Time has Little to do with Infinity and Jelly Donuts

This blog has been dead for the last couple of months. Apologies. First I didn’t know the future of the hosting. Then, I went out of the country (more in a later post on that). Third, the blog got hacked so I shut it down temporarily. A huge shout out and thanks to my former student Greg, who graciously gave of his time and resources to clean up the posts that were redirecting you to some website in Russia. Hopefully, everything is back to normal now.

I *do* plan on finishing up my Kilby series and then, who knows.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Hello readers,

I’m going to be losing the hosting service I had for this blog.  I’ve backed it up and won’t be posting anything new until I decide whether to continue and who to continue with.  Who knows.  This may be a good time to start anew.  I started this blog way back in 2005 before our first adoption journey.  I have not been as diligent about posting as I would have liked, but it’s been fun.

If/when I do move it, the URL address should remain the same.

On October 22, 1976, Clyde Kilby gave a lecture that he ended with 10 resolutions for mental health and well being.  John Piper has them listed on the Desiring God site.  I’m trying to unpack them in my life.

I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.

On October 22, 1976, Clyde Kilby gave a lecture that he ended with 10 resolutions for mental health and well being.  John Piper has them listed on the Desiring God site.  I’m trying to unpack them in my life.

 I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

OK, I know it seems like I forgot all about this series, but I haven’t.  #5 is a stickler for me and I honestly didn’t/don’t know how to go about tackling it.  It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, but I have so much to say.  If I take a good honest look at Resolution #5 I would have to say it is probably one of the top two that I have trouble with.  I don’t think I’m alone.

Our world is messed up.  We know it.  Go to any self-help section in a bookstore, virtual or online, to see that we are well aware that things aren’t what they are supposed to be.  As humans we always seem to be looking for the person that ‘has it together’ and take a great deal of Schadenfreude when we see someone we previously thought had it together show the world, often quite dramatically, that they don’t.

I love to do what Kilby resolves not to do here.  I love Meyers Briggs Personality Tests (I’m an ENTP, that 2-5% of evil geniuses that would take over the world if we could ever get organized), spiritual gifts tests, Smalley & Trent’s Lion/Otter/Retriever/Beaver types, down to some of the meaningless Facebook quizzes (my patronus is a fox) though I rarely let them post the results to my wall.  I hide people who do that too much.

I’m not saying those things are bad.  They aren’t.  God made us in unique ways with unique interests.  That’s the point.  We are unique.  There is not another ENTP/Golden Retriever/FoxPatronus like me.  When I pigeonhole myself, or anyone else into one of 16 categories I diminish the creativity of God.

Then there’s the part about not envying.  One of my favorite quotes from my pastor was his definition of envy: “envy boils down to being upset with God because you feel like He’s holding back something you think you deserve.”  Powerful words.  Let that sink in a moment.  When you are envious of your co-worker, sibling, or stranger that passes you in the nifty new Nissan Frontier, you aren’t mad at them, you are upset with God.  Envying someone else’s gifts or talents is at it’s core a feeling that God has short-changed you in some way.  Envy is a form of spiritual arrogance.

Kilby’s solution to this problem is, like in his other resolutions, seemingly easy on the surface: Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you probably guess with where I’m going with this.  This is not something you can do by your own willpower.  You can’t decide to forget about yourself and therefore forget your envy.  The human heart abhors a vacuum.  You start with who Jesus is.

If Jesus died for me, and knew that he was dying for me specifically, and promised by the power of the Holy Spirit to make me complete through a process that will take the rest of my life, then when I feel envy, I need to recognize what that is.  It’s telling God that my plan is better than His plan.

That’s humbling to think about.  But then the beautiful circularity of the Gospel comes out.  The death of Jesus was for my envy to.  As I dwell on that, and think about how God has blessed me rather than how I feel like he’s gypped me, then the envy begins to die.

It’s only hard when I try to make it happen.  If I can think upon the Cross, then it becomes easy, natural…almost like it’s supposed to work that way.

Funny how that happens.

I am amazed at the relevance of these words spoken 35 years ago.

There are a LOT of spambots that register on this site to try to sneak in their advertising.  I usually let them pile up and delete them en mass.  I just deleted about 30 fake users.  To try to cut down on the number of these I have to deal with.  I added a Captcha widget that helps distinguish real people from the bots.  It should only make you use it once.  If you have any problems, please shoot me an email and let me know.

