigns.

It’s not all sunshine and roses. Bath time is a nightly war, homework is a daily struggle and there are days where everyone’s attitudes could use a drastic improvement. But at the same time, we all seem to have made room in our hearts for the new guy, and that’s why it already feels like he fits perfectly. He was always supposed to be here, even before we knew it was time.

I don’t claim to understand how these things work, or even have a good handle on explaining how they feel, except to be thankful to God for these many blessings. Life can be absolutely wonderful, and when those moments wash over me, I try my best to remember the source.

A prayer for November 16:

Lord, thank you for simple gifts in overwhelming amounts. May the works of my hands and the words of my mouth be sufficient to give you praise in gratitude for the opportunity to delight in the wonderful people I count among family and friends. Thank you for allowing me to feel loved, and help me share that joy with others. Amen.

That was the week that was

Psalm 40:11 (NIV)

Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord;
   may your love and faithfulness always protect me.

There comes a point when, while holding your feverish, 18-day-old son down on an emergency room exam table for a chest X-ray around 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night, you both kind of look at each other and silence falls on the room. At least that was my experience with Isaac earlier this week, a kid so new my fingers still don’t automatically type his name when I envision his face.

In that moment, when I knew words would do me no good, I hoped against hope my face would reveal a calmness beyond my own capability, and that somehow the eight pounds of baby on the table would look at me and trust he would be as fine as we kept saying he would. And while I’m not entirely sure how well a person that tiny can see anything, sure enough the silence came.

Maybe he was just too tired after screaming through the collection three bodily fluids. Maybe the 101-degree fever sapped his extra energy. Maybe he was so wracked with hunger he couldn’t put up a fight. Or maybe, just maybe, he could sense serenity in a father taking one of his four sons through the emergency room for the seventh time. He was the youngest, by far (the others were all well past their first birthdays), and the only to earn admission (for three nights), but considering the chasm between the worst-case scenario and what actually happened, you’ll find no complaints here.

Three weeks old today; a third of those days spent in a hospital.

In the simplest of terms, very young children with high enough fevers need to be tested and preventively treated for bacterial infections. Once the fever goes away and the tests come back negative (some results take 48 hours), you get to go home, and that’s what we did this afternoon. But when you have four children, two in school and two in diapers, nothing is really simple.

When they told us we’d be spending Tuesday night in the hospital, the first caveat was only one of us could stay unless we were the only occupants of a double room (we were). But then came the logistical worries. We’d dropped the big boys off with my parents earlier and got approval for them to spend the night. Already on the next day’s calendar were an IEP meeting and a kindergarten costume parade. Two days in to working afternoons in an attempt to ease back into postpartum office life that plan got put right back on the shelf.

God bless my parents, by the way. This is the third time since the start of September we moved some or all of our family into their house with little to no notice. I’m eternally grateful for their hospitality and willingness to step right into direct parenting of our big guys, but we’d all be fairly happy to go years and years without any more extreme situations or extenuating circumstances. Our house still bears the marks of sewer-related damage, but it’s home no matter what, and it’s good to know we’ll all sleep here tonight — provided the five-year-old watching movies in the basement because his own illness led to a five-hour nap this afternoon actually goes to sleep at some point, and provided the two-year-old hacking up organs upstairs actually stays asleep.

Even with those hurdles, having us all under one roof is a comfort. Contrast that to my Wednesday: Around midnight, I left the hospital for home to get the things I’d have packed if I’d known we’d more or less be moving out for the rest of the week. Got back to the room around 2 a.m. By 6:45 I was out the door, over to Pops & K’s to pick up Jack so I could drive him home to meet the school bus, as well as get the garbage and recycling cans to the curb, take a quick shower and head back down to the hospital, grabbing breakfast for Kristie on the way, hopefully in time to catch the report from the morning shift doctor.

By 10 a.m. I was out the door again, head back north for the IEP meeting. After that there was enough time to snag lunch, then go back down to get Max and Charlie in time to get Max home before the bus. Shortly after he rode off Charlie and I drove to school for the costume parade. Then we hurried home so as to be here before Jack returned. Then we waited for Max and eventually got everyone back in the car to go back to Pops & K’s. I left them and headed to the hospital so Kristie could leave — when she finished feeding Isaac — to grab her first shower in more than 36 hours.

She left shortly before the World Series game started, and while Isaac did not so much sleep (who could blame him given the medications, tape, tubes and wires), he and I did watch quite a bit of uninterrupted baseball, and when Kristie returned around 8:30 with leftover pizza, I was able to exhale and feel like I’d done my caffeine-aided best to take care of my entire family as best I could for one day, not quite realizing Isaac wouldn’t be sleeping for another three hours at least.

And that’s the meat of the matter. There’s nothing like a medical situation in the midst of an already busy everyday routine to drive home just how much our kids depend on us for everything. That it happened while Kristie is still recovering from childbirth and also acting as the sole source of nourishment for another person is an extra degree of difficulty. That the battery in our minivan failed to function in the middle of a pouring rain Thursday afternoon when I had all three kids loaded right outside the bus stop was a straw in search of an overtaxed camel.

Not here. Not this family. Somewhere along the way we all earned an extra measure of resiliency. None of us would choose the flooded house or the feverish newborn fears, but all of us managed to make peace with the things we can’t control and make the best of the rest. Somewhere the abnormal starts to feel routine and rolling with the punches is a badge of honor. It’s not like we enjoy this stuff, but it’s still far too easy to find another family going through something much more difficult. We were never promised perfection or an easy path. Part of those wedding vows mention being broke, being sick and just plain worse. And yet tomorrow the sun rises and we have a chance to all be together, so what’s the use in complaining?

I hope Isaac never remembers anything of his hospital experience. I hope our older boys understand and forgive their mother for not being able to be at everything while we fight back to regular. But I pray none of us forgets the boundless love of the people who care for us, the simple yet rich blessing of being a family and the promise of a God whose love will sustain, save and guide us in this life and beyond.

There’s no place like home, and there’s no home like family. It’s great to be back.

A prayer for November 1:

Lord, thank you for our health, our home and our family. May we rise each day in full appreciation for the many blessings we enjoy in this life, and may we go forward into your world as thankful people, returning those blessings to you in praise and allowing others to see in us what it truly means to be transformed by your love and amazing grace. Amen.

Baby update

Psalm 51:15 (NIV)

Open my lips, Lord,
   and my mouth will declare your praise.

Isaac Evert Holland was born at 2:43 p.m. at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Ill.

At birth, Isaac weighed eight pounds, twelve ounces, and measured twenty and one-half inches long.

The catch of the day, bigger at birth than all his older brothers.

These dimensions are notable, because as both of Kristie’s obstetricians noted while wrapping up the Caesarean section, he most likely wasn’t going to fit the normal way. And so a planned surgery, while never the intended option, proved the most logical. The entire process was altogether different than the way his older brothers entered the world, but it ended with a crying, healthy baby and you’ll find no complaints here about that outcome.

After three prior trips to the maternity ward, resulting in the lights of our lives who now are ages nine, five and two, I have gotten somewhat used to seeing my wife struggle with labor pains. But those experiences did little to prepare me to offer wise words as she battled a flood of pre-op emotions this afternoon. But like always, she dug her heels in and rose to the occasion (you will forgive some mixed metaphors here — it is early in the morning and I have not slept well for a decade) and if I accomplish one thing in life it will be to make sure my four sons exactly how much their mother sacrificed to give them life.

The former baby of the family meets the new guy.

We had all four of those sons together for the first time this evening. The older three, staying with my parents, came over after dinner. Charlie entered the room with a big smile on his face, walked right up to his baby brother and patted his tummy, then rubbed his hair. Apparently the way to greet a baby is much like how you engage my parents’ Cairn terrier. But he also bent over and kissed Isaac on top of his hairy little head, and I think I might have hurt my face smiling.

