Category / Family

by Michael

Keep Your Friends Close…

I have several types of friends.  I don’t have explicit categories, but there are unseen, implicit categories to friendships.  What about yours?

First is the friend who I call “friend” when I cannot remember that person’s name.  I see someone I should remember and instead of calling them by the wrong name, I say “Hey, friend.”  It sounds better than “Hey, person whose name I cannot recall.”

I have facebook friends who I admit into that omnipresent virtual sphere marked by the color blue, buttons and pictures.  These people have access to my random rumblings and scattered scenes from my life.  They see what updates I let them and read the occasional link, generally kept to a minimum of two or three sentences, and I have absolutely no way of knowing how deep the friendship is when relying solely on the medium which brings us together.  At some point, I’ll post my criteria for facebook friendship.   

I have friends for whom I’d pull resources together if they needed it.  I’m used to being a helper.  I serve in a church so I’m accustomed to serving when someone needs something, and serving a person always makes it easier to call them a friend.  In my mind, they are acquaintances technically.  The association is created and maintained by a specific set of expectations and probably in a working environment.  They may be siblings by faith.  I usually give those good people what they need or what they’re looking for, and that generally is not me.  There is a vocational responsibility which textures this friendship and makes it less of a friendship and more of something else.  When I see these friends, I refer to them as church family or my friend from this place or that place. 

Then, there are the friends–plain friends.  No words before the term, none after.  They get what’s boring and clear and simple.  These are the people I talk to and hardly have to give the context of my life because they already have it.  These good people know the old me at various ages and stages, they know the current me, and they have a hope for the future me.  They plan to be around for each.  These folks know enough to ask the right questions and they get a pass when they don’t. 

I don’t talk to my friends all the time.  I don’t have to.  But I have access to them.  They are reachable.  I can find their faces when I must for the most part.  Some live many hours away so I downgrade the contacts when needed to text messages or emails or calls.  But all these people are here when necessary. 

I confuse friendship with family, using family as the label when talking about friends because friends are family in my world.  I introduce them as uncle and aunt to my son when I show him their pictures so his little brain can begin knowing and remembering the people who matter most.  I answer their emails first.  I return their calls even when I don’t want to because in the words of a friend, “I get to.”  I hardly ever ignore their calls unless I’m in one of the meetings when answering a call would interrupt another’s heart work.  I answer even if to say, “Let me call you back.”

I don’t know how not to give to friends.  It can be a flaw. 

I show up to hear their practice presentations at 10:30 at night.  I stand in their weddings.  I meet their significant others to give my thumbs down or up.  I preach at their churches or give sermonic points if they’re preaching in their churches.  I eat at their homes.  I know their families.  I give feedback on their soul’s growth.  I tell them that they’re wrong when I really believe they are.  I don’t fear whether they’ll hate me, whether they’ll stop coming to my church, or whether they’ll tell on me for being too harsh.  I sometimes write them notes to say thank you.  I call them if they’ve flashed across my mind more than twice in a week or less.

I do my best to make sure that the more narrow pools of friends don’t feel neglected by me.  I care about my friends from facebook and my friends from all those other places.  I really do.  But there are limits to the care I can extend to them.  With the friends, the just-plain-friends, the limits are less.  They don’t take advantage of that truth, but the truth is there.  I’d go to the operating table for them.

Who do you call your friends, the ones without adjectives or other variously employed modifiers?  How do you give to those relationships?

by Michael

Things I Learned in the First 12 Weeks at My New Job

We brought home a beautiful baby boy three months ago.  And I’ve learned a few things, things I think translate to other parts of life.  Here they are, in no particular order:

1) Walking is good for your health.  In order to give my wife breaks, so she could sleep uninterrupted, we walked.  Or I walked.  The kid strolled and inevitably slept.  As long as he slept, I kept walking.  Our longest stroll was 2.5 hours.  And I’ve lost 13 lbs this year since my annual checkup in January.