On October 22, 1976, Clyde Kilby gave a lecture that he ended with 10 resolutions for mental health and well being.  John Piper has them listed on the Desiring God site.  I’m trying to unpack them in my life.

I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

There’s a song from the musical Oklahoma that Katie often jokingly sings around me.  It starts out with the lyric, “with me it’s all or nothing…”  She’s right.  I do tend to trend towards all or nothing.  It’s been a struggle for me for a long time.  I’m either watching every calorie and counting every carb, or I’m eating whatever I want to eat.

I have noticed, as I reflect on these resolutions as often as I can that it’s a disturbing pattern in my life.  I’m either hardcore walking in the Word every day, or I’m struggling to open my Bible.  I’ve got an hour by hour plan for my day, or I don’t want to do anything.  I’m either blogging every day or so, or I’m not touching it for a month. One thing I have learned is that extremes aren’t healthy.  Balance is key.  That’s what this resolution is about.

I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality.

Have a plan.  It’s not good to live life in a fly by night manner.  Sure, it makes for a cool hero in a movie, but so do a smart mouth, blazing guns, and the ability to take a punch.  We often glamorize in our fantasy that which in reality are detriments.  Know where you are going and why you are going there.

I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

Sometimes, when I make a plan, distractions make me angry.  When I get pulled off course, it must mean that I didn’t plan well.  Therefore, why plan?  It can become a vicious cycle, and you can be far along the wandering path before you realize what you’ve done.  Still, as Tolkien says, “not all who wander are lost”.  What I think Kilby is encouraging here is a healthy tension between knowing where you are going and being flexible enough to get sidetracked by those “worthy potentialities” that crop up all the time.  This, quite honestly, is where I stink at life.  I’m either so driven by my own agenda and plans and goals that I put my head down and barrel along, leaving friends and family to keep up or fall behind, or I’m meandering looking around for worthy potentialities to distract me from what I am called to do: husband, parent, teach, etc.

So the question is how to plan in such a way that allows for worthy abstraction?  G. K. Chesterton said that “An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.” This is true, but the hard part for me then becomes to recognize the adventure from the distraction.  For me, self-discipline is a huge part of it.  Do any of you struggle with this, and what do you do?

Would love to hear from you.

On October 22, 1976, Clyde Kilby gave a lecture that he ended with 10 resolutions for mental health and well being.  John Piper has them listed on the Desiring God site.  I’m trying to unpack them in my life.

I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

This one is very convicting to me.  How many times a day do I find myself thinking either about what I am *going* to do or what I have *already* done.  In some sense, the past and the future do not exist.  They are the gone and the not yet.  Now is what counts.

Jim Elliot said, “Wherever you are, be all there.”  It’s something I have to work hard on.  I think it’s something we all have to work hard on.  We can all get caught up in the daydreams and to-do lists (depending on your personality type) and not be present.

The second part is even harder, but it’s one I’ve been wrestling with ever since I dove into my thesis.  My students will recognize it.  Evil is not the opposite of good, it is the absence of it.  Job teaches us that bad things happen to good people because of things we cannot understand in this life.

The corollary to that is that not all pain is evil.  You may be familiar with the C. S. Lewis quote that pain is “God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world”, but Lewis has an even more brilliant analogy.  God as a surgeon.

The surgeon will cut away that which will kill the patient.  No matter how much it hurts, he cannot stop.  In fact, the more dedicated the surgeon is and the more committed he is to the well being of the patient, the more he will ignore the pain he is causing because it is for the benefit of the patient.  The pain is necessary to save his life.

Seeing pain as a ladder to spiritual growth is easy to write on a blog, but harder to live.  It’s hard when you lose a parent, or have to watch a friend dying of cancer, or have your spouse point out a flaw you thought no one knew about and you had hidden deep down, but it is the megaphone to rouse us to awakening.  To see that the days don’t plod on.  They are ripe with opportunity.

Pain can numb us.  It can numb us to other people’s pain.  It can make us forget that we are surrounded by immortal beings made in God’s image.  It can make us stop believing altogether we are made in God’s image.  We don’t have the faith to trust that the surgeon knows what needs to come out: what needs to be cut.