Max and Jack were very curious what name we’d chosen. Kristie and I settled on a first name a few weeks ago, and nailed down the middle name when, with Kristie torn between two choices today, I deferred and reminded her she was the one about to undergo surgery. And she still waited a few hours to make up her mind. But Jack and Max were not concerned with middle names. They just wanted to make sure we were not actually naming their new brother Floyd, which we’d been calling him for months inside the family just to have a reference point.

Isaac, we learned after deciding to go with the name, pops up at least once a few branches up my mother’s family tree. It also is from the Bible, and it just so happens the boys have been learning about the patriarchs of Israel in Sunday school. Max chimed right up today with the story of Abram and Sarai, and how God changed their names. Last week after church he explained to Kristie how Esau’s arms were hairy but Jacob’s were not. And Charlie, who still would prefer to call the baby Floyd, is able to pronounce the name just fine.

But there are lots of names in the Bible. Hundreds, if not thousands, in fact. Yet Isaac is the name associated with laughter, and laughter is something vitally important in our family. There’s no pressure on this hours-old child to grow into the life of the party. Even if that is his chosen path, he’ll need to elbow his way into dominance over some other outsized personalities who double as the source of all his hand-me-downs. But in a way, I think we wanted this fourth (and final) baby to know he is, was and always will be a source of joy to his parents.

Isaac’s middle name is Evert, and you’re all under strict orders to pronounce it as the Dutch would, which is EH-vert. It’s also the middle name of Kristie’s father’s father, which is the most personal connection, but in the broader sense it is a tribute to the family’s Dutch heritage. I have written before about her grandfather as well as the importance of a house filled with laughter, but bleariness prevents me from barking too far up either tree at this point.

As I wrote the morning after Charlie arrived, the Internet and email and text messages and cell phones have kept us connected with friends and family near and far, and it is a wonderful treat to hear and read words of encouragement and congratulations from so many people. It confirms my belief that, for all its challenges, the world Isaac is born into is one where love reigns supreme, where relationships can grow, deepen and endure such that no one is ever alone unless they choose to be, where friends become family and family becomes the safety net that binds, protects and steadies us all.

So many people have offered thoughts, prayers and support that throughout the day, even far away from my trusty laptop and with phones that could not pick up a signal deep inside the hospital, the names and faces of these dear people kept coming to mind, usually when I most needed a reminder of the wide network of people who fill our lives with love. I hope and pray I can be part of the web of support for them, but on days like today I need to focus more on receiving than giving.

Peace. Love. Motherhood.

Usually when I stare into little eyes as they flicker open for the first time, I think all sorts of things about the future. What will his voice sound like? Will he enjoy music? Will we watch baseball together like we did all night tonight? Will he take to reading quietly or prefer to play loudly in the front yard with the rest of the crew? I could write questions probably for another hour, but none of them would be anything that actually came to my mind today.

I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow or a few months from now or kindergarten or college. I was just content in the moment. We felt the need to have one more baby and now, finally, here he was. We wanted him to be healthy and the doctors said he is. We wanted the birth to go well, and there wasn’t a single complication. We wanted his older brothers to accept the new arrival, and they literally opened their arms. Why focus any attention on tomorrow when everything you ever wanted is in one tiny room, bound together by a love better felt than described?

Thankful does not begin to explain my heart tonight. This is our last first day of life as parents, and I will treasure it until the seas run dry. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Amen.

A prayer for October 11:

Lord, thank you for a happy, healthy baby, and for the woman who carried him in her womb and will continue to sacrifice for him more than he will ever comprehend. Please help us both to give to our children our best effort, to further deepen our marriage bonds and to show us how our partnership, through you, can build a strong foundation to prepare our boys to go and live lives worthy of you. Help me be the husband and father my family deserves, and thank you so much for your amazing grace. Amen.

It wasn't, but it will

Psalm 33:10-11 (NIV)

The Lord foils the plans of the nations;
   he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever,
   the purposes of his heart through all generations.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. No, Baby 4 was supposed to arrive like Baby 1 and Baby 3, a more or less traditional labor and delivery process. We figured it would be just like every other time, water breaking in the dark of some weekend night, drive to the hospital and follow orders. Anything less dire than what we experience with Baby 2 — an emergency c-section, a collapsed lung and an ambulance ride to the neonatal intensive care unit — would have been considered a success.

But that’s not how it’s going to go down. On account of a few medical issues that need not be detailed, and barring a radical change in condition between now and then, Baby 4 is going to enter the world surgically Friday afternoon. I’ve long maintained herding three children going back to April 2004 is not nearly a large enough sample size for us to have experienced every possible parenting scenario, and Baby 4 has proven that to be correct many times already, and his arrival will be an exclamation point.

But having a long-held belief is not the same as actually encountering it in real life. And so I sit here tonight in a position I’ve never occupied, and one I quite frankly never fully anticipated even as evidence mounted it would be inevitable. We’ve been given a time to report to the hospital and, provided things go as is generally the case, it’s fairly easy to map out our next few days. That it coincides with a four-day weekend for the older boys and a long-planned visit from my California sister is an added benefit — we likely couldn’t have planned the whole thing much better.

So why does it feel so weird? Why can I not get my brain around the reality of the situation? I now have enough time, and a deadline, to accomplish the last-minute tasks we need to take care of to be fully ready. I can pick out clothes days in advance for the older boys. No one should have to drop plans at the last minute to shuttle Max to his soccer game or one of the two birthday parties he’s been invited to Saturday afternoon. No midnight phone calls. No waking up Jack to give him the news so he’s not upset in the morning when we’re gone (fool him once, shame on us; fool him twice, swear up and down it won’t happen a third time).

Maybe the other three times there was some comfort in the element of surprise? I know the fact I was watching “Saturday Night Live” when Kristie told me “it’s time” for both Max and Charlie was pure coincidence, but a large part of me expected her to give me the same message last weekend.

There’s just something weird about knowing, and I’m likely never going to be able to fully understand or explain. I know I get twitchy when encountering people who discuss their unborn children by name, and this feels kind of similar. In many ways it’s no different from having a milestone event on the calendar, like a wedding or graduation, but it’s never been off-putting to discuss things like those as certainties. A lot of my perceptions changed the day Max was born, and I’ll probably never see the world the same way.

But we have a date and a time and a place and a name (we’re not telling) and now I have about 36 hours to get ready. I will wash all the dishes and the clothes and pick up as best as possible and transfer car seats and for the love of all things holy take a vacuum to the minivan. We will sit down with Babies 1, 2 and 3 to discuss what’s going to happen over the next couple of days and answer any possible questions. We will go to sleep Thursday knowing it is our last night as a family of five. And by Friday night we’ll have two in diapers, pictures to share and a name to reveal and the long process of recovery from surgery while also caring for the most adorably helpless of creatures.

I’m going to do the best I can to clear my mind, to seek God and to open myself fully that I might have wisdom, strength, patience and peace far beyond my own abilities — whatever I may need to not just get by but to effectively lead my family through the days ahead. We are not alone, and we are blessed with enough family and dear friends to make sure we never feel isolated. And woven through it all is God’s love, uplifting and redeeming. Even when nothing else makes sense, of this I can be sure.

A prayer for October 9:

Lord, I want to surrender myself to you. I need to let go of my worry, fear, anxiety and whatever else might be clouding my heart and mind. I need to make room for peace, for clarity, for strength and patience. As we inch ever closer to the day, the hour, the minute when our family forever changes, I want to be made like new in your eyes. I want to welcome our child into a house filled with laughter and love. And I want all of us to be healthy and safe. Watch over us now and always. Amen.

Change is coming — eventually

Psalm 66:10-12 (NIV)

For you, God, tested us;
   you refined us like silver.
You brought us into prison
   and laid burdens on our backs.
You let people ride over our heads;
   we went through fire and water,
   but you brought us to a place of abundance.

Here’s the thing about waiting for babies: this is our fourth time , and it’s just not getting any easier. Jack was nine days past his due date, Max missed the mark by ten days. Charlie actually came about a week early, which felt darn near premature given our track record. And though Kristie’s due date is Oct. 10 — a week from Thursday — there a few factors making me feel like Baby Four is dramatically overdue.

