Reflection

Who in the 21^st century would ever write a blog on – of all things – reflection. Reflection meaning: on taking time to reflect on things in a thoughtful way.

No, there is no time for reflecting. That’s something they did in the 18^th century, sitting by the window with a quill pen and a powered wig, watching the birds flit from branch to branch. They reflected.

But us?

No, not us. There are too many beeps and bings in modern life for it, and if not beeps and bings, then cute ring tones, and when we arrive home the answering machine to the land line (do they even sell those anymore?) is blinking, and besides this we must spend time scouring all the millions of Facebook or Instagram posts out there for just waiting us, but wait: what about the email that just has to be answered and – ding! – we just got a text.

Comparable to the great drum scene in Ben-Hur, all this technology has made the drums beat quicker, and we row quicker, and the Roman centurion says “Attack Speed” (another text comes in), and we row harder, and then he says “Ramming Speed” (another tweet!) and we row harder. If you don’t get the analogy, you have to view the YouTube clip above. (Because you can, you must. How dare you not connect to everything that you could!)

In all this, it’s not so difficult to run from one thing to the next all your life, hardly ever stopping to reflect – even for a moment – about what is really going on and what it all means. “Ponder the path of your feet,” it says in Proverbs 4:26, and how necessary!

But we don’t.

Then there is the incessant background noise of modern life. The TV is always on, and the radio is blaring, or the smart phone is perched up while we fold clothes so we can watch our show, or something – always something. It’s just how it is. One of my Christian friends said something so profound, I’ve never forgot it, and it was years ago. “Why do people always need a distraction?” he asked. “It’s because when it is quiet, their conscience speaks to them.”

Our conscience speaks to us! It does, but only if we take the time to listen in quietness. Taking the time to listen is not popular these days; no, running from one pleasure pastime to the next is; having cell phones out on the restaurant table – just in case – also is; sitting around with friends in the living room, everyone on their phones – that is, as is being at work 16 hours a day because you own a laptop and are always connected to work. Earbuds are part of the is that is popular, and we can stream music and podcasts and real-time video (etc. etc. etc.) from just about anywhere in the world, right into the ears that God gave us, and God made ears as they are just so earbuds can fit in them. Yes, He did.

But reflecting?

Perhaps we need to change course. Perhaps we are doing it all wrong. Perhaps we are doing it right but need to fine-tune our direction. Perhaps we have forgotten someone in our lives who needs a good word. Perhaps we shouldn’t have said that. Perhaps we were afraid to say this. Perhaps we don’t realize the effect we have on others. Perhaps they are dropping hints but we’re not quite getting it. Perhaps we could be more kind. Perhaps we need to pray.

Perhaps.

But we only come upon perhaps if we slow down enough to listen. And if we can’t slow down, God will help us, and suddenly we are diagnosed with cancer.

The Meaning of Easter

It’s Easter weekend, and we in the US are celebrating in an appropriate way with the Easter bunny and lots of chocolate, but perhaps we can delve deeper into the meaning of this very Christian holiday and find out what it really means.

Jesus died on the cross for our sins – that much pretty much everyone knows (or at least knew in times past). Everyone has sinned; that is, everyone has given into the evil at some point and done what they knew was not right. If a person continues in this way, then one’s heart becomes hard, so much so that the voice of the conscience no longer speaks. Then one is dead in ones sins, and it is a horrible place to be.

Everyone needs forgiveness, but not everyone is willing to humble themselves. That is, not everyone is willing to be sorry for their sins, but there are those who are – sincerely and from the heart – and who ask for forgiveness, and God in His great mercy forgives them. This is fantastic. God essentially allows them to start over again. What could be better?

Jesus died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice. Isaiah 53:5 says, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment for our peace was upon him.” The punishment that we should have born, he bore for our sakes, so we might have peace with God. If this doesn’t stir your heart about the meaning of Easter, nothing will.

