Bad Dream Or A Call To Action

I awakened early this morning thinking of several friends who are not in a good place emotionally. Some are either dealing with serious health issues or consumed with the health issues of loved ones. Others can’t jar loose from a sense that the economy and fiscal solvency are on the fast track to disaster. Some are in the midst of overwhelming grief and can’t seem to get a step ahead of the pain. Others who seemingly wear a distant-rough facade carry scars from childhood and broken familial ties that accusingly still weigh heavily on their sense of self-esteem.

I suspect most of us have friends that fall into that category. At times, I have also uncomfortably been a part of that group. Emotional pain is something not easily ignored. I’ve been there, and perhaps the experience heightens my empathy and understanding of where people find themselves.

So what can I do or what can you do to make the circumstances of those we interact with more civil, tolerable, and hopeful. Shouldn’t a desire to demonstrate compassion be a priority for us. It seemingly falls in the pathway of sharing God’s love.

During my childhood, I repeatedly had bad dreams where I was inside a yellow school bus that ran off a cliff. Fortunately, I always awakened before the bus crashed, but I also found the dream was unsettling. It seemed strange to me that I would dream of being on a school bus because I’d never ridden one. I walked to school – You know the typical ten miles uphill both ways (aka 3 blocks on a flat surface).

Years later, I did some research about the symbolism of being inside a falling bus. There are many theories. For example: “Falling off a cliff in a bus dream is a harbinger for lost security, comfort and companionship.”

As a kid, I had absolutely no interest or skill in playing baseball, football or basketball. Obviously, something had to be wrong with me. I didn’t fit in.

I thought about the yellow falling bus dreams this morning because after I drifted off to sleep in the early hours of the morning after thinking of friends in hard places, I had another dream that involved a school bus.

This time, the bus didn’t go off a cliff, and I was the person driving the bus. My interpretation is that I have a personal responsibility to offer words of encouragment and hope to folks in the midst of emotional difficulty.

All My Best!

Don

Asylum Seekers

Out of necessity, I’ve shifted my morning routine. Instead of heading toward my computer as the first order of business, I head out the front door. I’ve discovered that if I don’t walk early, I don’t walk.

Consequently, when it is light enough outside to walk, I’m out the door. This morning as I walked, I thought about two brothers I read about once that went to the county fair. One brother tired before the other and wanted to go home. The other brother insisted that he wait long enough for him to ride the merry-go-round one more time.

When he got off the merry-go-round, the brother wanting to go home said: “You spent all you had; you got off where you got on, and you have’t been anywhere.

My daily walk is much like that. I walk on the sidewalk around the housing development where we live. The distance falls short of being a mile in circumference.

I generally walk for at least an hour and a half. By time time that I’m done, I’ve been around the neighborhood more times than I can remember. I do track the distance and I always walk at least five miles. The longest sidwalk excursion that I’ve taken was 11.6 miles.

I enjoy my walk morenwhen I run across someone with whom to talk. Seldom does one of my conversations take more than 3 or 4 minutes, but it provides me a personal contact and a sense of connection.

If I don’t walk in the cool of the morning, I discover that I don’t walk. It is too Texas hot to do otherwise.

This morning’s news of the migrants contained in a tractor trailer found in San Antonio hurt my heart. At least fifty of the hundred people hoping for a better life in the United States were dead when the door was opened.

A friend recently suggested that I watch the movie Stateless. Netflix bills “Stateless” this way: “Four strangers — a woman on the run, a brave refugee, a driven bureaucrat and a struggling dad — intersect at an Australian immigration detention center.”

“This six-part Australian TV show is set within an immigration detention centre, where several stories converge; an Afghani father and his family fleeing the Taliban, a local man taking a job as a security guard to support his family, and – at the centre of the story – a white Australian woman who has ended up in detention after a catalogue of errors.”

If you opt to watch the Netfix series, “Stateless” will heighten your level of empathy regarding asylum seekers and the harrowing events that fill their days and nights.

