looking back - Graduation 2005

(First published, as very first post, on June 6, 2005)

Saturday was graduation day for our son. I was on my way to get one last table, a wheelchair for my dad, and a bunch of balloons. I started to cry as I was driving, which wasn’t surprising because I had been on the edge all week. He graduates, his sister finished 8th grade, lots of transition right now.

As always, I was wondering how much I had failed. After 18 years of trying, what more should I have done? How could I have been more effective as a father? What are the things that I should have taught him?

I turned on the radio and heard worship music, lyrics which were pointing to the power and worthiness and significance of God. It felt odd, somehow, in my mood, but as I drove, thinking, switching between the two Christian stations in our town, I realized that every song on the playlists for both stations was pointing to God.

Then I realized that even in the middle of my doubting of myself, God was assuring me that He was in control. He was and is and will be sufficient for our son–and us–for ever.

Do I have responsibilities? Yes. Do I have permission to be depressed? No. Can I question myself? Yes. Am I loved even in the middle of the questioning? Absolutely.

I think that I graduated on Saturday, too.

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“Looking Back” is an opportunity to republish posts which have mattered to me. They may matter to you, too.

Where I’ve been - 2007

I wanted to look back at 2007. I really did. But somehow, finding the time to look back has been challenging. There were lots of trees and leaves.

Robert

Enter Robert Hruzek. Robert does a monthly (or so) writing challenge asking for posts on the theme, “what I learned from…” The “from” varies each month, but the challenge of writing to a theme is a helpful thing. (I’ve written a couple times in this series).

His end of year challenge was, “What I learned from 2007″ and the project was to pick one post from each month of the year that represented some significance. I finally settled down to write that post, and Robert has it up here What I learned from 2007. (He did this as a blogapalooza which means that all of the posts are put up on his blog, Middle Zone Musings, with links back to here.

It was a great exercise, realizing how much I’ve written, how much I’ve learned, how much you have meant to me. So head over there and see whether you agree with my choices.

In the process of compiling that list, I realized that I’ve been writing in other places as well.

Liz

A couple times this year, Liz Strauss let me guest post on her blog. This has been a privilege and a challenge. One of the things that marks Liz’s blog is that she comments on every comment. Every one. In almost real time.

And Liz gets a lot of comments.

When you write for Liz, you want to keep the conversation going, which means a significant commitment for the day or two following. Having done that twice, I have a deep appreciation for the commitment Liz has for her community. In her blog she talks often about relationship. In her comments, she lives that commitment.

Thanks, Liz for letting me stop by on December 5 (Are you blogging for as many or as much?) and August 15 (Shaping the world in little ways.)

Joanna

Through Liz this year, I met Joanna Young. She lives in Edinburgh and writes well about writing well. I mean really well.

One of the things she did this year was to try having guest writers. She opened up her sitting room in September and invited three of us to take the lead in conversation about authentic writing. (Robert wrote one, and Emma Bird wrote the other. Growing out of that collaboration, Emma and Joanna are hosting a writing holiday in Italy.)

So thanks, Joanna for letting me stop by September 13 (Sometimes I write hollow.)

Next Wave

Next-wave.org is an online journal about church and culture. Thanks to editor Bob Hyatt, I was able to write twice for them, once on Twitter (June) and once on the advent blog I wrote (December).

Related Blogs

In addition to writing here at Levite and at these other places, I wrote at two other blogs I created (deliberate disciple and advent2007) at various times this year.

Looking ahead.

There are several projects bouncing in my head, particularly as I begin understanding how social media is going to interact in my new position at Grabill Missionary Church.

In the works already, and unrelated to GMC, is lent2008.wordpress.com. This blog will start running within a week or so. Eight of us are working together to write this, attempting in community to reflect on the lenten season. The challenge is that only some of us know each other face to face. Most of the relationship has developed on-line. We are very excited about the interaction already happening. You’ll enjoy it, too.

Thanks

I’m thinking that I generated a lot of words in 2007. Thanks to each of you who reads and comments, whether face to face or in the comment section or through email or through a twitter reference or other link. I am grateful for the community that stops by here. I’m grateful for you.

Suet pudding

When I joined the Kies family, I joined a tradition. Every Christmas, Nancy’s mom makes suet pudding.

I never had suet pudding, had never heard of it, and thought it sounded, well, awful. Suet was what you put in the bird feeder. Suet seemed in the same delightful family as lard. Suet pudding? The images were horrifying.

Rice pudding, on the other hand, that would have been great. That’s what my family had. At first, I didn’t like the rice part, but really liked the custard. However, eventually I discovered how much I liked the whole thing. (Except the almond, one almond, that always floats around in the pudding, like a prize).

Eventually, however, I tried suet pudding, along with the lemon sauce which was always nearby. It is wonderful, steamed, not far in taste from gingerbread. It’s great. I look forward to it.