But there’s even more, and this more is something not many know about. We are all born with a human nature, and this human nature causes all the problems in the world. How many problems does the human nature cause? All of them. How does it cause all these problems? When us pitiful humans give into this human nature, and it’s horrible. We give into lust for power, and easily trample others. We give in to lust for the opposite sex, and end up in fornication, like the animals. Money is a great motivator, and how many have lost their soul chasing this great lust? A multitude.

The above will not get an argument, but what I am about to say might, and it does relate to Easter – believe it or not. Jesus was born with the same nature. Paul calls it the “seed of David.” That is, Jesus had these same tendencies as us. Like us, he was drawn to do ugly things, as are mentioned above. This is the very point that many cannot swallow but many verses in the Bible say exactly this: that Jesus was just like us in all things. When I say he was just like us that means: just like you. You! Think about that for a minute.

But of course had also had the spirit, and this was given to him at birth.  We get this spirit when we get converted, but he had it right from the start, as he was the Son of God.  So he had a human nature from below – just like us – but also the spirit that was from above.  As you can imagine, the two do not coexist well;  in fact, they can’t.  Galatians says, “What the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other.”  (Galatians 5:17).  It is so.

Thus, there was war. The war was on the inside, and temptation was the battlefield. Jesus was tempted to do evil – to yell at his parents, to steal something from work (or whatever) – but always and every time said “No”. He always said, “No.” Always. He never gave into his earthly nature; he always did what pleased the Father.

Thus, he never sinned, all because he loved the good and hated the evil. (Hebrews 1:9). He actually said “No” enough and enough that something amazing happened: all these ugly tendencies in his human nature died, bit by bit, so in these areas where he said “No,” he was no longer tempted in the same way. Then he was free of the evil; there was no struggle against temptation, and he could do the good – real good. It didn’t happen in a day, and it was a process. People wonder what he did before he was 30 years old and started his public ministry. This is what he did.

You can say that he made a way back to the Father. This man, who was like us in all things, he became like the Father, in all goodness, patience and long suffering, but it cost him loud cryings and tears, and he was heard because of his Godly fear. (Hebrews 5:17) It was a great battle that he was engaged in, and it was a great victory that he won.

When he died on the cross, his last words were, “It is finished.” What was finished?  The way was finished. A man had overcome and put to death all the sin this is to be found in a person, and God gave him his own nature. He was like the Father. A man was now like Adam before the fall. This, along with atonement, is the meaning of Easter.

Even more, he didn’t do all this to be some exalted figure on the order of a Greek mythological god. No, he did it so that others could do it also. They can walk on the way that he made. They – those who received forgiveness and also the Spirit – could do the same thing he did and thus become his brothers. They can say “No” in temptation and bit by bit receive a new nature – the Father’s nature.

There is no Easter in other religions, because all the creators of these religions died just like other men do – indeed, just as the dogs and cats. The grave took Mohammed, and Budda also, as well as the many others who started great religions. Death overcame them, and they are no more. Not so with Jesus. He overcame death, and who in all the annals of history has ever done such a thing? Men have conquered mountains and great armies and the inner workings of the atom, but no one has conquered death. No one, but Jesus did, and not because he was the Son of God. No, it was because he put all the sin to death that he found in his human nature, because death only comes because of sin. And we can do the same.

This is the meaning of Easter. Enjoy the day.

Cancer is Contagious

It is said that cancer is not contagious, but I’m here to tell you that this is wrong.

Cancer is contagious.

You can say that when one person in a family get cancer, then everyone gets cancer, but just in a different way. Everyone – and not just the patient – has to deal with the diagnosis in some way, and this includes the spouse obviously and also all the children, no matter how young.

The point is, something BIG has happened, and even if you are in Kindergarten, you know that something has gone down. In 2007 everything changed in a day – a single day. Suddenly I, the father, was gone, and we had helpers in our house for two years, as we did cancer with a six month old, a two year old, a four year old and on up. We couldn’t have done it without our helpers. And suddenly Mom was gone too, and a lot, to all sorts of appointments and – no – children are not allowed in cancer centers.

