Teens,tweens, whatever's...

                                                         1 hour every day.

                                                       1 night every week.

                                                   1 weekend every month.

                                                        1 week every year.    

               

                          Spend at least this much time with your wife, the articles suggested.

                                        This is what has been recommended a couple of times in Church classes I've taken, and a few Marriage- type E- mails I get from assorted sources...

                                              Yes, I get and read those E-mails.

                                I look at this, and my heart goes thru a thousand stages of envy for the people who somehow find the resources to do this.

                                    My soul screams " YES! I WANT TO DO THIS!" as my wallet, watch and imagined children's voices ( real children, imagined voices) speak " Tsk, Tsk, Tsk... You can't afford it, you do not have the time, and have multiple other responsibilities that take precedence over this. It is a LUXURY you cannot afford. You must set your priorities ..."

                                                            Ouch.

                                    I hate listening to my inner voices answers...

                                                 The sad thing is that I have no idea how to make this realistic. My Wonderful Wife is my biggest priority, after God, and sometimes it is a struggle to keep Him first.

                             Not because she is "high maintenance" or anything, because she is the least demanding woman I know. I have a hard time because I adore her and have to remind myself more often than I care to admit, that God must come first...

                                               Sometimes that's very difficult.

                                            But back to the subject at hand...

                            Do real people manage to do this? I'm not seeing it much in my circle. Is this one of those things, like super skinny super models being photoshopped in fashion magazines to make them look even skinnier?

                                                              Is it unrealistic?

                                           Or am I just an overly lazy, fifty plus guy who completely discombobulated his priorities? I would love to sit across from my Wonderful Wife an hour each day, and listen to her share the moments of her day with me. Quite a few nights, we do get fifteen or twenty minutes together to pass the daily baton of our Cliff Notes daily experiences, before I slip off to bed.

                                                        Great moments...

                                                 A night alone, once a week?

                                                     A guy can dream, right?

                                     We have three boys, teens, tweens, whatever...

                                                        You do the math.

                                             A weekend together once a month?

                                          Maybe if we hid from everyone in our cellar...

                                                   Nope. They would find us. 

                                                       They always find us...

                                             Someone seriously believes that married parents of said teens/tweens/whatever's can actually find the time, money,energy, legal places to drop of said whatever's, and then be able to locate the ultimate destination they somehow had the ability to choose, between the previous hours, nights and weekends?

                                              Mike and Carol Brady, maybe, but I do recall they had to drag all six of the " whatever's" to Disneyland...

                                                              And Alice, too...

                                             There is nothing I would like more than to be able to spend the kind of time with my Wonderful Wife, like we did when we were single. I'm betting if asked, she would probably concur...

                                    So I keep reading the articles and feeding my insecurities.

                                                  We will keep juggling everything that comes with this life filled with a thousand other things other than us, that demand our time. We will catch quick kisses as we pass each other at our kitchen door. Sometimes we'll blow the game whistle, toss a yellow flag on the floor and yell "foul"...

                          Tell the kids to fight over the last pop tart, we're going out...

                                     Ignore the whining from the crumb filled lips and the nagging whispering voices of guilt from our own thoughts.

                            

                                         

                                                              1 hour every day.

                                                             1 night every week.

                                                         1 weekend every month.

                                                              1 week every year.

 

                                                                        I wish...

" He went to Paris "...

                      " He went to Paris, looking for answers to questions that bothered him so..."

                                                I love Jimmy Buffet songs.

                                          This one was always one of my favorites.

                                       The timeline is kind of different, but the first few verses summed up most of my life, except I went to Key West and married a P.T.A. name Mare...

                 " And all of the answers, to all of the questions, got locked in his attic, one day...

                                             and twenty more years slipped away."

                      

                                       I have a lot of those questions coming back today.

                                                    and they are bothering me so...

                                              How does a Christian deal with refugees leaving war torn countries, trying to escape and protect their wives and children, much as I would; attempting to foster hope in an impossibility of death and destruction?

                                              How do we deal with the fact that intermingled in the innocents are predators and terrorists that want nothing more than to destroy anything not fitting their belief system?

                  And what do we do, when we realize it is completely impossible for us to tell them apart?

                                                    That last question haunts me...

                                       Where do the duties of a vigilant Shepard give way it's precedence to be a Good Samaritan ?

                               How do we dutifully accomplish both, without being derelict in either?

                               I mentioned that these questions bothered me so, didn't I ?

                                               I am completely at a loss, here...

                                    I am of two minds and two spirits in direct opposition to each other, and have no way, it seems, to reconcile...