We thought he was coming early all along, on account of Kristie being told she’s measuring ahead of schedule for months now. That’s the clinical reason. When our sewer ruptured Sept. 5 — a full five weeks before the due date — I was so convinced the kid would arrive in the midst of the insanity I’m flat stunned he’s still on the inside.

That’s not to say we’re through the woods yet on the house turmoil. The bathroom floor is mostly fixed and there’s a toilet in there, but we’ve not been able to finalize a replacement vanity. Thanks to family and some dear friends today, the bulk of our basement is now vacant. The drywall was repaired last week, the walls and ceiling will be painted Monday and the carpet comes in Wednesday, which means we can begin the process of uncovering our dining room and playroom and really start to feel normal.

At that point, the disruption of replacing the wood floor in the entryway, kitchen and dining room would be minimized, at least compared to what would happen if that crew showed up tomorrow morning. And at any rate, as nuts as it’s been around here for the last several weeks, it actually seems it’ll be easier when the baby gets here because then Kristie will be on the road to recovery instead of simply waiting for figurative shoes to drop — and packing enough extra weight it’s difficult for her to breathe, walk and sleep with any semblance of comfort.

So we’re having all sorts of “what if” conversations, which technically are “if the baby comes tonight” hypothetical situations. Who would take Jack to his Monday morning appointment? Max has after school events Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday each week. Am I keeping up with paying the bills and making sure laundry is clean and put away? Is the dishwasher clean or dirty? And so on and so forth.

But beyond all the practical matters, the more babies I have the harder it is to wait to meet them, hold them close and marvel at how tiny they are. Anxious is not a strong enough word to describe how much I want to stare into those newborn eyes, to take pictures of big brothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles as they share their first moments. It’s something of a ritual, but we’ve not gone through these motions nearly enough for them to feel stale or unimportant.

Though Kristie and I are oldest children, it seems we both have a sense of trying to make sure none of the younger boys will grow up thinking their early days were chalked up to old hat. She, especially, has plenty of ideas for how to go above and beyond to make this time through a little more special, likely because we both realize we’re not walking this road a fifth time. For her that notion manifests itself in a lot of “this is the last time we ever…” sentiments. For me it’s the overzealous anticipation of having everyone here. Even though we don’t know anything about the little guy, we know he’s an essential piece of our family.

It’s sort of the same as Thanksgiving or Christmas with my family last year. It was a good time and a wonderful celebration, but it just didn’t feel all the way full with all of us in Illinois and my sister out in San Francisco. Maybe it doesn’t make sense equating a sibling in her mid-20s with a family member who still is technically a fetus, but that’s the kind of love I have for this person who is as much my son as any of the ones I can kiss goodnight.

That’s what we’re in this for. At the end of April, our oldest son will be ten. Our youngest will be old enough to sit on his own, to smile laugh and have his own personality. We’ll probably all be getting decent amounts of sleep. The house should be as done as can be on the inside, and we might even have had a chance to polish up the outside, too. This episode won’t be a distant memory, but we’ll be over that particular hill and stronger for the experience.

And sure, we’re not promised any of that. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and choosing a bathroom wall color will seem pretty darn incidental by comparison. As noted, we still have some incredibly challenging days ahead. I’d be a fool to think I can predict how it’ll all play out; even though I have a pretty refined taste for the days and weeks ahead I must be open to the fact we’ll be dealing with things we’ve never faced before. Each baby brings its own unique complications, and I expect exactly the same this next go around.

Life in the waning stages of a pregnancy is high on questions and short on answers. If ever there’s a time to free myself from worrying about things I can’t control, these are the days. Hard as it can be, that’s my goal. I’ll focus on what I can do, give all the love I can to my wife and kids, muster as much energy and focus as possible to deal with our house and seek God’s strength and guidance for every step. And when that baby finally show up, I’m probably going to stop being able to contain the motions swirling around inside, and I’ll make no apologies.

Our house may not be back together when it’s time for the nugget to come home from the hospital, but it will be filled with laughter and love anyway, and that’s all that really matters.

A prayer for September 29:

Lord, guide us through the days ahead, as we near the end of the wait for our new arrival, as we slowly begin to put our home back together, as we continue to try to give our boys the love and support they need from their parents. Help me fight through the physical and emotional challenges to give my family the best of myself, no matter the circumstance, and help me seize opportunities to let your love shine through me and my dealings with everyone I encounter. Amen.

Faith, family and friends — all here for us

Psalm 112:3-5 (NIV)

Wealth and riches are in their houses,
   and their righteousness endures forever.
Even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
   for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous.
Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely,
   who conduct their affairs with justice.

I saw the caller ID on the work phone and knew it was church calling. This is not an uncommon occurrence given I work with the clerk of session, an active deacon and another person who is knee-deep in church activities. But this time the call was for me, and it was one of our pastors asking if I would be around for awhile so she could drop off something for me.

For the first time in a while, I actually was planning to be at my desk uninterrupted for several hours. I didn’t know what she wanted — I’ve got my own handful (smaller, but still) of church responsibilities — but I told her to feel free to stop by. She was there for only a fraction of the time it took her to walk over and back, but it was long enough to give me a big smile and hand me an envelope addressed to me and my wife.

Inside, unsigned, was the following message:

Even when your house is broken, it's still your home — because you made it that way.

Here's a small gift to help you in this time of trouble as you continue to count your many blessings.

Your faith, your family, your friends — all there for you! Peace.

That message alone would have been enough to set my heart soaring, but it was accompanied by a monetary contribution toward the house repair fund. It was especially welcome just a few short hours after we finished a lengthy meeting with our repair contractor and the insurance company’s claim adjuster. So far it feels like we’ll be getting the support we need, and the contractor has lived up to the “knight in shining armor” billing from the neighbor who suggested we call him. But I’m still walking on subfloor between the living room and the kitchen and cringing every time my super pregnant wife has to hoof it up the stairs just for a potty break. It doesn’t exactly feel like we’ve crossed the halfway point.

As I shared the news of our gracious, anonymous benefactor, we immediately tried to figure out the best way to express our gratitude. We decided we needed to go back through the pastor, assuming she could convey the message to the appropriate party. But in the bigger picture, I know we’ll someday have a chance to pay this blessing forward, to maybe bring a sliver of light to someone who feels they’re shrouded in darkness. Right now it doesn’t seem like we’ll ever be in a position to be financially generous, but we also hope to live a long time. The house can’t keep breaking forever. And of course money is something of a proxy here. The deeper message is one of being surrounded by people who will love, care and look out for me and my family, and that the circle is larger than I could expect or imagine.

When I dressed for church Sunday, I didn’t wear a sandwich board that said “Ask me about my sewer problems or my very pregnant wife or maybe both,” but it would have been a formality. But unlike 15 years ago at the same church when everyone wanted to ask me where I’d be going to college, yesterday I didn’t at all mind sharing the story over and again. As a child I didn’t appreciate the fact the people who spoke to me genuinely cared about my life. Yesterday I was actually happy to repeat the tale because it gave me the chance to look these friends — some of whom have known my family before I arrived — straight in the face and read the concern in their eyes, hear the caring in their voice and gain reaffirmation that around every corner was one more person whose mere presence in my life is a source of comfort and protection.

My earnest prayer is for my children to fully understand how this strong network of friends and family, those we can see several times a month and those further afield, can sustain us through any difficulty. And also for me and my family to be able to be to those people even a fraction of the blessing they have been in my life, for us to see the opportunities to show God’s love and for the courage to grasp those chances using whatever resources we might have available.

As I drove the boys home Sunday, I had running through my head the song “This Little Light” by Andrew Ripp (I used it for Charlie’s birthday slideshow), a positively upbeat on the classic gospel children’s song. In Ripp’s version, he sings of his intention to let his little light shine in order to show his love. I was shown love throughout the halls of Church Sunday. It’s come as well through phone calls and online interaction with family and friends, and again through the little white envelope today.

