Leaving Room for Grace

            My folks have a sign that says something like “When we got married, we had six theories about raising kids. Now we have six kids and no theories.” I don’t know if they really had six theories but I am told that the way my oldest brother was raised was much different that how I was raised as the baby of the family. I tend to think they refined their process with my older siblings and by the time they got to me I was pretty much the perfect child.

            I do know that raising my own children has certainly changed my perspective. I guess a better way to put it would be it has enlightened me to some things I could only know through experience. I shudder when I think about some of the things I put my parents through.

            For example, when I was 18 and just out of Boot Camp I decided I wanted to drive from Arizona to Florida, by myself. This was 1986 and for those old enough to remember, cell phones didn’t really come out until the late 90s. So off I went on my little trip without a thought in the world about what kind of horrors go through the mind of a parent when their kid decides to do something like this. I wont even bother with the story of how I told them I was engaged.

          Now I look back at how my parents raised me and I realize they were really doing the best they could with what they had. The more I know and understand what I didn’t (or couldn’t know) when I was growing up, the more I realize how hard they tried. I think all parents arepretty much in the same boat. We can read books, listen to CDs, watch Nineteen and Counting, and subscribe to Focus on the Family magazine, but really we are just trying our best to live by a set of principles and teach our kids to do the same, with the operative word there being “trying”.  And when we come up short, even with our most valiant efforts, there is grace to fill in the gaps. We need it, our parents need it, and our children need it. Grace is the peanut butter that keeps the bananas from falling off the bread. 

Stirring the Pot

I like to “stir the pot”. It gives me great enjoyment. If I could get someone to pay me to “stir the pot”, I would have my dream job. I am not talking about standing over a hot stove stirring a pot, unless it is stirring a pot of chocolate oatmeal cookies, I like to do that also. I mean I like to challenge the way people think about things. I like to challenge stereotypes and conventional wisdom. I like to call people on inconsistencies in their arguments. I enjoy raising my fist in defiance; even with my degree in Science (thanks Five Iron Frenzy). It is very immature and annoying, but if I had to make a list of the top ten things I can do with excellence, stirring the pot would be on that list.

The most recent attempt was while I was taking some graduate course work in Business through a pretty big Christian university. I learned that Webster’s Dictionary is not an acceptable source, while anything published by any grad student anywhere is an acceptable source. So I took it as a challenge to add non-traditional and maybe a little edgy, but acceptable, sources to every paper I had to write. It was so much fun!

At one point I had picked up a book by David Crowder and Mike Hogan called Everybody Wants to go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die : Or the Eschatology of Bluegrass. I had already used Crowder’s solo book, Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi earlier in the year. I could imagine some stuffy old Business School professor sitting in his office surrounded by piles of books and papers reading a quote by David and giving out a guffaw. “What is this? Who is this ‘David Crowder’ fellow and what does he have to do with business anyway? What? It is an acceptable source, properly annotated and formatted per APA? Well, I don’t like it one little bit! Not one bit I tell you! Kids these days with their Rock and Roll music and their computing devices!” I could not wait to use this second book, for no other reason than the awesomeness of the title.

Please don’t think I don’t like either of these books, they are both awesome. And please don’t think I am making fun of David Crowder or his band of merry men, I love those guys. The music they put together played an integral part in our adoption, but that is another story for another time.

So I picked up Everybody to find some random quote that I could fit in to a 15 page research paper on Creating Vision. I wanted to challenge the establishment one last time. This was going to be good! I started reading and soon found myself unable to see through the tears. It turns out Everybody is about life, death, and mourning. Crowder and Hogan had written it about their lives after the death of a close friend. My foolishness had boomeranged back on me and hit me right in the eye (which was why I was really crying, there was a proverbial boomerang sticking out of my eye). I had taken a wonderful piece of transparency and tried to use it for my silly game.

I abandoned the idea, finished up the paper without any reference to David and Mike, and started thinking. Why do I have to stir every pot I come across? What effect has being the pot stirrer had on my life? Certainly I have had way more stress in my life from it. I have definitely damaged some relationships. I can think of only a dozen occasions where positive change has been created by challenging the “system”. That makes an estimated 5% return on investment, which means 95% of the time I was just causing trouble for no good purpose. What a waste of time and energy.

So now I guess I need to work a little harder at “living peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:8) since in this case it really is up to me. There are still pots that need to be stirred, and I will still be willing to be that guy if needed, but I will have to make sure it is needed, and maybe I will gently use a clean spoon instead of a dirty electric mixer on high. Then maybe someday, someone will make an offer to be the Official Pot Stirrer for their organization, proving dreams can come true. 

Let's hear a big round of applause for "Yes*"

            I have added a new word to the dictionary. It isn't really a new word in the classical sense of words, but a twist on a very old word and spelled a little differently, kind of like the word "fat/phat" which my wife has been known to use on occasion. I still have to ask my wife specifically what she means when she says I am "fat". Does she mean that I am totally awesome and cool as in "Dude! Awesome beard! That crowder you are growing is phat!" (not that she has ever said that, but I can dream). Or is she implying my girth is more expansive that it used to be, as in "Those pants don't fit anymore because you are getting fat" (not that she has said that either, using those exact words anyway).

            My new word is "yes*". That is right, I have added a non-letter to a word to make another word. The root word is the same, but the asterisk changes the meaning to indicate that the yes is provisional and there might be certain conditions in which it is not a yes, like the asterisks that are found next to the word “meat” on hotdog packages. In this case it generally means it is a yes unless something better comes along. It is pronounced the same, except you must add a slide whistle sound and a popping lip smack at the end. For those who are old enough to remember Electric Company, it is the punctuation mark sound Spiderman would make.

            In context it would sound like this:

            Guy One - "Will you help me move a grand piano upstairs next week during game four of the Finals?"

            Guy Two - "Yes* beeeweeep-pop, I would be glad to help you."

            The addition of the sound allows both parties to fully understand the nature of the yes given. Guy One can then plan on not having any help whatsoever from Guy Two simply because, in this instance, there are a million things that are better than moving a piano upstairs.

            This brings up the second part of the provisional nature of the yes - "something better" is a sliding scale based purely on the whims of the individual. If Guy One upped the ante with cupcakes or pizza, his ask for help would then land higher on the scale and be more competitive with the better things that will inevitably come along.

            Using the "yes*" would help us out in so many ways. It gets us away from the “let me pray about it“ lie because we all know that no one really “prays about it”, we are just too dishonest to be honest about it.  We would no longer have to wonder who would be attending events at church or home. It would also help people in their Christian walk because they would no longer have to confess they sort of lied about accepting an invitation, their souls and consciences would be that much freer to dwell on the next step of their sanctification.

            It would also help our marriages by eliminating the accidental yes. "The Smiths invited us to dinner Friday."

            "I hope you didn't agree to go, the world premier of Creepy Vampire vs Shirtless Wolf-man Teenage Angst Love Story is Friday night."

            "It's OK dear, I told them Yes* beeeweeep-pop."

            And with that, another marriage is saved, hooray for the Yes*!