Why do I do this to myself?

I am part of a fantasy football league with a handful of people from various parts of the world. We all work for the same company so it can be fun to have a little rivalry amongst us. In addition to that, I have begun hosting Tuesday Morning Football, where, due to the time zones between here and the US, between 7 and roughly 10 am on Tuesdays we get together and watch the Monday Night Football game live. It is intended to be a bonding experience for us boys as we sit and watch the game and eat breakfast together, etc.

This week I have begun asking myself whether this is such a good idea or not. You see, I am *somewhat* competitive and if I or my opponents have players from our fantasy league playing in the Monday Night game, it is hard for me to be calm, cool and collected about it. As they do well, my stress level decreases, but when those players are not doing well, I get amped up like nobody’s business.

This week was a perfect example. My chosen QB was coming back after a 4 week injury-induced break, and was expected to do mostly well. Better than my other QBs in fact, which is why I chose him. One of my benched QBs scored an amazing 36 points this weekend, equaling a franchise record of 5 TDs thrown in one game, so I knew my chosen guy had better do well so I did not regret choosing him. In the first roughly 2 minutes he had thrown and interception and the opposing team had scored a touchdown shortly thereafter. Not a good way to begin.

It did not get any better before half time. He had thrown three interceptions and fumbled once, resulting in a negative 7 points. The real clincher was that I had a 3 point lead going into that game, and had he done nothing at all I would have won. Now, he was losing my matchup for me. Aaargh!!

The second half got much better when he threw 3 TDs and racked up some more yardage, giving me in the end a respectable 15 points to the positive and ensuring my win in my matchup.

But why do I torment myself this way? Maybe the best thing is to simply let the games go on and only check the scores later. That way my blood pressure need not go up for 3 hours at a time, and I don’t get so amped up about it. But that would not be nearly as much fun, would it? So I guess the key is to find a way to enjoy the game and the fellowship with the guys, but not take the fantasy part so seriously. Yeah, right. Like that is going to work. Good thing the season is only so long. My struggle will be over in a few weeks, and life will go back to normal.

Christmas comes early

Christmas has come early this year to our house. My mother-in-law arrived for her annual Thanksgiving trip to visit us, and with her comes a load of goodies for us all. New clothes for the kids, fun treats for us all to eat, and usually a couple of things for my wife and I.

This year I had asked her to bring some attachments for my wife’s recently acquired KitchenAid mixer. We will now be slicing, shredding and grinding things in addition to mixing things.

And I will be happily listening to music and watching various kinds of entertainment on my new 80 GB video i-pod. Wow!! I could have only wished for this, and yet somehow here it is in my hot little hands. I have been hesitant to tell my wife what I have read about how mine is advanced over her measly old 60 GB video i-pod. :)

God is good to us, and so are our family and friends who continue to spoil us with the desires of our hearts and so much more. We are blessed indeed.

Discomforting words

“When we fall, Jesus picks us up. He’s busy.”

These are the first words of Chapter 22 in Scot McKnight’s book The Jesus Creed.

For whatever reason these words struck me as I read them last night. While the first sentence is comforting, I find the second one particularly discomforting. Why is it that after all these years (decades, centuries, millennia) of church history and even our own personal faith in Christ and his transformative work in our lives, we still have not figured out how to ‘fall down’ less often?

Children learning to walk generally learn quite quickly not to fall so often, and in a short period of time become reasonably good at not falling down. The animal kingdom teaches us that those who fall down a lot are easily overtaken by their predators, so in their case it is truly a life and death situation. So why can we not seem to learn to not fall down as often in our spiritual lives?

Of course the argument could easily be made that God’s mercy and grace would not be as evident in our lives if we fell down less. But Scripture is clear that that is no reason to fall down more!

One could also argue that since the falling down part is a result of our fallen nature there is little we can do about it. We are just simply people who fall down a lot. That is taking the easy way out I think. It is not my fault that I fall down? That does not mean I should not strive to fall down less.

I also think one option that we need to at least consider is the price we pay for falling down as well as the reward we get for not falling down so often. A child who falls on his face learns quickly that that hurts, and can be very embarrassing. They also learn that parents are so amazingly happy and proud of the child when the child learns to walk. Perhaps we are not ‘embarrassed’ or ‘ashamed’ (I am not talking about in front of or by others as much as I am talking about within ourselves) enough any more when we fall down. Or maybe we have lost the joy of pleasing our Heavenly Father when we don’t fall down as much. Or maybe we don’t even remember that He cares or is watching.

I know full well that my Father watches me in all I do, and wants me to fall down less. He is overjoyed when I am successful in that. So let me learn to keep striving to fall down less, to be adequately embarrassed or ashamed when I do, and learn to celebrate with my Father in my successes. And thanks, Jesus, for picking me up whenever I fall.