I pray that my eyes would be open to divine appointments.  Our word “adventure” comes from the French aventure which originally meant “on the way to”.  Most traditional adventure stories happen when a journey is interrupted.  One of my favorite Chesterton quotes is, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.”

I pray my inconveniences diminish and my adventures increase.

Soli Deo Gloria

On October 22, 1976, Clyde Kilby gave a lecture that he ended with 10 resolutions for mental health and well being.  John Piper has them listed on the Desiring God site.  I’m trying to unpack them in my life.

Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: “There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.

So, in case you didn’t know, I love my job.  I think what resonates with me on Resolution #2 is that it touches both sides of my brain.  Today I got to teach about how the kidney works.  It’s a pretty amazingly designed piece of machinery.  When your blood has too many ions, etc. it gets rid of the extras, and when it doesn’t have enough, it grabs all it can get.  It all works by chemistry.  Each unit of the kidney (the nephron) filters about 20% of the plasma contained in the blood vessels nearby into it and then sends it on this winding pathway to let the blood get back what it needs.  First, Sodium is pulled in.  Sodium ions have a positive charge, so when there are enough sodium ions, they start attracting negatively charged ions like chlorides and phosphate groups.  Then, when the concentration gets high enough, water is pulled back in.  Amazing.  Your kidneys make up about 1% of your body weight, yet they filter your entire blood supply 20-25 times a day.  Processing 180 liters (45 gallons) of fluid during that time.

Then, I get to teach English.  It’s also amazing the power of stories and how they move us.  Jesus used stories as his primary teaching tool.  This year I’ve covered stories from ancient Greece to war-torn Africa.  All of them have something in common: a search for meaning.

As humans, we have this deep seeded desire to matter…to someone.  It’s in our makeup.  Even the cynical authors like Kafka are desperately crying out for some sort of meaning to life.  The trouble is, it’s a meaning that has to fit into his own view of meaning.  He felt as if there was an “…infinite amount of hope in the universe … but not for us.”

Then, on the other side of the spectrum was Tolkien, who felt that telling stories reflected God’s image.  Because we are *in* God’s story.  The Story of Stories.  The crowning moment of that story was when the author entered in, became a character, and set things right.

It’s hard not to be cynical in times such as the ones we live.  It takes work.  Cynicism is easy.  Hope is hard.  Through the wonders of the design of the universe around me to the stories others tell as they also search for that wonder, I am encouraged.  Kilby’s second resolution seems very deep, and it is, but you simply start.  It ties closely with his first resolution.  Don’t just enjoy creation, marvel at it.

“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.”

J. R. R. Tolkien

On October 22, 1976, Clyde Kilby gave a lecture that he ended with 10 resolutions for mental health and well being.  John Piper has them listed on the Desiring God site.  I’m trying to unpack them in my life.

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades
or loose the cords of Orion?
Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
or can you guide the Bear with its children?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth?  Job 38:31-33 (ESV)

Where do I begin a blog post to talk about how insignificant we are compared to the rest of the universe?  How does one begin to describe being surrounded by wonder?  Another book I have been reading is One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, and she describes how we are so jaded and rebellious that we must be overwhelmed with wondrous things like the Grand Canyon while we are surrounded by beauty and miracles every day that we blow right by.  To quote Dr. Chumley in Harvey: “Fly specks, fly specks! I’ve been spending my life among fly specks while miracles have been leaning on lampposts at 18th and Fairfax!”  When the mechanic calls and tells you that “we found something else and it’s going to be a little bit more than I told you the other day” or you’re worn out from work and the kids need love and attention (not to mention your spouse), then it’s hard to realize just where we fit in God’s cosmos. I am Dr. Chumley.  Job finally gets it. I hope I eventually do.  We are specks of dust, but we are not insignificant.  We are loved specks, cherished specks, redeemed specks.

Berkley just released some pictures from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (W.I.S.E.) of our cosmos. If you are like me, and often have to be overwhelmed by beauty to take a breath and slow down, then let me offer a few of my favorites of these recent pictures.  You can click on them to embiggen them.  Yes, I said embiggen.

Soli Deo Gloria

OK, I’m a slacker.  I haven’t been updating the blog like I should.  If you read back through the years this blog has been around you will see that I write in spurts.  It’s been busy around the house, so that makes for slow posting.

