I can’t even imagine what effect it will have on Katy to be born and raised here in Kadiolo.
Thanks to Aunt Stacie (another little girl born and raised out here) Katy has a head covering. It seems more important for the women around here to keep their hair covered than their chests. There is nothing right or wrong about that, and I wonder how a world of cultural differences will shape the woman she will be.
Do you remember that couple in high school? They never seemed really happy to see each other, but they had been off-again, on-again since junior high, and they just couldn’t seem to be without each other.
I think that is maybe what Jethro and our cat have going on. The cat could easily get away from a toddler, but he never does. Jethro is eventually too rough, and the cat enevitably scratches him to get away. As predictable as this turn of events is they make no effort to avoid it.
Maybe that’s all they’ve ever known, and they think that’s how love goes between a cat and a boy.
Last night it got cool enough to light some candles in the house. And this morning, as I write this Harley is standing beside me lost in the sublime world of a good pair of headphones. She is matching the Yankee Candle lids with the correct candle by smell. She looks up at me and says over the noise that is only in her ears, “Do you like birds?”
I smile and nod, my eyes taking her in. Harley is the kind of girl that makes you feel lucky that she is talking to you.
Every night we read one page of The Awesome Book of Bible Answers for Kids by Josh McDowell and Kevin Johnson. It is a good structure for us to have important conversations with our kids. I always start by asking the question and giving the kids a chance to answer. More often than not I prefer their answers to Josh McDowell’s.
“How do we know what God is like when we can’t see Him?”
Each of the older boys hazards a guess with the confidence of divinity students. Zech says something designed to make everyone laugh without having any idea what the question was. He just knows it is his turn on the stage.
Harley say, “Dad, I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff.” She almost never feels like she has the right answer when someone asks her a question.
She loves to paint. She collects things, any and every thing.
She is tough, sometimes. If I tell her that she is going to get a spank for something she did, she just turns around matter-of-factly, pushes out her posterior and waits for the worst. Never a tear, never a word.
She is fragile, sometimes. If she feels like her brothers have left her behind, she can melt into a puddle of tears and wither there for an hour.
She is a dancer. We haven’t done much to encourage it, but Heidi and I often watch her, lost in a beat, and wonder who taught her body to move like that.
Drew woke up and found me sitting is a dim shaft of light coming from the bathroom door. I motioned, finger to my lips, for him to be quiet and led him out to the screened-in porch. I was glad that he came to find me. My dad had ‘the talk’ with me when I was too young to find it scandalous or even particularly interesting, and I had always wondered if that would be a good way to talk to Drew about that aspect of life that we all resulted from. A decade had passed and here we were sitting on the floor across from each other on a vacation that brought us within 100 yards of the house we lived in when he was born.
He was in a talkative mood, and I asked, “Drew, do you want to talk about sex?”
“No, not really.” He says, and he was right back to what is really important to him, game strategies.
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Needing a quiet beginning to the week, Heidi kept the kids home from church. Instead, they each picked a verse and illustrated it. Genesis 2:25 is what Drew chose. “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” He has committed it to memory.
The Adam and Eve in Drew’s picture bear a striking resemblance to his mother and me. Does modesty increase gradually as our children grow older, or are there moments that change the way family members see each other?
There is no doubt in my mind that Drew has begun to piece together the puzzle of love and marriage. Heidi and I live in a glass house in front of our children. Drew remembers clearly the birth of at least three of his siblings. And while we have never really talked brass tacks about how babies get inside their mothers, an inquisitive mind like Drew’s must have asked the right questions by now.
There are many factors that differ from Drew’s experiences to mine. My only brother is just sixteen months my junior. Drew has had a new sibling every two years since he was born. The women in the culture we now live in make virtually no effort to hide their breasts while nursing their children. And Drew’s upbringing has been far more rural than mine.