2) Church people like to cook.  And I’m glad to say that the good folks at New Community can cook.  You know that everybody who enjoys cooking is not necessarily qualified for the work.  We received great help when the weeks worth of meals were scheduled.  And when Mother Cantrell supplied us with all that chicken and macaroni and green beans too.  It was one thing we didn’t have to worry about and it was also something to look forward to.  Those folks reminded me that including others in your life, even when they’re doing specific things, leaves you filled and not empty and thankful.

3) I care more about what other people think than I thought.  I tell my son when he’s going through one of his I’m hungry fits to stamp down the noise.  I tell him we have neighbors and that he can be heard down the hall and at the elevator.  Does he listen?  Of course not.  He can’t hear me through the screams.  And what do I think of?  I think of those neighbors and how they’re saying to themselves “What’s up with the Washingtons?  Don’t they know what they’re doing?”  And I answer the imaginary neighbor, “Absolutely, we DON’T.”

4) Sleep when the boss sleeps.  Our midwife told my wife this, and it’s proven true that the best time to get rest is when the person we’ve been working for (without pay) rests.  We have developed a system that currently works.  Still, it’s hard to work hard and to find rest.  Takes effort.

5) People are concerned.  About my wife.  Not a few people want to make sure my wife (and son too) are healthy.  That makes me feel good because I know she’s valued by more people than just me.  Now, those same people aren’t always so interested in how I am, but I have very good friends to supplement the stupidity of the well-intended.  It helps to a have good group of people who love you and see you when others look over you.

6) New relationships are vulnerable.  I didn’t like my son at first.  I’m not sure how much I like him now since everyday I’m subject to unevenness, and generally I am pretty even fellow.  But crying unhinges me, particularly because I don’t have doors in my home.  I’ve noticed my weaknesses and the places in me that are messy in these months.  I hope this child grows up and that this new role comes with a lot of patience.

7) Keep your eyes open and look around when water is involved.  More pointedly, if you leave a child unattended or slightly unattended during bath time, it helps to have extremely quick reflexes.  I haven’t dropped him yet!  Every situation is potentially a danger around this child.  It makes me wonder if I’ll miss.  Indeed, I know I’ll miss something one of these days.  And either I’ll get injured, saving him from a fall–which I suppose would be the fatherly preferrable thing–or he will.  You can’t prevent every danger, even with quick reflexes.

8) Babies need too many things.  Daiper pails have their own special bags.  There are such things for sell as breathing pads and onesies, and babies have more options for their personal comfort like swings and cribs and pac-n-plays.  And I think there’s a temptation to get more things, unnecessary things, while forgetting basic things.  I told my wife that our son could sleep in a drawer.  I was joking.  Partially.  It was my way of remembering the things he really would need from us and my way of pointing out the things we wanted to give him.  We don’t need as many things as we think.  Love.  Time.  Effort.  Presence.  Relationships needs those items more than a fruit-dispensing teething ring or the splendid sounds of a put-that-baby-to-sleep CD.  And my son loves Piano Sonata #14.

by Michael

If You’re in the Neighborhood

Here are two events this weekend in the Hyde Park area which promise to be fun.  Stop by if you can and say hello if you see me.

1) The WVON Health and Wellness fair.  This event is designed to offer families information on ways to maintain health and fitness for the mind, body, and soul.  It’s sponsored by an African American radio station and will run from 7Am to 4PM Saturday only.  Activities include a one-mile walk, children’s horseback riding, and bellydancing.

2) The annual 57th street art fair.  If you’re an art lover and you’re from Chicago, you already know about this.  Come find great art and jewelry, food, and entertainment.  You’ll see photography and prints to purchase, along with a host of artists to connect with from the area.  The fair is Saturday and Sunday so you can come one or both days.  The HP Herald mentioned the fair too.

