They told me parenthood would change everything, but I didn't think it would change this...

                      Married friends of mine have told me since I was in my mid-twenties, that everything changes, when children come. Of course, I laughed. 

                           You see, I was not going to have them. If by chance I did, I was smarter than all of these people warning me. I was more rational, less emotional by nature and more laid back. If children eventually came it would be no big deal.

                                                               Uh huh...

           I accepted the lack of sleep and toy land mines thru out our house, fairly well. I eventually caved into the fact that high chairs and potty chairs were more important than some of the tools at Harbor Freight... I ever so reluctantly eased myself into the reality that in this plane of existence , my children possibly deserved the extra share of chicken skin my Wonderful Wife had always reserved for me, from her plate...

         Imagine my surprise to learn there was more...

         Much more...

                Since my late twenties,  I have been what some people would consider conservative. They may even have called me an  ultra-right winger, who considered both Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson a little too far left for me... 

             ...and they would have been right.

             Unapologetically, I plead guilty on almost every single count. I still am a staunch advocate of The Constitution, as written and the sanctity of our founding fathers intent...

           I could go on for a while, but in the end, it would not change my point or my purpose in sharing what has been a recent revelation...and for me, a personally startling one.

                  I watched the news recently and saw what was happening at our border.

                     Please don't shut down right now, because this post is not about politics....

          As I saw children flooding into this country I was alarmed and shocked. I tried to jump into the" Let everyone step in line and wait their turn mindset", but it kept slipping down. 

     I was completely confused at my lack of conviction. I always had been unmoving in regard to immigration... But like I said- this is not about politics...

                 I say this, because as I watched those children being corralled and rangled, I looked at my own children of the same age.  I listened to the stories, the tragic history of some and the myriad of atrocities many of them had already survived and escaped.

             I imagined how I would feel if one of my children were kidnapped and brought to another country. If they were forced into the sex trade for years and were finally able to escape.

   If they somehow managed to reach our border and were stopped from entering and then sent right back to the living hell they had escaped from, for the simple reason they could not verify their citizenship...

                                                        How would I feel?!?

                          If it was your daughter or son, grandson or granddaughter, how would you?

                 Listen to the news. Children in THIS country are kidnapped every day. Just listen to the morning radio, maybe not KLOV perhaps, but almost any other local channel.

                                                      It happens all the time...

         My Wonderful Wife is a member of a task force for the organization " Love 146".

              They combat sex trafficking both locally and worldwide. I never knew the prevalence of this issue until she became involved. I also never knew that their was hope...

                        True despair cannot exist without the illusion of hope.

                               Returning these children back to the horrid life they escaped not only is inhumane, but inexcusable. The only thing worse than the existence they inhabit is returning them, knowing it can never end...

                                       So, in this quandary of beliefs, I prayed.

                                     And then I asked " What would Jesus do"?

                                                     I got my answer. 

                                               I'll let you ask Him yourself...

                                   What I do know, for myself, is that I cannot let this political circus distract me from the fact that this is not about politics, but is simply about kids...

   Not American or Mexican or Central American kids...Just kids...hurting kids..helpless kids...

                                Jesus warned of dire consequences for those who would keep the children from Him. Can you imagine how he would feel towards those who justify and enforce this return too atrocity?

                      The saddest part of this whole deal is there are loving, dedicated Christian Americans hellbent on the letter of our Constitution. They may have forgotten that the founding fathers made provisions for these people, the persecuted and victimized in their own country...

                                               For a very long time, I was one of them..

                            But not today. Their comes a time when even the greatest of ideals must stand face to face with whether it is on the side of right or wrong...

          In no circumstance can I justify, or could you possibly justify to me that returning innocent children back into slavery is O.K....

                        I can't believe I'm saying this. I can't believe I'm feeling this...

      I can't believe that something as simple as this biological trick of having children could touch and change my soul so much....

                         I have no clue how this whole fiasco will turn out. With God, all things are possible, I do know. I also have realized that often in our trials, we must remember that sometimes, probably more  than we care to think, the good is often the enemy of the very best...

                           

           Sometimes all we can do is the next right thing and have Faith that God will make it work out all right ...

Equally clueless and confused...

           I started a post yesterday morning about labels and how they so often define us. I wanted to make a point that what we really need is a place that when we walk in, all the bullcrap disappears. No Republican, Democrats, commies or tree huggers, just equally clueless and confused human beings...

         The concept was decent. I had planned to bring it all together by saying that this will actually happen, eventually. We all will stand before God with our covers pulled. We all will see each other exactly as we are/ were, with no emotional or societal cosmetics added on.

                  Finally, we would have the chance to know each other completely and have no show left. Our brokenness and vulnerability would bring us all together as loving brothers and sisters, exposed by God...

            Then I read that Robin Williams died. I assured myself it was an Internet hoax and tried to return to my original post... But the story kept repeating. It was true. Robin Williams had apparently committed suicide.

