Confessions of a Shiftless Mind

What a day yesterday.

I left work, knowing that my wife was going for an ultrasound.  An unexpected pregnancy was suspected by the midwives as being “molar” which means it could just be a bunch of undifferentiated cells reproducing a baby-like rates.  They’re bad because they can be cancerous.  Think D&C, then chemotherapy, and you get the state of mind my wife and I were in.

At the same time, just before I left, the biggest single sale I have ever made at work called… to cancel.  He said it was because his car had been totalled by a garage who was supposed to repair it.  I actually believe him, as his was the most airtight sale I have ever made - he even had his wife approve the sale with him explaining it to her before we closed it.  Anyway, he expects to have his finances re-sorted in a month or so and expects to do it then.

Two punches.

I went home with a pretty heavy heart.  I wait for my wife to come home from the ultrasound.  She says they had to check twice - there was something odd.

But they figured out what it was.

Twins.

I could be upset, shocked, unnerved, fearful, desperate, any number of things right now.  We hadn’t closed the door to another child, but we didn’t expect two at once!  I certainly have no idea how in the biggest recession to hit real estate since 1929, I am going to make ends meet with my job, which sells software to realtors.  But God’s got to have a plan, because I sure don’t.  And I am so curious to see what it is.

What got me on this subject this morning?  I am trying to remember…

Oh yeah.  I have this Christian news RSS feed, and it came up with a story on the new WOW 2009 CD, in stores October 9.  I was passably curious about what was on it (they are good collections of Christian music if you’ve never been into it before), and I discovered the newest edition is donating a portion of its proceeds to Shaohannah’s Hope, a charity founded by Steven Curtis Chapman, one of the most popular Christian musicians of the past 20 years.  He and his wife adopted I think 3 or 4 kids from overseas, and then set this up to help families pay for international adoptions, as the process can be expensive - into the tens of thousands of dollars when all is said and done.

My mother and father-in-law adopted a whole bunch of kids a few years ago from Russia, and recently their oldest adopted son won national recognition for advocacy for orphans (I hope I am describing that accurately).  My sister-in-law also adopted her son from Russia.  Hence, we have been involved and informed about both the need and the expense of adoption for a long time.

Being remarkably good at producing sons (we have four now) naturally has a downside.  I’ve always wanted a daughter, and it seems I suck at producing the necessary chromosome.  Cheryl and I have talked on and off about adoption, but the latest obstacle is definitely money.

So, I checked out Chapman’s charity.  Wouldn’t you know it, they don’t help Canadians.

After a little more digging, I did find some organizations in Canada though, who do provide grants to families looking to adopt internationally.  I give you Orphan’s Hope and ECHO.  Apparently they can give you up to $10 000 to help with the costs of international adoption.  It looks like it is income-based, but we should qualify.

Something to think about.  It really does break the heart to think about the difficulty faced by orphans in 3rd world countries.  While supporting charities that improve their plight help, if you have room in your life to give a child a family, why wouldn’t you?

It was a good 12 days we were gone, and we had a great time both at the convention we went to and at Disney World.

Funny thing about Disney World, in light of all the global warming rhetoric.  I don’t hear of any eco-organizations lobbying against Disney, even though a day on the park in August illustrates waste of energy and garbage on a scale dwarfed by just about everything.  I mean, every building they have is open-air and they all have air conditioning pumping cool air out like crazy.  I can’t imagine the juice that takes.  Even some of the rides are just crazy in light of the new, cool hatred of all things fossil fuel - both Disneyland and Disney World feature a car ride where literally hundreds of go-kart sized cars follow a simple track on a rail.  Every last one of them are powered by gas engines probably of the lawnmower variety.  It creates its own little cloud of carbon monoxide, you can smell as you walk by the ride.  I couldn’t imagine working on that ride as a “cast member”!

Putting that aside, it was great fun though.  The kids were brave enough to enjoy many of the rides - Splash Mountain was a favourite.  We checked out Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom were good, but their best rides were insanely busy.  We couldn’t come within miles of the Everest ride, and the new Toy Story ride in the Hollywood Studios, we got fastpasses for at 10am, for 5pm that night!  That’s right: within an hour of the park opening they were only issuing fastpasses for the evening.  The lineup for that ride was an hour and a half all day.

Let me just say though, August really is the worst time to go to Florida.  It was beastly-hot.  The humidity made the heat (over 30 every day at least) unbearable, and sweating all day long combined with hiking through the park for 13 hours a day led to chafing.  I was glad to come home.  30 degrees in Vancouver is infinitely more bearable than 30 degrees in Florida.