  

by Michael

Things To Live For

My father in law closed his business earlier this year, and on the evening the store was to be cleaned out, he couldn’t pack his last boxes because he was hospitalized.  I met his business partner, loaded two cars, and drove south on Western Avenue to a storage facility where we pulled years of page-torn note spellers, stray mic stands, really old looking boxes with large knobs, and other random music stuff out of a small cell into a hall, devised a plan, and re-stuffed the shell which would house their things.

Pianos had been given away.  Speakers and guitars sold for much less than usual.  Pictures of blues singers and jazz musicians, friends and colleauges from the years, found a new home in a box or a folder or crate.

When we finished, I found a surprisingly good meal at Quench (which I highly recommend you go to), because I hadn’t eaten at all that day, and made way back to Ingalls hospital to deliver the all-clear report to everyone.

My father in law was grateful but a little out of it.  He hardly cared about the store and its contents at that moment.  Thirty plus years of selling and buying and bartering in Roseland and Beverly.  Of course he had better matters to concern himself with, like his heart, his blood sugar, and the look of fear and disappointment in his (then) pregnant daughter’s face.  His voice was a whisper and he said little as Dawn and his lady friend jousted him verbally for the next few minutes. 

He did the same when a delightful nurse came to care for him.  She explained how three of her sisters, an aunt, and her mother had died from diabetes.  It wasn’t until she spoke that we thought father in law was paying attention.  He listened.  He accepted what she said.  He wanted to live, he told us.  He would do better.  He leaned over to my wife and said he had to live for that grandson.  He needed to be around so he could play with him.

He is around.  But he’s not caring for himself.  We’re unsure whether he’s been taking his meds.  He’s not exercising, and his voice is weak and evasive when Dawn talks to him most of the time.  In fact, he’s hospitalized right now as I mentioned a couple posts back.  I think this is the third or fourth stint since we’ve been together.

It’s hard to see another person’s business or view of life–how he or she sees  and keeps things–and not judge them.  Have you ever looked at someone’s things? 

I create stories about things.  I ask questions and ponder and imagine.  Then I come back to reality, leaving my fiction and wrestling with what’s in front of me.  I’m not sure what my father in law has inside his heart, what things keep him fighting.  In fact, I can’t be sure that he is fighting. 

I wonder.  We hope and we fight.  But we don’t know.  So we pray.

And I imagine God weighing the role of another miracle versus the role of life without the divine’s next intervention.  I think about God’s words and try to listen on the long train ride home or down that familiar interstate.

My father in law is pushing me to ask helpful questions about the things I live for, the causes and the people I live for.  The other week, when he was responsive to our presence, he couldn’t speak, but he pointed and turned his lips into a smile.  He came out of sedation and recognized our voices, listened, and grunted or stretched through a response shut mostly inside his less-able mouth.  He pointed to his sons and stared at and squeezed the fingers of his daughters, connecting with us all in his own way.

Who do you live for?  Who are the people that you would point to when words failed, the people who would stand around your bed if you were ill, as you listened to music from old school artists you once knew or while you saw your children or loved ones standing and praying and hoping for you?  What do you live for?  What keeps you going? 

Maybe you have a comment.  Maybe you don’t.  But we all live for something or someone.  I cannot know for sure who or what that is for my father in law or for you good folks.  I hope you live for something(s) that matters.

by Michael

Interruptions

My father in law was transferred to the critical care unit in Jackson, Michigan three days ago.  He was hospitalized for something days before that.  His condition deteriorated quickly.  There was trouble with his organs.  The word “failure” was used.  We knew he had fallen and hit his head.  Someone mentioned a coma. 

At the time we were two hours west of Chicago, five hours from Jackson.  My wife and I were away with our son, taking a short break a few days before she would return to work from maternity with David, Maggie, and Eliot. 

Our break was interrupted.  She talked with her sister who was negotiating airfare from Denver.  She called all the siblings and several others with a similar report.  We were afraid.  We talked with our friends who told us to simply go.  See what’s next after you arrive. 