It is not a feel-good movie, but it realistically chronicles the lives of many who are at the mercy of a broken system.

All My Best!
Don

The Content Of The Story Is Disturbing

When I tire of HGTV, I turn to Netflix to fill the gap. A documentary entitled “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey” caught my attention yesterday afternoon. Please don’t mistake my intent for sharing. I’m not recommending the series as a “must-see” experience. In fact, you’re probably better served not to see the documentary.

The details of the documentary are based on the true-life experiences of families caught up in a religious cult that took from them the freedom of choice. Often, it also stole from their daughters a normalized childhood where they were victimized by sexual abuse.

Of course, it was all couched under the auspices of blessing. Warren Jeffs, the prophet, or head of the church since 2002, made all the decisions regarding the congregation who lived on the property. The FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) group practiced polygamy and decisions regarding marriage were solely made at the discretion of the prophet. Jeffs taught that to get to heaven, a man must have at least three wives. In addition, he taught that the more wives a man has, the closer to heaven he is. Excuse me, heaven is not the destination I suspect that kind of living situation most closely resembled.

Attempting to avoid the scrutiny of state officials and laws regarding statutory rape, Jeff moved the FLDS group from Utah to Arizona and subsequently to Texas. It goes without saying, that the FLDS group was subsequently responsible for bringing national attention to Eldorado, Texas.

Law enforcement and Children’s Protective Services forcibly raided the compound and removed 468 children from the families living there. Several children’s homes across the state accommodated the state’s need for placement. In so doing, they ensured that children would be placed in a cottage only caring for children from the Yearning from Zion Ranch. There were a number of other requirements, but when the State reached out to the children’s home where I worked prior to the raid, we didn’t have an empty cottage that could be dedicated solely to that population of children.

I had several friends who made arrangements to serve those children, and they expeditiously worked to meet an immediate need. Less than two months later, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that children’s protective services had been wrong to raid the compound in April and remove 468 children. Reportedly, the State could not substantiate that the children were in immediate danger.

Warren Jeffs, the prophet and leader was convicted of sex crimes concerning children. His youngest wife was only 12 years old. She was the youngest of four children that he married. He is currently serving a lifetime prison sentence.

All My Best!
Don

A Blending Of The Old And New

To everything, there is a season. Solomon wrote there is no new thing under the sun. He may be right but I can truthfully say we’ve never done it this way before. The home we are building is an attempt to hang on to the traditional and incorporate modern in the scheme of things. If we fail, it will be a mistake. Somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that a blending of the old and the new can work.

Our last home had a lot of glass. This one will have even more. In terms of style, we’d probably describe the architecture as a modern farmhouse. Sixty percent of the house will be rock, the remainder will be board and batten with large windows on both the north and south side. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Those ends of the house don’t have windows.

I’ve always heard that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. That doesn’t represent a problem for me. However, the lack of available space to hang artwork does pose a problem. Seriously, if you choose to accentuate the view, you limit space to hang artwork.

The view from the back of the house is the golf course with a panoramic glimpse of hills in the background. That is most evident in the second-floor living area.

The entry foyer to the house from the front porch is double doors with windows on each side. As I said, we are building a glass house.

On Thursday we went to San Antonio to look at door designs. We’ve never had a steel front door before but in keeping with our commitment to having a home filled with light, the steel wraps around four large panes of glass on each door.

So we must be certifiably crazy. We are having steel doors made and filling the steel door with four large panes of glass. I guess you could say it is both durable and breakable.

There is absolutely nothing traditional about the design of the doors. Yet instead of stepping inside to marble floors or polished concrete, we are going with wooden floors throughout the home. How’s that for blending the traditional with the new?

To balance the warmth of wooden floors with the new, we are opting for white walls. We’ve never had white walls before for any appreciable length of time. They may have been painted white when we purchased the home, but as quickly as we could, we repainted the rooms one at a time.