Lots of pics on facebook if you’re interested.

It must have been months ago that my oldest was introduced to Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom.  Maybe years.  We were staging for our first family Disneyland trip and Cheryl wanted to introduce him to what we’d be doing.  The neat thing about VMK.com is that not only is it a MMORPG style game, it is set up so you are exploring Disneyland at the same time - the most famous rides sights and everything are there.  (Update: looks like they are shutting it down shortly, though there are some resisters…)

One day whilst playing around with that, I noticed a link to something called “Disney’s Toontown“.  I signed Dylan up for it and watched it a bit, helping him to learn the basics.  It was cute but too simple to interest me, or so I thought.

Flash forward a few years.  He’d played it a bit more and Lyndan was now big enough to find it amusing to play his own.  I thought I would make myself a toon and log in.

They were thrilled.

They’d run back and forth between the desktop and me on my laptop, yelling about where they were and “Oh!  There’s a cog!  Let’s get it!”  They would follow my character around like puppies, help me with quests, and in general just love being “a team” with Daddy.  I was astonished.  I think they really enjoyed teaching me how to play too.  Dylan had been playing long enough that he had explored a lot of the areas, and he knew what was allowed and not allowed to non-paying players.

Now I am semi-hooked.  I can’t wait to play again - both because I enjoy it and because they enjoy it with me.

Problem is, I should really be working on my paper…

Just ran into this umm… well, it’s not really a dating site. It is a marriage proposal site. It facilitates arranged marriages, based on the old testament model of bride price.

It is an interesting idea on a number of levels, if a bit foreign to North Americans coming out of the European pattern of marriage.

The bride price concept is not meant to assign a monetary value to women, so much as to establish how much the husband is willing to sacrifice - a demonstration of his commitment and seriousness in pursuing marriage. It was in the past a nod to the expense of raising a daughter, who could not do as much physical work as a boy could, contributing to the production and wealth of the family. Today, this isn’t as true (physical labour is rarely the primary driver of income in families today), but on the other hand, the cost of raising any child has gone up substantially. If you ask around couples these days how many kids they desire, the answer is always a very low number as compared to previous generations. If you follow up with a why question, the first reason is invariably, “kids are EXPENSIVE!” If that is true, then paying a bride’s family makes a certain amount of sense.

The second major area of discomfort is the fact that the site caters to families who are offering their daughters for marriage young. Some as young as 13, though it is unclear if they actually expect the marriage to be conducted and consummated before a reasonable time has passed and legal ages are attained. This brings to mind some of the bad press around the FLDS, and the commune that made the news in Texas, as well as the Bountiful, BC situation. Certainly nobody advocates such nonsense, least of all me. Coercion is probably the biggest issue in both those news stories.

It is a fact, though, that girls are attaining puberty at earlier and earlier ages. With the onset of adult hormones comes adult desires, and the tremendous volume of teenage sexual behaviour is now a fact of life. As Christian parents, who seek to see their children into marriage without having fallen to sexual temptation, we are faced with two choices: teaching children self-control and modelling proper relationships, and supporting them in remaining celibate until their wedding at whatever age (which is also moving later and later into the twenties on average), or finding alternative ways to help our children express themselves sexually - while maintaining God’s will for us in marriage. Practically speaking, that means marriage.

In the mainstream, there has definitely been broad-based support for and creative approaches to the former approach. I have heard of father-daughter balls, and other types of approaches to building strong loving relationships between young girls and their dads. Statistics seem to bear out that the stronger a girl’s relationship with her father, the less likely she will be to seek affection prematurely from young men. On the other side, chastity rings and other ceremonies meant to create and support agreements to remain a virgin until marriage are becoming increasingly popular. The sexual urge is a strong one though in young men, borne out by the entirety of human history. It can be used to drive the young men to prepare, if they believe that they cannot have what they want until they accomplish certain things. There is something to be said for directing boys that way, to prepare for marriage, and to prepare for their future that way.

Every person is different though. Some may find it easier to maintain their virginity and resist temptations while others will find it harder. Paul seems to recognize this in his writings - talking about whether people should get married or not (1 Cor 7:8-9). He also points out that this drive should be given freedom in marriage (1 Cor 7:2-5). Some consideration should be given, in my opinion, to Christian parents endorsing earlier marriages amongst their children. Some will be better served by an early marriage. With rates of some STD infections as high as one in four in the USA, there are serious dangers to not keeping it in your pants until marriage.