We are doing great.  Getting ready to put our house on the market, which many of you know can be stressful and tiring.  We are excited about what God has in store as we try to give ourselves a little breathing room.  Katie’s prayer has been awesome: God, don’t give us a house if you’re not going to fill it up.

That was a rambling introduction.  It has nothing really to do with what I wanted to write about, save to update you briefly on our life.

When I was working on my thesis I read a lot of literary criticism by a man named Clyde S. Kilby.  He was a man I envied to a large degree because he got to spend a few afternoons with J. R. R. Tolkien and his wife, Edith, as well as C. S. Lewis.  He was a gifted scholar and an insightful writer and he is used quite a bit in my final thesis.  I even hinged one of my main arguments on one of his later conversations with Tolkien that contradicted what Tolkien had written in an earlier letter.  But, I digress.

I decided to look him up on Wikipedia and I found a link to his old college at Wheaton where it gave a mini-bio.  This line was what really startled me.

When Dr. Kilby retired in 1981, he and his wife Martha returned permanently to Columbus, Mississippi, where they had been married more than half a century earlier. Clyde S. Kilby died on October 18, 1986.

Those of you who grew up with me, or near me, could imagine my surprise.  For those of you who are scratching your head, Columbus, MS was a mere 17 miles from my house growing up and it was the booming metropolis of 50,000 people that served as a distraction and entertainment from small town life on the weekends.

I was only 15 when he died, but to think that a man that influenced a lot of my graduate career was living a short drive from where I was growing up is neat, but at the same time I feel a missed opportunity I had no clue about.  So I started reading more about him outside of his work on the Inklings.  He was a very smart man of God.  John Piper took one of his classes and a few years ago he posted a snippet of a lecture he once heard that changed his life.  In it Kilby discussed 10 daily resolutions.  I think they are changing mine as well.

I could just stick the list up here, but I want to take some time with them.  Writing about them will help me dissect them.  Since I need a little extra motivation to help me blog, I thought I’d make a series out of them.  I can’t promise a fixed schedule, but hopefully weekly.  There will be some pictures so those of you tuning in via Facebook may have to click on over to enjoy them.

First one tonight or tomorrow, Lord willing.

I haven’t really been able to write about this before now.  When we were in China we posted pictures of Shepherd wearing his swim goggles.  I remember the first time he put them on and looked at himself in the mirror.  He still couldn’t speak any English so he could just point to his reflection and look at us and grin.  After that he wouldn’t leave the hotel room without them on.  By that I mean he would pitch a loud fit if he didn’t have them before getting in his stroller.  It’s amazing how the mind of a three year old works.  We didn’t totally understand why he was so attached to them until after we got home.

While we were in China we were walking around a lot as a family.  Shamian Island is where adoptive families stay in Guangzhou so the residents there are used to seeing blended families.  Some of them are not used to seeing kids with special needs. On more than one occasion a Chinese person, usually elderly, would come up to us and start talking to us.  While we didn’t understand the words, we didn’t need to.  One little old lady pointed to Shepherd’s nub and moved her hand back and forth like she was cutting off a waiter filling her glass.  Her nose was crinkled up in disgust.  The words were foreign, but the motions were all too clear: You don’t want him.  He’s not whole.  You’re making a mistake. That’s why he was abandoned.

We didn’t understand the words, but Shepherd did.  Whenever this occurred he would stare off into space and ignore everyone.  As we would try to communicate with these people that we were well aware of this child’s needs it didn’t make him any less valuable, any less whole, you could see Shepherd’s body language buying into the lies The Enemy sent his way that his parents were almost helpless to defend against.

I tell my anatomy kids that when you look at someone, you are looking at dead cells with the exception of the eyes, and it’s true.  Our outer covering is old, keratinized, and dead: except our eyes.  Shepherd wore those goggles as protection; not from the pollution and dust in the air, but from the corruption of the lies that the world would have us believe: you must be perfect, or you’re no one.

When we arrived at the airport and the crowd greeted us, Shepherd went around giving high fives, meeting everyone, looking at balloons.  Quite a few people said the same thing to me:

“I thought you said he was shy.”

We had, in fact, warned our friends and family that Shepherd was shy and not to expect too much of a greeting at the airport.  We were wrong.  What we had taken for shyness was self-preservation.

