Puke Runs Like Rivers and The Importance of Seeking Forgiveness

Over the past five or so days, puke has run like rivers in our house. It started with Zoe, progressed to my wife Kelly (laid her out for a couple of days), and struck Davis and Emma Kate in an epic puke-duelling match in the middle of the night on Friday night.

I have been the lone healthy one through all of it. I'm faintly hopeful that my time might not come at all. I'll be sure to keep you posted.

At any rate, being the lone healthy one over the past five days has meant a lot of work. We've undergone a self-imposed quarantine over the past several days and we've all been up in the middle of the night with sick kids.

Yesterday, in the midst of my own sleep deprivation and tired and somewhat cranky kids, I lost it with my oldest son. He and Zoe were bickering for the millionth time in the previous ten minutes and I just yelled at him.

It's never pleasant to see the ugly sides of yourself. Mostly, I like to believe that my most pleasant sides are the "real" me and that those ugly sides are the aberration. I think if I'm honest, however, the unfortunate reality is that it's quite the opposite.

The episode occurred just before dinner. About five minutes later, I had cooled down. I knew what I needed to do.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you, Davis. Can you forgive me?"

"Yes, Daddy," my sweet boy said to me in his sweet little voice, "I forgive you."

It's never good and yet always good for my ego to apologize to my six, four and three year-olds.

I have spent so much time with so many students over the years who had zero capacity to own the ways they had blatantly sinned against and hurt someone else because in their family they never did it. They never saw an adult parent take responsibility for sinning relationally against them or anyone else.

And so they were completely crippled in their ability to live in reality where we sin against each other all the time. Not only were they disasters relationally in the present. Their future marriages and families were going to bear the burden of the pride of those parents. A train wreck was preparing to repeat itself with each successive generation.

Later that night, we were going around the dinner table and sharing what we're thankful for--sort of a Thanksgiving primer. "I'm thankful for my daddy," is what Davis said.

And I'm thankful for him and his willingness to forgive me. And I'm thankful for parents that taught me the value of owning up to mistakes and making things right. And I'm grateful for other mentors who taught me this value along the way.

Hopefully I'll avoid the bubonic plague that's been steamrolling the Kirk house over these past several days. But whether I'm also steamrolled later today or not, I'm hopeful that my kids will grow up with a daddy who's not going to steamroll over them...at least not without an apology, shortly thereafter.

Vision and Strategy Meet Blankie and Bedtime

I tend to be a big-picture guy. I like nuance in books that I read or sermons that I listen to, but when it comes to action I just want to get to the goal and I haven't always thought through the best ways to get there.

But then God gave me kids. And my kids aren't necessarily motivated by the end game...say, getting to bed, for example. They get tired and cranky towards bed time. My solution has been to try to rally them towards bed. I've historically done this by trumpeting the wonders of a soft, cozy bed and by invoking visions of getting all snuggled up and drifting off to sleep. But they need more help than that.

After a couple of years of maddening bed time processes that ended in melt-downs, time-outs, and me and the kids locked into a grudge match, I've realized that the vision (getting to bed) isn't as helpful in this situation as breaking down the process.

So now as we're headed to bed, I focus on breaking down the process into bite-sized chunks: "We've just got four good decisions to make and then we can get to bed: quick bath, brush teeth, get pj's on, and climb into bed! Can you make that first good decision?"

When the kids are gearing up the whine-fest as we make our way toward bed ("I'm too tiiiiiired to get ready for bed! I need my blankie! Where's my doll?"), we re-direct. I try to get them talking in terms of the next good decision. This has gone a long way towards making bed-time less of a disaster and (slightly) more sane process.

I've come to realize that dealing with a task that feels overwhelming isn't helped by more pep-rallies towards the big-picture vision or goal. Nor are we helped overly-much by the proverbial stick: time-outs or other consequences, although that's certainly implemented and necessary from time to time.

What's needed is to make the change or movement towards the goal manageable. We figure out what the next good and wise decision is. And then we do that. And then you do the next good and wise decision. And eventually you move towards the end-goal.

As I've reflected on this, I've realized that unfortunately my leadership has often been overly-dependent on rallying people towards a vision but not supplying the necessary "next wise step" towards getting us there.

Not that everything needs to be scripted, but there at least needs to be the recognition that working out those next wise steps is important to get the bus moving towards the goal. And creating those "next wise steps" might be the collaborative work of a group of leaders or members of an organization.

But bottom line: it can't just be all visions and pep-rallies and slogans. There has to be concrete, practical and as simple as possible steps of implementation--be that towards bed-time or towards developing a healthier campus ministry or even in our own personal lives like developing spiritual disciplines or losing weight.

We are more likely to move if the first steps don't feel overly-daunting. And of course, having that blankie already in hand is a helpful tool, too.