For example, Drew raises chickens. One of the chicks is growing into a fine rooster. Knowing that two roosters can’t rule the roost, he was trying to decide when to eat the older rooster and let the younger take his place. Drew tells me, “Well, he hasn’t started crowing yet, but he does the dance. When he starts biting the hens necks we can kill the other rooster and let him be the cock.” To my city boy ears it all sounded rather graphic, but to Drew… 100% normal.
I’m not worried about Drew. I prefer his farmyard education to the enlightenment of suggestive-TV-commercials. So for now we’re encouraging him in the things that do interest him, and we are watching closely for the right moments to teach him new things.
All of the sudden, Joe whizzes past me on his bicycle, and he stays in the lead the rest of the way home, a dramatic change from all of our other bike rides where Drew and I were always looking over our shoulders to make sure Joe is still there.
Little by little Joe is emerging from his brother’s shadow.
He can read now, and every night he reads us a few pages from a beginning readers Bible. But he’s not really to the point yet where he reads for fun.
Plants vs. Zombies. It is all the rage in our house. Drew bought the game back in January, but it is just now reaching a fever pitch. The boys talk strategies over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Family members wait like people in an unemployment line for their turn to protect our home from zombies.
And so I found myself during a similar PB&J power meeting extolling the virtues of a board game over an iPod game.
“People fill the moments during other players turns joking, laughing, and getting to know one another.” I said.
“Yeah,” Joe agrees, “but you can’t play a board game on the toilet.”
Touché, Joe. What could I say to that?
Last year we said that Jethro was our mango eater, and it is true. He loves a mango. Plus he looks so cute with bright orange mango juice finger-painted from nape to navel.
But we’ve got to give Joe his due. I don’t remember a time Joe turned down a mango. We used to fix them for him until he started consuming more than we were willing to cut up each day. Then he started tearing into them with his teeth. But at the advent of this mango season he has taken to cutting them up himself. I love seeing him headed out the door, mango in one hand sterling blade in the other, with a contented glint of determination in his eye like a skillful hunter striding into the woods.
After finishing blogs for Zech’s three older siblings, I turned to my wife and said, “What should I write about Zech?” She looked over to Zech napping on our bed, his doughy fingers still holding headphones to his ears. The look on her face said it all… all that we can’t say. Unmistakable love, but there was also a wince of sympathy.
Zech is so ‘much.’ I don’t know how to say it. Most all the time Zech brings us joy and energy and curiosity, but we as sinful human beings in our diminished capacity for love can only take so much before we find it taxing. Zech has the indefatigable ability to come to you with fond queries and desires until you can no longer respond in kind.
Heidi had a knowing look of compassion for a boy who will have the life long vocation of learning the hard way.
We pray regularly for the self-control, patience and wisdom that only God can give so that we can strengthen our boy the same disciplines. I can only imagine what God has planned for a boy who couples all of his natural talents with those learned through self-discipline.
We are rejoicing today!
We paid off my student loans which have the highest interest rate! We have prayed and worked toward this for about five years, and while I still have a lot to pay, this is a time to rejoice. It is a milestone. Look at all those zeros and praise God with us!
Have you ever had something hanging over your head year after year? It is different for a follower of Jesus because, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;” (Lamentations 3:22-23a) Even though my student loans don’t hang over my head, they are something I think and pray about each day.
We pay triple the required amount each month, and tax rebates and other unaccounted for money goes toward paying down the principle. We are looking forward to the day that we “owe no one anything, except to love each other…” (Romans 13:8) At one point my debt threatened to keep us from going to Mali as missionaries. Sacrifices have been required because of our student loans, but we rejoice in them all the same.
Here are some reasons I rejoice over my student loans:
1. I am constantly reminded of my dependance on God for all our needs.
2. It leads us to pray.
3. Missionaries sent to teach about Jesus often get caught in the role of ‘international banker’, and our obligation to our student loans has made this role less complicated.
4. It gives us such a clear way to watch God provide for us and rejoice in Him.