                            I stopped writing and re read what was written and I realized that it did not say what I wanted it to say. It only said what I HAD wanted it to say...

                          I thought about that place.I pictured Heaven in my little mind. Equality and union before God, no hiding. No need to crouch behind humor or antics. No posturing or pretending in an attempt to be loved or accepted. With our ransom paid, we would be transformed ...

                             I realized, sadly, that was what we needed, right now...

                   A place for all of the broken and frightened and camouflaged. Today.

                   A safety, like in hide and go seek, where the roles and worries of mom or dad, drunk or academic, rich man or thief, disappears for the moment, and we stand in front of each other now, as we will stand in front of one another then... 

                   A place where we have a chance to see the tragedy coming.

                   A place where we we have an ability to do something about it.

                   A place where no one need die by their own hand, alone...

                  Most all of the people I know have been affected by this thing called suicide, many deeply and personally.

                         I did not know Robin Williams, but I knew many like him. I have stood where he stood and felt what he felt. Probably many more of us have had that experience than care to admit...

                            No defense for the act, just sadness and compassion..

                                        So , I realize today there is that place. 

                                                     And it is here, today..

                                                            It is Christ.

                                        It always was, always is and always will be...

                                  We may never see the tragedies coming, but Jesus does...

                                  We may never have the opportunity or ability to do something, but every moment of every day, Jesus does...

                            And the sad fact is, no one need to die at their own hand...

                                  Jesus was there with his arms wide open when Robin Williams died, just as he has been with all the others that chose that road. He was willing to pull him out then, just as he pulled me..

                         And that is the saddest part, the true tragedy...

                                   That free will can overpower spiritual need, if all we are willing to focus on is the pain and isolation. All it takes is a glimpse away from the garbage and a millisecond view of the true release that Christ brings....

                     I don't know why some never look away.

                         No clue why some do..

                          In the end, in the real end, I believe we will all have that question answered.

                       Not today, though. Today, the best we can hope for is comfort.

                            I pray for all the families and friends touched by this.

                                I'm grateful for the ones who looked away from there pain long enough to see the true answer...

                       ...and accepted Gods Grace...

Wasted times and judgements, past, present and future...

                        I remember a day, long ago, in second grade. I was standing in line with our class, waiting for our teacher to come and walk us to our room. Standing next to me was a new classmate, a child of parents that traveled state to state picking produce. At least that was what I was told. He was a friendly kid with a bright smile, but otherwise quiet.

                        We started arguing over something and the shoving back and forth began. My vocabulary was pretty good back then but I resorted to a term requiring no intelligence.

                                       He was black. I called him a nigger.

                       I found myself pausing a few seconds after typing that. I hadn't spoken of that afternoon in over forty years. I keep stopping my typing and looking back up at that word, trying to sort out the menagerie of feelings putting that word on " paper" brings...

                                        Shame. Guilt. Disgust. Judgement.

                                          Anger. Loathing. Fear...

                                               ...  But mostly, sadness...

                                    The lunch lady broke us up and pulled me aside, scolding me. She said that was an awful word and I should never say it again. Even if that is what he is, she said....

                                I will tell you today that I hate that word. Whether it is footage of David Duke at a white sheet rally or an old concert of Richard Pryor, my skin cringes. Today, I react to it with the same intensity as I do when I hear someone blaspheming God, or some idiot calling his wife or daughter a "B" or the "C" word...

                                       Maybe that is progress.

                      I've shared before that I never considered myself prejudiced. As this body ages and by some gentle and Godly grace, I grow up in tiny increments, and realize how so much of me and probably, so much of us, have been owned by that encyclopedia of labels..

           Greedy Republican. Liberal Democrat. Communist, fascist, leftist or extremist Tea Partier...

             Feminist. Sexist Neanderthal. Tree hugging hippie...

               Baptist. Catholic. Muslim. Mormon. Christian Scientist. Wiccan....

                                                    The list is unending. 

                                I look at the list and realize it concentrates almost exclusively on our differences.

                                           I shared recently about my Muslim friend.

                                            That was a nice experience. But not all growth is as pleasant as that..

                                      So much of the medias attention recently, has been on prejudice.

                 People seem so divided in their responses to the protests going on, now.

                         Some call it peaceful demonstration, while others call it riot and looting. 

                                              I had my own judgements on this. 

                                A few days ago, at work, I picked up the paper and scanned thru the articles. 

            There was an article by a journalist I passionately disliked and almost always disagreed with.

                                  No "almost".  Always is a much better description...

                                 Every article he wrote that I ever read ( I read him whenever he's in the paper) has to do with the unfairness of whites to our president or racial inequality. Race baiter, I would think...

         So in this particular article he begins by speaking of Ferguson and Micheal Brown and all of the suggestions made by both sides, in dealing with situations like this...