The Swansons are lovely, solid friends who responded to our interrupted break by helping us get things together to leave.  They repacked the cooler that had just been unpacked the evening before.  They asked if we wanted chicken.  I grilled it the night prior–turkey links, zucchini and rice too.  It was good, but I said no.  

Maggie made sandwiches.  We were quiet, stepping softly around the house.  We didn’t speak about the plans we had or about the small disappointments which took their places.  We said nothing about our fears. 

We folded the pac-n-play, zipped the bags, and stacked the car.  I told David I didn’t know what to expect.  They prayed for us.  In the middle of the day we said goodbye and found the long road for the next hours. 

The last few days turned into one long hospital visit.  But there were glimpses of hope.  There are glimpses of hope.  Siblings who hadn’t seen each other finally did.  I saw and felt love happening before me.  But our collective breath was held.  Tuesday my father in law responded, winking an eye.  The color of the world changes when a man who is either heavily sedated, sedated beyond ability to respond, or who is comatose actually responds.  You hear the life support machine doing it beeping and slurping and hissing, but it all goes quiet when the man actually responds to words he’s heard. 

It was the next day, after the chaplain came in to pray, Wednesday, when he blinked and jerked one minute after “Amen.”  I was sitting by his bed, grandma next to me.  I could still feel the cold under his skin from when I pressed his swollen hand during the prayer.  I told his mother to look.  He was responding.  His lips moved.  He tried to move his arms against the powerful influence of the massive stroke. 

When his eye opened, I tried to talk with him.  Then his mom stood and bent her 93-year frame over her only child.  It was my moment but it wasn’t.  So I ran to get his daughters and the son who waited in the family lounge at the time.

The rest of the afternoon Wednesday was filled with rejoicing under the shadow of whatever was next.  Most of my father in law’s children were there.  The ones we knew wouldn’t come came.  The ones whose presence made us revisit, even if silently, long stories rarely told.  We were together.  In the same room and later, at the same table.  We took turns, two at a time, in the critical care unit.  He pointed to his children.  He tried to speak.  There was laughing and crying and picture-taking in the family lounge.  Bryce cried and got little sleep. 

We know we don’t know what’s next.  We know the doctor’s prognosis is sober.  This is miraculous, said the doctor, but we don’t know what direction things will go in.

There may be more interruptions.  There, likely, will be. 

So, question for you: how do you deal with life when it looks like one interruption after another?  How have you found your life different when some thing you didn’t expect came, stayed around, and left long after its welcome was worn?

by Michael

Have I Been Diagnosed?

David Swanson sent me this, and his accompanying email said, “I’m not saying you’re depressed, but this is interesting nonetheless.”  Of course when David Swanson says, in this case, what he’s not saying, I get suspicious. 

So I looked through my notes and chapters to start self-diagnosing.  For those of you who haven’t heard, postpartum depression affects men as well as women. 

I laughed when I thought about how much I’ve said to David since we learned about Dawn’s pregnancy.  He is a good man to take some of the stuff that’s come out of my mouth.  As is Winfield and Bishop Alvarado, my brother Mark, and Peter Hong, to say nothing about the words my spiritual director has held.  They’ve heard things they won’t (and I won’t) repeat at this point–thank God for confidence.

40 weeks is a long time.  And I remember thinking, we’ve waited for years for this, that moment when I’d wake up in the morning to see my wife sitting there, asking me if I wanted to know the results.  I already knew the news, she was pregnant!

Uh, but pregnancy is tiring, and I didn’t gain any weight.  I didn’t share (or lose) my body to a life inside.

I think the article is interesting for many reasons.  Remember these points as you think about the men you know, be they involved with pregnant women or not:

1) Men feel.  Who knew?  We have emotions. 

2) Men often don’t know what to do with feelings.  And we need to do something.  So, at times, we do crazy things, bad things, or somethings other than constructive things.  We need help listening to ourselves, help becoming aware of our stuff, and help treating people with respect despite ourselves.