I will most certainly let this light shine whenever I have the chance, for it will dawn even in darkness. Good will come, and if God leads me I’ll be able to be a conduit. Thank you to everyone who cares, and to Gold be the glory. Amen.

A prayer for September 16:

Lord, thank you for everything. Even in the middle of this torn up house, there are examples of the way you have showed us with blessings. The gifts of faith, family and friends are the channels through which you deliver your peace that passes all understanding. Tonight I am able to go to sleep with contentment. Not because our house is fixed — it’s still very much broken. But because I know it still is home, and that it is a home where your love has and will continue to reign over us, to bind us together, to guide us forward each day in your name. Thank you for that love, and help me seize the opportunities to shine as an example of that love for all others to see. Amen.

A long, wet week

Psalm 104:10-13 (NIV)

He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
   it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
   the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
   they sing among the branches.
He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
   the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.

Let’s start here: It could have been worse.

On the evening of Thursday, Sept. 5, I came downstairs after getting the boys out of the shower. I went to get the diaper pail out of our main floor bathroom, only to discover the wood floor was covered in water. I couldn’t figure the reason. The toilet has been known to back up, but no one had used it for at least an hour. We figured maybe our leaky upstairs shower was the culprit.

We also quickly remembered what happens when water spills out of that toilet — it finds its way into the basement via the portion of the ceiling under the ductwork. That hadn’t happened for quite some time — so long, in fact, we felt nothing of using a counter down there as the shipping supplies storage area for Kristie’s business. As the water poured from the vents, however, it appeared our confidence was sorely misplaced.

Things gradually went from bad to worse. By Friday morning we realized we were not dealing with a faulty toilet or leaky shower. Rather, we’d experienced what folks in the neighborhood call a sewer shear. The material used to connect the home’s main sewer line to the village’s sanitary sewer system, which is no longer allowable by municipal code, combined with the wrong type of fill material used around the foundation at the time of construction in the mid-1980s, will eventually result in a snap between the house and the sewer. The result is water backing up in every inch of pipe in the house and forcing its way out wherever it finds an opening.

So our showers, our dishwashing, our laundry, our toilet flushing, every drop of water (and it wasn’t just pure H20) that entered a drain in the home splish-splashed around the main floor toilet and the finished basement. We used towels and vacuums (I drove to the grocery store just before midnight Thursday to rent a Rug Doctor in a vain attempt to salvage the basement) and buckets and tried like heck to keep things dry. We did not succeed.

There used to be carpet there. And a wall. And lots of our stuff.

Long story short, our basement is ruined. The carpet must be replaced, as well as drywall close to the floor and part of the ceiling. The first-floor bathroom also is ruined, as is a good chunk of the hardwood floor in the adjacent hallway. The living room carpet was spared — barely. With essentially no access to indoor plumbing, aside from filling up an ice cube tray or a glass of water to drink — we packed what we could and moved into my parents’ house for the weekend. The sewer repair was lined up for Monday. My folks had a long-planned trip to Wisconsin with my dad’s brother and his wife, so we actually had the house to ourselves after church on Sunday.

Long story short, again, we ended up staying there seven nights. The sewer did get fixed Monday, but the house smelled awful. On Tuesday the insurance company sent a remediation crew to begin professional drying and damage assessment. Their work was so extensive, and their fans so loud (especially for one of our children) we realized, day after day, it was easier to deal with our new routine than try to force ourselves back into a life that barely seems normal.

On Tuesday it became clear all the basement carpet would be removed. So Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, I spent about five hours removing everything from the basement I could carry alone. The entire inventory of the diaper store ended up in the dining room and spilling into the living room. The books and movies and baseball cards and so on are on the floor of our playroom. The bouncy seats and baby swings are in Charlie’s room. The Christmas decorations are in the garage. I no longer have a bunch of empty boxes to offer the next person planning a move.

I did not intend for this to be a play-by-play of our longest week as a family, but I simply can’t help but recount the gory details. I can scarcely believe them to be true, but I haven’t been getting nearly enough sleep for it to have been a dream. Getting Jack to the bus stop at 7:30 each day is enough of a challenge when it’s a three-minute walk from the front door. Add in a 20-minute drive and I’m becoming a little more familiar with the sunrise than I’d prefer.

We’re trying to focus on going forward. The remediation work is complete and we have met several times with a neighbor who, as a professional, will be in charge of the repairs. On Monday we meet with a claims adjuster because the repair estimate is enough to warrant a site inspection before the check is written. We’ve been shopping for flooring (and a new bathroom vanity) and trying to figure out which job should be completed first as it relates to the goofy amount of stuff we’ll need to schlep around the premises.

The likelihood this work gets completed before Baby 4 arrives is almost zero. For months it’s been looking like he’ll trump his Oct. 10 due date, and baby or no baby it’s hard to see the work getting completed even by then. Which means the old normal — us and our three boys in our messy but still functional house — is gone forever, and we didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. The next step is to combine the hectic nature of living in a construction site with the total blur of life with a newborn in the house. At this point we can only hope she doesn’t go into labor at the precise time we need to be present for one of the many workers we expect to get to know in short order.

But it could have been worse. It could have happened a few months ago when Kristie was less pregnant but when we still had a tree growing right where near the plumber needed access to the foundation. It could have happened while we were at the hospital and my mom was here with the boys, which means the damage likely would have been far more extensive and costly. It could have happened on our first day home, when evacuating would have been exponentially more difficult. We could have had major issues adjusting to life at Pops & K’s, when in actuality the kids recalibrated far better and more quickly than the parents.

This has by no means been an enjoyable experience, and there are plenty of complications yet to encounter. The financial impact will be significant, but it won’t be nearly as drastic as the way the blend of newborn instability and major home repair figure to wear everyone’s patience to translucency. But somehow we’ll get to the other side. We probably won’t look back and laugh, but we’ll look back together, as a family of six, and realize that as difficult as it might be, there still are blessings to count if we know where to look.

People ask what they can do to help, and I honestly don’t know. I guess maybe eventually we’ll need help moving furniture so the floors can get fixed. When the baby comes we’ll be open to any and all food contributions, though the picky eaters who live here have no problem turning up their noses, even during such periods of neighborly graciousness. As much as it’s easier to work when the kids are elsewhere, I am coveting this time with them before our family dynamic makes a giant shift. But I appreciate very much the kind words and thoughts from those who have reached out, even in a modest offering of sympathy. It is good to feel loved.

I’ve had enough rushing water for quite some time. I am all at once too tired to function at 100 percent and yet too busy to ponder sleep until I have no alternative. I’m anxious to get everything finished but aware of the need to be diligent at each turn. I’m not sure where the money’s going to come from or what will have to be cut to make ends meet, but I’m confident we’ll find a way to manage.

And above all, I’m happy to be sitting on my own couch in my own living room with my three children asleep upstairs in their own beds. I can think of any number of reasons I’d rather have to lead to a week off of writing, but for tonight I’m content to working through some of my thoughts in this medium. We’re a long way from done here, but we’re going to do it together. You can’t put a price on that kind of contentment, but you can find the source if you know where to look.

A prayer for September 14:

Lord, grant me the patience to navigate through this period of tribulation. Home is such a great source of comfort for me and my family, it is difficult for the house itself to be a source of such unrest. Help us all to remain focused on the many blessings we still enjoy and not be worn down by the challenges of the days and weeks ahead. Above all, let us not lose sight of the indefinable peace your grace provides, and let us walk this bumpy road fully enveloped in your love and the love we have for each other. Amen.

What is your ministry?

Psalm 116:5-6 (NIV)

The Lord is gracious and righteous;
   our God is full of compassion.
The Lord protects the unwary;
   when I was brought low, he saved me.