This year, Mom made it, but sat at the back of the table. This meant that Nancy was the one cutting and serving. It was an adventure. It was the beginning of a transition. Mom said, “Someone needs to start learning how to do this from beginning to end.” I volunteered, though I won’t be the anointed one. Someone, however, will start to make the pudding.

As we hosted both my family and Nancy’s family this year, as the youngest of the grandchildren on one side is now 16, as the other side has two sixth-graders, as the oldest in each family is older than 75, I am very aware of the need to consider transitions. And traditions.

What is worth passing on? What is worth making the basis for gathering…and what is not?

We didn’t do a gift exchange on one side this year, and it brought great freedom. We didn’t all get together on one place on the other side, but were able to spend extended time with each of the family units, and it brought great fun. We didn’t travel at all, and it brought great relief.

Somehow this year, in the middle of all our family transitions, we had great times with families. Which made its own great tradition.

So, from now on, our new family tradition, worth passing on, is delight in each other. Somehow, unexpected, but great when it happens. I’m wanting to look for that and shop for that and plan for that and work for that. Delight.

Oh yeah. And suet and rice puddings.

Sweet.

Experience

While driving yesterday, I heard a conversation with Mary Frank. The question being discussed? “Where does experience go?”

It’s a question that has weighed on me since. Today was our last family day at First Missionary Church. Tomorrow I turn in my keys and phone and change my own passwords. On Friday, the lock was changed on my office. (Of course, I haven’t locked it at all in 7 years, and I wasn’t being locked out, but it makes a great image of change.)

So what does happen to experience? All of the conversations with people at the hospital right before surgery? The hugs right before or right after finding out about the death of a parent? The drama scripts written and rewritten? The struggles to figure out why the sound system isn’t sounding in the last 2 minutes before the service starts? The anxiety about whether we will figure out what is happening financially with our childcare? The conversations about finding jobs and careers and meaning?

Where does all of that experience go?

Sometimes it goes no where. It evaporates into thin air, leaving no trace on my memory. Sometimes it finds its way into my brain, suggesting that the next time I should say this differently, or provide that direction. Sometimes it finds its way into my heart, from whence it emerges at the least opportune time through a spot very near my eyes.

Sometimes, if we wait long enough, we find the experience emerging from our children, reflected in their choices and values. We hear that our experience, shaped and transformed, has been bouncing around in someone else’s life. We look back on work and find that in fact, it wasn’t bad at all.

We are not the same people that started attending FMC more than a decade ago. At that point, we never thought we’d stay this long. Somewhere in the middle, we never thought we’d leave. What was evident today, as we listened to our friends talk about what God has done in their lives and has allowed us to participate in, is that staying and leaving are not the point. Transforming and being transformed by people through relationship is what matters.

And this has been a wonderful experience.

Happy Christmas

It is.

In looking for a theme for decorating this year (sorry, I do that), I realized that this is the twenty-fifth year that Nancy and I have celebrated Christmas together, that we have given presents to each other.

We had gotten engaged in July of 1982 and then I started grad school in Texas (UT-Austin) in August. I came home for break in December. In January, right before I headed back to school, we picked up our wedding license. There was a waiting period in Illinois at that point. I was coming home on Spring break in March and so wouldn’t have enough time for the license. As it was, if the wedding had been delayed even a couple days, the license would have expired.

If I were good, I would remember what we bought for each other that year. I have no clue. What I do know is that shortly after I told Nancy this year what the theme was (I handle most of the Christmas decorating), she came home with this heart.

Of course I cried. I always do.

It’s an inexpensive heart. What makes it glow is that it has been purified by 25 years of refining. It has been polished by 25 years of conversation. It has been shaped by 25 years of forming. Its meaning lies not in the heart itself but in the relationship that it represents.

That’s true of mangers, too.

The whole significance of today is not in the most expensive gifts or the most beautiful music, or the best cards or the most accurate living nativity scene. The manger was part of an invitation,  not to a set of rules about not running in church (were you born in a barn?) but to a relationship with One who refines and polishes and forms not inexpensive materials but actual valuable hearts.

It is a happy Christmas.

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For more on Christmas see

Middle Zone Musings

The Daily Saint

Anna’s Attic 

I never knew.

Tonight we went to a basketball game. Nancy’s niece was playing (number 10). She goes to Calvin College in Michigan and is on the JV and they had a game with a school here in Fort Wayne. So we went to a basketball game.

We had never seen her play. She led her high school team to great seasons but we had never seen her play. She is amazing. She just lifts the ball from the hands of other players. She cuts off passes, she grabs rebounds, she hits for three. She is the smallest player on her team and has the greatest impact on making plays happen. And we had never seen her play.

We live at a distance from our two families and we are pretty committed on Sundays. We have two kids who have been involved in sports and music and church. We are, like everyone, busy. As a result, however, there are dancers and singers and laughers and thinkers and athletes and people who share our bloodlines that we hardly know.

