A tin mans quandary...

                      Our youngest McMonkey seems to have inherited a musical bend from some far off branch in our family tree. Of the three of them, he has been the only one to enjoy practicing for the school band that he signed up for, and the only one of them to take any interest whatsoever in the two dusty guitars I have had leaning on the wall, next to the side of our bed, for the last fifteen years...

                              I have absolutely no musical talent. This is not false modesty; in point of fact, the only way I could get anyone to listen to me practice, was a time when our two oldest children were still crawling and not able to escape the circular plastic gate I encompassed them in. I would play for them out of tune, sad country songs...

                               I tried to accept their quizzical perplexion as appreciation.

                                        That just may be the summer that they learned to climb...

                                     But Jake, he is a different story. He laughs when I sing and fools around howling right along beside me, as these tone deaf annunciations I try to pass off as music, escape my mouth. He plays along beside me, pretending I harbor not only an inkling of talent, but maybe a modicum of skill...

                                                                I don't. 

                                   I really am that bad; he just doesn't know it yet.

                                           And that is the crux of my dilemma...

                                       Jake shared as his thanksgivings gratitude, as his turn came around the table, that he was grateful for a dad who could teach him how to play the guitar...

                                    He has been asking me for years to show him how to play, and a few weeks ago, I yanked down some old music books that had the chords diagramed with the lyrics; I demonstrated a few simple chords,  as he fought to make them on his tiny guitar.

                                    He would come home from school, finish his vision therapy, school homework and practice his trombone, then rush upstairs to practice his guitar. 

                                                                For hours...

                                 I went up and handed him mine, after I dusted it off again...

                                                                      So...

                                      I find three choices that all lack the wisdom that eludes me...

                                                    Do I do what he wants, teach him incorrectly, these things I know he will need to fight to unlearn in the future, as he develops more talent and interest?

                                           Do I bow out gracefully and get him lessons from someone actually skilled and accomplished and able to teach him well?

                                          I forgot the third choice, during this last paragraph.

                                                Not sure I'm fond of this " getting old " thing..

                                              

                                              So, of the two choices, which do I choose ?

                                                              

                                                 Behind the wish, I know what he really wants. He wants to connect and share something personal of mine that most people in my life don't even know exists.

                                             He thinks that he's found a secret treasure and doesn't yet know that it's only tin...

                        Maybe he does know that it's tin; he always has had a way of picking up things other people have thrown away and seeing them as a special kind of gold. Jakes vision has never been constrained by the worlds definition of worth; he always has had a sense inside of him that saw treasure where most would miss it...

                                                         I'm kind of missing it...

                                               It's so easy to miss the treasure...

                                     The truth is, he knows that I play terribly, he just doesn't care. 

                                                         That scares me, a little ...

                                             I'm not good at accepting unconditional love, let alone being loved for my incompetence...

                                   That yanks me right out of my comfort zone by the short hairs.

                                         I want to be loved and cared about for the strengths I bring to the table, not the inadequacies I fight to hide. I more often than I care to admit, would rather barter goods than be loved without balance, without measure or scale...

                                                Like I said, I'm kind of missing it.

                                 Not quite sure how I'm going to proceed with this...

                                                           Writing helps.

                                                          So do donuts...

                                  A dad shouldn't struggle so hard with concepts like these.

                                                    It is a tin mans quandary...

                                                          

"Right and Wrong"...

                                    Sometimes it just comes down to right and wrong...

                          A woman on " The View " said the other day, that an unborn baby in his mothers belly, moments away from birth, has no constitutional rights. 

                 A valued person on the outside of his moms body, but surgical waste inside of her...

                               I'm not thinking about presidential stuff right now, I'm puzzling over how good hearted people can hear things like this, watch it live on television in full 4K resolution and dismiss it as irrelevant...

                       I'm thinking of words I read years ago from a man describing how in fifty years, abortion will be seen as a far greater genocide than all of  Hitlers atrocities and most likely larger and more horrific than all other wars and genocides combined. We are in the middle of the worlds largest global atrocity and we just brush it aside as business as usual...

                                                 The sad thing is that it is.

                                                    This is our usual...

                        I wondered for years how everyone back in the days that Christ walked amongst us in human flesh, being present for all the miracles and fulfilled prophesies, swept that all aside and totally missed it. For decades I wondered how they could have managed to deceive themselves enough to reject and crucify who they had to know was legitimate.

                                               They consciously chose to.

                                         They hardened their own hearts, to make it somehow acceptable, somehow palatable...

               He was not the Savior they wanted, so they chose to deny Him, murder and crucify Him...