This time there is no plan to alter
the white. In fact, the color the General chose is Sherwin Williams Pure White.

If my daughter was selecting the cabinets, she’d opt for white. I’m sorry, this is our last home. I can’t bend that far. The cabinet selection offers an opportunity to incorporate traditional with new. We are going with stained rustic hickory cabinets.

My daughter has convinced us that less is more. Everything we own has been in storage for the past eight or nine months. Consequently, we have determined that everything in storage isn’t coming back inside our home.

My daughter’s posture is, that if you’ve lived without it this long, you don’t need it anyway. Just start over and move on. There seems to be a method to her madness.

We may be delusional, but the General and I are on the same page with this and we have high hopes. The home will be a blending of the old and the new.

All My Best!
Don

Go Down To The Potter’s House

When the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday, I momentarily entertained the thought that I might opt out of going to the last half-day of the workshop. After all, Monday and Tuesday had been full days, and I already had much on which to reflect. Seriously, did I really need to be in attendance on Wednesday?

Whenever I have a dialogue like that with myself, if an outsider could read my mind, it would be easy to discdern that I either grew up Baptist or Catholic. Guilt represents a ton of baggage when I make a decision other than the one I think I am supposed to make.

I needed to be present because my registration for the workshop was an indication I would be in attendance. It would be rude for me to be a no-show on the last day.

I countered that thought with the reality that I’d only be missing half a day if I didn’t go. The round trip commute would represent at least two hours of car time. That would require at least $30 of fuel. I don’t think of myself as cheap, but I try to be frugal.

Am I the only person who goes through that kind of crazy-making thought process in deciding to go or stay? Eventually, the thought that I needed to be present won out, and I made the early morning commute to Round Rock.

All of the conference was exceptional. Yet, for my interest and reflection, the last day proved to be the best. You don’t have to know me well to know that I’m not athletic. As a kid growing up, I couldn’t walk and dribble a basketball. As a nine-year-old, I didn’t make the First State Bank Little League team. Consequently, I’ve been mostly avoiding baseball ever since. I wasn’t fast enough or big enough to play football.

As kid, my hobbies included putting plastic model cars together. I also did a lot of arts and crafts stuff. When I saw that the last speaker was doing a pottery-making demonstration and sharing her testimony, it was something that garnered my interest.

The potter is a lady named Rachel Norris. When it comes to making pottery, I suspect she is at the top of the leaderboard. She shared with us that being a potter is hard work. Yet she made it look easy. I found it fascinating.

In almost no time, she took a lump of clay and using a potter’s wheel, fashioned it into a pitcher from which to pour liquid. She added a handle and spout to the pitcher. She even stood and held up the pitcher for all to see.

Almost before I could comprehend her words: “I’m not nearly done with this clay. I can’t do another new thing until I let go of the old,” she tossed the pitcher back on the potter’s wheel and it was once again a lump of clay.

In short order, she made at least four different kinds of bowls for us to see. In the process, she referenced a Scripture from Isaiah: “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” [Isaiah 64:8]

Just as a potter must have a vision for what is being made, God has a vision for each of our lives. It is the potter’s job to have the vision and know what he wants to do.

Pottery is refined by fire. Rachel mentioned for the clay to be durable and withstand the test of time, it would be fired at over 2,000 degrees and subsequently over 5,000 degrees. I couldn’t wrap my head around that intensity of heat. I don’t know that I’ve ever cooked anything in an oven that required more 350 to 500 degrees. Rachel was clear that it is the fire that makes the clay useful.

Rachel was born in Hong Kong and grew up the child of American missionaries. Her story is not mine to share, but I will tell you that as she recounted her story it tugged at my heart strings. More than once, my eyes were moist with tears as I processed the level of pain she endured.

No doubt for all of us, there are lessons to be learned. Jeremiah writes: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.”

All My Best!
Don

All Is Good In My World

I spent three days this week on one of the campuses where I previously worked. Texas Baptist Children’s Home hosted the summer workshop for the Association of Christian Child Care Administrators. Those in attendance also included staff members whose primary responsibility is direct care of children.