Now to consider the negatives to early marriage. First, there is next to no way for teenagers to earn a living wage independently. Sure they could get minimum wage jobs and live in cheap housing, but it would take a lot of discipline to get them ahead, and get them the educations they need to be successful in life. It is possible, but very hard. Most parents support their children financially and in terms of education well into their child’s early twenties. If they are already willing to do this, why would loving parents stop if their child was married?

There is also the maturity factor to consider. I firmly believe that a big reason for the historic rules and customs in cultures around the world that restrict the young from marriage were there is because of the basic fact of life - wisdom comes from experience. There are exceptions, but it is true in the vast majority of cases. Young people make dumb decisions which is why the old almost invariably, are the ones who make the important decisions in culture and society. Respect for elders is a preservative against stupid, rash decisions anywhere. The idea of arranged marriages is premised on this - that your parents because of their experience and wisdom, and their impartiality as compared to the child’s position, are better prepared to make a choice for a life partner for their child.

So is it wise to simply let kids marry younger? Probably not if they are making their own decisions unfettered by wisdom and experience. However, the system that the website seems to support is insulated against that by the tradition of arrangement. People don’t go there to “buy” a girl for their son. They go there to initiate a process of evaluation and examination to see if this is a “good” match. If the two young people have much in common, similar values, similar goals, then there is a reasonable expectation that their marriage can work. As I understand it, once the parents on both side approve of this potential marriage, then the potential couple can commence some kind of courtship to get to know one another and decide if there is the attraction that needs to be there for a successful marriage. Loving and supportive parents will give their children the opportunity to veto the match, so nobody is bullied or pushed into anything. “Arranged” does not need to be synonymous with “forced” or “coerced”.

From reading on the site it also appears that most of the girls listed are consenting to the process. They want to be matched for marriage. Now, as we have seen, this process can be abused, as in the case of the FLDS (if you think that your salvation is based on marriage, you are sorely deceived!) But if the children understand that this is their choice, but informed by all kinds of processes and people who have their best interests at heart, I see no reason why it could not be successful.

So am I in favour of arranged marriages? Mine wasn’t. But there is something desperate, random, and unsafe that comes from the ubiquitous quest for “the one” that has been popularized by romantic writings for the last 400 years. I also think that certain pitfalls that I fell into as a young man, and even while I was dating and engaged to my now wife, could have been avoided had our relationship been guided by such a process. As I understand the process - intiated at the consent of both the son and the daughter, assessed by their parents with the view of long-term marriage, then courtship entered into with the goal of determining for each of the betrothed the suitability of the other for permanent marriage, with the potential for veto of either party, and finalized by a bride price to demonstrate the earnestness of the suitor, certainly seems both practical and efficient.

UPDATE: It turns out the site itself is a fake.  As I mentioned, the site was short on details, and abiguous about when a child can legally be married.  However, I stand by my above comments in the sense that I don’t have a problem with people arranging marriages, assuming that rules of human decency and the guidelines I mentioned above are followed.  Anything else I would have big problems with.

Four boys, no girls.  It’s the dad’s fault right?

Apparently, some researchers in England don’t think so.

It’s all about position.  Or the day of the month.  Or health.  Or the time of day.  No, it’s the mother’s diet!

Last night, I sat down in Lyndan and Aydan’s room to read them a Bible story.  I picked out the story of Samuel, so I read out of their little kids’ Bible the Cole’s Notes of his life up to finding David.  I focused on how he was a little boy when he began to serve God and how he was a gift to his mother who was barren, from God that she gave back to him.

I then headed over to Dylan’s room and he has a “real” Bible to read from.  We had been reading Mark 8, but I told him I wanted to read him the same story in his Bible, with all the details.  There were a bunch of neat lessons there, and I could have stopped and camped in any number of places.  We talked about how Hannah was teased for not having any babies, and how she cried and prayed to God.  We talked about how God answered her, and how she was so happy that she sang a song to God.  Then we talked about how she brought Samuel to the temple, because she had promised God that she would give Samuel back to God as her firstborn.  I explained to Dylan that in the old days, parents decided for their children about serving God, but now we let children decide if they want to follow God and serve him.  I just left that there and kept going, telling him about the priest’s sons and how they were very naughty boys.