Body parts

While having a tickle fight with my daughter the other day she made me laugh out loud, and got me to thinking.

I was tickling her legs, especially the inside of her thighs and her hamstrings. She was laughing loudly, and when she had had enough she playfully said “Daddy!! Stop!. Stop tickling my knee-arm-pits!”

“Your what? I asked.”

“My knee-arm-pits. This part, in the back of my knee.”

What is that part in the back of your knee called? I always just called it the back of my knee. Knee-arm-pit is a new one on me. But should it not be called a knee-pit, following the lead of the ‘arm-pit’ protocol? And while we are at it, shouldn’t the inside of your elbow be the arm-pit since it is truly in the middle of your arm and the inside of your shoulder (what we now call an arm-pit) be a shoulder-pit? So you have a shoulder-pit, an arm-pit, a knee-pit. Any other pits?

What about the belly button? Shouldn’t it be a belly-pit? It surely is a pit on some, especially us ‘full-figured boys’.

Are there other funny parts of our bodies that don’t have proper names? Or maybe they do and we just don’t know what they are.

Feel free to submit your suggestions for body parts with funny names or little known proper names for other parts. Please keep it family friendly!

Going to space

My son told me in the car the other day that he was learning about space in school recently. When asked what he was learning, he began sharing various facts that he was picking up. For example, when astronauts go into space they go in a space shuttle. Very good! And when their eyes are open they are on the earth, but when they are in space their eyes are closed. Not quite sure what that means, but good to know.

After a short silence he announced to me that someday he wants to go to space. The conversation went something like this:

Him: “Daddy, someday I also want to go into space.”
Me: “How would you get there?”
Him: “In a space shuttle, silly.”
Me: “And what would you do in space?”
Him: “I would go to Bluto.” (I was pretty sure he meant Pluto, since Bluto is a character on Popeye, and I don’t think he lives in space.)
Me: “Do you mean Pluto?”
Him: “No, daaaaaad! (in a ‘duh!’ kind of tone like everyone knows that is not right) I want to go to BLUE-TOE! (with emphasis).
Me: “And what would you do there?”
Him: “I would push the red button.”
Me: “And what would that do?”
Him: “It would make me go down of course.”
Me: “I see. And then what would you do?”
Him: “I would walk around Bluto for a while and see some people. Then I would come back up.”
Me: “How would you come back up?”
Him: “I would push the GREEEEN button. (again, in that ‘duh’ kind of tone like he just could not believe I did not know that)”
Me: “And then what would you do?”
Him: “I would push the blue button and come back to earth (pronounced by him as URT with no ‘th’ sound at the end, only a ‘t’ sound).”
Me: “Why is the button to make you come back to earth blue?”
Him: “Because most of the earth is made up of blue water!”

If only everything in life were as simple as pushing the right colored button to get done what we want or to go where we want. I suppose in the mind of a child it really is that simple. It is only us adults that seem to make it all so much harder than it needs to be.

Careful with my kid!

I had written earlier about my son riding home in the ‘van’ from school and how it made me realize how fast he is growing up. I had a slightly different response when I went to pick him up the other day.

We meet the van near the airport, alongside an overpass. Most of the time the van goes under the overpass about a block in front of where we park, into a neighborhood and pops out again from a side street right near where we park. This particular day, the van driver saw me sitting there and decided to drop Clark off first.

At first thought that seems to be a nice gesture. However, the practical application of that gesture meant the driver was taking my son the wrong way against one-way traffic, weaving in and out of pedestrians and dodging scooters and cars as well as buses coming headlong at him into the bus stop through which he was driving the wrong way. All this he was doing in what amounts to little more than a overgrown soup can on wheels that would be crushed beyond recognition were it to attempt or be involved in an altercation with one of the above mentioned buses, or pedestrians, cars or scooters for that matter.

Mind you, the drivers of these school vans have always exhibited total control over their vehicles, but never the less, it was all together disconcerting to see said van lunging and weaving toward me knowing my son was inside, likely oblivious to the fact that he was in fact cheating death with every passing second.

As the seconds ticked by, feeling like an eternity in and of themselves, I winced as other vehicles came near and then deftly reacted to the not so odd fact of a vehicle driving the wrong way down the street. You see, here, it is quite a common experience.

Had this event happened in most western countries the driver would have been the subject of the nightly news for killing himself and all of his charges in the process of this escapade. But here, he is simply normal. And my son, having arrived safely at our car, was not the wiser to the stress his father had endured in the previous 15 seconds.

Maybe the best thing when things like this happen is to simply close ones eyes. And Pray!