Outside of the pool, Shepherd hasn’t worn his goggles since we came home.  He hasn’t needed to.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Jesus sees us how we are, special needs and all, and loves us.  He frees us to take off the goggles of self: self-worth, self-preservation, self-esteem; and bask in the glory of His righteousness. Righteousness we do not deserve, but can receive.  Mercy is not getting what you deserve.  Grace is getting what you don’t deserve.

I am thankful for both.

Over the last few months I have been playing a game from my childhood with my kids.  It’s an easy one to learn, but difficult to master.  I can remember playing this up in to my middle school years at least, if not later.  I don’t know if anyone else has ever played it; it may be that my friends and I created it.

Name: Crash Up Derby, aka Redneck Marbles, aka Matchbox/How Wheels Keepsies

Materials: An even number of toy cars of similar size and various makes and models, orange toy car track (optional, but good for beginners) 10′ minimum, longer for more challenging play.  If playing ‘keepsies’ each player supplies his/her own cars.

The Rules: Some method of determining who chooses first: flipping a coin, farkling, etc. are all valid.  Game variables are determined before the first car is chosen (see variables below).  Players take turns choosing cars from their collection/common pool to play with until each player has an even number of cars.

The person who lost the choosing method (the person who chose their car second) now chooses a car to compete.  After this car is chosen, his/her opponent chooses their car.

Both players place their car behind respective release points.  If plastic track is used, the end of the section of track closest to each player is their release point.  Hands are not allowed past the release point.

Both players count aloud, “one, two three” while moving their cars back and forth to attain momentum and rhythm.  On three (or a short pause after three depending on how the Lethal Weapon conversation goes) each player pushes their car forward and releases.  If a player holds on to their car too long or moves their hand past the release point the other play must call “do over” before the cars collide.

After the collision, either car not resting on all four wheels is ‘out’ and removed from play.  The winner of that round takes his/her car back and waits on the loser to choose another one from his pool.  If both cars are out the choice of car alternates from the previous round.

The winner is the player with the last car  remaining.

Game Variables: Before play, each participant must agree on the following:

• Keepsies?
• If a car is pushed too hard and flips before the collision is it out or a redo?
• In some variations the winner must leave his winning car in until it is defeated.  This is for more advanced players.
• If both cars are flipped over are both out, or is it a redo?
• If one car is upside down and the other on its side, are both removed? (again, with advanced play, some leave the side car in)
• If track is not used, aim must be good or a predetermined number of ‘misses’ must be agree upon before new cars are chosen (you know how older cars may not roll true).

Strategies: It is advantageous to choose your car second keeping in mind the general principles of physics and 80′s action/adventure car crashes.  If your opponent chooses an SUV for example, a sloped hood car such as a corvette or Porche 944 could be a good counter if your velocity is high enough.  Alternatively, you could choose a heavy car to counter in hopes that momentum will flip the other car over.  Experimentation and knowing your cars is the key to victory.

Dads, I know you’re tired when you get home, and money may be tight, but 10′ of track is $5.00 at Wal-Mart.  The return on your investment will be in the thousandfold.

I was home from school sick.  I was old enough and well enough to stay by myself.  I remember calling my mom at work telling her ‘the space shuttle just blew up!’  I sat glued to the television the rest of the day.

It was one of those days that I grew up a lot in a short period of time.

Never forget.

I spent the afternoon playing Jeremiah Johnson.  We got a good dusting of snow last night and I got home from work earlier than usual so I grabbed my pipe and my rifle and I hit the woods.  We are fortunate to have some public land 15 minutes from the house and you have to be really careful because folks hike back there (whether from ignorance or being stubborn, I don’t know) during hunting season when they’re not supposed to.  Still, it’s the closest place I have to hunt.

About 5 minutes after I got settled in the wind picked up and started blowing snow off the trees.  I knew fairly quickly that it would be an unproductive day.  An unproductive day doesn’t necessarily mean a bad one.  If I hunted (or fished) just for what I got, I would have quit a long time ago.

With the wind blowing I decided to stalk hunt rather than still hunt.  Squirrels and rabbits would be on the ground if they were moving around at all, so I hiked some familiar trails.  There was no one out there, the day was gray and overcast and if you managed to tune out the sounds of distant sirens and traffic, it felt like true wilderness.  I heard two Great Horned Owls establishing territory lines and had a ‘conversation’ with them and got them a bit upset thinking a third owl was moving in.  I jumped a few deer, which was great because in my 2 years of hunting this place during deer season I have seen exactly zero, so it’s good to know some are around (and I have a pretty good spot for next fall).  As light was fading I did take a long shot at a squirrel peeking around a tree at me.  It was a true ‘long shot’ and analogous to the good guy shooting at the fleeing getaway car in movies.