3) Men need safe people to give their feelings to, people who won’t judge them but who will be truthful, loving, and respectful.  Men need people who will encourage them to tell the truth about their feelings and who will sit and hold with strength the things men say.  bell hooks challenges her readers to be able to hear men answer the question women often ask, how are you?  She says, “Most women do not want to deal with male pain if it interferes with the satisfaction of female desire.”  If you ask, if you want to know, exercise good strength to hear honesty.

4) Men must be taught how to relate well to ourselves and to others.  We don’t come–women too honestly–knowing how to navigate emotional terrain.  We are works-in-progress.  We’re writing our lives, in words and deeds, and those lives are subject to editing and revision–and sometimes scraping altogether.  Revising takes courage.  Especially when revising means altogether doing away with the stuff you know so well.

5) Life changes are great times for loss, grief, and discovery for men.  To relate well to men, we need should anticipate changes and name them as times of potential for the men we love and are loved by.  Whether your father is retiring or facing surgery; whether your parents are about to celebrate an anniversary or a painful divorce; during unemployment or re-entry into the work world; the first days of a brother’s attempt to live by grace in response to a past full of addictions.  Anticipate the emotions which come, ask about them, keep asking, and listen hard.

This post has gotten longer than I intended.  So I’ll wrap this up.

I’m not depressed.  Not yet.  Hopefully that won’t change.  I’m still able to get along with my normal activities, even if I have to schedule those activities around a newly forming life and his needs.  I’m still the same occasionally mean man I was a year ago.  Ha!  

Life is different.  My interests are changing.  I’m becoming both more and less selfish.  I’m aware of my desires and aware of the times when they will go unmet.  But, according to reports, I have up to twelve months to experience my fatherly postpartum.  So if you see me embodying any of these signs, or if my strong relationships weaken so that my good friends become jerks, send me an email, express your concern, say a prayer, or do all of the above.  I’ll be thankful for your care, even if your email says “I’m not saying you’re depressed…”

Question for you, male or female: How do you maintain your mental and emotional health?  What and who can you attribute your sanity to?

by Michael

Oh, Arizona, Not Again

I am not a resident of Arizona.  And I have to remind myself that I’m not a politician or legal scholar.  I live on the south side of Chicago.  I work in a church whose home has been on the northwest side of Chicago for eight years and that, this year, started a new church on the south side.  I am a pastor.  Happily.  

But I can’t help but be drawn to the behavior of the governor of Arizona.  You can learn about the newest law signed at their governor’s desk here or here or about last week’s uproar from the Governor’s perspective here.  There are other places.  Her state’s residents are saying interesting things on their blogs.  To be clear, this week’s law wasn’t about immigration.  It’s gotten better and better over in the desert state.

Governor Brewer signed a new law to stop state school’s from teaching ethnic studies.  Ethnic studies, of course, is the umbrella term for studies of color, especially brown.  The language of the law apparently gets at academic material which would overthrow the government or promote the hatred of someone of another racial background.

I think it’s bad to hate people from other backgrounds, and I think it’s sinister to pretend that a law cannot fundamentally encourage the hatred its intends to correct by explicitly promoting what amounts to the same. 

If a law like this came to Illinois, I’d have the following things to say to our legislators.  I think it’s meaningful for residents in general, parents, teachers and churches.

1) The reach of ethnic studies must be stretched.  Educating students on matters related to ethnicity and culture–in homes, schools, and churches–has to be for everyone.  Teachers and parents have to communicate to brown and black children that their culture is not simply for them, but that the formation and culture they receive affects others, including white children.  Apparently the AZ law doesn’t stop teachers from teaching studies as long as everybody is invited to take the class.  But I remember, at U of I, that the Black students hoped that non-Blacks took courses about Black studies.  I expect a similar hope across the nation since people of color like for white folks to know about our histories.