How I Pray for My Kids

One of the things that I'm grateful for over the course of my life is that I've had adults praying for me and with me almost every day of my life. The older I get, the more I realize how many people don't have that experience and thus don't feel comfortable praying out loud.

So in the spirit of wanting to share with those of you who struggle with prayer but want to pray for your kids, I thought I'd share some of how I pray for my kids.

This isn't because I've got it all figured out, but because I've been given great gifts of prayer and I want to pass them along if they're helpful.

This is a rough outline of what I pray for each of my kids each night as we're doing our bed time routine. We've brushed, pottied, pj'd, read a story and read a chapter out of their children's Bible. Each one of them is curled up in bed and I sing (or we sing together) two songs of their choice--usually worship songs or hymns.

And then we pray.

First, I thank God for some truth in the song we just sang that applies to me and that kid. From "Amazing Grace" for example, I thank God that his grace is amazing and I pray that both me and them would know how amazing it truly is.

I pray that they'd never have a day where they don't know that God loves them. I pray that they'd have friends every season of their lives who remind them of the gospel and who knows how much God loves them for when they forget it. I pray for a spouse some day who knows and loves Jesus and will remind them of the gospel.

I pray for them to be a woman/man after God's own heart. I pray for wisdom, joy, peace, gentleness, strength, courage, integrity and/or character, depending on which child I'm praying for. They each have their natural gifts in one of these areas and needs for the Lord's grace to enter into their weaknesses in one of these areas.

I claim the legacy of faith and faithful service for them. My great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, siblings and many others in my family love Jesus and serve in full-time or lay capacities. I claim that for them, that many people would know the love of Christ through their lives.

I pray for practical matters of the day: a cold to be healed, for protection from bad dreams, for friends or soccer teammates that we've seen that day.

And I pray that they would, again, know the love and grace of God towards them, even as they sleep and even in their dreams.

Amen

Bunk-Bed Gravity, Getting My Groove On, and My Singing Kids

[Ed's note: over the weekend my wife went to a baby shower of some old college friends who complained that my posts of late had been overly-theological and not enough cute kid stories. I hope that this post might assuage my mommy demographic. To the ladies of Labor Day!]

The de facto arrangement between my wife and I is that I bat lead-off and clean-up with the kids. I get up with them and get them breakfast and get the day started. And I put them to bed at night--stories, songs, prayers. She does all the hard stuff: life in-between.

In my extended family I am surrounded by musical genius. My mom, grandfather, and multiple aunts and cousins are (or were at one point) professional musicians. Those genes somehow skipped over me. I'm not abysmal musically, just extremely average.

But at night, singing to my kids, I'm a rock star. They most often request "campus songs"--worship songs that we would sing at our weekly large group meeting or that they heard at Rockbridge, our year-end camp that my kids attend along with the students.

And recently their favorite song is a gospel song, "Bless the Lord," which is one of the coolest songs ever. And of course, since it's a gospel song it requires not just vocals but a little groove as well. If you've never heard it you can groove and listen to it here for yourself.

We've sung "Bless the Lord" so much over the past six weeks that they know it by heart now. So this week instead of me singing to them at bedtime, all three of them delight to sing the song to me. Each night, I get a solo (or accompanied by dad) performance of a song where they command their soul (like the Psalmist does) to "bless the Lord."

Unfortunately, they have their father's singing voice. But worshipping alongside my two, four, and six year old is enough to make me well up with joy each night.

I can hear the angry cynic's objection: "You're just socializing your kids into singing a song to a 'God' who might not even exist. Why not just let them make their own decision? Why must you force them into something that works for you but not not work for them?"

My response: guilty as charged.

I am raising up my kids to worship the God who made them. I believe that this is as much a fact as the realities of gravity. I am teaching them to trust and revere and understand the workings of gravity in ways that they can understand at this stage. And of course they will understand much more as they grow.

But they need to know some things about gravity now--that they need to be careful coming down the stairs, that the railing on the bunk bed is there to keep them safe at night.

And I am teaching them to worship the God who made them. If they do not worship Him, they will worship something else that will enslave them. My kids were made to worship Jesus. That's what ultimately will make them most human. One day, by God's grace, we will all five worship God together in perfect and un-ending joy forever more.

And they will have many decisions to make as they grow up. What will they do with gravity and what they will do with the God who made them to worship him are both important decisions. I cannot make those decisions for them and I do not wish to do so.

But in the mean time, we will talk about the workings of gravity and we will sing worship songs to God together. We will bless the Lord together now in the hopes that they will grow up into a full-fledged understanding of who they're worshipping--and why.

The songs will change, as will their understanding of why we would sing at all. But the God and the gravity that are ever-present in their lives demand recognition now. And so we'll sing.

I'm just relieved that they don't keep score of my musical abilities.

Making New Friends & Situational Leadership (and Parenting)

"I don't know anyone in my class," one of our kids complained as we got ready for church on Sunday.