Having an opportunity to spend time with people with whom I previously worked and the opportunity of reconnecting with people from other children’s homes was a privilege I enjoyed immensely.

The commute from Dripping Springs to Round Rock came as a big surprise. Prior to my retirement five years ago, for at least a three-year period, it took me two and a half hours to get home from work due to traffic congestion. This week, the commute ranged from one hour to an hour and fifteen minutes.

I found the lack of traffic puzzling, but school is out, and I surmise that many state employees are still working from home. Yesterday morning, as I was driving, I entertained the thought that I probably would not have retired had the commute still been that manageable. The decision to step away from a place of work that I truly enjoyed was not an easy decision to make.

With that thought came the realization that Texas Baptist Children’s Home is in a better place today than they were when I was working there. They have made program adjustments, added a host of counseling and support services to people in the community and continue to integrate best practice in their program design.

The landscape of providing care for children has changed since I was involved in serving children from hard places. The adjustments TBCH has made were in keeping with a sign of the times.
I am pleased with all the children’s home has accomplished under new leadership. Surprisingly, I didn’t fantasize going back to work in that setting.

The open door that took me elsewhere five years ago continues to be a passion I enjoy. Providing leadership for a professional organization of children’s homes and residential schools has proven to be a good fit for me. It keeps me tied to the lifelong work that has been a source of enjoyment and offers other opportunities I would never have imagined on a national level. All is good in my world.

All the Best!
​
Don

The Older I Get, The More I Find I Want To Be Just Like Dad

My dad was part of that generation who saved the world. Tom Brokaw defined it in his book as the “Greatest Generation” – that WWII generation where values, duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and above all, responsibility for oneself, defined one’s approach to life. That all set the precedent for who dad was and the values and courage he represented.

This is a picture of my Dad wearing his army uniform. I don’t remember him looking like this. He looks very young. He almost looks like a kid.

One of the things I often noticed when the General and I went to visit Craig and his family when they were stationed at Camp Lejeune is how young the recruits who came for basic training looked. More often than not they could have been mistaken for high school students.

Dad really looked youthful as a newly enlisted soldier. Following the war, Dad opted to keep three mementos. They included a German helmet, a 1933 Standard Dress Dagger he took from a German who was being transported after being taken captive. The soldier was taking the knife out of his boot when Dad noticed him. He also kept a U.S. Army-issued overcoat. To my knowledge, Dad never wore the overcoat after his discharge from the army, but he also never opted to part with it.

At my insistence, my brother Larry took the overcoat after Dad was no longer on this side of eternity. As an older brother, I charged him with the responsibility to keep it for the remainder of his days since dad found it worthy of keeping. It was a selfish thing on my part for me to do. We didn’t have the extra storage space to integrate it into our stuff. I stay in trouble with the General as it is because I’m reluctant to part with things that are too good to throw away but not good enough to keep. I feared Dad’s overcoat would fall into that category.

Larry, reluctantly but amicably agreed to take the coat. I didn’t want the responsibility of keeping the coat for the rest of my days, but at the same time, I thought we honored Dad by keeping it.

Karoni, dad’s oldest granddaughter, has the German helmet and Craig, his oldest grandson, has the German dagger.

Craig is the reason I know the year and description of the dagger. He took it to an expert to learn about it and have it refurbished. It is a keepsake of Dad’s that he will treasure for the rest of his days.

I think of Dad often. It is hard to believe the fifteen anniversary of his homegoing was last week. He died on June 10, 2007. I remember the day as though it was yesterday. I felt privileged to be with him when his time on earth was no more.

During my growing up years, Dad provided for our family, but he wanted more for me and my brothers than he had experienced for himself. He saw education as the key to a better future.

I don’t know how he did it, but at one time there were three of us in college all at the same time. It made Dad feel good to provide for us with the college degree he never had for himself.

