Long walk, same talk

Amber and I took a walk yesterday around the island.  After catching up on the books we were reading, how her sinuses were doing, and touching base on a couple of parenting things, we starting talking about more “big picture” stuff…the next 18 months and possible travel plans…the possibility of future schooling for me…our relationships with various family members…the status of our will…and a few other items.  At some point, Amber commented that she felt like we always have this conversation when we are away, and wondered aloud if we ever made progress or just rehashed the same things…

Maybe simply talking about – even rehashing – these things IS progress?  Doing so keeps big things – relationships, dreams, legacies, etc. – in the forefront…

I confess I probably get caught up in the immediacy of “urgent” things and the daily grind of normal life as much as the next person.  But I also have regular life practices in place – like vacations to an island, or more regular blogging – to make sure I don’t stay enslaved to the immediate.  These practices ensure help create time and space to step out of the urgency of the every day and reflect on where our lives are going and what they will ultimately mean…

So how do you do this?  How do you pause, reflect, and remind yourself of the big picture?

Daddy Doubts

I spent most of the day with my boys today.  We went to the soccer field this morning; Gabe played while Michael and I watched (and wrestled, and kicked the ball, and met several dogs, and went to the potty twice).  The three of us then went to the mall to pick up some sandals, swim shirts, and sunglasses for our trip to the Bahamas manana.  We grabbed a pizza lunch, then went to see “Gnomeo & Juliet” at the theater.  Good times…

We got home, and Gabe immediately got to work packing his suitcase…and Michael immediately got to work annoying Gabe.  After what was a terrific day out and about, it took about 5 minutes at home for things to digress into the boys pushing each others’ buttons and then hitting each other.  I quickly got frustrated, raised my voice a couple of times, separated them, and then got caught up in a control struggle with my youngest.  By the time Amber walked in 30 minutes later, Gabe was agitated, Michael was weepy…and I was wondering what had happened to our great day…

I know I’m a good dad, and I know that I am a good provider and caretaker and role model for my boys.  But I also know that I lose my patience, raise my voice, and get frustrated far more often than I would like….

I know I love my boys, and I know they know I love them.  But I also know that I struggle at times to appreciate each for his own unique personality.  They have different spirits and different hearts that need to be nurtured; but I feel like I’m often more concerned with herding them or controlling them rather than understanding them and shaping them…

I know that I would never intentionally harm my boys.  Yet, I wonder at times what hurt I may cause with an insensitive word or an impatient response…

Lord, help me – more fully and more faithfully – be the dad you want me to be…

Halloween at our house…

The boys in our family went to the library yesterday.  Bored with the art festival Amber was enjoying, we walked next door to return our overdue books and check out some more.  The boys gave their books to the guy behind the counter and hurried over to the kid’s section.  Gabe quickly picked out two titles…”Vampires” and “Monsters.”   Both were on display prominently along with many other horror and creature-themed children’s books.  I told him no.  After a brief protest, he picked out something from the Goosebumps series and a “Choose-your-own-adventure.”  We then played a game of checkers, helped Michael pick out a couple of titles, and returned to the festival to find mommy.  We wanted to get home and watch the Gator game…

Later that evening, we spent some time as a family carving a pumpkin.  Actually, after about 15 minutes of slimy pulp and biting bugs, others moved on while Daddy finished up.  Then after dinner, Amber took the boys to a party hosted by the family of Gabe’s best little friend at school.  Gabe was a pirate…Michael was spiderman…and Amber even put on a cape and a batman mask.  This afternoon, we will all go to a family fun event at church with games and prizes and sweets.  No scary costumes allowed, by the way.  And then after a few visits to homes in our neighborhood, we will spend the rest of the evening being friendly with whoever happens to ring the bell in hopes of some candy…

Should Christians “celebrate” Halloween?  My experience has been that a lot of Christians (and even those who are not) have strong opinions on this question.  A simple google search provides a wealth of information on the the origins and development of the holiday, so I won’t summarize that here.  It’s interesting reading though if you want to check it out…

