How Easy It Is to Ignore Their Stinky Feet

It’s another day gone.  Another meal conjured together of what is left in the fridge.  But, that is done and now all that is left to do is to peel the two-year old BOY from the ceiling and then wall and then the older sister and finally the younger sister.  Earlier peeling done, now in the bathroom it’s time to peel the remnants of his meal from him…then to the room for pajamas and …AHHHHH…UGH!…back to the bathroom, muttering, “How can feet that small contain such a stench?”

As I sit him on the edge of the sink, with him looking on, and attempt to separate  the bottom of his foot from the stench and YUP!, from in between the toes as well, a thought perculates through my mind.  I do not usually get spiritual thoughts or insights while washing my toddler’s feet, but maybe the stink is what brought it bubbling forth.

The Biblical image that came to my mind was that of Jesus, who after a meal with His disciples one evening, put a towel around His waste and went around and washed His disciples’ feet.  This shocked these crusty men who recognized the actions of Jesus by what in the culture of that time was a duty of a servant and not a master.  All were shocked, some embarrased and still another defiant.  Jesus, however, would not be swayed in His act saying that those who wish to be the greatest in the Kingdom must be a servant.  He went on, also to say, that we too must wash each other’s feet.

So, as I sat there scrubbing the unknown crud from my son’s feet, I asked myself a question.  “Do I take on the attitude of a servant with my son, my daughters?  Am I more concerned about the little things that develop in their character that are not in line with God’s Word than I am with sitting in the chair and being too tired to address the situation?”  That is the small impurities that take ahold as they grow and pass through the stages, soon developing into a young man and young women?  I am sure there was some time today when his feet did not smell as bad as they did at the end of the day.  The culprit could have been washed out then and never been allowed to progress to the level that it did.

Stinky feet are just a part of life and not a life changing event.  But what about the patterns that develop because of small actions committed by my children that go unchecked when they arise?  The flesh, if allowed to take hold, will be a cancer that will proliferate throughout the spirit, mind, and body of a person.  Those small pieces of leaven left alone could multiply over time and consume the whole.

I have found it is easy to develop blind spots that whether chosen actively or passively when raising my children can one day become habits of sin and the sinful habit of denial in me.  This would be a true stench in God’s nostrils and offensive to His nature and Will.  I am reminded of King David and the lack of a role that he played as a father in his son Absalom’s life.  The boy got a little carried away as he was growing up, but instead of addressing it and setting him right, David left it alone and it progressed to Absalom attempting a coup against his own father.  If it weren’t for Absalom’s vanity and those low hanging tree branches, David may have lived a shorter life and enjoyed a more diminished role in the Bible than he did.  That is not to put all of the blame on the father, for the son did choose to do what he did.  But I wonder how things would have been if David took as much passion in his familial role of father as he did in his national role of King of Israel.

Thank goodness God makes it possible for people who are dysfunctional to still have a part in His Will.  David was enlightened to this a day too late and only because he came up short, but yet is a part of the lineage of Christ and achieved incredible works and writing many as well.  By considering his dysfunction I would like to learn from his shortcomings and seek to diminish my own.  I sometimes take the same thinking  as the father David.  I adopt the mentality sometimes that  I take with my lawn.  Sure it could sure do with a trim, but I let it go, because once again, I am too tired right now to deal with it.  It will still be there tomorrow.  And then tomorrow it rains and then I find the yard that was once slightly long  has now become an overgrown lot whose accusatory tones declare my guilt to the rest of the neighborhood whenever I pull up into the driveway.  “The Growth” can no longer be ignored.  It becomes more than just a 45 minute job of maintaining.  No, it results in a two and a half hour battle of my will against that of the jungle that was once my front yard.  And so also, the “minor” thing that I put up with in my child’s behavior  grows beyond my ability to be blind to it.  It is foolish to choose to ignore or deny the potential inertia of the little foxes in the garden of our children’s development.  No unchecked manifestation of the flesh stays small for long.  It will get bigger,until it has grown beyond just a little thing and gotten out of control and will take significant conflict between my son and me and significant focus and energy for a consistent and extended time on my part to address what could have been mowed down a few days earlier or washed out from in between my son’s little toes before the reek set it.  “I am too tired”?  That’s just the excuse of the flesh giving me permission to allow my feet to stay dirty along with his.  I can appease myself and my son with those same words, and as his father, set up a trajectory for my son and myself that sends us away from the Father and guarantees the impurity on our feet will spread all over us and take control.