The woods recharge me.  I come home tired, but refreshed.  When I am in the woods I understand how Creation ‘cries out’ to and for the Creator.  I feel very close to God, and I worship.  It is my ‘almost church’, and that is good, but I have to be careful.  As close as I feel to God, it is *not* church.  It takes a proper perspective of God’s Word (Special Revelation) to truly understand and appreciate the goodness in God’s Creation (Natural Revelation).  You can’t reverse them.  That leads to bad theology, being ‘spiritual, but not religious’, and in short worshiping the Creation rather than the Creator.  It is something dear to me, which means The Enemy wants me to love it more than God.

So, there is a healthy tension in the ‘almost church’.  It is good when it drives to you community and fellowship, but it is dangerous when it replaces them.

What’s your Almost Church?

Well, If you’re not friends with me on Facebook, the month long drought of me posting on here might lead you to believe that surgery was more of a deal than I thought.  I just hadn’t taken the time to get back here and update.  I won’t bore you with a long drawn out detailed account of the last month, but rather give you the bullet points.

• Surgery went well.  The recovery was tougher than anticipated.  3 extra nights in the hospital (thank goodness for insurance)
• After making it home, the next few days were filled with Percocet dreams.  It was strange because I knew I was dreaming.  It made me feel a little better when the six foot mole in a business suit tried to get into the car I was driving because it had a meeting and needed a lift.  But they were still some of the oddest dreams I have ever had.
• I am incredibly thankful for wonderful alumni from both my schools who visited me, helped Katie with the kids, dragged our Christmas tree out of the attic and put it up for us, and just encouraged and loved on us.  You guys rock.  I loved seeing you, even if I don’t remember a lot of what we talked about (see previous bullet point).
• The first couple of days back to work were rough.  I had to wear sweat pants because I still had some dressing on my wounds around my belt area.  It was also rough because I wasn’t up to full strength yet (still not).  I work at a wonderful place.  Everyone has been so great.
• My birthday was one of the fondest I have ever had.  Not because there was anything special per se, but more because the random texts, facebook postings and phone calls just lifted me up all day even though I was still feeling peaked from surgery.
• I am really, really enjoying Mumford & Sons.  Check them out if you haven’t already.  Incredible band.
• Getting ready for exams.  Looking forward to some time at home with the family.  Last year we started a new ‘tradition’ of putting Sophie to bed in her PJs and then 15 minutes later loading her up in the car and driving to look at Christmas lights and ending up at Krispy Kreme with the red light on.  I’m looking forward to doing that with two kids this year.
• Taught Hamlet to my seniors and I think I have never enjoyed Shakespeare so much as this time.  I’ve read it countless times, but it is finally starting to grow on me.
• Taking in a big breath of helium and singing the Chipmunks’ “Christmas Time is Here” is a great way to entertain kids.  It works even better as a duet.
• I have the best wife in the world.

I think I have caught you up on our life for now.  I’ll try to post some pictures of the kids soon.  We had a great photo shoot with a former student who is a great photographer.  Here’s a preview.

Well, not much has changed since my last post. My surgery is still scheduled for the 19th. I have to say, I’m ready. The lower back pain is a little more frequent and a little more intense. I went in for some testing and everything looks like a go. The surgeon told me that he might not have to be as invasive as he thought. He’s going to have a robot “standing by”. I’m picturing some sort of droid like the ones that repaired Luke Skywalker’s hand.

The kids are doing great. They get along so well. We found a wonderful babysitter that both of them love. The really awesome thing is she’s a junior so she’ll be around for a while. Katie and I got to attend the Show Hope fundraiser dinner. From an adoption standpoint, the fact that we were able to leave Shepherd for that length of time and him be OK (there were frequent text check-ins) is amazing. The dinner was great. Ernie Johnson, announcer and son of former MLB pitcher was the keynote speaker and wow, what a story. If you’re looking for a place to give some year end dollars for a tax deduction, consider Show Hope. Both of our children are Show Hope kids.