I started my professional newspaper career in June 2001. I’d been an amateur since August 1995, but there are rarely, if ever, any obituaries in high school and college newspapers. But in the twelve-plus years of my pro career, I’ve edited probably more than 10,000 death notices, a conservative guess. Much like parenting, I consider this task a blessing and a responsibility.

Day in and day out I get to read about people and their life history, sometimes marveling at the details included, occasionally guessing about those clearly omitted. Every so often we get a note form the funeral home that provides a clue the at-home reader never see. This job can be heartbreaking, but also humorous and uplifting. Again, it is a privilege.

But with all the names and notices that have flashed across my monitor over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered the phrase I read today: “Her ministry was visiting the sick and elderly in hospitals and nursing homes.” Sure, there have been dozens of obituaries for ministers, nuns and priests, even the occasional church music director or Sunday school teacher who was especially dedicated. There are listings of the places and organizations to which the decedent volunteered or donated. But never once have I seen this precise wording, “Her ministry was…”

As is so often the case when a word or phrase stands out among the crowd, it made me think of my own life. What is my ministry? I can answer this question easily for my parents. My mother offers her musical talent (and is, in turn, richly blessed by the experience) as well as much time and energy as clerk of our church’s session. My father has probably been on every church committee imaginable at one time, but the service that stands out to me is his work with the homeless shelter and, in recent years, the food pantry. And like the woman in our obituary, he has joined in the task of reaching out to elderly members of the congregation.

I don’t know if they consider these efforts to be ministry specifically or simply answering God’s call to service. I do know their dedication is a point of pride to me and a rather lofty example for me to pursue. Perhaps this writing project could be branded a ministry, but I feel there’s far too much personal involvement, to almost a selfish extent, for it to earn such a distinction. I’ve been involved with church music as long as I can remember, and I’ve had some time to work directly with young people to help build a foundation of faith, but it’s nothing I’d consider a calling card.

Maybe the hang-up is the idea of the word minister as on occupation, as though my layman’s efforts don’t reach that same level. But there is the old Protestant axiom that holds pastor is a job title, yet all of us can be ministers. (Many a church bulletin lists in its staff box “Ministers — the congregation.”) The dictionary supports this stance, identifying ministry as “the spiritual work or serve of any Christian or a group of Christians.”

Were I slated to preach on Sunday, I might well title my sermon “What Is Your Ministry?” and then plan to spend 20 minutes invigorating and encouraging my parishioners to take up the call to do God’s work in all its possible forms. Fortunately for everyone, the pulpit is well staffed. But still, I will turn this question on myself.

What am I doing, with purposeful regularity, to make a difference? How does my life reflect my gratitude for God’s many blessings? If someone asks my children about their dad, will they have any idea how faith matters to me beyond, “He takes us to Sunday school each week”?

The answers don’t have to be big and bold to be important. But I do need to know, between me and my maker, that I’m sincerely trying. The woman in the obituary I edited had a clear goal. That ministry has ended as her time on Earth is over, but hopefully the spirit she embodied will live on in inspiration to those who knew and loved her — and those lucky enough to read about her in the evening paper.

A prayer for September 5:

Lord, you are indeed gracious and righteous. The compassion you have for me is overwhelming. It is my earnest hope to live a life worthy of your love, to show to those I encounter a life fully changed by your grace. It is so easy to be selfish, and the temporary rewards can be rich. But help me think beyond myself, to remember what you have done for me and turn it all back in praise and thankfulness. Use me as you need me God, wherever, whenever and however you see fit. Amen.

Confounded by rejoicing

Psalm 96:13 (NIV)

Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
   he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
   and the peoples in his faithfulness.

Late Tuesday night a man who is accused of horrific crimes, with damning evidence, committed suicide in his prison cell. The information is all over the media, there’s little to be gained by rehashing the details. Nor is there much value in revisiting the way this news was received on social media and in comment and message boards across the web, notable a wretched hive of scum and villainy even on slow days.

Yet it was that reaction, very similar in tone coming from many walks of life, that sent me to bed with a thought a night of sleep didn’t shake. It lingered with me throughout the day and as I sit down here to write, ostensibly about my children and my role as a husband and father, I cannot escape me emotion. Quite simply, I cannot come to terms with rejoicing when someone takes their own life.

I’ve struggled all day with the best way to distill my many thoughts on the subject into a digestible package, but it’s maddeningly complex. I have no positive feelings for the accused. The crimes he most likely committed are about as despicable as one could imagine. I would hope any decent person finds it easy to produce sympathy for what the victims endured. But I refuse to see victory in self-inflicted death.

Perhaps if you don’t believe in God, and a especially a God powerful enough to create life, you are able to deem one life as less worthy than any other. But that’s not what’s in my heart. To say the world is better off with a particular person dead is to pass judgment on that person, to brand them beyond redemption. I don’t feel comfortable making that ruling. I was commanded to love my neighbor as I love myself, and while I will admit some people are incredibly difficult to love, like or even tolerate, I cannot in good conscience apply a personal condition to what Jesus most definitely intended as a blanket statement.

It is so easy to read or hear about someone you don’t personally know and brand them an irredeemable monster. But why is there such a rush to strip someone of their humanity? Is that not an insult to that person’s mother or father or sister or brother? Heaven forbid one of my children should do something awful later in their life. Am I supposed to reject them in scorn, or am I supposed to love them in spite of their sins? Am I so perfect that I can decide who is worthy of life?

And what if my sons — or anyone’s children — buys into the lie that suicide is the easy way out? What if they convince themselves the world is better off without them? What if they take their own life before I have a chance to convince them of their worth and value? This is not as preposterous a worry as it may sound — not when I think of the dear friends whose families have been ripped apart by suicide. The questions that type of death raises cannot and will not ever be answered.

When the court of public opinion rises up and deems a person’s life has no value, what message does that send? A person who is considering suicide is already not in a good place mentally. I’ve been told I’m connecting too many dots here, but am I? Can anyone who remembers what life was like as a teenager or college student sit down and calmly admit they never had a moment where emotions and hormones raged such that seemingly nothing in the world made sense?

I am dreading the days when my boys encounter the trials of adolescence because I know how much they will fight my attempts to go on that walk with them. I would love to stay frozen right here when my biggest challenges are a two-year-old who won’t potty train, a pregnant wife just aching to be done and an elementary student who defies the idea of normal. This is just the gateway to the hard stuff, and sometimes I am scared beyond words to think of what the next twenty years might bring.

And, as one insightful friend pointed out this afternoon, what does this entire ordeal say about the nature of mental illness in this society? How precisely did we get to this day in 2013, and what could have been done or said at any time along the way to get help to the people who needed help, to prevent the atrocities in the first place? We would not let someone infected with bacteria roam the streets passing on disease to innocent bystanders, yet we can be so quick to turn away from the mentally ill and later judge them for their actions instead of us for our negligence.

At some point my brain becomes unable to process any further thoughts on the matter. I keep returning to the idea of each human life being precious and realizing just how difficult it can sometimes be to hold that position. If choosing selfless love were easy, we’d all do it and have a heck of a lot less to worry about as a species. But there’s several thousand years of evidence to show people in general are not quite wired to live in that fashion.

Ultimately I have to pull away from the messy big picture and focus on the things I can control and the people I can positively affect through my direct relationships with them. That starts at home with my wife and sons. I cannot let them go a moment without knowing I love them. I refuse to allow them to question their worth to me, to each other or to the God who rules over us all. I want them to prize their own life and that of everyone they encounter, to believe we’re all created equally and to love fully, even when that puts them at odds with society.

And like always, I realize if I want my children to grow up that way, they’re going to need an example to follow. Therein lies my calling — to live my own life in a manner I would be proud to see them emulate and hopefully surpass. Let there be peace on Earth, as we sang at my grandmother’s funeral about thirteen months ago, and let it begin with me.

A prayer for September 4:

Lord, my heart is so heavy today. My mind is racing with thoughts I can’t control, with ideas I don’t fully understand and with so many questions I’ll never have answered. I surrender it all to you, and I ask you to grant me your peace that passes understanding. Help me identify the ability within me to be the husband and father my family deserves. May those around me see the light of your love shine through me, and may my words and meditations, in some small way, advance the cause of fellowship among all of us. Amen.