For me personally, I am not as bothered and don’t feel as strongly as some others do.  Families and churches with strong objections to Halloween…and who oppose any semblance of observance…are of course entitled to feel that way.  I sincerely appreciate their conviction…

My hope is that the are equally vigilant the other 364 days of the year…

I’m not going to take my stand on getting dressed up with his classmates at school and indulging in sweets and having some family fun getting messy with a pumpkin.  I actually appreciate the chance Halloween offers to interact with people in my neighborhood who I rarely interact with otherwise.  Instead, I’m going to say no to vampire-themed, “non-age-appropriate” books at the library…

In addition to glorifying violence and evil in general terms, our culture does have a fascination with darkness and the occult.  TV shows and countless movies and books – often aimed at young people – attempt to make witchcraft and “creatures of the night” and other such things seem mainstream, edgy, and cool….or even fun, romantic, and life-giving.  Examples of this fascination abound: the Twilight Series, True Blood on HBO, the “Saw” movie series and countless other horror films, etc., etc.  And in my experience, many Christians – including parents – are not particularly discerning in how they consume or allow themselves to be exposed to much of what the culture offers.   The saturation of violence in video games and other media….kids who are Gabe’s age and younger seeing movies like The Dark Knight…Christian young adults among the throngs rushing to movie theaters to see gory horror flicks or downloading the latest hip-hop lyrics denigrating women…and the list goes on and on…

It seems to me that the real danger lies not in an annual costume-wearing event and consuming lots of candy from strangers; rather, it is how desensitized we become to violence, sado-masochism, exploitation of and brutality against women, mystical figures of evil seeming harmless, and any number of other things when we continually consume these images and values and let them seep into our consciousness and the minds of our young people…

My boys are going to learn that evil is real, that there are people and other things in the world that will hurt them if they are not careful, that they need to be discerning about what they read and see and think about.  We will talk someday about the occult and the dangers that lie there.  When they are older, we will have conversations about real monsters and real demons and real ways that evil hurts people in the world…including our oftentimes un-reflective commitments to injustice and militarism and violence and materialism.  And they won’t learn this stuff from unsupervised consuming of the media and our culture and what these have to offer…they will learn it from me as a Christian parent who is committed to preparing them to live in this world.

In the meantime, spiderman costumes and candy and meeting our neighbors will be OK.  But vampire books will not.  And while Gabe can dress up as Captain Jack from Pirates of the Carribean…I’m still not going to let him see that movie until he’s older…

Great, Great Week

This past week was a wonderful week.  Nana arrived Sunday morning from Gainesville, allowing Amber and I to board a plane to North Carolina on Sunday afternoon.  We spent Monday and Tuesday at a Pastor’s conference which included some great speakers and challenging thoughts to wrestle with for life and ministry.  Then we drove out to the mountains for a couple of days of relaxation.  We stayed at a very nice Bed & Breakfast, drove the Blue Ridge Parkway, and remembered briefly what it was like to live in a place that had seasons.  The leaves were stunning, the weather was gorgeous, and the people were friendly.  We slept in every morning and ate out every night. We took a long walk around a lake and a short hike up a mountain.  We talked about life – our time and time off, our upcoming holiday plans, our marriage, our boys, our ministries, our friends, our fun, our future.   We confessed our need to have more fun as a family, be more intentional in making and keeping friends, and find ways to rest and have more balance in our daily lives.  We checked on each other’s souls, and simply enjoyed each other’s company.  It was a great, great week.  Here are a few pics…

Enjoying rest and good food and no responsibilities…

Enjoying God’s beauty and artistry in creation….

Enjoying the woman I am blessed to share life with….