                      I have a Covenant with God, my Wonderful Wife and I, where i swore to love, honor and protect her. As a father, I am to provide an environment that keeps my children safe.

                     As a Veteran, I took an oath to protect this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic...

                             As a Christian, I accepted His forgiveness and became willing to accept the commands given me, to love my enemies as He loved me...

                                       That is much more demanding than it first sounds...

                              To love those beheading and mutilating us, bombing and shooting and removing any illusion of peace or safety we had conveniently lulled ourselves into believing we had...

                                                   I don't think I can do that...

                                     I can't even honestly claim that I want too...

                                This is the crux of my problem and seed of my dilemma...

                I want them to become lovable or at least tolerable; to not be a threat to the ones I love and the country I am obliged by oath, to protect...

                           So I lean away from commands given, in favor of what I want to justify...

                            Not a good feeling, for a man who wants to love and honor his God...

                                            But doesn't, by ignoring His commands and wishes..

                                So I struggle with this, as I have struggled with almost all of this walk I bumble thru, fighting obedience in a twisted spite, until the eventuality of Gods Grace gets me past the present battle, in bruised victory, only to land on another plateau of " No... Never..."

                                                        The story of my life.

                                  When I signed up for this I thought it would be so much easier.

                         More regimented, perhaps, more legalistic and better defined...

                                                             But easier, still...

                                                   In reality, the struggles past the Words have proven to be more difficult than the Words, themselves; knowing how to " reconcile" the confusions found, is much more of a challenge.

                                            I think of Paris tonight, as I ponder the questions.

                                                                 I pray for them.

                                                                   I pray for us.

                                                                I pray for " them"

                                                     But mostly I pray for me, that God will do His work in my defiant soul and change it, giving willingness, wisdom and strength to know and follow it...

                                  He hears me, along with thousands of desperate, pained prayers continents away...

                                               He hears them. He is with them.

                                                      He went to Paris...

                                                      And everywhere else.

Another brick in the wall...

                                                  Have you ever had this day?

                       The under slept, overloaded and stuffed with more stress than the Hefty garbage bag commercials - type of day, and have one of your kids walk up quietly behind you, at its most chaotic point?

                                                 " Hi dad" he says deflated...

                               You momentarily turn, almost grudgingly, and look into his eyes. Something's wrong, you can tell, so you rob a few seconds from the task at hand to say hi and give him a hug.

                        He holds on a little longer than usual and you pretend not to notice...

                                   Turning back to your work, you tell him that your glad he's home and again, ignore the few extra seconds he stands behind you waiting and hoping.

                               As he carries his bulging book bag on his tiny shoulders into the house, you make a mental note to talk to him later. " After dinner", you tell yourself...

                          But "after dinner " comes and goes, as you continually try to get past the wall he's erected in your absence.

                                    He doesn't need you now. Whether he cried it out or tougher it out, you have no way of knowing. Was it a day he was pushed around in the hallway or the day kids on the bus made fun of him? Did he disappoint a favorite teacher or maybe he just found out his best friend is moving half a country away? 

                                               He doesn't need you now...

                                                          But he did...

                                           And you probably never will know why.

                                             

                        A wall begins, it's foundation begun by this first brick you created...

                                           The hardest thing to do in every single relationship is to let someone know that we need them, to stand quietly waiting for them to acknowledge us and maybe not meet that need we are so terrified to let them know we have...

                             

                                      It happens in all relationships; parents, kids, spouses...

                             We don't get to define the need or it's time or place. We don't even get to choose whether it's valid. All we are able to choose is if we are willing to fill it...

                              Nothing is sadder in this life than watching kids who learned how not to need their parents or husbands and wives that long ago, stopped needing each other...

                             I grew up in a house with parents who had absolutely no need or real use for each other, by the time I was old enough to notice.

                               By then, they had passed the place where they noticed the cost...

                                            But watching it day in and day out, the cost tallied in my head automatically. I learned observing fear and weakness, masked as strength, what not to do...

                                                          At least I thought I did...

                                          What my kids need from me are not electronics or toys; it is time...

                            It is to be a priority for moments of their choosing, not a timeline based on my convenience.

                                          A lot of days I've managed to get that right.

                                  My Wonderful Wife doesn't need me for my paycheck. 

              Don't get me wrong, if I didn't bring one home a few weeks in a row I'm sure her stress level would skyrocket to levels not yet seen... She's a mom and the budget lady. No paycheck would surely be noticed..

                                 But if I know her, it is not what she needs from me.