It’s t…

It’s that time of the evening again as it always is.  My oldest daughter has finished her generic knock-off of a pepperoni Lunchable sans pepperoni.  These she has relegated to her four year old sister who loves the stuff and yet will only eat the circle slices of ham and some of the cheese squares of her meal leaving the crackers to languish in their flimsy plastic tray .  But this is a step-up from the one and a half year old bundle of testosterone locked into his high chair by the removable tray that is sprinkled by the little bits and shredded morsels of what might be cheese and other parts of his decimated meal that did not deserve such and end now only destined for the trash can and garbage disposal.  Their teeth are brushed, medications given, hugs handed out and excuses for staying up denied.  Now is the part where my boy sitting in my arms turns off the light to the room and then leans into me giving me the good night hug that will last for the duration of the prayer on the way to his crib where he will fling himself onto his dolphin Pillow Pet and fight the inevitable grasp of sleep.

Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

     It is this time of the day that I can dream for my kids.  It is this time of the evening that I begin to realize once again the immense role played by the father in their upbringing not just in the tying shoes, killing spiders, and showing them the finer points of skipping rocks across the water of the drainage ditch skirting our neighborhood park.  As I pray for my son and then when he is asleep my daughters, asking God to watch over them, draw them to Him and teach them and show them the way to live their lives that they may please Him and follow His will and way, I can’t help but realize, once again that though these are all things that their Heavenly Father supports and is a part of, it is their earthly father and mother who must instill it in the children.  I can not pass it off to God and then walk away from it.  God will teach the willing.  He will discipline all of those who are willing to stay around to feeling the lick of His all consuming fire.  But it will be me who at the appropriate time talks to them about the things of God.  It will be their mom and me who live out the mature Christian life that we expect of them.  It will be my hunger for the things of God that will be the benchmark for theirs.  They will look back on how their mother treated them with kindness and how I their father taught them the grace of God by showing them the grace of their father when they blew it on purpose or otherwise.  They will see their Heavenly Father as severe if I am.  They will believe His love to be as unconditional as they find mine to be.  The confidence I show I have in them to not intervene but to let them make choices and be creative in their own right and express themselves will be a great part of the confidence they will have in God that He loves them the way they are and does not seek to alter their identity only to show them the unique way He created them within their personality and identity to serve Him and impact their world the way only they can.

     My professor who I looked up to the most in college said that we as parents should wet the appetites of our children for the Lord.  We should introduce them to Him as their source.  This will set them on the right course for the rest of their life.  We are to introduce them to Him, the Source aim them down the path and then send them on their way.  If we have done our part, though they stray and  sway from side to side on the road of faith they will not be able to depart from it for it is as much a part of them and become ingrained on their identity so that they can no longer disown Him as they can their own reflection.  When they find Him as their source nothing else will be enough.  What an incredible work.  What a challenging goal.  But, OH what a worthy one!

The Need of Money

For the last three months, money has been tighter than usual.  Our monthly income has been recovering from the wife being on maternity leave.  Well, because of all that, we have really had to learn to reign in spending.  It forced us to really think long and hard about where our money was going, and what we actually needed to what we wanted.  I think these last three months I have learned the meaning of frugality.  I bless this time, because it has made it possible to better understand what it means to truly trust not in money, but God.  Every single time we were at our last dollar, someone would want my wife to make a hair bow, or we would find a way to make things work.  No matter what the situation or need we were okay. 
   Payday was yesterday.  When I went after school to fill-up my tank that day, and later to Costco to stock-up, I for the first time recognized that feeling that comes when you have a need and the means to meet it.  How many times have I trusted on the things in my life and not on the Creator?  How many times have I filled my gas tank and then gotten a satisfaction out of knowing I was okay from the full tank?  This made think, am I relying on God or my gas tank?  Do I need gasoline for my car to run?  Yes.  Do I need food to fill my stomach to live, and water to drink?  Yes.  There is no shame in relying on physical possessions, but as I learned these last three months, I may rely on these things for life, but no matter what the circumstances God is the Provider of those things.  We did not nor have we ever lacked for anything.  He is the God who provides and through that provision, no matter from where it comes, He is the One sustaining us.