This was a bit confusing to her mother and I. She had complained about this the week before and when we got to church we found that she already had at least one friend in the class. And we had already encouraged her to go and meet other kids. What more could we do?

But my wife wisely saw a moment here to help our child learn some quality social skills.

"Maybe you need to introduce yourself," she said. She patiently talked through a script for how talk to a new person.

A couple hours later, we went to pick her up from her class. "I met nine new kids today!" she exclaimed gleefully before we even left the room. What our kid needed wasn't just encouragement. She needed specific direction.

One of the most helpful parts of my Area Director training a couple of weeks ago was the introduction to the Situational Leadership model. I think it applies to leadership, management, and parenting.

From the "supervisor" position, there's four basic postures: directive (specific instructions), coaching (they've got some basics but need concrete feedback and helps), supporting (they know what they're doing, they just need someone to believe in them and encourage them) and delegating.

Every supervisor (and parent) has a naturally more comfortable style. Both Kelly and I are naturally more the supportive type than directing, coaching or delegating.

The trick with supervision (and parenting) is matching your style with the needs of the person you're working with. On Sunday, Kelly realized that our daughter needed more than just encouragement. She needed direction--specific, step-by-step instructions on what to do in a specific situation.

She changed her style to match the situation and person in question. And the results were dramatically different.

Perhaps you've been in a situation where you've needed more direction and all you got was support. Or perhaps you just needed to be left alone but you were stuck with a boss (or parent) who insisted on telling you exactly what to do.

Fewer things are more frustrating than having someone in authority over you who's doing all the wrong things but who thinks that they're doing it right.

Maybe you can take a look at this, think on these things, and make sure that person isn't you.

The Correction of the Parental Protection Instinct

Talking with a friend over the weekend about our kids--and our worries about the different challenges that they face whether they be physically, socially, academically, emotionally or otherwise.

It seems that as parents we're hard-wired to want to protect our kids from having to face hard things in life. This is a good instinct--it's part of what it means to be a good parent.

But given how unafraid God seems to be to allow challenges and obstacles to come our way, it would seem that this instinct might be in need of some serious regulation. Apparently (at least on this side of the Great and Terrible Exchange in the Garden) obstacles and challenges are the keys to character and spiritual formation.

Apparently, the redemption/correction of the parental-guardian instinct is yet another area where we need God's grace and mercy to do its work in our souls.

Christian Parenting: Why It's About More than Control

The other night my wife Kelly was reading a random mommy blog. The blogger was insightfully cutting through how much of our parenting is really just about management and control.

"Why is it that so much Christian parenting advice is all about control," she wondered out loud.

This has stuck with me the past several days. If you're not in the Christian parenting world, it's glutted with books about how to raise kids. And while some of it is excellent advice, much of it is fear-driven. And most all of it majors on the importance of control, establishing rabid boundaries, and enforcing them from the earliest ages.

Here's the deal: control is great. And there's plenty of parents (both inside and outside the Christian world) who need to figure out how to establish order in their house. Supernanny makes millions jetting into the chaos of people's bratty and out of control kids and establishing order. There's a big need for it in our world.

But in the Christian story, order is good only as a means, not as an ends itself. The goal of Christian parenting is not order. It is not control. It is not breaking the will. It is not any of these things except that they lead to love.

Faith expressing itself through love is the final goal of all Christian work, parenting included. Any parenting techniques or philosophies that do not realize this, point to it, and end in it are only half-truths at best.

There's probably a billion and one reasons why so much Christian parenting advice is grounded in fear-based control efforts. But if you're a Christian parent out there (or hope to become one some day) we must resist the fear-driven efforts at simply managing our kids.

We are called to steward them, love them as their good Father does. And boundaries and control over the house is a huge part of that. But it is not all of it, and it is certainly not the point of it. The goal of our parenting is that it is an overflow of the work of the Spirit in us: faith expressing itself through love.

Supernanny won't tell us that. We need wise Christians to do so. Here's to hoping that we get more wise Christian parenting advice and less crap in the Christian book stores.

Just Saying No to Hallmark Moments...And Yes to True Relating

So I just finished putting the kids to bed. And for the second night in a row, what you pictured to be a Hallmark moment before you have kids was anything but. Each night a different kid chose to be cranky, cantankerous, ornery and down-right difficult.

Before I had kids, I never knew that a human being could swing from near-rage-level frustration to warm, affectionate, tender love in the span of approximately 9.5 seconds. Kids do that to you.

One of the things that I've had to contend with in both marriage and with my kids is allowing the overly-romanticized hopes and pictures of what it will be like to burn off without that producing bitterness. Bed time "should be" this sweet, cuddly, fun time with the kids. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's the worst time of the day.

Faced with this, I have a couple of options.