                                    It was not lack of knowledge or education.

                  It was a premeditated choice and volition; The Pharissees knew where every piece of the puzzle fit, but chose to see something else...

                                     And we are just as culpable today...

                                        We know a baby, moments outside the womb can feel pain. If you're  a parent, you can't help but remember the moment of indescribable joy when first holding your newborn child, finally understanding the definition of true beauty and perfection; you realize that this amazing lump of miracle in your arms is more important than almost any other human on the planet, for that first, and most all following moments...

                                 I remember my Wonderful Wife's blood pressure drastically dropping and her losing consciousness in the middle of my second McMonkeys birth, and the terror I felt as visions of losing both of them possessed my mind. We decided before this, if it were a choice between her life or his, we would choose his...

                               You don't have conversations like that over pieces of skin; you don't hold hands sitting on a bed, with tears in your eyes over the possibilities of miscarriage, over just spittles of blood and tissue...

                               You don't silently pray with all your heart for the life of a few cells...

                                             So please don't try pulling that crap on me that a baby in the womb is anything less than one outside it; please don't try to deceive me with justifiying words and measured days on the calendar, that at any time these little miracles, wherever they reside, are not completely viable and wholly perfect at every single stage God brings them thru...

                                                  The simple fact is this:

                                     This is our time with Jesus. We look at these truths and CHOOSE either to accept them or deny them; we have no other option.

                                                           God knows our heart.

                                                         Let me say that again.

                                                         God KNOWS our heart.

                                       Someone can stand on a stage before crowds of ten thousand spouting outright lies about the right to murder; they can use all the acceptable words to remove any semblance of humanity from the ones in this world who don't even have the power to utter a sound.

                                         The heartbeat is just biological noise...

                                                        Not a real person...

                             You KNOW the moment you first hear that heartbeat at the doctors office, the first time you see that amazing blip flashing in unison to the funky tone coming out that speaker, that this is alive and precious and real... 

                                                   WE KNOW THEY ARE ALIVE...

                                                    God knows that we know...

                                                       Let me say that again.

                                                     God KNOWS that we know...

                                        I can stand in front of Him at the end of my life and try to open textbooks collected to assuage my guilts and conscience, trying to prove to Him that I had some kind of plausible deniability, that I was confused or misled...

                                                             But He knows...

                                   Just like He Knew that the Pharissees had all the information they needed, but their hearts were hard, hardened against Him long before, in choice...

                                                     We can't con Him on this...

                  We are all going to answer for our choices, who we empower and what they do...

                                     For what we do, and more importantly, what we don't do...

                              I still don't think laws will fix all the problems surrounding abortion...

                                   But maybe acknowledging and following Gods law might help us find the wisdom for the rest of it...

                                                    He did have an opinion on this...

                                                   He had clear commands on this...

                                                                 He still does...

Stuff...

                      I have a LARGE collection of precision mechanical parts piled in random order and sequence, thruout my entire garage. These are my treasures, linear bearings, polished V rails and 80/20 extruded aluminum framing, scattered mostly half hazardously, to the untrained eye...

                                                      To the trained eye, also...

                              I am exceptionally blessed, quite strangely, to the exact same degree that my Wonderful Wife is harrasedly burdened, by kind hearted business people who allow me to scavenge their metal recycling bin for old parts. My middle McMonkey shakes his head each time I pull him in from the basketball court to show off my newest and coolest treasures...

                                                             "Junk" he calls it.

                                                             So does his mom...

                                              I have plans. Big plans. Cool plans.

                                       In my head there are CAD drawings and .stl files, all duct taped to the side walls of my brain; as I walk thru this mental Disneyland of rubble, PLC ladder logic schematics rewrite themselves and run real time simulations on imaginary screens, while I grade their functionalities, on tiny yellow post it notes...

                                It is truly a wonderland, and I so wish I could share it with you.

                                           

                                              But like viewing photos of other people's grandkids or acquaintances vacation slide shows, after seven or eight seconds, you would be politely positioning yourself for a quick dash out the door.

                                        Don't worry, no offense taken for these imaginary actions, completely impossible to make...

                                                    But you would make them.

                       So would my Wonderful Wife, plus three furry children, and they love me...

                                  The funny thing is, I haven't actually made anything yet.

                                                   That would be anti-climatic...

                                          

                                              No one out there will understand this.

                                                       It makes sense to me...

                                                   Not sure how, but it does...

                                                                It does...

The most precious gift...