The hard part is that the parents are doing the best that they can to cope with the situation and they often want to help the children cope with it also, but they themselves are trying to cope; and the children are very easily notice that the parents are going through something but then again so also are they. So everyone is in coping mode, and on top of this life in a humorous way must go on as “normal” – whatever that is, as clothes have to be washed, meals prepared, cats let out, and so forth.

For my part as the patient, it was as if I was plucked from the family and returned a year and a half later: “Hello, everyone, here I am again!” I was there before this, but every day was a struggle to survive: to get through the day. There was the operation and then the chemo and radiation, and then then recovery from the operation while getting chemo and radiation, then the recovery from the chemo and radiation, and finally to tie it all in a big knot, my esophagus closed up due to the scar tissue, which meant endoscopes every six weeks for a very long time. It was like getting hit by the big ocean waves, only try as I might to stand, it was all in vain: every time I was knocked over and dragged out to sea with the tide. That was my life.

That was me, but there was them also. The wife and kids. I think it was like that for them also, when events outrun your capacity to understand them, and you’re left figuring out what they mean later on. Such is cancer, and not only for the patient.

The good news is that God is in it all. And afterward, what did Job say, but “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you!”  So the entire trial was worth it.

Confusing Times

There are times when people – even large groups of people and indeed entire civilizations, lose their mind for x number of years. It is difficult to comprehend how normal, intelligent and civilized people descend into madness and all for a great number of reasons – reasons that somehow converge in a special moment, where – bing – the nuthouse cometh.

Well, such a moment came to Germany in 1932 when a very uncouth corporal ascended to power in a very democratic way, and a similar madness was also unleashed in Stalin’s purges and Mao’s cultural revolution, and how crazy was that? Very, with millions of lives abruptly terminated. Indeed, we can call World War I a case in point: when Western Civilization as a whole slaughtered each component therein for who knows what; during this time Shackleton and his party were lost in the Antarctic region for three years and when returned was told, “The whole of Europe has gone crazy!” It had.

I grew up in relatively mild times, during the greatest expansion of property and (relative) peace the world has ever known, that in the aftermath of World War II. We had our wars here and there (Korea, Vietnam) but the world was on the whole like a toy with only a few moving pieces, and if you can understand how pressing one lever made the toy light up and another made it buzz, you were done. It was simple: there was the West (democratic, good) and the East (communism, bad) and from this simple formula you divided the world up. Like a grand game of Risk, they took Angola and we took South Korea, and they made a move on Afghanistan and we shored up Iran’s Shah. Simple.

Unfortunately the Berlin Wall crumbled, because after that the world became a multi-polar place with so many moving parts, no one really knows what effect input A will have on either region C over there or economy V someplace else. It’s all connected, and there are many power centers, some old and cracking power centers along with new, up and coming power centers and power centers that shouldn’t even exist (North Korea). It’s a toy with untold complexity, with every part somehow connected in ways that are both unforeseen and enigmatic. Example #1 is the best one, really, where when a vegetable seller in Tunisia gets pissed and lights himself on fire, leading to the Arab Spring, where Syria falls apart causing millions of refugees to leave Europe, who is creaking under the strain and may eventually go under from this and other factors (Greece), but we can ask: how does a vegetable seller in Tunisia contribute to the downfall of the EU?

But more has happened than just politics: I would submit that Western society is in decline, moral and otherwise, and the parts that were put together – the grand order – is being taken apart piece by piece, so the world we are living in now bears no resemblance to the one I grew up in, and I’m only 55 years old. Like the Roman Empire, which Gibbon said fell due to decadence, we in the West are enjoying liberties that would have horrified our grandparents. But if we are racing into the 23^rd century, with all it’s amorality, the Muslim world is fixated on 7^th century Arabia as a template for all things social, religious and political, and they’re not in the mood to talk it over.

So we are in flux, but the scary thing is that in the great rearranging, the vectors of the Perfect Storm can arrange themselves in uncontrollable ways so what was intended and what actually happens are divorced from one another, and, as John Adams said when he beheld the craziness of the French Revolution, “The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.*”

Confusing times: when perhaps the man on the street wants an answer in terms he can understand, and the strongman cometh.