I could let reality shatter my romantic illusions and be bitter about it. This has all kinds of unpleasant circumstances--one of them being that I end up despising my kids in my heart for not living up to my expectations of them, for not delivering what I need/want/thought they were supposed to deliver. This is equally or even more toxic when we take this route in marriage.

Or I could live in denial about reality and continue to try to massage/force these kids and my life to fit the over-idealized mold I want them to fit into. The consequence here is that I never actually love my kids for who they are. I love the illusion more than I love the actual human beings given to me by God to love. Again, some folks opt for this in marriage. Not so good.

Lastly, I can allow my illusions to pass but do so with humility and even expectation. Only as I die to my pictures of what my marriage or family life could or should be can I then learn to actually love my wife and children for who they are.

In other words, the economy of the gospel is always that life comes from death. Jesus lives this out and invites us to follow in his steps.

Putting to death my own dreams or expectations in order to allow something new to take root is what it means to follow Jesus in just about every area of life. So it is with our most precious and important relationships.

This does not mean that I do not have goals or hopes for how we might grow or what the Lord might do in my marriage or with my kids. But these hopes and prayers for our future together are rooted in the realities of who each one of us actually is, not what my culture or Christian sub-culture would prefer me to look like.

I'm still learning how to lean into that third option. And sometimes when my kids push me to the limits of my patience I can't say that I'm exactly forward thinking in concert with God and the angelic beings he's given me to parent.

But I'm learning, even tonight, to discipline and pray and dream and hope while allowing some expectations to die--with great hope that just as Jesus was raised in a perfected body, so, too, will my own images and expectations and hopes for my family.

But I don't think Hallmark has a card that says all of that.

The Good News of Our Un-Importance

Yesterday morning my son was throwing an epic tantrum. Something to do with who got to turn on the Christmas tree and a host of other (real and imagined) wrongs.

As his fit reached a fever pitch he screamed, "I'm going to knock over the tree and ruin everything!"

In a rare moment of clear-headed sanity I felt like I was able to speak something that blessed him: "No, son, you can't. You can't ruin everything. You don't have that much power. That's a good thing."

I think all but the most wounded of us and the most power-grasping of us don't actually want the power to ruin everything. And, even though we don't always feel like it (as Davis didn't that morning), it's a good thing that we don't have that kind of power.

God has come in Jesus to make sure that we don't have the last word on anything any more. We don't have the last word on culture, the economy, government, politics, on our marriages or our kids or even on ourselves...especially on ourselves.

You don't have the last word on you. God does. Congratulations, you can't even finally ruin your own life. God's arm is not too short to redeem anything. This is important for the "knowing God's will" conversation, among other things.

We can't ruin everything. And part of my job as a dad is to free my son from the burden of thinking that he can do so. To parent him in such a way that he feels that he could ruin everything would be to curse him with way too much power.

And it would set him up for a lifetime of too much pressure. If he can ruin everything, then the inverse could also be true: it's up to him to make sure that everything goes well. This lie could crush him--and actually probably crushes many of you.

This is the good news for all of us: you can't ruin everything. You are not as important as you think you are. Instead, you are loved far more than you ever hoped or imagined.

Merry Christmas.

Parenting Does Not Equal Coddling

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with a friend who had read a book about parenting. This author's axe to grind (all parenting books have at least one, sometimes multiple axes to grind) was that we're over-coddling our kids. They're not good at everything, why do we tell them that they are?

I'm inclined to agree.

Last weekend we wrapped up Zoe's under-four soccer league (go, Bullfrogs). We hosted a post-last-game brunch and Kelly picked up some little wooden frog picture frames for the kids and had their soccer picture in the frame. One dad commented that this hit the right note for a year-end celebration.

"I don't like it when all the kids get trophies," he said, "Growing up you got a trophy for actually winning something, not just for showing up."

I think that helping my kids come to terms with their limits and in-abilities is as important as encouraging them to discover their strengths and what they are good at. Embracing the inherent limitations of being human is a part of being a healthy human.

And it's crucial for the spiritual life. Apart from understanding the fundamental reality of our incompleteness, we will attempt to live in the illusion that we can be like God--the original lie spoken to our original parents.

My natural bent is towards super-encouragement. I'm not critical by nature--at least not in terms of what I vocalize. So perhaps this is simply about a healthy correction in my own temperament. And perhaps those of you who find it harder to express something positive need correction in the other direction.

But I think that calling us out as a culture on the cultural norm of lying to our kids about their super-human-ness might be needed. Learning to strike that right balance of affirmation and explaining "harsh realities" probably varies among your personality and what kind of kid you have...and is (like most things) a process.

So I'll be thinking on this during the winter as my soccer coach's whistle takes a rest for a few months. And I'm hoping that the Bullfrogs will re-gather next spring for another epic run at leap-frogging over the competition.

I'll just try not to talk it up too much.