The messenger is the message

Psalm 7:17 (NIV)

I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness;
   I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High.

It’s not what you say so much as how you say it. This is a truth I try to remember when it comes to how I speak to my wife and children, but there’s nothing like being at (or near) the other end to drive home the point.

When I’m around mostly other adults, maybe at church or in small group, or a mix of adults and children, like when helping out at soccer practice, I can’t help but be tuned in to the way people communicate with one another. There’s a line between being observant and judgmental, and I try to come down on the side of the former as much as possible. Listening to others is a learning experience, especially if it makes me consider how I behave.

Nearly all of my communication with my newspaper colleagues is electronic — emails, instant messages, Facebook chatter and so on. We’ve worked together for six and a half years now, and I consider many of these colleagues good friends. I trust they can sense when I’m trying to be droll or sarcastic, even just from the typed word, but I must take into account I am working with some people I’ve never met in person. And even when relating to those I know well, it behooves me to keep aware of the fact they’re in the full-time grind and I’m just dropping in from out of the ether, often unannounced.

At the end of one of Max’s soccer practices, a group of kids more or less clumped up and engaged in a little roughhousing. The parents of one of the boys said, very calmly (to the point of being nearly inaudible) “I don’t want you involved in that.” It was a good message and I appreciated the intent and the soft-selling delivery. But it also accomplished absolutely nothing because the parent didn’t sound at all like they believed what they were saying.

That’s not to say yelling would have been any better, but there has to be a more efficient way to communicate in such a situation. Not to denigrate kindergarten boys, but they’re a lot like dogs. Sometimes the words take a back seat to the tone used to speak them. What’s important in my book is consistency in message and delivery. Not only that, but that the words and done correlate with the actual scenario at hand.

I’ve written before about the danger of numbing a child to a parent’s angry or alarmed voice. I’m intimately familiar with this topic because it’s one of the weaknesses I’m trying diligently to eradicate. I don’t see myself as a generally angry person — quite the opposite, actually, as I prefer to think I’m fairly optimistic about life — but I can see how on my bad days my kids might get that impression. I don’t want to be the kind of dad who snaps over minor transgressions or honest mistake. I do want to be able to get their attention at a moment’s notice, but only in extreme situations when safety is at stake.

Adults, as I have observed, do not always think about how their words, or even their tone, will be perceived. Likely there are some who are simply incapable (via brain chemistry) to understand how they come across. Some people communicate benign sentiments with malignant disposition. And then there are folks who shroud wicked thoughts with flowery words.

I’m not trying to lay blame here — I’ve been guilty of all this and more. The larger point is for me to take the opportunity to observe how people communicate and weigh my track record against their examples. Maybe I’ll identify one of my bad habits and realize how awful I must be only after seeing another employ the same method. Perhaps I can come away with a successful strategy I hadn’t considered on my own. Even if I don’t learn a specific lesson, I might just make a better me simply by thinking more honestly about how I walk through life.

Am I sincerely trying to reach my potential as a husband and father? Or am I just going day by day, reacting to whatever blows across my path and hoping not to screw up too badly? Having these moments to sit and reflect at the end of the day is a nice opportunity, but if I’m not carrying anything into tomorrow, then what’s the point?

Think, probably more than once, then go and act. Over and again. One of these days I might just get it right.

A prayer for September 3:

Lord, tonight I am thankful for the many chances you give me to make mistakes, seek forgiveness and try again. I am trying to make less mistakes, of course, but you know my many weaknesses and love me anyway. Help me to think about the way I communicate with other people. Not just verbally but in my body language, my actions and the respect I afford them. Help me be to the world an example of the love you command us to show one another. Amen.

Dad, lads and the beautiful game

Psalm 149:4-5 (NIV)

For the Lord takes delight in his people;
   he crowns the humble with victory.
Let his faithful people rejoice in this honor
   and sing for joy on their beds.

It was a busy morning for the Holland boys. Max had his second soccer game. I’m a volunteer coach — and we use that term loosely given the shallow nature of my soccer knowledge. It also was our day to bring treats, a date I chose because I wanted to get it out of the way before we get to “any day now” status with the baby. But when I signed up, I failed to consider this was the morning some of Kristie’s church friends were taking her out to breakfast to celebrate her pregnancy.

Our budding soccer player, as captured by our budding photographer.

So it was just me and the guys… and our camera, four water bottles, two folding canvas chairs, a bag full of Pirate’s Booty and a wheeled cooler full of juice boxes and yogurt. Amazingly, we were not only on time but actually a few minutes early. That included the time it took to get Max’s shin guards and cleats on in the van in the parking lot, plus dragging the aforementioned cargo about 300 yards to our field.

But being early was just an omen of the way the morning would play out — a good omen. The game went incredibly well, as Max followed instructions, played like he’s been doing this for longer than three weeks and had a great attitude the entire hour. Charlie happily played fetch on the sidelines, bringing me a soccer ball so I could roll or kick it a few feet away time and time again, until he decided he wanted some water or a snack.

And Jack, well, Jack was incredible. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because I know exactly where he learned these habits, but every time I looked away form Charlie or the field I saw my oldest son, camera in hand, trying to capture the action for posterity. He was moving around the field — carrying a chair with him each time — shooting the action, isolating on the ball and occasionally his brother. He insisted on a portrait during the fourth quarter when Max played goalie (literally during the fourth quarter, getting his shot while the action was on the opposite end of the field).

I was so proud of all my sons. Charlie was a big enough boy to just sit in the chair with a bag of snacks, watching the action after politely asking for help getting the bag open. Max exuded as much maturity as you can get from a kindergartener and proved he’s paying attention in practice even when I think he’s just staring off into the distance. And Jack, well, I wasn’t even going to bring the camera given how much other junk we had to manage. But after dragging his rear to last week’s game, today he got up on time to eat breakfast, helped load his brothers and our gear into the car and managed the camera all on his own. And darn if the kid didn’t get some good shots.

When we got home I couldn’t decide which kid to brag about first. Max got inside first and gushed about the game the way five-year-olds do (open mouth, say things), but I think my favorite part of the whole day was sitting on the couch with Kristie, looking through the pictures on the camera. We could relive Max’s game through Jack’s eyes and even see how Charlie spent the morning. The entire thing is so remarkably mundane and yet incredibly special to me as their dad.

The only thing better? Knowing we’re soon going to be able to add one more munchkin to the mix. I’m so anxious to see how his personality stands out while also blending in with the family. The sun shone bright on the Holland boys today, but I’m even warmer thinking about the future. I know I’m not promised anything — next Saturday’s game could be a total disaster for all three kids, for example — but I’m still thrilled about the hope for blessings yet to come.

A prayer for August 31:

Lord, thank you for the simple gifts that fill my heart. May I never forget that you are the giver of all good things. Help me appropriately show my appreciation to you, and may my children see my thankfulness and learn to understand the power of your love in our lives. Please bind us closely together with you as we anticipate the growth of our family and help us welcome our newest member with unlimited joy. Amen.

What took me so long?

Psalm 143:11-12 (NIV)

For your name’s sake, Lord, preserve my life;
   in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.
In your unfailing love, silence my enemies;
   destroy all my foes,
   for I am your servant.

Typically when I go through the Psalms part of the lectionary, I sort of shut down my brain every time there’s a reference to enemies, foes, attackers, persecution and the like. It just doesn’t seem to resonate with my modern life, where I certainly don’t feel I’m put upon in any sense on account of my faith. If I have enemies, they are my own bad habits and sinful tendencies.

I wonder why it took so long — I’ve been doing this project about 16 months now — to try reading that reality into the Psalms. If I can stop thinking about Philistines or Babylonians or Canaanites acting on Israelites from the outside and start thinking about anger, impatience and judgment poisoning me from the inside, maybe that would open up an entirely new way to read an appreciate the Psalms.