2) Parents are the best teachers, and faith communities aren’t bad either.  I’m a new father, but I’ve been a son for a long time.  I’ve learned my best lessons about respecting, loving, and being good to others while sitting on the lap and in the house that belonged to my mother.  My dad embodied generosity when I was child.  Parents are great teachers.  We need to tell our children the truth about who they are, where they come from, and what that means for how they lovingly engage with people from all corners in the neighborhood.  The church too.  The role of the church is to point to a reality that everyone’s experience is valuable to God and should be valuable to people.  If schools (state schools or otherwise) do not promote that truth, the community of faith, which is a diverse community since God’s family is multi-colored, must.

3) One group’s view has always been an introduction to disenfranchisement.  Howard Thurman, a theologian, talks about what it means to be disinherited and to fight a war of nerves.  He says, “If a man feels that he does not belong in the way in which it is perfectly normal for other people to belong, then he develops a deep sense of insecurity.”  For Thurman this is one of the things that is “worse than death.”  When legislators restrict educators from providing intellectually stimulating experiences from a variety of perspectives, the legislators are overpowering people from those perspectives.  After all, the kids are being taught.  The curriculum tells somebody’s side of the story.  When that happens, we’re steps away from not just re-writing history but erasing it.  I think the government has a responsibility to promote history as it’s been lived, even if the presentation of those stories tempts a student from believing the most popular history books.

4) Pushing for academic freedom equips and strengthens our communities.  It will diminish the value of education if our states follow Arizona’s dismal behavior.  Native, African, and Latino American people have something to say and not just to their specific communities.  Their messages and histories are vital to the broader United States of American public.  And I don’t intend to suggest that our white scholars and storytellers have little to say–only that those stories are either already heard, are more likely to be heard, or so pervasive inside our country’s books and classes that uplifting the former people groups does little to diminish the later.

5) Culture matters.  Race matters.  Ethnicity matters.  It matters to the Creator who painted, cooked or crafted our skins with an array of colors.  All those colors come with stories.  One shouldn’t be esteemed to the detriment of another.  Sure, politicians should be concerned that no one be taught in a state school how to dishonor the governmental system of that state.  Of course, we must promote in our learning centers civility and respect and dignity.  But none of that happens when we edit the truth from those who search for it.

I’d love to know what you think.  About any of this.

by Michael

Four Things I Don’t Like and May Even Hate a Little

There are four things that I do not like.  One is to be hollered at.  Another is to be hit.  A third is to be ignored.  And the fourth is to be spit on. 

I didn’t grow up with people doing these things to me necessarily, though every child gets ignored by his older brother or sister.  I have one of both.  I also have my share of memories of being hollered at by more than a few people.  Still, along with a friend named Tyler, I’ve learned how much I dislike these four things.

It’s funny because I used to go into my “There are four things in the world that I don’t like” when my wife would ignore me.  It got to the point when it was funny.

I found myself thinking about my long-unemployed mantra a few days into fatherhood.  I wasn’t laughing.

Well-intentioned people brightened when they saw me after Bryce was born.  Their faces wore a number of questions, one of which was “So, how’s it feel to be a dad?”  I enjoyed their interest and happiness, but I secretly hated their question.  I edited the first words in my mouth…  There are four things I do not like, I wanted to say. 

Don’t get it twisted: I’m loving some things about early fatherhood.  I love the way Bryce turns his face to something when an unfamiliar sound pulls his ear.  I’d give my best books to see Bryce smile and laugh after he’s been fed, when the milk fairy dances in front of him and lulls him into another 2-3 hours of sleep.  I love the walks we took those first days so Dawn could sleep, even though they were two hours long and my feet were sore and he was asleep during most of that time.  I enjoy those few times when Dawn cannot quiet him and, like magic or grace or some other miracle, he just goes silent when he comes into my arms.  I hope to trap inside my head and heart the first time I heard him cry because my eyes were wet too, the first time he screamed during bath time, and the way he listened while Bishop G. E. Patterson prayed on my playlist. 