That’s all for now. Keep praying for us. I’m sure I’ll have another update before surgery.

OK, I’ve put off letting a lot of people know about this, but I guess it’s time.  The next month or so will be pretty chaotic around here.  I’ll try to give you the short version.

Back in February I was having some “ideopathic discomfort”.  That’s medspeak for mystery pain.  After a month or so of monitoring it my doctor sent me in for an MRI to make sure it wasn’t gall bladder trouble.  The gall bladder was fine, but they found something else (don’t panic, it’s not that serious).

If you remember your high school anatomy, most people are born with two kidneys and a tube connected to each one.  I was born with two tubes on each kidney.  It’s called a dual collecting system.  It’s not that uncommon, but most of the time it’s caught in childhood and fixed.  I’m one of the ones that made it to adulthood.

So, one of the tubes is blocked, and that’s causing fluid to build up in the upper portion of my right kidney.  Again, back to high school biology, the kidney works because of concentration gradients.  If half my kidney is retaining fluid (it’s called a renal cyst and it’s not cancerous) then it hampers the kidney’s ability to do its job.  Think of trying to dry up a spill with a sponge and half the sponge is in a sealed container full of water.

They found this back in early May and the treatment is a partial nephrectomy, which is where they go in and cut out the part of the kidney that’s not working.  I put off having it done because afterwards I can’t lift anything heavy for about 6 weeks, and that was right before China where, as we know, one of my roles was pack mule.

Although it’s not dangerous at the moment, it is a bit uncomfortable.  The cyst is acting as a reservoir, which means it slowly fills up with fluid over a period of 7-10 days and then my side hurts for a day or so and I can do a pretty good Leslie Nielson impression (Naked Gun fans, you know what I mean) and then it starts all over.

So, on Monday, November 1, I have an appointment at Vanderbilt where I will have several consultations; including a visit to a lab I have called “Las Vegas” because what will happen there will stay there.  There are a couple of medical procedures I had hoped to never experience in my life and God, in his sense of humor has me lined up for one of them…twice.

Then, on November the 19, after a wonderful day of fasting and surgery prep (details omitted) I will show up at Vandy again, bright and early to have a laparoscopic partial nephrectomy.  I should be home sometime Saturday and will have Thanksgiving week to recuperate.

So, pray for us.  I’ll be out of commission for a few days.  Katie might need some help with stuff.  You can come visit.  I will love that, but I might not remember it.  The only other time I have had anesthesia resulted in a missing week of memory and a ton of phone numbers in my phone from old college friends.  I don’t remember how they got there, but Katie said I was calling everyone and being a “chatty Cathy”.

So, there ya go.  I’ll be sure to keep you updated.

Well, things are still progressing well.  Shepherd gets more and more comfortable each day and we learn how to ‘read’ him more and more too.  The last two days Katie and Sophie have been able to leave and go do something, while I stayed home with Shepherd.  He was not happy at all, but Katie recorded some videos for him on my iPhone just before they left.  When he would get too sad I’d ask him if he wanted to see the video and he’d watch, stop crying, blow the phone a kiss and then go back to sitting.  That’s most of what he did when she was gone, was sit.  The first time he sat on his toy car in the driveway and stared off in the direction Katie and Sophie drove off in.  Every once in a while he would point and motion for me to push him to go after them.  Sad and sweet at the same time.

Today was a bit easier.  Katie made a great point yesterday.  He faced his biggest fear: mom leaving.  She left, and she came back.  He sat in his little rocking chair the whole time she was gone, but I did get some smiles and laughs out of him today.  He has a wonderful sense of humor.

This afternoon we went to a large festival at Centennial Park celebrating diversity.  There were booths from all different countries and there were thousands of people there.  We got to see some traditional Chinese dance and walked around a bit.  We definitely want to go back next year and spend more time.

Looking forward to tomorrow.  Family pictures!

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Friday night was not a good night for Shepherd.  We are picking our battles in regards to when to be firm.  For three years all he has known to do was whine and make noise until someone took care of him.  It’s hard to train him how to use his words and it is also hard to tell when he legitimately needs something (his needs can be as simple as a hug) or when he is playing us to get his way.  That’s why you choose your battles.  You have to be sure you aren’t aggravating a need, but teaching that he is not in charge.  Last night was one of those nights.