                       The middle McMonkey joined the ranks of teen this week. Not wanting to be overwhelmed by expectations, he would get mad at me the last few days before his birthday, as I reminded him " 4 days and a wake-up", the numerical designator changing as the day grew closer...

                             Number two son is much different than his simian siblings; he knows what he wants, knows what he likes, and is not shy at all about informing us of brand, color, size, make or model. Sadly, the Wonderful Wife and I will often find ourselves staring at an Internet order page with a specific object he has fixated on. We have battled about that approach more often than I would like to admit, as both his mom and me struggled to teach him the meaning of " gift"; that it is not an order form to be filled exactly, but a physical representation of a sentiment...

                                         The funny thing is, if I handed him any present, he would smile graciously,  say thank you and use it, whatever it was, as we watched. He is very sentimental and grateful for the thought, when receiving a gift; but after a while, he will go back to something that he likes. It took quite a while for me to realize that this newly minted thirteen year old is not demanding, just answering honestly exactly what he really desires. How often as adults, have we been completely frustrated and frazzled by a relative or spouse that only answers with a " I don't want anything " or " I have no idea", when responding to our question?

                                    He is easy to shop for, I'll give him that...

                              Of course, his hearts desire was back ordered, so when he opened the other small presents setting before him, we smiled a bit sadly while telling him it was on its way. 

                             He was happy in a subdued way. " it was a great day. I love you dad", he said when I hugged him good night.

                                         Skip back about two weeks before...

                                    The eldest McMonkey is the exact opposite. He will bumble around, when asked for ideas for a gift, scratch his head, forget the question and then immerse himself in a video game; suggestions from him are like pulling teeth...

                                  The experience of shopping for him makes me almost wish he would pop an Internet page and a defined object in front of us.

                                                                   almost....

                      At an absolute loss of ideas, I wondered what he would really, really want...

                                     I searched, checking specs, trying to find the perfect set up, in a perfect gift, that was in an acceptable enough price range. It took days of reading reviews, comparing configurations, but finally, I had it set...

                                    When the Wonderful Wife asked me the next time if I had any ideas, I pulled up a screenshot with all ordering info readily viewable. Back and forth we bounced off each other the pros and cons, trying to decide...

                                     On the oldest's birthday, he opened a few small gifts, happily. When he opened the main package, he screamed in complete surprise, like he'd won a million dollars in the lottery. He had no expectations and was completed blown away...

                                    

                                                 So who had the best gift?

                           

                         Costs were nearly identical, as were the number of presents.

                               Before you answer, let's jump back three weeks or so...

                                         

                          Father's Day was coming and my little apelets were nowhere to be found. On my way to the upstairs bathroom, I saw one of them looking very emotional, sitting at his desk, with the lamp illuminating the paper he was writing on. Concerned, I went to walk in, and asked him if he was alright. He coughed, said " Sure dad", then gently closed his bedroom door...

                                      Not sure how to react, I grabbed a couple comic books and went into the bathroom. Mission eventually completed, I looked across the hallway as I exited the bathroom, just in time to see my son, still a bit emotional, walking past me, giving me a playful nudge and going downstairs....

                                                 Perplexed a bit, I let it go.

                               On Father's Day, no big presents were offered. My Wonderful Wife told me, as she looked around the table at my three sons, that this year everyone wrote what I meant to them, from the heart. As she spoke, I saw three sets of pupils, nervous, emotional and vulnerable, uncomfortably meeting and evading my eyes...

                                I began reading cards with many paragraphs, explaining how and why each of these precious McMonkeys loved me. I struggled to hold back tears as I read aloud what they had written; they struggled to hold back tears as they heard the words they wrote.

                              I didn't do well holding emotions back, and neither did they.

                                 It was the same with the words from my Wonderful Wife...

                                              So, of the three, who had the best gift?

                                              Not the one who got exactly what he wanted...

                                   Not the one who received what he never thought he would get...

                                              But the guy who got the most precious gift, the only gift any of us really needs, is the one who was shown in no uncertain terms, exactly how much he was loved, and by whom...

                                            I think it's that way with God, too...

                              We think we will be happiest if we're given exactly what we want, a fulfilled list of defined desires, but we usually end up finding that when we get exactly that, something inexplicably is missing.

                    Sometimes we look at our lives, and are completely amazed and blessed, seeing everything God graced us with, far beyond all our hope and exceeding our imagination... We mistakenly think that is His greatest gift, His greatest demonstration...

                                                  Until we hear His Word...

                              When we Hear His Word, just like how I heard my Wonderful Wife's and children's, deep and personal and undeniable, explaining how much He truly loves and adores us...

                             When we hear that, we know that is where every other gift comes from...