I ended it with a prophet coming and speaking to Eli about his sons and telling him how God was going to judge Eli and his sons for their evil.  This gave me a chance to talk to Dylan about how even though the sons were bad, their Daddy was held responsible by God for the boys that he was to teach to be good.  I told him that it was the same for me: God wants me to teach him and his brothers how to be good, and if they are not good, then not only to they get punished, but I am held responsible by God for them too.  I told him that is why he needs to pay attention to what I say, and be a good boy - not just for himself but for others as well.

It was a lot to teach about.  I was glad for the time, even though it made me a bit late for an appointment.  He’s been resistant to us lately about chores and things, and has been getting upset when he faces consequences for misbehaviour, so this was to give him a new view on why we have rules and why he needs to listen.  What I didn’t realize was what else he took out of the lessons.

I asked Cheryl after I got home if the boys stayed in bed after I left.  She said the younger two were up once or twice then stayed down.  Dylan only got up once, to come in to talk to her.  He said to her to the effect, “Remember when we went to that ‘baptsasimis’ a while ago?  I decided tonight I want to serve Jesus my whole life.”

Wow.  He is putting it all together.  I don’t think he means he wants to be Samuel, (though he did ask about why Nazirites don’t cut their hair.  I wonder if he thinks this means he won’t cut his hair either.)

God is a wonderful God.  The older my boys get the more I’ve found myself worried about them falling into the selfish traps of the world.  This was the best gift I’ve had in years.  I will be needing to talk to him more about what he is deciding but this is a great first step of faith for him and I couldn’t be happier.

I’ve been trying to figure out whether, or how, or how much to write about where God is leading me in my life.  Because I have this blog linked up to my facebook account, I know that family and friends that I have made over the years could read this at any time.  I still have lingering fears about acceptance that stem from my high school years.  They carry over into all kinds of aspects of my life, much as I hate to admit it.  This is an attempt to trace the origins of what I believe is a calling on my life, by God, to plant a church.

I am not ashamed of Jesus and what he has done in my life.  I can’t be.  Even though those scars in my past seem to keep me feeling like I am.  And now, this Easter 2008, I am looking forward to the next 10 years as being the most challenging, most rewarding, most bizarre, most scary, most peaceful, most amazing chapter of my life.  Why?  Because God is directing my life, and preparing me to work for him.  He really is.

Somehow, some way, waaay back when I was in Grade 11 and 12, I remember sitting in Jiro’s basement bedroom with him, playing Crib until who knows when, and talking then with him about how we both felt that we were born for something cool.  That something amazing was going to happen in our lifetimes and we were going to be a part of it.

I didn’t know how that was going to happen, but I did follow where my heart was leading - back to BC, where I was born.  That call led me down to the coast where I met my wife and for the first time took upon myself the task of learning more about this Jesus who I gave my life to back at Fort Saskatchewan Fellowship Baptist when I was 16.  I was being fed before, but in stepping into paying for myself to go to Bible College, I was taking ownership, for the first time.

In doing so, though, I was opening myself up to something bigger than I had ever thought.  I visited my grandparents on my Dad’s side the following year, and told them about the school, and how I had transferred to the Seminary.  My grandmother said, “Oh, you’re going to be a pastor?”  I said, “NO!”  Of course I wasn’t!  I am a history buff, I like the outdoors, I don’t feel like I make friends easily, how could I be a pastor?  I didn’t believe in myself enough to be one.  I thought, maybe a teacher, but not a pastor.

Flash forward 5 or so years.  No longer in Seminary, couldn’t afford to finish with a baby on the way.  God had some plans for me to start overcoming my own stupidity, and grow me up.  My next transformation was in terms of responsibility, and priority.  I put it all on my wife and kids - they were number one (actually number two, just behind God).  I started seeking more wholeness with respect to my relationship with my wife.  I just began to hate the selfish crap I had wrapped myself in for so long.  The progressive realization that seeking after Jesus and following in his footsteps over my own selfish ideas just makes me happier and everyone around me happier.  Every step I take away from that hurts me or others around me.

Then there was the trip to Mexico.  God had blessed us financially, and enabled us to take a trip to Manzanillo for a week.  It was a lovely time of rest and exploration (I love visiting new places), but we both came back feeling like something was amiss, vacationing at a resort surrounded and staffed by very very poor people.  This led us to considering, the next year, when we were thinking of another break, how we could enjoy a trip like that while giving back to the community we visited.  This led us to look at short term missionary opportunities, and ultimately, to Rwanda where we helped construct a school and visited with a number of people who were full-time missionaries.  We came back with opened eyes, for how we could participate in God’s plans.