It involved crying on just about all our parts.  Shepherd getting so upset that he threw up, and all of us being a bit frazzled by the time the kids fell asleep.  This morning, everyone woke up a little more cheerful.  It’s amazing what sleep can do for your attitude.  Sophie, however has still been having struggles with being mean to her brother.  It’s very normal sibling rivalry and resentment.  This morning I had to send her to her bed.

As we were talking, I knew the typical lecture wouldn’t cut it, so we talked.  With a trembling voice Sophie said, “I tried sharing my room with Shepherd, but he cries a lot and it makes me anxious.  I just want a place to be by myself sometimes.”  Pretty astute for a 5 year old.

I get it.  I do.  I need my downtime as well.  It’s how I recharge.  We had already decided to head out to an adoption yard sale being held by some friends of friends, and Katie and I talked about it on the way.  The yard saling was a success.  Sophie scored her first aquarium paid for with tooth fairy money, and we found some other things for the kids.  On the way home we decided that Sophie was right.  She’d had her own room since she came to live with us.  She’d been incredible about sharing, but it was taking a toll on her.

And so it began.  The reason this poem has been on my mind all day.  For those of you tight on space who have ever tried to rearrange know that while verbally you can say, “OK, we’ll put his bed in the playroom and divide up the toys.  Bring one of the dressers in here and rearrange some clothes”, in reality what happens is something like a re-enactment of the old song, “There’s a Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza.”

The only room that we haven’t moved something around in is the kitchen, and that’s because it’s gridlocked.  It was referred to as ‘holding area C’ for a large part of the day.  Stuff was moved, shuffled, rearranged, and functions of various pieces of furniture were reappropriated.

We’re not done, but I think the big stuff is in it’s new place.  Sophie and Shepherd both went to bed pretty easy, which may mean he was wanting some space, too.  Now come the fun lessons, like which toys are community property and which ones come under the squatter’s rights.  I can’t wait for the easy stuff, like intimidating potential suitors by cleaning my guns when they come over.  This toddler stuff is hard.

Well, we’ve been home about two weeks now and everyone is settling in quite nicely.  Shepherd has gone from screaming in fear any time one of our cats walked into the room to chasing them around the house and snatching out a clump of fur if he catches one (he’s gotten a couple of time outs for that).   I can now play with him outside while Mom stays in and cleans house, and in an unprecedented move he stayed in the car with me and Sophie while Katie went into the grocery store for a moment (there were bubbles…bubbles that smelled like Fruit Loops, that’s all I’m saying).  He still hasn’t gone anywhere with just me, but that will come.

The boy can work a whine.  We learned he was the youngest in his foster home and you can tell!  I have never seen a child grin and whine at the same time, but Shepherd can do it, especially when he wants to get his sister in trouble.

Sophie is doing very well in school.  We went over to a classmate’s house today for a Labor Day lunch and met some of the other parents.  Sophie is a little grumpy early in the morning, but she has good days at school and has made some friends.

We are slowly unpacking and getting stuff down from the attic that we had put up for ‘unnamed child #2′.  Shepherd is exploring his world and Sophie is a great big sister.  It’s quite funny and sweet to listen in on their conversations once the lights are out and it’s bedtime.  Sophie was teaching him his ABC’s last night.  She calls him ‘Comper’, which she insists is the name of the fox from “The Fox & the Hound” despite our efforts to set her straight.  The last thing we heard last night from their room was ‘Happy Dreams, Comper.”

To give you some perspective from adoption world, it is not unheard of (and some would say common) for Shepherd to be having night terrors, not sleeping unless Katie were on an air mattress in his room, and basically needing constant 24/7 attention.  The fact that he will go to bed on his own and fall asleep with a typical 3-year old whining is incredible.

His English is slowly getting better than my Cantonese, which is laughable.  The travel phrasebooks don’t translate the really necessary phrases you need like, “the cat won’t hurt you”, “stop whining”, or “quit trying to take your shirt off as I am trying to put it on.” the latter, he thinks, is a grand game we play in America just after bath time.

Sure there are things to be done and there will continue to be.  I ran into Dr. Livingstone mowing the back yard yesterday, he made a wrong turn at Albequerque, and my fish tank could be, at this moment, spawning the star of the next Saturday afternoon TV movie where they sell you storm windows during the commercials, but that will come in time.  We are enjoying the new normal, even if we don’t quite know what that is yet.