Parental Grab-Bag: Saving the Toilet Paper, Dutch Pancakes, and Bulllfrog Brilliance

It's been many months since I've grab-bagged it. Today, some grab-bag thoughts for the parents out there.

The rest of you who might be pro-creating some day can feel free to read along and take some notes.

*Many of us in parent-land dread fall. Not because it pains us to see leaves dying on trees or because we have a deep-seated fear of carved pumpkins. We dread fall because colder weather and shorter days means kids indoors for longer.

So for those of you who are feeling the beginnings of colder weather driving your kids inside, and therefore driving you insane by destroying furniture, siblings, family heirlooms, and/or toilet paper rolls, allow me to encourage you to make the exquisitely wise and wonderful purchase my wife made a couple weeks ago: the indoor exercise trampoline.

She got it on Craig's list for cheap. I've made it a game of seeing how many consecutive jumps the kids can do--Davis did 700 the other day. Holy core-strengthening exercises, Batman. And of course the goal is to get them as physically exhausted as possible in order to save the furniture/toilet paper rolls/family heirlooms/siblings.

It's certainly not the panacea for all rowdy indoor behavior, but I shudder to think about what life might be over the past couple of weeks without it.

*Fun Saturday morning treat: Oma's Dutch Pancakes (a.k.a. crepes): 1 cup of flour per person, one egg per person, add milk until almost watery.

Ladle a small amount onto an egregiously-overly-buttered skillet and spin around until a thin layer of batter is spread out across the face of the pan. Cook, flip, finish cooking, and eat immediately.

Spread on your favorite topping (we grew up with sugar and lemon juice but you could also do a favorite jam or jelly or even syup) and roll them up and eat them up--yummy! The kids always love daddy, but they especially love me the moment I reveal to them the plan to make Dutch Pancakes that morning!

*I'm making my coaching debut this fall with Zoe's under-four team, the Green Bullfrogs.

We aren't much to look at on the soccer field (last weekend the kids were literally holding hands and walking in circle singing "Ring Around the Rosie" as the other team whizzed by them and scored for the umpteenth time that quarter).

But what coaching wisdom I have to offer I am glad to pass along to others out there who might also be in the position of coaching children who are less-than-interested in the game their parents signed them up to play.

Without further ado, here is the mighty Bullfrog cheer:

Coach Alex: "Does a bullfrog say 'moo-moo?'

Bullfrogs (each with one hand in; the other is likely holding the weed they picked during practice): "NO!"

Coach Alex: "Does a bullfrog say 'woof-woof?'"

Bullfrogs (with increasing indignation): "NO!"

Coach Alex: "Does a bullfrog say 'meeowwww?'"

Bullfrogs (at a fever-pitch of gleeful agitation): "NO!!!"

Coach Alex: "What does a bullfrog say?"

Bullfrogs (with deep, visceral joy): "RIBBIT-RIBBIT!"

Coach Alex: "Go bullfrogs on three: one, two, three.."

Bullfrogs: "GO BULLFROGS!"

That one's for free folks. You can thank me later.

Nomination for Grandmother of the Year

Last spring I was listening to a series of podcasts about raising kids from my old church in Richmond, West End Pres. One of the few things that pastor Steve said that all of us should be doing is praying every day for our kids to know the love of Jesus and for their future spouse.

There goes my father-of-the-year candidacy. I felt like I'd been occasionally catching but mostly missing the boat for much of the past five years.

Better late than never to cover those things I suppose. But still, I realized that I'd been mostly mired down in praying for survival (for us and for them) rather than praying important, long-term prayers for my kids.

Then I went to see my parents for a weekend early in the summer. My mom and I were talking about how great her grandkids are (a topic she rather enjoys discussing, crank her up and you'll have a hard time shutting her down).

And then she gave me a tremendous gift: "You know," she said, "I pray for them every day. That they'll know the Lord and that they'll have spouses that do, too. Just like I used to pray for you guys, and look how well that worked out!"

I realized at that moment that I am a part of a community of faith, a family of faith. I have a unique role and responsibility to raise my kids as faithfully as I can. But it's not all on me to pray, teach, and lead my kids to Christ. If I step back and look at it, there's a ton of folks doing this alongside Kelly and I.

I'm speaking on "A Community of Faith" this week at our large group meeting. Mom's gift/story won't make the cut--college students don't quite connect with the intricacies of the whole parenting thing. But in my own life in the past couple months, it's been one of the most palpable experiences of being a part of a community of faith.

Thanks, Mom. If I can't get father-of-the-year, you're still in the running for grandmother-of-the-year.

Parenting, Playgrounds, and Megaphones

Okay, so I've only been at this parenting thing for about five and a half years. But at this point I think that there are two things that I can't do too much of:

1. I can't tell my kids that I love them too often.

2. I can't over-do consistency in boundaries. That is, I cannot be too consistent in how I enforce the limits that we have (wisely, I hope) placed on our children. This consistency in holding to the boundaries we've put in place is actually just concrete iteration of point number one.