*John Adams, David McCullough, Simon and Schuster, New York, Page 443

My Smartphone, Myself

I have a smartphone but a more precise way to say it is this: my smartphone has me.

These little devices, smaller than your hand, have a way of taking over ones life. They are, unfortunately (or fortunately) way too convenient and unfortunately (or fortunately) they offer way too much in the way of helpful connectivity and random pleasure.

It’s crazy.

John Adams

What can I do on this little thing, let me count the ways. Real-time banking, texting the kids, playing chess with dudes from Brazil to India to Mongolia (I do!), checking the weather here and indeed anywhere, emailing, looking at pictures of other peoples snot nosed brats on social media, taking pictures of my snot nosed brats and posting them on social media (though I am loathe to do this, see here, but the possibility exits), actually making a phone call to someone (a concept from the 1970s, I know), of course surfing the web and – indeed – accessing any sort of information that us homo sapien have accumulated since the dawn of history, and that’s not it: on my new phone, I get my own personal assistant (who said slavery is dead) that scours my digital life and tells me important things, such as how far from home I am and when that package from Amazon arrives (how does it know I even ordered one?), on and on and on it (the things it can do) goes.

Just this one device. I can take it anywhere, anytime and connect to anything or anyone, real-time, and if Vladimir Putin makes a statement at 11 am about Syria, I know about it at 11:01 am.

Amazing.

I’m reading an awesome book about John Adams by David McCoullough. It’s a great read, and Adams spent ten years in Europe as one of America’s first diplomats, but the man lived the life of a technological caveman. The Continental Congress would send directives to John, but it would take two to three months to get to him, by which time events had changed completely back home and also where he was; and likewise with him sending mail in the opposite direction. Same with the family: like the light from a star that arrives century’s later, so you only know what happened to the star way back in time and not now, letters from home told of events that happened three months before. Another perfect example is the war of 1812, which was started by mistake – the English Parliament had essentially met the American’s demands – but the generals in America didn’t get the memo, so the war commenced. The same with its end: on one side of the Atlantic there was a treaty but on the other knew nothing of it, and Battle of New Orleans was fought after the war ended. Wow.

It was a different world, that’s for sure.

The thing is, though, I live in this world with these machines, so we have to come to some understanding how to co-exist with them. Even though we can communicate so easily with the world, it seems increasingly difficult to communicate with the person in the next room, who also happens to be on their device. I joke with my kids, who have actually texted someone who was in the same room as them; ok, it doesn’t happen much, but it does happen! And everyone everywhere is on their device; everywhere you go – donut places, libraries, schools – the cell phone is out, the operator oftentimes plugged in, and connectivity (among other things) is had.

I know myself I have developed a dependence on my smartphone. I use it for everything, as the list above attests. And if I lose it, something has become unhinged in the universe; until it is found, the laws of nature are in question. Even worse if the thing is out of juice and cannot be called – then it can be anywhere, being so small, and the universe itself seriously tilted. Yes, I am cut off from civilization and have reverted back to the time of John Adams. Oh, the Horror!

And with all the greatness of modern life, the reality is that you always have to be ready to be interrupted. Always interrupted: by the next text, the next Facebook post, the next move in a chess game – something, and the darn thing is so good at notifying you of everything that is happening NOW. Bing. Bing! Bing!!! As a protest against all this technology, I’ve actually gone out of my house without my cell phone. How does one relate to reality without my handy personal assistant or my app that tells me how the weather is (looking at the sky doesn’t suffice anymore)? It’s very interesting. But then again I am free, and what a concept: no one can call me. No texts can interrupt my train of thought. If some Republican says something outrageous, I don’t know about it. It’s just me out walking in the sunshine of spring, and the birds are singing to boot. Wow and wow again!

This is modern life. The challenge is to find the right lines in all these new-fangled inventions that comes along, and there are a lot of them these days, as computerization is constantly evolving and expanding, taking up the oxygen in ever more and more cleaver ways. We can add this: another milestone is about to fall: the oriental game Go, which was thought to be an area where humans would always reign supreme, beat the foremost Go master in the world, who is the latest victim of the computer (aptly named Deepmind!); he was stunned and mad, as you can imagine!