This can’t be a revolutionary approach, but to me it certainly is different. If these and other sinful thoughts and actions are indeed my enemies, where better to turn for help than God? I know from far too much experience how my body and mind can be poisoned if I give in to these tendencies, and I know I can’t fight them off alone. I’d like to think I’ve shaped up a fair bit over the years, but it also seems each positive step also shines a light on how far I’ve yet to travel.

Those are my thoughts for the night. Nothing major or complex, and I’m not quite sure how to weave this into my approach to parenting — except perhaps to discuss it with the boys should we ever encounter one of these Psalms together — yet I feel I’ve put one more little block in the wall of Godly support I’m trying to construct to help stabilize my life. Every day is a challenge, but it’s also a new opportunity to live the right way. And with this growing young family filling my house and making it noisy, every day also is an absolute blessing.

A prayer for August 29:

Lord, thank you for finding new ways to open my eyes. So many times when I pray for wisdom I’m really asking for a better way to relate to the world, but it’s easy to forget how much attention I need to focus inwardly on my own shortcomings and challenges. Please help me to walk the path you set before me. Silence the urges within me that will only do harm. Cleanse me and let me begin anew, washed in your love. Amen.

Thinking simply

Psalm 27:11 (NIV)

Teach me your way, Lord;
   lead me in a straight path
   because of my oppressors.

It’s been something of a crazy week. I took off Monday so I could take Jack to the dentist in the morning, then bring the boys and two of our good friends from church (and their summer caregiver) to the theme park. Jack started school Wednesday and Max today, except Jack’s at a new building so his bus call is about 40 minutes earlier than the last three years. We both have struggled to get up on time each morning, exacerbated for me my wee-hours visits from Charlie early Wednesday and Max early today. I’m not getting to bed any earlier, and last night was later than usual because I spent a few extra hours on a newspaper project.

Suffice it to say when it came time to walk Jack to the bus stop — or, more accurately, nudge him out the door then go back inside and get my shoes on and hope to make it down there myself before his chariot arrives — I was not exactly in a good place mentally to be able to resume my morning prayer ritual. In fact, I’d practically forgotten until the first day of school that praying on my way to the bus stop was a part of my routine going back to the end of Jack’s first-grade year.

I did manage something slightly coherent Wednesday morning, but early today my brain was a complete jumble. I repeated “thank you for today” about a dozen times, hoping it would lead somewhere, and eventually offered a “I hope Max has a good day at kindergarten.” I eventually got into the Lord’s Prayer, which I try to recite each morning, but I started it too late and wasn’t quite finished by the time I reached the stop and the handful of parents interested in small talk.

So at a time when so much is going on in our life, when I would naturally be expected to have many things to offer in prayer, I find myself satisfied if I’ve put my shoes on the correct feet (two for two so far). As such, I was happy to come across this verse from Psalm 27, a Psalm I’ve already used for three earlier posts, and see a few words that can be used for a simple prayer.

Simple is what I need right now. If I find a few basic words to get me going, maybe I can start to sort out the thoughts racing through my mind. “Teach me your way, Lord; lead me in a straight path.” I’m going to try repeating that sentiment, if not the exact phrasing, at least once for the next week and see if it helps put my brain at rest and allows me to focus on a more engaging prayer experience. I might not be successful, but I can’t fathom this attempt being a wasted effort.

A prayer for August 22:

Lord, teach me your way. Lead me in a straight path. Search my heart and mind to determine what I need to walk in your light, to love as you commanded and to be a positive example. Use me as you need me, God. I will try my best to live a life worthy of you. Amen.

'I will never be shaken'

Psalm 30:6 (NIV)

When I felt secure, I said,
   "I will never be shaken.”

It comes as little surprise to those who have been with me for all 475 of these entries that I am big on nostalgia and also somewhat hung up on anniversaries. At this time of year, this kind of sentimentality is around every corner. As I wrote in today’s newspaper column, it’s been twenty years since I started high school. At the college where three generations of Hollands matriculated, today is freshman move-in day, which reminds me it was 15 years ago when I first laid eyes on my future wife, during her orientation. And did I mention we have a son starting kindergarten Thursday? And one beginning fourth grade tomorrow? And another arguing he deserves to go to preschool despite refusing to use a toilet? And a bun nearly ready to spring from the oven?

And yet is so remarkably cliché to write about such things — as just pointed out, I’ve already done so once this week — it’s now almost even more of a cliché to comment on how many people are being cliché. In fact, one essay I encountered I only clicked on because the person sharing it, a Chicago Tribune features writer whose work I enjoy and respect, presented it with the following caveat: “So many pieces of this ilk are written at this, the sending-off-to-school time of year. This one is especially good.” And, of course, he was right.

Michael Gerson, who according to his Washington Post bio writes about politics, religion, foreign policy and global health development, departed from his stated oeuvre to share his feelings about his son heading off to college. It is, as I was told it would be, especially good. But one particular paragraph leaped off the screen at me:

I know this is hard on him as well. He will be homesick, as I was (intensely) as a freshman. An education expert once told me that among the greatest fears of college students is they won’t have a room at home to return to. They want to keep a beachhead in their former life.

I’d originally planned to write tonight about giving our oldest son advice as he enters a big new school building tomorrow, that he can always feel secure in the love of God and of his family, that he should never be shaken. But when I read this paragraph in Gerson’s essay, I came face to face with an important truth: I never felt homesick at college.

To clarify: I missed my high school friends and spent far too much time corresponding with them via email, which believe it or not was a new experience for me in 1997. I was very, very sad when my grandmother died a few months into the fall. When I got physically sick (nothing serious) in the spring of my freshman year, I realized how lousy it is to be ill when your mother is not there to tell you what to do to feel better. And I loved going home to visit, discovering a new layer to my relationship with my parents and, eventually, my younger siblings. But I was never what I would consider homesick.

Why? Because I felt secure. I could not be shaken. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that no matter how long I was away, no matter where I went or what I did when I was gone, there would always be a place for me at home. Maybe not my old room — though my mother, knowing me better than anyone, took great strides to preserve my former life exactly as I’d left it — but always, always a seat at the dining room table. A hug when I came through the door. A tacit commitment to wash every last piece of dirty laundry. Every piece of mail that came addressed to my name. Any remotely relevant scrap of the daily newspaper.

When I came home the dog slept in my room again — no questions asked. When I came home the pantry always had enough of my favorite cereals and microwave popcorn. The fridge was never short of whatever brand of caffeine I favored at the time. If I ever needed to borrow a car, somehow there always seemed to be one available — and we only had two — even if I wanted one for the whole weekend to go see the girl who would become my wife. In the summers I was still allowed to mow the lawn and wash the cars for a little extra cash. I might even have been permitted to stay home from church on Sundays if I’d ever asked to try, but church was always just an extension of home, and I wanted to go feel loved there, too.

If my mother were honest, she would say I was not very good about calling home from college. She probably noticed I was not even the best at paying attention the entire time when I did manage to ring. I’m not sure I got much better after I got married and had kids, so it’s a good thing email and instant messaging technology advanced before the present reality, which is seeing my parents so many days a week I never need to remember to call.

In a weird way, that forgetfulness was a testament to my parents. I’d grown so safe and secure I did not need to hear their voices to be reassured. I knew I was loved, and deeply so, and I suppose eventually I took it for granted to some degree. But I am here to say now it was not sheer laziness or some twisted power play for independence. It was the manifestation of feeling so unbelievably safe in regards to my place in the family. Even today I can see my siblings understand the same way I did, and perhaps that’s why they feel so secure being so far away. I guess when you’re prepared well to succeed outside the nest, there isn’t much alternative but to soar proudly.

As noted regularly, I am doubly blessed in that my in-laws’ house has come to feel like a home for me as well. It goes beyond the food and the laundry, though certainly that helped ease me in. Rather it is a place where no one has to love me unconditionally, yet I’ve felt from the earliest days as if somehow I always belonged. I don’t think these things happen by accident, nor do I feel I would appreciate this situation as much had my own home been anything less than what my parents nurtured.