                                             

                                            

                                      

Before, after and in-between...

                                  The truth is, I don't really know much about being a dad...

                                                           I'm just faking it.

                                        That statement is certainly true, the whole " faking" thing, but it doesn't quite cover the confusions hiding behind all the coffee and donuts; it doesn't adequately address the few things that sometimes go well in a parenting style more in tune with unchoreographed Caribbean water spouts than binge watched episodes of Father Knows Best...

                                  I think I know where I'm trying to go with this, but I'm not entirely sure that is where we are actually going to end up....

                                  If you've read the blog before, you know what I'm talking about; if not, maybe a couple Excedrins might help the transition...

                                        An extra cup of coffee?... I don't know...

                             The day before Father's Day, I awoke my eldest McMonkey from a deep and well earned sleep, on the last weekend before the last days of school. 

                                                           At 6:00 am...

                                  Nick hates getting up early, but he loves his dad, so he got up with much less goading than he usually requires and with almost no threats of frozen marbles being poured under his covers. I promised hot chocolate and bacon, to motivate.

                                   Our Church has a "Men's Advance" every three months or so, a little pancake breakfast for the guys, both in and out of our congregation; a partial bribe with bacon and real maple syrup, sided with a bit of Bible and organized comradery... That's not how the flyer puts it, but I lost my copy of that, and have to wing it...

                                               A friend and mentor who organizes the breakfast section of this, asked for volunteers to man the griddle. 

                                           Of course, I volunteered my son...

                                  Like I said, I don't know much about being a dad.

                                         It was easier when they were little; a few funny noises mixed with copious amounts of potty humor, and you get the best dad trophy every single day. They forgot the "No's" pretty quickly then, the giggles and laughter seemed to follow them around like happy confetti clouds. 

                                         No pimples, no hormones, no angst...

                                   I never thought you had to raise teen boys; supply them with chips and meat and just let them run. Like dandelions, they will raise themselves...

                                          Then again, I have vast arrays of personal cautionary tales to disprove most of the brilliant ideas I'd ever thought, thruout most of my life...

                           My kids think I'm a pretty decent father and the Wonderful Wife has reviewed me much better than I deserve. I'm faking it at this stage, with a lot of whistling in the dark.

                                   An old proverb  says that it takes a village to raise a child; I think that they have that half right. I watch my kids, teens, really, and see in all of them a foundation that started when a frazzled mom made long trips with infants and toddlers to a place that gave her a few moments of peace, and a few Godly women that let her know she was going to be alright...

                               Who gave suggestions, help and support.

                         You see, I would have used crazy infants and kids as an excuse to miss Church; she used them as a reason to go. I wanted to cuddle with my complacency, not challenge myself to be better; coasting was ok with me...

                            But I saw what happens when a women loves God, loves her kids, loves her Church and becomes part of it by showing up, serving and making a few dear friends. I saw the contrast most every morning, looking at myself in the mirror as I would brush my teeth, measuring myself by uncomfortable convictions that haunted me every time my mind quieted. Never once did this amazing lady guilt me or even point out my discrepancies...

                                  She was overjoyed when I started men's studies at our Church.

                          I am so blessed to belong to a Church that supports men in their struggles to get this "Christian ", " dad" and " husband" thing right, that corrals us all together on mornings it would be much easier to sleep in. 

                               So on the day before Father's Day, I am not thanking God for a village...

                                                I am thanking Him for this Church.

                                      I am thanking Him for men and women who are worshipping Him, building each other, while at the same time putting down bricks on bridges to eternity, for feet they most likely will never see...

                                 Before we can help make the next generation better, we must insure that we, ourselves are walking rightly; we can't teach what we don't know or can't do...

                               That is what I'm working for, shooting for, and mostly faking.

                                       The best gift I can give my young men is to show them my stumbles, bumbles and bounces in trying to increase my obedience by smidgens...

                                         And walk beside them as they enter into the best struggle ever, on days they would rather sleep late...

                                         

                                    

                                  

     

Facebook, Silly Circuses, and Printed Tickets...

                                                   I want to dive into the fray...

                                 The Internet has exploded with half of its population calling for expanded gun control and the other half quoting statistics and opinions of exactly why doing just that would destroy the entire world...

                                        I fight every fiber of my being to just stand down and not alienate people I otherwise care for and respect.

                                                   I have my opinion; oh yes, I do...

                                        Throw that into a blog and let the chips fall where they may, that is how I want to react. I hear an old hippie Pastor asking me quietly, in my brain, if plastering this contrary opinion all over my corner of the Internet is worth more to me than keeping people in my life that disagree with it.