                                To love her, to see her, to be her partner and father to the McMonkeys we conceived and she birthed; to be a husband who has forsaken all others, in this Covenant with her and God...

                                         I'm thinking that's what she would list.

                                     I am blessed to come home to a clean house and dinner on the table, coffee made on the mornings I work... I love that she does those things for me, but they are not what I need...

                                                   She is my one and only.

                     She is the first one I think of in the morning and the last one that leaves my thoughts, as I fade off to sleep. 

                                                               I need her...

                                            Probably more than she knows.

                                  I hope that in the end, I have met more needs and missed fewer opportunities to give what was needed.

                                                 More loving, less bricks...

       

Trick or treat, Mrs. Pratt...

                        Last night was the first night in thirteen years that I didn't take a costumed McMonkey down a sidewalk, in search of candy that their mom wouldn't let them gorge themselves on...

                  It started small; a single stroller rolling up broken sidewalks in Whitehall, then an hour long trip to Grandma Jill's house, so she could use her granny superpowers to veto our common sense and fill our tiny terrors with chocolate.

                                        A happier ended version of " Hansel and Gretal"...

                                  

                                       They never tell new parents about these " last rites"...

                        

                If someone told me, as I pushed a small wheeled stroller over giant curbs, into deep pot holes, filled with freezing water, as its gentle, fragile frozen surface inevitably cut thru my thin socks and skin, simultaneously soaking my sneaker, that I would ever miss this, I would have laughed...

                           

                       I have pictures in my mind of long gone Halloweens, of my two older brothers and I, traipsing up our dead end street, house by house, until we arrived at Mrs. Pratts house. 

                     She would invite us into her house and talk to us; ask questions about those things important to the first generation of Jay St. McMonkeys...

                      We grew up climbing the giant pine trees that fenced in her property. We raked humongous piles of pine needles to jump into and had great and fierce wars using the pine cones from those trees, like grenades...

                               When we got older, sometimes we laughed at her warnings about life.

               " Don't smoke cigarettes because they will lead you to beer and beer will lead you to liquor. Pretty soon you'll be smoking marijuana and getting into hard drugs. So don't smoke cigarettes "...

                                We thought she was completely clueless, but like most from her generation, she hit the nail right on the head.

                                                She must have had a crystal ball...

                                                               ...or a Bible....

                                  Little did I know that she had a lot of indirect, but intimate exposure to boozing and drug addiction. Not personal use, but she knew the patterns, from many that she loved...

                                     So when we moved into town, every Halloween we brought our own tiny tribe up the street and to her house....

                           And every time, she invited them, my Wonderful Wife and me, into her home; we talked about our boys and the boys my brothers and I used to be.

                            We talked about the coincidence that our boys are so close in age, looks and temperament to the kids long since grown...

                    The last time we went to visit her, we had lost all track of time and it was well past 9:00 p.m.

                                                     We almost didn't go...

                                 Three tired and cranky children trudged behind two crankier and more tired parents, who were half hoping it was too late, and that the knock on the door might be ignored.

                       On the first knock she came, looking concerned, panicked and relieved.

                    " I thought you weren't going to come. I turned the light off so the teenagers wouldn't knock, but I sat here hoping that you didn't get busy, that you didn't forget"...

                        We went into her house and she loaded the kids up with the rest of the candy that was left in her bowl. We talked again about the time my brothers and I showed up wearing the matching Indian outfits my mother had sewn; the same story we shared with each other, year after year..

                     " Somewhere, I know I still have the picture", she always said...

                                                I don't think she ever found it.

                                 Early on, in the next year, Mrs. Pratt passed away.

                         It didn't seem long until one of our McMonkeys was asking to go with his own friends, trick or treating.

                                    Eventually, last night, they all had places to go...

                        And for a moment, I think I know some of what Mrs. Pratt felt, when she thought no one was coming...

                                   To realize that our time to see all those moments of our children growing up, have speedily begun passing away. We will still have cross country meets and dinners home, but from this point on, the moments we are present, witnessing their " new first steps", will be fewer and farrer between, most to be recalled to us in stories from them, after the fact...

                                                                    If at all...

                            I joked to my Wonderful Wife that now, we were the " new" Mrs. Pratt...

                                         We would be the ones waiting and hoping...

                   I was kidding at the time, but when I drove to another neighborhood north, this morning, to pick up my eldest and she drove east, to another town, picking up our youngest, that phrase came back into my thoughts, much less comically...

                                   We are given compressed moments of our children's lives that begin dissolving in a time-release process that we can never encapsulate again.

                                                                   "Trick or Treat"

                                                                I think I get it now...