Next week is Thanksgiving. It’s one of those family holidays which we look forward to with dread and desire. We like to see some of these people, we are afraid of the conversations with others. We are far more comfortable talking in the circles we have formed with neighbors or coworkers or online friends than with these relatives we see only occasionally.

Here’s what happens. Leah is great on the court. It’s a comfortable context. She shines making plays. But at these holidays, she is one of the little kids, sitting at the little table. We pull everyone out of their contexts, the places that they shine, and we put them on chairs by folding tables and we want there to be instant Hallmark card warmth. And then it surprises us that something isn’t right.

Here’s what we need to do. Remember that everyone has a context outside the family. Look for it. Call it out. Find out the cool thing they love and then ask them to talk about it. Study it ahead of time. Make the same effort to talk to family that you do to a job interviewer. Bring your social networking skills to your Aunt Mabel. Make cousin Xerxes a research project.

Don’t do it for your mother. Don’t do it because they are family and that’s how family ought to be.

Do it because they actually are people.

Great game Leah. I’ll try to pay attention more. And Madeline, dance well. What are you this year? And Natalie, we’ll get the magazine order in. Thanks for asking. And we’ll figure out Christmas better this year than the books last time. Collin? Love your smile.

These are the people I never knew. And they are real, amazing people. Who knew?

On the road

path

Originally uploaded by jon.swanson

We spent the morning working on the garden this morning. More accurately, I helped a little and Nancy spent the morning working on the garden. We dug out violas and wild strawberries and some daisies and grass that had taken over the upper section of the perennial garden. Nancy was wanting to move some stones stepping stones to new places. She was planting and transplanting. We added some bags of soil.

While we were looking at the paths, I asked if there could be an additional stepping stone to the far side. I need a place to step when crossing the bed to be able to use the grass trimmer along the back of the bed. When she asked about arrangement, I said that I just needed a path and that she is the one that understands the design.
We took a break, did some shopping, and Nancy went back to work and I started reading. (This division of labor was a gift from her to me).

After she was done and everything was put away, I went looking with the camera. When I looked at the paths that Nancy had created, I discovered that this brick path was extended to exactly where I need to go. It is weathered, aesthetic, and very functional.

I’m thinking these days a lot about paths, about next steps, about how to get from where I am to where I need to be. I wonder exactly where God is taking us and how He is arranging the bricks. Sometimes it seems that what I need to do, what I am called to do, what I am obliged to do, is on the other side of the flower bed and I can’t get there without stepping on something, without doing damage. But after today, I’m thinking that if I acknowledge to God that I know what I’m supposed to do and then leave the arrangements to Him, maybe, just maybe when I look at the path, the next set of bricks will be in place.

So here’s to letting go of the bricklaying sometimes. Here’s to not being in the spiritual roadbuilding business and staying in the path following business.

scary generations

We were driving home tonight, Nancy and I, from a graduation party in Michigan. It was for Nancy’s niece, Leah. We had a nice time.

As we drove back, much later at night than we are usually out, I wanted to let Andrew know where we were. So I texted “Angola”, as we were approaching Angola, Indiana, about 45 minutes from home.

His one word reply? “Zaire”.

Then, when we got home, we found out that Andrew had walked into the house and told Hope that we wouldn’t be home for two week as we were going on safari.

You know, it is really scary when you find out that your children are growing up to be like you.

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2 hour video stories - episode 2

My goal is to do the whole project in only two hours. This time, we tied in driving practice as well.

Enjoy.

Things do not make my heart feel loved.

Nancy and I were walking at the mall on Valentine’s day morning. Most things in the city were closed because of a snow storm the previous day, but we could get out and couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to have little traffic on the walking track which is Glenbrook Mall.

As we walked past the hallmark store, I looked in and saw a sign which talked about “making her heart feel loved”. I said I should get something and she said, “Not a stuffed animal.” And then she said, “Things don’t make my heart feel loved.”

What a wonderful gift she gave me with that statement. I knew it from observation, but she had never stated it that clearly. And we talked about how husbands and wives need to actually tell each other what warms their heart. At Valentine’s Day, our culture will give us all kinds of ideas about how to treat your sweetheart. In truth, maybe most wives don’t like chocolate or long-stem roses or jewelry or going out to dinner. Every one of those things costs money and so there is an industry with a vested interest in having us believe that those are the ways to express love, even if the price increases our debt load.

Maybe, just maybe, what is really wanted is conversation. or affection. or a cleaned up common space. or for once not arguing. or a made bed or a meal prepared together. or…..

But we will never know unless we are each willing to say, “Do you know how to tell me love me? By doing, saying, buying, not buying, helping….”

Give someone special the gift of describing your heart.

technorati tags:love, communication, relationship

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