To this point, I would say that I'm much better at telling my kids that I love them and much too inconsistent at holding to consistent limits and boundaries. Which is to say that I'm much better at telling my kids that I love them than I am at demonstrating it.

Someone recently told me about a study of playgrounds. Kids who played in playgrounds with no fences tended to only use a small portion of the space allotted. Kids who played in playgrounds with fences tended to use the entire space more fully.

Communicating what and where boundaries are and holding to them is a blessing to kids. It's also a blessing to us grown-ups...which why it's part of God's goodness that he gives us firm boundaries.

When we violate those boundaries, it usually results in pain. Pain is God's rumble strips to alert us to having crossed over and outside of a boundary put in place for our good. To quote C.S. Lewis, "pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

So I'm growing in being more consistent in holding to the boundaries that we've put in place for our kids. It's an important part of how I love on them.

And I've got a growing gratitude and joy for the boundaries that have been put in place by my Father who loves me way more than I can ever hope or imagine.

For My Dad on Father's Day Weekend

When my dad retired in June of 1992 after over twenty years in the Navy, it was a big whompin' ceremonial deal.

My dad spent his last three years serving at the Pentagon. There's lots that he can't tell me about what he did during his time there, but suffice to say he had at least some face time with a group of guys called the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The ceremony, held at our church in Northern Virginia, had plenty of high-ranking officials on the program offering speeches and celebration of many years of service.

But the biggest memory that anyone has of the retirement ceremony was something that happened that wasn't on the program.

About three-quarters of the way through the ceremony, a late-middle-aged gentlemen stood up and asked if he could come forward and say something. In a crowd packed with fully-regaled military officers and decked-out friends and family, he wasn't particularly official looking.

Everyone was a little nervous as he slowly moved to the podium.

He introduced himself; he was a janitor at the Pentagon. This did little to calm anyone's fears about what might be coming next.

"Me and the other janitors have been talking," he said, "and we're going to miss Commander Kirk." I think he then proceeded to present my dad with some kind of plaque or memento of some sort.

I had just graduated from high school a week or two earlier. At a pivotal point of my life, where I was about to step into a fuller sense of adulthood, I was taught a valuable lesson in what it means to really be a man.

My dad was a guy who rubbed shoulders with people of influence. But the janitors knew his name. And he knew theirs. That's the kind of man I want to be.

I hope some day that my own kids might be as proud of me as I was of my dad that day. Happy Father's day, dad, thanks for teaching me about the importance of not finding yourself too important.

What's Wrong with Dads...And Why

The other day I was at the beach and noticed a dad of three kids who spent the whole time taking pictures of his kids rather than playing with them.

I'm not sure if this is symbolic of how he relates to his kids or not, but it got me thinking about us dads, how we hide behind other things rather than relate to our families (wives included), and why that is.

What we hide behind varies by temperament and personality: work, hobbies, the yard, the house, the t.v. One student's dad hid behind serving. He would do anything for anyone. He even served around the house in the name of helping the family but he was running--he was emotionally detached from everyone in the family.

Even as I watched the photo-taking dad the other day, I realized that I was tempted to sit there and hide behind thinking about how dad's hide rather than digging in the sand with my own kids.

Why do we hide? Larry Crabb's book The Silence of Adam is far and away one of the best books on men--what's gone wrong, and what repentance looks like.

Crabb proposes that the story of the fall of Adam and Eve is instructive about men's sin. The Genesis account explicitly says that Eve gives the fruit to Adam "who was with her." Adam is there the whole time of the temptation and says nothing.

The curse is then pronounced, and all of Adam's curse has to do with work. And so, men are bent towards work.

Adam's silence in the face of relational chaos is indicative of our brokenness. In the midst of the temptation, Adam is silent when he should have spoken.

Crabb suggests that men were made to live by courage, not code. But we prefer code. We like to know the rules, have a clear idea of what to do, when we're right, how to proceed, what's expected of us.

Work, hobbies, the yard, all have codes and clear outcomes. The family is chaotic, uncertain and unpredictable. It is much easier to blog than to husband. It is much simpler to be a CPA than to bring up wise and character-rich children.

I hope and pray that I might be a dad who chooses to live into the familial relationships that God has given to me rather than to choose the easier path of work-aholism or escapism by other means. I, too, have the longing for code in me. It is work to choose the path of wading into relational chaos where I'm not always sure what's expected of me.

But I hope that what marks my time as a huband and a father is the courage to quit hiding behind the metaphorical camera and join in the fray with my wife and kids. That life, I know, is much more rewarding indeed.

New York in August v. Sticking with the Diet

About a month ago I got an invite to do a pretty sweet speaking/consulting gig. It was a quick trip, overnight, to New York. The only catch was that it was in mid-August. August for a campus minister is like December in retail. You buckle down, work your butt off, and try to enjoy the ride.