       To my surprise, he dismisses most of them as ineffective, by themselves. This writer, Leonard Pitts, jr. says what we really need is education, cultural education...

      My eyes rolled. I remember Afro American culture studies from seventh grade and how useless it really was in white bread, upstate N.Y..

                 The next paragraph surprised me, though...

                      Not something to give cultural pride but a hard headed, " warts and all"  curriculum to show who we are, who we really are behind the pigment and labels...

           A serious discussion on race and prejudice of both sides. Empathy, he said, follows understanding. My curiosity made me read forward...

     In the end, in my extremely brief crib note version,  Mr. Pitts says that we must " stop being moral cowards, stop embracing the idea that our racial and cultural challenges will resolve themselves if we just don't talk about them"..

        As I read examples of racial inequalities I silently said a prayer to God, thanking him that my children were born white, living in a bleached clean, low crime/ high performing school Norman Rockwell town... Rather than black, in Ferguson ...

      And once again, like forty years earlier, I felt shame. Shame for the feelings, shame for the prayer. Most of all, shame that even after acknowledging the unfairness and sinfulness of that thought, I still felt it deeply in my soul.

               I spent half an hour a few days ago lecturing my three tween boys on the importance of playing fair. No ganging up. No cheating. Instiling the belief, quoted from Wild Bill Hickock " that a man who cheats at cards ain't got no religion "

              Today I find that I really don't want an even playing field. I talk the good game about judging men by content of character, not color of skin, but when push comes to shove, I want my children to have every advantage in this life I can give them, even if it means others are deprived of it...

        I always thought wanting the best for my children made me a good father. Today I see that it makes me something worse...

           A big hubbabaloo went on in our town when a company wanted to buy our old, decaying mill and turn it into condominiums. I was all for it, as long as it was written into the contract that it could not be turned into low income apartments. Our town has a graduation rate of 96 percent and scores in the high nineties on our regents tests. By no means could we jeapordize that...

      So all the crap I was teaching my children about fair play was just pretty bling. In my heart I had found myself content to play in a fixed game with a marked deck, while proclaiming my unbiased fairness and judgement....

  Remember how I said all growth isn't pleasant, sometimes?!?

                       Today I stand reading this and being pulled in both directions. I am confused and perplexed on what I truly believe in my heart. I want the best for my children, that is a given.

    The rub, as they say is in defining exactly what that entails...

              My instincts, I think we're initially right. Teaching about fairness and true justice and standing for what is right, I believe was right on. Unfortunately, that always comes with a price. My wanting them to have an undeserved privilege, by nature of color is wrong. In my brain and somewhere hidden in the deep recesses of my heart, I actually know that.

                             But... I still feel it....

                          I want the comfortable ground of the fallacy of real equality in our world, but for some inexplicable reason my covers have been pulled, and I stand before myself to judge my own character.

       I realy did always believe we should all be judged by our character, especially so, when I had an inflated view of my own..

                   I have absolutely no idea how to absorb this all. I have no clue how to fix these situations, even if I eventually decide I want to. I am scared of the talk about quotas and reparations. I want whats fair, I think, but am clueless in what that is.. And mostly, just afraid of what I, we, could lose.

               I find myself praying for openness to Gods will. That can be a scary prayer, too.

                   I wonder how to teach my kids about fairness when I'm not sure what it is..

                        No one prepared me for this section of being a dad.. or a man...

                              But I do know one thing. All sides of this need to sit in a locked room and discuss their beliefs and fears. No political correct dialogue, but truthful confrontations on who we are, who we think we are and how we are all actually seen. It will not be pretty or productive for a very long time. This may make things much worse for a while, before it gets better, but it HAS TO HAPPEN!

         They say the only real solution between human beings are not found in compromise, but in a win- win style of problem solving.

        Putting our heads in the sand is escalating this, now, in our time.

            So, if Mr. Leonard Pitts jr. would like to start a conversation, this conversation, I will join him.

                  I doubt we would like each other at first, but as he so eloquently wrote " Empathy will follow understanding". I do believe that. I've went thru all the possible logical scenarios. We must understand each other deep enough to find that non threatening win-win situation.

     If not, Ferguson will look like a picnic to the world that's coming...

              

Letters to God...

              Last night was supposed to be an early night for the boys. No movie night. They all had Vacation Bible School in the morning, the two oldest assisting the adults, and my Wonderful Wife was with the pre- schoolers .

              Everyone was tired and almost liked the idea of an early night, until Jacob walked ( in reality, his walk is more of a jog) up to us with a DVD in his hand and asked if we could watch it. Offhand, I looked, preparing a very stern " no", until I saw the title...

                                                         "  Letters to God".

                            To be honest, I had not seen this movie yet. I heard a lot about it and knew it was a Christian movie( Duh!) and it had to do with a kid dealing with terminal cancer...