From a vocational perspective, I never wanted to be just like dad, but that may have been through his urging. As I said, he sacrificed to ensure our opportunities would be beyond his own.

It is a startling realization to know that dad was only eight years older than me when he went to be with the Lord. Now that I am approaching the closing chapters of my life, I find that what I want most is to be just like Dad.

My Dad represented strength and sacrificial commitment I have never known. The last fourteen months of his life were filled with one physical difficulty after another, but the overriding passion of his life had little relationship to himself. His primary goal was to take care of my Mother. He simply lived with a reliance on God that somehow the need would be met.

Dad refused to give up, retreat to bitterness, or fall prey to depression. He had the sense that God was with him every step of the way during the last chapters of his life, and he was a testimony to how faith can make a difference.

If I could attain the stamina and perseverance I saw in my Dad, I’d think of myself as finishing the course in the best possible way. It was a faith walk for Dad, and he never wavered. I can think of no more victorious way to cross the finish line to an eternal new beginning. I want to be just like Dad.

All the Best!

Don

The Ups & Downs Of Building A Home

This week has reinforced for us the belief that we are in the process of having a home built. We bought two lots on the golf course in Blanco before we put our previous home on the market back in September.

The General was not willing to leave anything to chance. She wanted to know for certain where we were going before she’d seriously consider selling and starting over.

Would you believe those decisioins were made nine-to-ten months ago? We moved into temporary housing eight months ago. It is a comfortable place to live and I’ve enjoyed having people in the neighborhood.

It took six months from the time we bought the two lots before they had been replatted into one lot, and we got a thumbs up to start building.

Honestly, I was half a step in front of depression for a period of that time. The realization that nothing was happening day after day, week after week and month after month weighed heavily on me.

The same was undoubtedly true of the General. Being in a holding pattern where nothing is happening requires patience. Sometimes it was self-evident that we aren’t by nature, patient people.

Over the past nine days, we’ve seen tremendous progress on the concrete slab that was our six weeks ago. It is almost as if we are leaving nothing to chance, and we do a reality check every evening to ascertain that something is happening on the job site.

I can logically ascertain that due-diligence and the price of gasoline would negate the need for us to do a drive-by every evening. While I recognzie that is true, I still want to see for myself.

This week, I’ve been up and I’ve been down. Monday was a very exciting day for us because the framing crew of about 12 men made incredible progress. I could hardly sleep that night anticipating what the next day would bring.

For the life of me, I didn’t expect the disappointment of discovering that nothing happened on Tuesday. Tuesday evening, we found the job site exactly as we left it on Monday.

Fortunately, the past three days have yielded surprises related to how much lumber goes into buidling a home. The adrelenine rush we’ve both discovered from carefully walking through the jobsite lures us back to the job site the next evening.

I had trouble sleeping last night because I couldn’t remember if we had firmly settled on the color of the metal roof with the builder. I thought we had, but did we?

Truth be told, we are weeks away from the metal roof being installed.
I didn’t have to forfeit sleep last night thinking about it.

Despite the obstacles that can get one sidetracked, we are both very excited about what will prove to be our new home.

All the Best!
Don

Where Is God When It Hurts?

The headlines in the news left a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. The man of prominence is entitled to his opinion, and I am entitled to mine.  I suspect there are many things we might agree or disagree on, but I could not disagree more with his alleged suggestion that the death of nineteen third and fourth grade students in Uvalde was part of God’s plan.

There are two forces at work in our world, and it is my belief that God is not the author of the indiscriminate killing of children.  Across the years, I’ve heard many people of faith attempt to share a word of comfort with a grieving family by saying: “We don’t understand it, but this is God’s will.”

For all of my days, I will never forget the experience of holding the lifeless body of a four year old in my arms as the family handed her out of their car to me as I stood in the driveway outside the emergency room where I worked.

The four year old had ingested rat poison. The poison was stored under the kitchen sink in her grandparent’s home.