I can imagine it. What have we created? And why? I wonder what John Adams would say.

Living Life in Three Month Increments

Living with stage 4 metastatic esophageal cancer is, well, a lot like having your life parceled out in three month increments. Why three months? Every three months now for many, many years, I will be getting a scan, which will show what the cancer is doing or not doing (and we are hoping for not doing).

This is the inside of ME, February 17, 2014, with cancer spot to the right

Life in three month increments. When finish your last cancer treatment – when you walk out of the cancer center building and across the parking lot to your car – you have started survivorship. You are done. Done. Done. Done. It is as Door A (the cancer world) closes behind you and door B (the living life world) opens, and through it you go. Few experiences are comparable to this! Maybe graduations. Maybe marriages. Yes, graduations for sure and marriages probably, but you get the idea.

Now you can re-start your life and then sometime in the future there will be a scan, and if that is good, the living life mode is allowed to continue – but only for another three months. Still, you had a good scan and the corridors to the world are now open to you. The day after my last good scan, for instance, I removed my feeding tube: a simple procedure that saved me a few hundreds in co-pays and the satisfaction of not having to partake again of the medical insurance industrial complex. (Read here.) But I also started to look again for a job – the most normal of pursuits – and even had two interviews; I made other financial plans, as my life that had been on ice had now thawed. It was great.

But there are no great horizons for a Stage 4er like myself, but it’s as if the grand sunset on the horizon is blocked by the treeline 90 feet away, so you mostly see the blackened branches against the orange. But hey, that’s OK: you’re not in treatment anymore, so you’re thankful that you have that much. If you do happen to get past the treeline (aka scan), there’s another treeline, with a tiny bit of orange bleeding through. This is the life you live: in little increments.

Opposite this are those without cancer who have a fantastic vista, horizons where sky meets the sea many, many mile out, and it’s so far away that one can wonder if it ever really exists, as every time we look, it seems so, so far away. It is wonderful to live this way but also quite deceptive, as life seems to have an unlimited expanse – so much so that you get lost in it – but it is not so.

Living life in three month increments means that at every three months the train can jump the tracks; so many stars can fall from the sky that it is left black; the iceberg can be hit, Titantic-like. All it takes is the doctor to enter the small exam room a bit uptight and go to his computer – his dreaded computer – to “show you something.” No, you don’t want to see anything, but all it takes for upheaval to enter ones very boring life is a white spot in the vastness of an CT scan, and I could never figure out where my organs were anyway. And we believe him, this doctor – that that one little spot is so important.

But still, you’ve learned to be happy with your three months; yes, very happy, and living in the land of the living is positively exhilarating and shall continue to be – as long as the scans come back good; though if not – well, we’ll figure that out if and when we get there. It all depends on what the Big Man upstairs wants.

Goodbye Carbs,Oh How I Loved You!

Let’s just be clear on this one point: I really like the Bearclaws at Panara Breads, and they are also reasonable in price. It’s so easy: most Panara Breads have a rounded road that goes along the back of the store, so all you have to do is find the sign in their parking lot that says “Drive thru,” and you’re on your way to something delicious. Couple that with a well-made cup of coffee or tea, and heaven has come well before death.

But in the name of dietary purity and healthy eating, I am emotionally in the process of coping with the fact that the above carb – indeed, all carbs – will soon be a thing of the past, and – freed from this horrible food group, I will be a much better man for it all. I am promised to lose weight (well, I don’t need that) and have more energy (which I do need), but also to have less hunger pangs, which I’m for (this three meals a day stuff is just out of control, I’ve always thought). Also, by chucking carbs, they tell me I will have stumbled upon the cure for diabetes, high cholesterol, fuzzy thinking and much more – all because I steered away from the Panara Breads “Drive Thru” lane.