                         Syrupy and sad. Encouraging and uplifting. The kind of movie that makes a rough around the edges dude tear up and ineffectively attempt holding back actual tears..

                            I have come to terms with the fact that emotionally I am kind of a " girly man". 

                                 My Wonderful Wife knows this and bears witness to it in those times that bring it out... For some strange and unfathomable reason, she thinks it's O.K.

                I really should buy her a few dozen John Wayne movies so she can see how real men should act in such situations. Her Dad loved those movies, so it should be an easy sell...

                                My kids have never watched one of these movies before. Not nearly enough action or explosions. Attention spans for the last few years would have shut them down half way thru..

                                     It seems crazy that I'm more comfortable watching Batman or Spiderman than a movie like this with them. ..

             Is it because I don't want them to see ME touched emotionally or because I don't want to see THEM ...emotionally touched?.?.

                         Probably the latter...

           Not because I REALLY believe the macho- men don't cry at movies- crap... Any guy who saw Old Yeller knows what I'm talking about..

                      I guess I want to protect them from knowing tragedy does still exist in Gods world and that happy endings are often non existent. Sometimes you have to search real hard for meaning or reason. Sometimes it takes an amazing faith to just not curse at God, let alone to trust in him and scratch thru the bad stuff and accept His will as perfect...

                                      I hoped to wait a few years for that...

                                So we watched the movie. 

                                      Everyone was quiet, subdued, but attentive...

                                         The movie ended and we hugged goodnight.

                                        It was a good movie. None of us looked at each other much, staring straight ahead.  

                            My three sons liked the movie. They were uneasy and uncomfortable with its ending.

                                                      In truth, so was I ....

                                    So my kids are ready for more mature themes. Not language or sexuality, but deeper levels with much more gray area, more room for questioning or Faith.

                                            Kind of a boring post, I know...

Imperfect timing...

     I came home from work to an empty house. The three McMonkeys and their Wonderful Mom were not home yet from an early morning/ afternoon working at vacation Bible school. It turns out they visited some good friends afterwords and took a dip in their pool.

            I was able to get through half a comic book in the bathroom before I heard my youngest son , Jacob, outside the door saying " Dad, when you get done and come out, I have something to ask you".

                       Spiderman had just started winning an epic battle between himself and Venom. Fifteen or so, pages left...

                    Now I knew two things. One was that Jake wanted to work on building a skateboard. I knew this from a conversation we had yesterday about it. I was cooking dinner and he asked if I had time for him, to help him build a skateboard that he desperately wanted. I told him that it was not a good time, but that maybe tomorrow, after work, we could...

             He had responded so patiently yesterday. Typical Jacob, in a good natured and happy mood.

    " O.K. dad. You finish your cooking and we'll do it tomorrow". 

                                             Then he scampered off.

                          In knowing this, I also knew there are not that many times that are "good timing" for this. My body, recently, has not been the most comfortable place to inhabit. Nothing serious, just a couple stages past " rode hard and put up wet"...

          I wanted to stretch out. I wanted a few moments reprieve from an uncomfortable body.

                               I wanted to finish my comic book....

                     Those were the first things I knew. The second thing I knew was how the comic book ended. I'd read it twenty or so times before , along with the four other comics that populated the bathroom basket. 

               Needless to say, I was soon outside with my youngest boy, tearing apart a dilapidated donor board and walking him thru the planning, set up and centering, drilling, countersinking, cutting, sanding  and eventual bolting of wheels to a newly fabricated board...

                   He did a great job. At every step I either asked him how to figure out placement or explained to him WHY we did things the way we did. He was hands on. HE drilled the mounting holes and counter sunk them to the correct depth. He put the bolts thru the holes and started threading the nuts on... He learned what " Cross threading" was, and how to carefully start the nuts, patiently.

          I let him know that that is often the difference between a good mechanic and bad, a lack of patience and care, during the process...

                A page out of " Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"...

                   The coolest thing about this whole deal was seeing his face. 

                  It was not the jovial joker or the immature act he sometimes has. He payed attention at every step, asked questions and even anticipated the next action, and brought the parts over, without being asked or directed...

                                                         I was impressed.

                                                    He was proud and happy.

                                                               Me too...

                      I watched him ride it down our driveway, back and forth. She certainly was a sweet  ride...

                               It really was inconvenient, this collection of moments, in it's timing. The funny thing is that most of the really good times with those we love, usually start that way. Sometimes, they end that way, too. On rare occasion , they seem to be that way the entire way through..

                          But they are GOOD moments. They are the stuff between the overlooked ordinary, interspersed randomly but not neccasarily rarely, in our lives.

                                    They are as rare as we give them the opportunity to be.

                       I am blessed that I haven't updated my comic collection in a long time.

                           I wouldn't have wanted to have missed this, today....