But as I looked at the exact dates, the invitation fell right in a pleasant window of what looks right now to be wide open space. Nothing on the calendar. As I talked it over with a couple of friends and my boss, it seemed like it might be do-able. I was pretty geeked out about it.

Then I was listening to a sermon podcast where the pastor was prodding us to ask the question: "in light of my present responsibilities, my past experiences, and my future hopes and dreams, is this a wise use of my time?"

He argued that many things we choose to do aren't sinful, they're just not wise. He was calling us to look past the simple "there's nothing wrong with this decision" to think more deeply about the ramifications of our decisions.

In the course of the sermon he talked about the areas of our lives where small deposits over a long period of time are crucial and non-recoverable.

Exercise is one example. If we exercise just 30 minutes a couple days a week, we're healthier people. But you can't make up for the lost time by trying to make up for eight months of non-exercise in one sitting. I've tried. It hurts.

Going to church, same thing. Dieting, same thing. Personal time in prayer and Scripture study, same thing. Miss one day at church, cheat on the diet one time, skip out on one day in personal prayer, no big consequence. But make it a habit, and you fall away from community, from health, and from God.

The speaker wrapped up by talking about small deposits we have to make with our family. He's a tremendous communicator, head of a large church, and has published several books. He gets invites to speak all over the place. And he's got three kids at 12, 8, & 6.

"Maybe some day," he said, "when my kids are grown and out the door, I'll just travel around and take every speaking gig I can. But for right now, my assistant and I just look at each other and we say, 'just say no!'"

"Because my future hopes and dreams include having healthy adult relationships with my kids. And that means saying no to other things so that I might be available to make these small, incremental, regular deposits of time."

I turned down the gig. I desire to make my default posture towards all the cool stuff that might come my way towards a firm "no" unless I get a clear sense that I should make an exception.

I've got a five, three, and 20-month-old (not to mention a wonderful wife) who need to know that they are more important. I desire to faithfully make small, regular deposits of time, to turn towards them and not towards other stuff, even good stuff, even stuff that feels like it could make an impact for the gospel.

I've got a prior engagement.

The Helicopter Parent

So the helicopter parent is a relatively recent cultural phenonemon describing the parents of out-of-the-house children (in college particularly) who continously play an active role in the day-to-day activities of their grown children.

A helicopter parent hovers continuously around their adult child (via the cell pphone) to offer guidance and advice on any number of routine decisions: should I get my haircut, what classes should I take, what should I do this weekend, etc.

I had someone once point to the helicopter parent as proof that the family wasn't in as bad a shape as some would have us to believe. But the truth is that helicopter parenting is simply another expression of the extreme brokenness in our culture when it comes to the familly.

If one of the primary goals of parenting is to prepare your children for healthy adulthood and independence (and I think I read that somewhere but I'm still new at this) then the way that I see some parent-child relationships play out is nothing like healthy.

Helicopter parenting can spring out of all types of soils. I've seen some home-schooling students whose parents were so focused on the family that they taught them nothing about preparing to leave the family.

And I've seen some that have sprung out of the "both parents working, kid has been in daycare since week 6" family culture. Some of these parents feel guilty and try to hang on to make up for lost time.

And of course I've seen healthy parent-college child relationships spring up out of both home-schooled and two-working parents type families.

My wife noted last night that our culture is more kid-centric than ever before. Everything from summer camps to Kinder-Music to more and more organized sports and activities at earlier and earlier ages.

But the results of all this sound and fury seem to signify the wrong things. Post-adolescence as a new label to describe twenty-eight year olds who still act fourteen. Helicopter parents who cannot allow their children to grow up and make normal, growing-up type mistakes.

I wonder if I or my kids will fare any better. Perhaps I'll look back on this post in fifteen years and think how little I knew.

But my hope and prayer for my kids and I is that we'll have healthy, adult relationships as they graduate high school and head off to the great beyond. That means lots of small, hard decisions along the way and allowing our relationship and my role to shift along the way.

I hope that I might not be a helicopter parent some day. If for no other reason than I'm not sure I can afford the cell phone bill.

Dealing with Patterns of Family Brokenness

After many years of working with students prior to having kids of my own, I decided something: when we had kids, we'd start the college savings account and the future-counseling fund all at the same time.

It seemed no matter how well-intentioned the parents, students always had plenty of baggage.

The baggage can become particularly onerous and alarming for those students who are thinking about marriage. If you're seeing a whole bunch of mess in your own family's dynamics, one of the biggest fears is that you'll repeat those same messy dynamics in your own marriage.

In working with students, doing some study, and praying alongside folks for many years, I think the hope that we have in this lies in the cross of Christ.