Yes, I am changing my eating style. I’m cleaning up my act, turning over a new leaf; I had been a dietary felon, but no more; I was a gastrointestinal gangster, the dietary version of organized crime, eating one too many Italian cookies at Christmas and positively enjoying my bread from Columbus Bakery (if you’ve never had it, it’s to die for.) So I am reforming myself. It’s akin to a death-row criminal confessing his sin and asking for forgiveness from all his victims, then getting out and being a candy stripper at a nearby nursing home. Yes, it is.

But I’m also doing it my way. I told my wife that if everyone is an expert on what to eat, then why can’t I be one? If they can pontificate, then why can’t I? If they can write a book and make a million, what about me? We can say the eating thing is sacred – to the point of a religion – and can ask a reasonable question: why does no one talk about flossing? Do you know how important it is to floss? Imagine me writing a book about flossing; how many million would I make on that? (A nickle at best.)

I’m off topic. You can read about my diet here. The essential take-away is to salt everything. We’re also cutting out the carbs so we can have a good conscience; we don’t want to wake up at 3 a.m. in torment, tossing and turning to 5:17 am (the clock says it) because of that potato. No, no, no. We did make an exception for tortilla wraps, because they’re lite and you can put a lot of yummy foods in them. With great angst we nixed spaghetti – indeed, all pasta – and such nixing is hard on the soul. Rice is in; 1.34 billion people can’t all be wrong, now can they? And they’re not fat slobs either, so they must be doing something right.

So all the comfort food is gone, but we are left with almonds, oily fish with omega-3 fatty acids and celery sticks. Already I am souring on this whole endeavor. But, on the other hand, bacon is in, so life is worth living.

That’s pretty much it.

Oh carb, you villainous deceiver – you who have enriched my life so, now we must part; if you love something, let it go, so I shall do that, and I will trudge about a much healthier man but whose soul is bereft of the sweet thoughts of snicker doodles and buttered popcorn made over the stove. Such it is! Suffering enters every life, and I think of families in the depression who traveled the country in rail cars and those who lived through bombing raids in World War II, and feel my suffering every bit as poignant as these poor victims. The pizza (pepperoni, thin crust) will be no more.

Oh carbs, how I will miss you!

Children: A Gift of the Lord

I have what many would consider a large family (eight kids), but I know other families with double the number of kids, so compared to them we are small, similar to one of those modern nuclear families with 2.3 children. But we don’t have 2.3 children, we have eight, and the dings in the walls and the noise levels in the kitchen attest to that.

We can characterize having eight children in many different ways, all correct. Psalms says that they are a “gift of the Lord,” (Psalms 127:3) and this really shines through in the moments when they are not arguing over the last piece of bacon but, even then, I count them a blessing; just a blessing in a different way.  If you really want to see what you are made of – you, this civilized Western man, the pinnacle of civilization – just have kids and even better: lots of them!

No, children are wonderful to have in every way, and I wouldn’t want to be without them. I couldn’t be. I’ve done many stupid things in my life, but having them is not one of them. If you want to be constantly in need, just have children. I know one mother with the number of children in the double digits – and all very good children once say that “I didn’t know how to raise children: I never knew what to do, but just was always in need and loved them.” I can sympathize!

I’m not saying that having children – and a lot of them – is like walking among the daisies; it’s not a cruise on the Caribbean, or eating exotic French foods in the best restaurants. No, if you want to experience sleep deprivation, just have children, and I would often tell my wife over the years that sleep deprivation is a form of torture. (Not funny.) Many households have serious problems with monsters, goblins, werewolf’s, vampires and the like, but if you don’t mind such problems, just have children: such beasties can all be found in your house at 3 am – just ask your five year old! Then again, if you want to avoid paying a wrecking company to demolish your house, just have children and not only children, but boys. Walls are expendable, and flowers shall be mowed over, and drilling the soccer ball into the cat – oops, he really didn’t mean it, but it’s a gas anyway.

And if you want to live in a reality comedy show where you are the star, just have children.