I could continue.  I love things.  I even like things.

But.

I don’t like being spit upon.  I don’t like being ignored, which is incidentally what his little ears are doing when I say “Stop crying” and he keeps crying.  I don’t like being hollered or roared or screamed at.  I can do without being hit, or, in this case, pressed at the arms by tiny feet and little thick legs stretcing into a premature stance because I’m removing a soiled pamper. 

Nobody told me about the moments or days when being a father would annoy me.  They said sleep would end.  They said life would change, that I’d never have time to do things I wanted.  They said that me and Dawn would be great at parenting.  They even said we’d make mistakes.

They didn’t say that I would feel frustrated or annoyed at me and even at this little blessing from God.  Or that my job would consist of pailing wrapped up white packages in a green bag or that taking out the garbage and the recycling would get that much more complicated because of a new resident who’s too young to work and clean up after himself.

So, yes, I love being a father.  There are times I don’t like it much because I have never learned to like those four things which this lovely kid does so well.

What are some things you don’t like?  Let’s make this interesting.

by Michael

Days Like Mother’s Day

I completely disagree with holidays like Mother’s Day.  I sit closer to the conviction that Mother’s Day is everyday. 

Of course that’s not sustainable if Mother’s Day is about cards and dinners or gifts.  But if the day is about acknowledging love, making gratitude known, or spending time reflecting on the important people in one’s life, then a person can get that done daily.  At least in small doses. 

A few years ago my mother, with our family alongside her, met a crisis in a cancer diagnosis.  One of things I told my wife after that is that I’d never miss another one my mom’s birthdays or let Mother’s Day pass without doing something.  It’s been five years and my track record is good.  Actually this year my sister picked up the organizing ball so I’m sharing that.  

To me the holiday is about celebrating people you love, marking people with your love.  It is about thanking people–like parents or relatives or loved ones–who are worth compliment or praise.

One of the other things I told my wife years back was that I’d never end a conversation with my mother, that I’d let her end it.  It’s small but to me, it’s a way to stretch Mother’s Day out.  It’s a chance to give my mom, even though she may not notice how long our chats have become, another day where I say I love you.  I make random visits or take her to breakfast, even though she would remind me that I don’t do any of these things enough.

How do you celebrate days like Mother’s Day?  How do you mark the important people in your life with lavish gratitude?

by Michael

Changes in Employment Change Your Relationship

My wife told me in 2005 that she needed to leave the job she’d held for the previous several years.  We’d been married for four years by then.  I told her it wasn’t a good time.  I told her I thought she could stick with it.  In effect, I told her no.  She reintroduced the topic in 2006. 

She used all the right words.  She used words like “mental health, emotional state, scared, unsure how long I can last, sexism,” and “racism”.  These are words that immediately capture me.  They make me pay attention when I’m not.  Little attenae in my brain wake up and stretch and stand tall when I hear them.

When she did leave, we talked to close friends about the decision.  We asked for advice.  I was scared.  In my head I used words like emotional state and mental health, and I questioned how long I could last. 

We didn’t have all the answers.  Dawn didn’t have a job lined up.  She had searched and searched and was sure that she would locate a new position quickly if she was able to devote herself to the search full time. 

Things changed.  In us.  In me. 

When she left her work and became a freelancer, when she eventually got a part-time job that she wanted and didn’t want at the same time, we both changed.  We kept changing and are still changing.  She’s working full-time now.  But that season of unemployment and adjusted employment marked us.  We look at things differently, are hesistant to spend as easily, and are more intentional about giving.

Do you have a similar experience?  If you do, how have you been changed?

by Michael

When Did Crying Become Bad

I told my wife, my mother, and my niece that crying wasn’t so bad.  “If he’s clean and fed,” I said of my son, “then what’s so bad about him crying?”  My mother nodded.  My wife turned up a brow.  My niece slipped a smile as she watched our son.  It was her first time meeting him, and she had already summoned me to come get him when he started into his evening song. 