What Jesus does on the cross is absorb all sin. John the Baptist declares: "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

Paul declares on the other side of Jesus' death and resurrection that Christians not only follow Jesus, we are grafted into him, we are united with him, we share in his life, death, resurrection, and inheritance.

As a part of this participation in Christ, I believe that we are invited to join Jesus in absorbing the sins of our families rather than pass them on to our spouses and children. We are invited to share with Christ in taking on rather than passing on broken patterns, some of which have been in place for generations.

Scripts of what it means to be a husband, wife, parent, child, and grandparent all get passed along to us. Left un-examined, we will filter those scripts through the lens of our personality and experience and pass along the same basic scripts to the next generation.

But in Christ, we are invited to bring the scripts handed to us into the light for inspection. In Christ, we are invited to see what is true and what is false.

In Christ, we are given power and authority to cling to what is good. And in Christ, we are given power and authority to absorb what is bad, false, broken.

That's good news for all of us today, no matter how "functional" your family was. We are not bound to pass along broken patterns. We have authority and power in Christ to allow Christ in us to take on the sin and brokenness.

You still might want to keep that counseling fund going, just in case.

Understanding God Through Granola Bars (Already)

A couple of weeks ago, Kelly and I downloaded and listened to a couple of parenting classes taught by our former pastor in Richmond, Steve Shelby. If you're a parent (and you know who you are) and you want to bring your kids up in the faith, do yourself and your kids a favor: go to the web site (here) and scroll through the downloads and find Steve's Parenting Classes--they begin in January.

There are few people that so wisely combine theological reflection and earthy, real-time, real-life gospel application as Steve does. It's not always very polished or neat, but it's very, very rich.

Listening to Steve's classes has made me think about how to help our son, Davis, engage with and begin to understand God.

Davis is a very concrete thinker. The abstraction of "God" can sometime stress him out. "Jesus is always with us? Where is he? Why can't I see him?" is not something that he's actually articulated but it's definitely in operation as he tries to understand all this.

An opportunity to make things a little more concrete presented itself recently as we've been talking about the homeless guys at the stoplights holding signs and asking for help. The kids have been asking about them...and wanting to help them.

My wife, a.k.a. the one with mercy gifts, had a good idea: buy a big box of granola bars that we can give to the guys whenever we see them. Davis loves it. He clutches the box whenever we're in the minivan and hopes that we get stopped at the right lights in order to give them something to eat.

Feeling a teachable moment last week, I asked Davis, "Do you know why we give these guys granola bars?"

"Because they don't have anywhere to live or anything to eat unless people help them," Davis rightly replied.

"That's right," I said, "and even more than that, when we needed help, Jesus came and helped us. So we should do that for other people, too."

"Dad," he said, rather disgustedly, "I already knew that."

Maybe he's getting more of this than I thought.

Pride (In the Name of Love): The Power to Bless or Curse

I think I posted this past fall that Davis was playing soccer, his first foray into the world of organized sports. The Silver Streaks were a sweet gang of four and five years olds, most of whom were also making their first foray into the world of organized sports.

Every team we played, however, had at least one prodigious player who apparently had been playing soccer en utero and had been to multiple summer soccer camps...in Brazil. The result: the Silver Streaks were usually outscored by an average of 24-6. I'm not kidding.

But in the last couple of games, a light bulb went off for Davis. He was more confident and began to get a feel for the game.

So last Tuesday, at his first soccer practice for the spring season, I felt something new when in the middle of a scrimmage Davis darted towards the ball, dribbled it down the length of the field and scored a goal, earning a high-five from his new coach.

The new thing was pride, specifically pride in something my son can do, not just in who he is as a person.

And it seems at this point, as a dad, I have the opportunity to bless my son with a tremendous gift or saddle him with a curse that he could be stuck with for the rest of his life. How do I proceed with a healthy pride in my son's accomplishments?

Biblically speaking, the priority is always on character and identity before doing or accomplishments. But that doesn't mean that what we do doesn't matter. Jesus tells one judgment parable where the verdict on the people being judged is decided with a rousing "WELL DONE!"

Many of you reading this post are adults walking with wounds from not hearing from your parents that they were proud of what you did. At some point, that matters. We were made for it to matter.

But it must be about him, not me. I think this is what distinguishes a pride that blesses versus a pride that inflicts a curse.

It is not about Davis reflecting back on me. It is not about me living out my un-fulfilled athletic dreams through him. If it becomes about me, then it gets twisted and sick, full of pressures and frustrations and agonies and dysfunction that should never accompany kids kicking a ball around.

It's about him being the person that God made him to be. Really. And when I can spot that, and celebrate it along with him, it blesses him and helps him to flower into the man he was created to be. And that's the kind of dad I want to be. No ridiculous pressure to earn a college scholarship by age 7. Go have fun.

In one sense that's too bad; I hear that there are some pretty sweet sites to see in Brazil.