I don’t want to downplay this mind-change.  It is a different as night and day.  Before, we looked for what we would like to do, what pleased us.  We both thought a sign of God’s will for our lives was a certain amount of satisfaction in what we were doing.  When we came back, we began to look for ways to please God with our service.  This is a major shift.  We began to look for where God could use us next.

That fall, we met a church planting couple.  They were missionaries - to our town!  Canadians don’t think of their own towns as mission fields, but that is what they are.    This is something that has bugged me, nagged me at the back of my mind, ever since my early days at Fort Sask Fellowship Baptist.  I remember looking at the “missionaries” corkboard, with pictures of nice people deployed all over the world, I was thinking, why are we paying people to travel all around the world when there are people right here who need to know Jesus?  The statistics that say 60% of Canadians believe in “God” - they are meaningless.   God wants people who love him and follow his teachings.  There are many many people who are living a lie, believing that because their parents had them baptized as infants, or perhaps in their youth they prayed a prayer, that they are “in”.  But they don’t know God.  They don’t know how much Jesus loves them, and they fool themselves into thinking that their own choices will earn them a place in heaven.  Most Canadians are like that.  Even in churches.  They need to understand the truth.

We stepped into involvement with this church plant, and it has been amazing!  Never before have we seen God work so up close.  I love watching the people who have joined us, those that came broken, needy and having those needs met by God in our presence.  It is great.  At the same time, about a year ago too, Cheryl and I both recognized in our hearts that there is something coming, that we will be going somewhere, in the service of God, soon.  We began to feel like we need to prepare ourselves for it.  It is becoming more and more clear that we will be involved in planting another church.  For the first time in my life, I have people around me who see this too.  Their vision feeds mine.  I am getting to the place where I am really starting to believe that even though I fear judgment and inadequacy, it’s God’s project, not mine.  If he wants me to preach, then he will see me prepared to do it.  If he wants me to lead, all I have to do is worry about following him, he will provide the followers.  If he wants me to build a church, he will give me the skills, or provide me with the help I need.  I just have to wait on him.

It kind of takes the pressure off.  But most of all, and I think this is what everyone is looking for, he’s given me something to live for, work for.  I am not dropping everything.  God’s got me in a great job that pays well.   I am thinking this job is here right now to help get us prepared financially.  Plus, I have a lot to learn before I am ready to do anything on my own or as part of a team.  Probably a couple of years out still.  But it’s going to be a ride!

No it doesn’t get better than this…

But it did,
It did,
Oh it did.

Just when i start thinkin its as good as it can get,
This crazy life does somethin just to let me know
I haven’t seen anything yet…

- Brad Paisley, “It Did” - 5th Gear 

I have every reason to be completely stressed out.  I have every reason to be falling apart physically and emotionally.  I have to say, in my life to date, the place I am at right now may be the toughest I have ever been in.

But yet, I can’t help thinking, life just keeps getting better.

People occasionally make fun of me for liking country music.  They joke about how it is so depressing.

“What do you get when you play Country Music backwards?”

“What?”

“You get your house back, your wife back, your truck back, your dog back…”

There are some melancholy songs out there, but there are fun ones too.  Best of all are the uplifting songs.  In all my years of listening to rock, pop, metal, etc., I can’t recall but one or two truly uplifting, soul satisfying songs that made you feel better about yourself and your life and that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be fine.

Nearly every Country record I listen to has them.  The lyrics at the top are a case in point.

People say financial pressures are one of the leading causes of divorce.  I am simply amazed by the fact that when we face them, my wife and I become even more united.  It is a challenge we face together, tighter than ever.   I don’t think I underestimate the effect it had on me, when I began to doubt that we could get out of this mess, that my wife told me that she thought we could.  We didn’t need to make drastic changes, uproot from work, family, church.  Her faith in me became my faith in myself.

Where’s the money going?  Bills.  Where’s the money coming from?  Well, sales is an up-and-down thing.  It’s a down time right now.  But my treasures keep piling up.  We just got a dog a little while ago, and despite her bad habit of peeing on the floor outside our bedroom every once in a while, she is a blessing.  We just had another baby a month and a half ago… and aside from his annoying habit of needing to be walked to sleep by Daddy well after Daddy should already be asleep, he is a blessing.  The treasure of people and dogs that love you - that love can’t be bought.

So, what I am saying is, it is those things that so many others would say bring you down, that are building me up right now.  I am excited.  The pressure, the trouble, the clouds on the horizon are a challenge to me.  I am excited by it.  I want to take it on, head on.  Because it’s going to get better than even I can imagine.