I think of Bryce’s roars as songs.

I later told my wife that God knew what parents needed.  We need to care differently about cries, screams and tears in week five than we did during week one.  Otherwise, there’d be a lot less families!

Maybe I’m a little more heartless than the average person, but I think it’s good to cry.  Kids exercise their lungs, and that has to be good, no?  One person told me the other day that crying babies are communicating babies.  So, in his mind–and I’ve heard not a few people say something like this–the kid is telling us what he needs or wants.

I’m thankful that Bryce doesn’t suffer from colic.  That I don’t suffer from it.  He cries as any normal baby would.  It’s just that normal goes a very long way, and it seems to include whatever he decides to do or not do.

In my mind, if the child is cared for, really provided for, in terms of diapers, clothes, food and all, then it’s a choice between 1) what he needs or wants and 2) what I need and want.  He wants to be held.  Comforted the articles say.  I want to wash clothes.  Yes, I have the snuggle vest, but that doesn’t work for every scenario.  So there will be times when I surrender to my son’s want for closeness and times when I’ll say to myself, “I seldom get picked up everytime I want it, so Bryce will have to adjust.” 

What say you?

by Michael

Talking and Texting

My niece returned home from college for spring break the other week.  She called me.  That’s a gift because Britney doesn’t call me.  Even though I was working on something, I answered.  I answered based upon her identification in my phone, “Niece Britney.” 

She always says the same thing in greeting me.  “Hey, Uncle Michael.” 

But you must envision with your ears, if you can envision with ears, a slow drawl.  Britney has maintained a drawl since two consecutive summer visits to one side of the family.  I’ve teased her about it, hoping it would do the job of enlivening the voice that once was hers, but she keeps her drawl. 

Talking to my niece Britney on the phone is a little like me talking to my dad.  It feels like a job that neither of us wants.  It feels like one of us always wants to blurt out, “You know, why don’t we try this another way?” 

I love communicating face-to-face and voice-to-voice.  I prefer primary contact. 

Unmediated and unrestrained from the safety of editing features and filters.  I like to listen to sighing and coughing and stammering in a conversation.  I protested as long as I could before getting a cell phone.  Even then I didn’t add the texting feature.  Someone else added it as a part of the corporate plan our church used.  They had to tell me how to “enable” the texting feature when I finally caved in.  This was a handful of years ago, but it helps for you to know that I still protest as much as possible.  I protest every time I tease my niece because I know she’d prefer texting me and not talking.

Communicating takes time and energy.  It takes attention and grace.  When I say grace, I mean the undeserved gift of attention.  Talking to people has become a bit outdated in our world or chats, pop-up windows, and the finger-punching and slipping most people call texting.

Here are a few of my praises and protestations for talking:

1) Talking allows you to hear a person’s voice.  You hear inflections.  You hear excitement and fear, all the feelings it would take a bunch of words or yellow images to express on a screen.

2) Talking gets you used to words coming out of your mouth.  I’m a preacher and a writer, so my love for words is long.  But at some point, everyone introduces themselves to somebody else. 

3) Talking enables you to do what coworkers and interviewers and supervisors eventually expect–speak.  I serve in a church where a lot of people are making decisions about jobs, graduating from one school or another, and a lot of people have to talk about themselves.  I’ve noticed more times than I care to count that people need safe relationships to TALK, to make mistakes, and to get used to talking without their fingers.

4) Talking ensures understanding.  Hopefully.  When you sit with someone or when you call someone on the phone, if you have a question, you ask it right then.  That’s not to say that written communication isn’t important, but it is to underline the importance of personal contact.

5) Talking gifts you with personal contact.  I’m an introvert so I can only take so much contact before taking a break.  But every one of us needs bits of humanity.  The most capable tech geek and gadget lover needs people.  I think that secretly why we react with efficient automated customer service programs or with nieces who always text and never call.