Clutter

It is amazing how much clutter we can accumulate after a while.  We, as my wife Karina put it, “Purged” the girls room of the excess stuff that had accumulated in their toy boxes and under the bed and in the bookshelf.  There was a very high pile of stuff that left the room for good.  It was not an easy process for the girls though.  They had grown attached to the things around them, even though those things did not bring value to their lives.  They were the familiar that had slowly encroached on their space and before we knew it, what we kept stepping on and shoving to the side with our feet when we walked into the room.  After the purge was complete, and we sat down for dinner of microwaved burritos for us and spaghetti Os for them, the question was asked to Brisa, my six-year-old daughter, “How do you feel now that we are done with the purge?”  Brisa responded, “I feel good.  My room actually feels relaxed when I walk into it.”     I wonder about the things that clutter my life.  What things have slowly encroached on my space and slowly choked out the open areas of my life?  Organizing my life will not help.  We tried that with the girls room as well, but eventually the clutter returned.  You can organize all you want, but if you have filled up the open areas in the room, they are now occupied areas of the room with things neatly stacked in them.  It is a temporary fix that changes as soon as life happens and a few dress-up sessions later, the accumulation has returned.  Same thing with life.  Things can be scheduled and plans can be made to support the promises we made to our loved ones to leave open space in life, but when life happens and the things we scheduled and planned take more time than we planned, the open areas of our life start to get encroached upon once and the inevitable feeling of the cluttered room returns.  We feel kind of claustrophobic with not enough room to breathe. 
  It looks like we need a purge.  We need to start looking at our life, and noticing the extra responsibilities that have been sapping our strength and consuming our time and energy and availability to those most important.  We need to look at the attitudes that are only naturally creep up on us.  Those habits that can also consume the open areas of our life and also rob us of our energy and mental well-being.  We have to test ourselves and be honest.  “Have I taken more than I can handle?”  We don’t like to recognize our limits.  We want to give the appearance that we always have more to give, but when we are done giving of ourselves for the day do we have enough left for those who matter most at the end of the day?  If we don’t, then maybe we are working above our limits and need to step back.  Giving our everything to God does not mean that we should be left at the end without anything.  It means that whatever we do, yes ministry, work, sleep, eat, have friendships ETC, all of it should be for the Lord.  The good thing is that “..for Him” means that at every moment of the day our lives reflect Him.  It is not just one single act that we must do to bring Him glory.  For me, teaching is my profession.  I should do it to glorify Him, but that isn’t all that I should do, nor is it the only thing that I should do that glorifies Him.
   So the pressure is off.  Whatever I do be it eating, talking, or even using the toilet may it be for Him.  May I be living every part of my life in a way that those around me can see my manner of behavior and action and living and existing is for Him.
   We can have the best of intentions and miss it.  We can keep doing and doing thinking that our main actions of the day are what is important and run ourselves down in an attempt to please the Creator when in reality, all that He wants is for our life to acknowledge Him.  “…in all of your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” Proverbs 3:6. 
   So relax, work, sleep and acknowledge Him while you do it.  Get rid of the clutter and focus your energy on what is most important.

The Weight and Responsibility of Fatherhood

I always wanted to be a good father. Always desired to be the man on whom my children could depend. Now  that the time has come I feel that I am, but also realize what comes with it. It sounded like a great thing to say and even though I meant it there are times when it gets heavy and difficult. I understand the thinking, at least, of the men who when the weight starts to come and the sacrificing and changing of plans begins to mount they decide to step out. When life gets in the way of what we planned it is easy to want to loosen the load, but at what cost? The easy way out leaves behind it a swathe of chaos and brokeness. The road of the man who is just not willing to pony up and be a man and has to run at the first sight of his own blood being spilled out for his family, well that is not for me. I have moments where I could have been more positive with my wife. There are times I have been less than understanding with the kids. This is reality. And every time that I screw up or have that feeling of giving up, I remind myself of this one thing. I have always wanted to live my life for something. I have always wanted it to count for more than just me, and I have found the way. I give myself for my family everyday. When the life and family require more out of me than I thought that I had in me I stop and pray and ask for the strength. And I don’t feel the energy after I pray. The prayer is more like a reminder and then I in faith knowing what my family needs of me keep going, not because I can. I keep going because at the end of the day when everyone else goes to bed and I am typing on the computer or doing the dishes or when once in a rare time I have some free time to play the Wii I can reflect back for a second and with satisfaction know that I am living the life of the true man. No spotlight, no shouts or cheers except what the family gives, but when it is all said and done I am living my dream, a family man.

Fathers Get the Short End of the Stick!

      I will have been married now for ten years in December.  I am a father of three.  I have a six year old girl, a three year old girl, and , yes FINALLY, a son, he is five months old.  With each successive child, comes more demands.  Obviously, this is the case.  Where there are more mouths, there is more need.  I have found though that there are some things that are not so obvious.  I consider myself a full-contact dad.  I change the diapers, and wipe-up the vomit, and wake-up at, “What time is it again?” to care for the little crying tike.  I have coached little league soccer and gone to my little girl’s kindergarten plays, and taken my girls on dates.  My girls run to me when they see me and can’t wait to spend more time with “Daddy”.  I have all of this happen and then when one of them gets sick, or we are having a discussion with others about our kids, the assumption is that their mom is doing all of that and that I am just the back-up guy to do the heavy lifting and carry the bags.   So much for women’s lib and men and women are on equal playing fields.  When it comes down to the children society will always assume the women are the only ones who are doing it. 

      I love my wife and I know that we are each other’s sidekick.  She is the loudest voice to correct people when they make the mother doing everything assumption.  No matter how loud she might be, it will always be otherwise, because fathers, truly hard working fathers always get the short end of the stick!