                                        Will I silence my opinion to keep them?!?

                                              I'm tempted to infer that I had no difficulty at all, in answering that question, but I struggled with it terribly, weighing my need to be " right" over all else.

                                                       I so want to be right...

                                               My answer was simple, look for something to distract me from the silly circus I printed tickets to; find something else that might actually add a tiny positive to a terribly divisionary and useless battle...

                                           I tried to find that place, but instead, I found myself in a conversation today, that troubled me to no end.

                                               An eighty year old man I know kept repeating to me that it was a " gay club" that was shot up.

                                                            I told him I knew that...

                            " But it was a gay club", he kept repeating, with a strange smile,almost as if that made what happened ok....

                                                   Hearing how those words were spoken, and all that was inferred by them, made me want to completely ignore my Pastors advice about offending people with my opinion...

                                 As I began to open my mouth, angered by the ignorance speaking before me, I understood that sometimes we must confront what we disagree with.....

                                         Then I looked deep into his eyes, and I realized that nothing I could say would change almost a century of programming...

                                                I wanted to argue anyway.

                                      I closed my eyes and took a deep breath; 

                    For a completely different reason, a day after tragic violence, 

                                                     my heart broke again...

                                             

                                                     

The Magic Kingdom...

                                      His eyes were almost hypnotized...

                         I had snuck into their room at 4:00 am and crowed like a rooster. All three of the McMonkeys awoke, perplexed and frustrated. Eventually, they all laughed, jumped out of bed and excitedly grabbed the bags they had packed the night before, for the big trip to Disneyland...

                           We pulled in on the bus about eight hours later, dragging from the stop and go merry go round of standing in lines for airports, planes and the eventual bus we just had walked off of...

                                     When we got to the Magic Kingdom, that was when I first saw that hypnotic gaze, so amazed and overwhelmed by the fairy tale world that surrounded him; he was lost for that moment in the exquisite unreality of that small section of time...

                                            Fast forward about six years...

                                 My father is talking about Orlando, a mass shooting, fifty dead and fifty three injured, as my now almost eleven year old sons mouth drops open, his eyes glaze over a bit, as he fights to understand that this really just happened.

                     An eerie kind of replay, of that day long past...

                                       It was not a movie or video game; it was tragic and real and almost unfathomable to his loving and innocent little mind...

                                        Miles away from where we had been, but not many.

                                             This was not the stuff of Disneyland...

                                 So Facebook loads up with all the people to blame, just as it did when a black church was shot up, when a Colorado movie theatre, an Army base and an east coast elementary school listed those murdered, to the press.

                               Homophobes, racists, Muslims and NRA gun nuts...

                        We have this crazy inherent need to define the ever changing enemy, in a useless attempt to pigeonhole some segment or group responsible for all of these tragedies. In hopes of illusionary control, we trade an uneasy feeling of brotherhood for any profile that fits our present fears...

                         

                                 My son will soon ask " Who are the bad guys"?!?

                                              I struggle for an honest answer.

                                    He will want a simple answer, just like all of us do, standing here today, crying for justice, want. He will want a picture, a face, a characteristic, that will fit all those who commit such atrocities...

                                                Me too, kid ; me too...

                                              I can give it to him, I think...

                                     Not one race or society has ever been free from atrocities. Jew, German, English, Native American... All the way back to Cain, the list goes...

                               No religion is free of crackpots, doing awful things in the name of a God they have no understanding of. No philosophy, exempt...

                                           Sadly, the one thing in common to all these killers is a DNA sequence called " human".

                                         I know many people of many faiths; I know deniers of God, doubters and devoted followers. 

                                      All of them shared broken hearts for every victim of these shootings.

                                         I think that's common in all our DNA, too...

                                              We are both a mess and a miracle.

                                                 So we can search for bad guys...

                                                    Or we can let that inborn spark of common decency and love, that we all share, unite us and bring us together...

                                          I can give him that picture we all want in our anger, or I can reframe it by changing my own viewing perspective, and focus on the best it has to offer, the best we all have to offer...

                                             So often, we humans find the ability; are Graced with the ability, to step over all that evil would use to separate us, and use it to unite us, in love...

                                Sometimes we screw that up big-time, and we release our worst.

                                      It feels like a crap shoot, sometimes.

                                                           But it's not...

                                                It comes down to a simple choice.

                                     We mirror the evil or we let God heal our souls, and allow Him to right our misguided instincts..

                                                        It can't be that simple...

                                                                 But it is...

                                                                     It is.