It probably goes without saying that my parents did not do this alone or luck into it accidentally. They are intentional parents in the best sense of the word, and they have always made faith a core component of the family. In hopes of repaying them for everything they invested in me, I’m trying every day to do just as much for their grandsons, to build for them a home where they not only feel safe and loved but feel so much security they’re not afraid to leave, for they’ll know that not only will the door always be open, but inside that door is a place they’ll always want to see again.

This week, kindergarten and fourth grade. Soon enough, high school, maybe college and whatever lies beyond. But those are just places. Very special places, sure, where almost magical transformations are expected. But they are not home. Home is here, with mom and dad and your brothers, the food you love to eat, clothes cleaned and folded while you sleep and a free ride wherever you need to go. There’s lots of ways to say, “I love you.” My goal is to try to use them all.

A prayer for August 20:

Lord, thank you for our summer together. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend so much time with my children while they are young. I hope I was able to give them joy, security, fun, encouragement, respect and an example to follow. My prayer for them as they go off to school is they remember to treat their teachers and fellow students with love and kindness. May they continue to live lives worthy of you and walk in the light of your grace today, tomorrow and always. Amen.

The second annual pie buffet

Psalm 104:21-23 (NIV)

The lions roar for their prey
   and seek their food from God.
The sun rises, and they steal away;
   they return and lie down in their dens.
Then people go out to their work,
   to their labor until evening.

In my role as a copy editor, I refuse to allow an event to be branded the “first annual.” The preferred term is inaugural. There’s simply no way to be certain a new event will happen as scheduled the following year, no matter how dedicated the organizers may appear. Some sticklers won’t permit “second annual” either, going my an old rule of thumb stating you can’t call something annual until its happened three consecutive years.

Depending on how you slice it (pun very much intended, though not yet evident), tonight was either our small group’s fifth annual end-of-summer picnic or second annual pie buffet. It was 2009, I think Labor Day weekend, when several couples from church gathered in one family’s back yard for a cookout and to hatch plans for a small group. As it’s happened, we’ve gathered at the same house every August since. And last year, the hostess had the brilliant idea to suggest each couple bring a pie. Since it was such a delicious success, we happily signed on to repeat the feat tonight.

I made the two on the bottom. They are yummy.

This cookout has been one of the highlights of my summer since we moved here in 2009. Yet as much as I enjoy the gathering, the fellowship and the food, it also heralds the end of summer. Never has that been more evident than today, which we started by taking Jack to see his new school and classroom. In our district fourth- and fifth-graders have their own enormous building. I’d never been past the lobby, so it was a pretty impressive experience.

Jack, of course, wasn’t especially thrilled. He didn’t have a great attitude, either because he felt babied to have his mom and dad (and little brothers) help him find a classroom he surely could have located on his own, or simply because he can no longer avoid the fact school starts Wednesday.

Summer is almost over. We’re going to try to squeeze in a few more bits of fun in the rapidly shrinking interim, but we’ve also got to work on re-establishing routines. And not just bedtime, though that is the most significant. As a family we survive because of our routines — knowing exactly what to put in the lunch bag, where to put the next day’s clothes, what to look for in the backpack each afternoon — but we know we might have to try a few new things in August as opposed to what worked well in May.

And then of course there’s the realization that any routines we establish in the first few weeks of the school year are likely to be turned inside out when Baby Four arrives in early October. I think Jack is pretty well aware life is going to be pretty different for a while, though I doubt he totally remembers the full brunt of the newborn experience, even though Charlie is just two and a half. Max probably has much less of a memory of a baby in the house, though I’m convinced he’s not going to forget anything this time around.

But that crazy period will pass, as it always does, and then we’ll be back into our new normal. I’ll go to work, the boys will go to school and we’ll gather again in the evening, a family once again under the same roof. And then all six of us together will embark on what might be the longest period of stability we’ll ever have as a family. No more new babies, everyone here at home (no more moving, either) until Jack is done with high school nine years from now. I know we’re not promised any of that, but it’s interesting to think how stable the next nine years might be compared to the nine before.

And if each of those next eight or nine years includes an August night where we can get together with our dear friends, re-establish our support system for the coming year and — equally as important — load up a plate full of yummy pie slices, then I think I’ll be pretty content. Going to bed feeling blessed is indescribably wonderful.

A prayer for August 17:

Lord, thank you for good friends, good food and good fun. As our family gets ready to re-enter the regularity of a school year, please help us remember to be patient with one another during the adjustment. May our house be filled with your peace even as the temptation to give in to the hectic transition surges. Help me to lead by example with tolerance and a calm disposition. And may we all go our separate ways each morning remembering the family bond that ties us closely and the love you have for each of us. Amen.

The buffet is open. And empty.

Psalm 51:16 (NIV)

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
   you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.

The last two days have been something of an eating bonanza for my children. Both afternoons Kristie has sent me a note to report all the food she prepared for our brood. On Thursday it was eight scrambled eggs, two bowls of tomatoes, a nearly complete tube of summer sausage, two slices of Colby jack cheese, two popsicles and three tubes of yogurt. Today she reported serving nearly two pounds of strawberries, popsicles, spaghetti, noodles in chicken broth, marshmallows, cereal, more popsicles and more summer sausage.

That’s just the afternoon noshing — it doesn’t take into account what we actually made for dinner or the other foods they managed to put away. Last night after his shower Max asked if he could have a bedtime snack. I told him no, that’d he’d been eating all day and it was too late. He outed himself as a “bottomless pit” (his words) but relented and let me get him ready for bed. Reading these lists from Kristie each day is about like recounting what Eric Carle’s “Very Hungry Caterpillar” plows through on day six of his binge, except we have three of them eating with abandon.

Just a hint of what's been devoured at our house of late.

I don’t think the kids have any idea what their parents go through to put food on the table. And we’re not talking about earning the money, but the actual act of preparing food almost nonstop for an hour or more because as soon as one dish is ready to serve you have to start on the next one just to keep up with demand. The Venn diagram of the boys’ acceptable foods has a very small joint intersection. In the tiniest part of the center are things like chicken nuggets, popsicles and Goldfish crackers. So we’re almost always prepping at least two things, if not more.

And goodness, there is no pleasure in burnt offerings. Not only does this food have to be prepared 15 minutes ago, it also needs to be as flawless as possible or the picky eating tendencies will flare up and we’ll be stuck choosing to either eat something they

Of course these challenges will only intensify as Charlie gets older and then a fourth boy enters the scene. I’m going to look back on days I’d come back from the warehouse club with only two pounds of strawberries and four pounds of cherry tomatoes as quaint. I shudder to think how many Goldfish they could consume in a week if left unsupervised.

It’s not exactly a deep spiritual issue, but all of this food we (mostly she) prepares for them are opportunities to teach them about where the food comes from, the time effort it takes us to get it ready for them and about accepting such things with gratitude. That’s the ideal — the reality is sometimes you just shove as much food as you can in their direction and hope it’s enough to occupy them until you’ve at least cleaned up the dishes dirtied in the process.

At least when school starts next week there may be periods of calm when the kitchen can be silent momentarily. But when they pile off the bus each afternoon, I expect them to tear through the fridge and pantry like offensive linemen trying to bulk up for the big game. And it’s going to be like this for nearly 20 more years. I’m just glad we’ve been blessed with so many mouths to feed.

A prayer for August 16:

Lord, I am thankful for the ability to provide for my children. Sure, sometimes I wish they weren’t so selective, and I’d be thrilled if we could eat a quiet meal gathered around the same table once each night, but I don’t need anything more than their presence in my life. It’s such a joy to see their personalities revealed, to engage them in discussion and teach them about whatever they might be willing to learn. I’m grateful for the busyness and the happy noise that let me know I live in a home where love reigns. Amen.