I will tell you a secret: you don’t have to have a lot of children to have children; one almost will do. You can be enjoy your life being childless and spending your money on cruises and fancy restaurants, and when the car breaks, it’s no big deal, you just pay for it; you count your sleep as a blessing, and if you are woman, your dress is never used as a snot rag, and if you are a man, no one ever crayons on your walls. Life is good. But to turn this idyllic world on its head, you don’t need three children or five children or fifteen children: you really only need one. One little baby with all its demands, one little baby that poops when you just have to get out the door now; one little baby that unfortunately walks someday and there goes all the cute knickknacks on your end tables. Just one.

Many feel that this baby needs a sibling, so you agree to bring a second gift into the world. You do. Now the chaos is doubled, and the German-like schedules you kept as a single person are smoking like the buildings in Berlin after the air raids, and suddenly there’s bills for all sorts of odd things you only saw at a glance in the grocery store while going down the aisle to get something really useful (chocolate): diapers and play pens and cute little light up green toys that skirt along the floor and make an obnoxious noise (especially in the morning), and of course the dreaded legos in middle of the night, as half-conscious you walk to the bathroom to pee (at least you don’t have any little eyes watching you as you sit on your Throne, but the lego is a reminder that these little ones inhabit your house – just in case you forgot!)

When you were single, you put on your shoes and coat and left. No big deal. Now leaving is comparable to hitting the beaches at Normandy, with air, ground and naval support having to all be in sync for the assault, with strollers and diaper bags and and snacks and sippy cups for the little one if he happens to get thirsty on the way, and stick-on shades on the car windows so the sun doesn’t warm his beautiful skin too much, and perhaps there’s a playpen and of course the plastic bags, so when he poops while you are out, you have someplace to put the diaper just in case, and on and on and on it goes. There is no end.

The point here is that after one or two kids, your life is crazy enough that adding a few more is really just like finishing the trim on the nuthouse. When you pass four or five, the world already considers you to have a form of dementia or some degree of a developmental disorder, as don’t you know where they all come from, now do you? Add a couple more on, and the descent into some exotic form of chaos is complete.

All this is good for a person with a will like a steal girder and all sorts of opinions on everything, child rearing included. The will gets bent and the opinions questioned when the toddler flushes the McDonald’s glowing toy down the toilet, or the kid comes home with Common Core homework that only a physicist can understand. The will gets bent even more when, in a timeless fashion, the drink you just poured is drunk by the little gift, and as a mother you shall never be able to finish a meal or it will be cold, and no door shall ever be left un-hung upon, and the cat shall be placed in the box, and down the stairs it goes!  The bed will be peed (enough said) and clunks in the night are little heads falling out of their bed. The outside hose shall be left on, and the pool liner slit, as why did someone throw a nail clipper in it? If one doesn’t learn to take it all from God, it’s not sure where one shall end up.

They all have their emotional needs too, and need affection and love, so you have to try to meet them in that, and there’s eight of them, and they have their physical issues as well here and there – some get foot problems and some have frequent ear infections and some are constipated and some just can’t sleep – and you have to take care of that as well. And academics: you have to help them there, as you don’t want them to grow up as dummies, and there’s the spiritual needs to take care of, as this world will appeal to them but destroy them in a second, especially these days. Then they grow up and need direction in something called “this big world;” there’s the first job, and careers and picking a career, and the first car and picking the first car, the college and picking a college and the potential spouse and picking the potential spouse, and on and on it goes.

So to meet or understand even half of all it, you need God. And that is good. Very good. Once you’re past the first four, you can just keep rolling them out: it’s just a variation on the same theme, and your life isn’t going to change that much by adding one more gift on; it’s like packing another baby bird in the nest, with one more mouth to feed with a worm, and finding enough worms in the neighborhood (or county) presents a challenge, as they seem to be always hungry, but that’s another story, now isn’t it?

Yes, they are a gift of the Lord. Where would we be without them? And who really cares about all the work and perhaps the heartache?  Yes, in my travels through this big world I’ve occasioned on many a mother who said these were the best years of her life, and more than one has told me that if she could do it all over again, she would have more. Wow! There’s a time in our life when we shall wipe little bottoms, and there’s a time when these little bottoms will give us the ride of our life as student drivers, and there’s a time when we will miss it all.  The right eye is to see what a gift it is -right when we are in the middle of it all!