To his credit, the family’s pastor quickly made his way to the hospital in the very early morning hours once he received a distressed phone call from the family. I heard his counsel to the family as they gathered in the small waiting room.  

With seemingly a sense of genuine compassion, the pastor said: “We may not understand this, but this is God’s will.”

When I hear God credited with the death of a four year old who ingested rat poison, or the death of a twelve year old in a car accident, or the death of two classrooms filled with third and fourth graders, I want to cry out: “No, No, No, that is not what God is like!”

How could a loving God being credited with the most horrendous and despicable of circumstance?  Those assertions hurt my heart. From my limited understanding of God, that is not the nature of God.

I believe there is a decided difference between God’s perfect will and His permissive will. We live in a broken world, and much of what happens is outside God’s perfect will.

I like the way that Rick Warren expresses it: “Circumstances cannot change the character of God. God’s grace is still in full force; he is still for you.”

“In Jesus’ day the Jews had a popular saying, ‘Where Messiah is, there is no misery.’ There are many in our day that continue to promulgate that myth. Isn’t that one of the premises of the ‘health, wealth and prosperity’ approach?

“I am more included to think, “Where misery is, there is Messiah.”

Jesus saw the crowd through eyes of compassion and sought to come alongside folks at the point of need. Jesus said:  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. [Matthew 11:28-30]

I read somewhere that sermons are best prepared with the Bible in one hand and today’s newspaper in the other. Our walk with the Lord has a very real relationship with other variables in our life.

There is a wonderful promise in the book of Isaiah. “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. [Isaiah 40:31]

The good news of the Gospel is that God does not abandon us when life becomes difficult. He offers to sustain us and support us even when life is broken by grief.

All My Best!

Don

Life Goes By Quickly

As the General and I drove to a restaurant in Austin last night, we talked about how quickly the years have evaporated. We didn’t specifically use the term evaporated, but that was the topic of our conversation.

How could we possibly have been married for 54 years? The General said that she doesn’t even think of herself as being 54-years old, much less married for that long.

And for the record, I don’t think she was being delusional or in the beginning phases of memory loss. I may look three days older than dirt, but I don’t think of myself as old either.

Following our wedding, there was no limousine to drive us from the church to the reception or to the airport for a departing flight.

We were married in the “punch and cake era” and a fancy meal for the wedding party and guests was not on the radar screen. That wasn’t an expectation related to getting married.

The wedding reception took place at the church. There was no father/daughter dance or frivilous party that followed. Actually, there was no dancing period.

That is not to say that the reception wasn’t memorable. It was, but by today’s standards and expectations, it would pale in contrast.

When the cake was cut, we respectfully placed a small piece of cake in each other’s mouth. I can assure you that smearing cake on the face of the person you just pledged to spend a lifetime with would have been the equivalent of a criminal offense.

As we were getting ready to leave the church, I noticed that my Volkswagon Beetle had been lifted up in the back, and a watermelon was under both rear tires.

We had no flight to catch, but we did get on the road. The honeymoon destination was Six Flags Over Texas. I know you’re thinking, who in their right mind goes to an amusement park for their honeymoon?

Okay, so we were not in our right mind. She was nineteen years old and I was twenty-one. That was way too young to be married, but we didn’t know that and somehow we made it work.

The General learned at Six Flags that I was not a man she could trust. I convinced her that she would love the rollercoaster. I was wrong.

The General cried through the entire experience. She was terrified. I felt awful! Consequently, at least I had the presence of mind not to suggest that we ride it again.

We’ve seen a lot of change since June 15, 1968. That being said, we are still the same people. In the process of growing older, we learned the lessons of love, respect and civility.

We have never lived in a war zone. I can’t imagine being miserably married. I can imagine short intervals where it is a stretch to be loving.

It is true, the years have gone by quickly. Scripture tells us: ” You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

As grown up adults, we did eventually make it to Niagara Falls. I’m certain we enjoyed it more than we would have on our honeymoon.

All the Best!

Don