Enjoying the time we have, while we have it to enjoy…

Putting the “Fun” in “DysFUNctional”…

I’ve been in Texas this weekend for my cousin’s wedding, which I had the privilege to officiate.  It was a beautiful wedding…outdoors on a hillside next to White Rock Lake on an uncharacteristically cool September night….everyone looked great and was appropriately nervous and weepy and sentimental…the food at the reception was fantastic…and maybe most importantly, there was no drama, no unexpected interruptions or awkwardness, nothing that people will talk about later and say, “wow, I was at this wedding once, and….”  There were a few moments of slight weirdness – always a possibility when you have a multigenerational gathering of people who know each other really well and then throw in some alcohol, a handful of strangers and a DJ.  But all in all, it was a very nice affair…

One of the funnier comments I heard over the weekend came Thursday night at the rehearsal dinner.  My cousin (sister of the groom and a bridesmaid) brought a date to the festivities.  A few of us were standing around talking with him, laughing about some family story that had just been told.  She rolled her eyes, laughed and said, “Yeah, our family definitely puts the fun in dysfunctional”…

I had never heard that expression, but I loved it.  And I had to agree with her…

Our family has lots of fun together.  Whether it’s intense games of Risk or “O Hell” or Bananagrams, Medieval Times birthday party feasting, talking trash when Texas plays Texas A & M, playing putt-putt or going bowling, looking through old scrapbooks, visits to the zoo, tasty potluck dinners whenever there is a reason, or dancing in a family circle at the wedding reception on Saturday (to “Baby Got Back”…yeah, a little weird)….my family can have lots of fun and lots of laughs…

We have our share of dysfunction too.  Painful divorces and battles with addictions, interpersonal drama and unhealthy dynamics, skeletons in various closets, unresolved hurts and unspoken expectations, histories that everyone knows but nobody talks about, etc., etc.  And our family certainly has some colorful characters…and colorful stories involving those characters…

And does this dysfunction bother me?  Sometimes.  Were there seasons in the past that were painful?  Sure.  But am I a better father, wiser pastor, stronger person, and more faithful follower of Jesus because of my family and all that we’ve been through – the good, the bad, and the ugly? Absolutely…

Most of us don’t choose our family…they are given to us.  We don’t choose our parents, and our grandparents and aunts/uncles and cousins come with them.  We rarely have any say with our siblings either.  And while we do choose our spouse, we don’t choose the people that he/she brings and makes up the other half of the room at the wedding reception…

And so families become fertile ground for learning how to be faithful, because family usually aren’t going anywhere.  They keep showing up at weddings, funerals, graduations, birthdays, and lots of other times in between.  There are ties there beyond choice or preference that keep our lives interwoven.  So we have to learn how to love…how to forgive…how to talk things out…how to confess and take responsibility…how to have compassion and mercy…how to rebuild trust….how to see someone for who they are and for what they have done and still claim them and call them our own.  Because someone will always have a wedding, or someone else will need a funeral, and so the family will gather together again…

Being able to have fun helps, I think.  It’s much easier to offer support to one another during difficult times after laughing hysterically at each other’s expense.  We are often more ready to bailout relatives in financial straits if we have regularly enjoyed meals and games around their kitchen tables.  Trips together to lakehouses and beaches prepare us for trips through darker valleys and more desperate times.  Forgiveness is much easier to give when there are goofy pictures and funny stories that prove there is a history of something besides hurt and pain…

So I’m thankful for the fun times, few and far between as they might be living across the country from most of my family.  They are good reminders that – for better and worse – we belong to each other…

I’m sure most families have dysfunction.  I hope all families have fun…

Excuses

I took my boys to the public library in our neighborhood yesterday.  It was our first time to the library since we moved to Miami-Dade, so I went to the desk to ask about getting a library card.  The woman behind the counter handed me a form to fill out, which I did, and then I stood there at the desk while she entered the data into the computer…

As she was entering, she asked, “Isn’t your wife the new pastor down at the Methodist church?”  I’ll admit I was surprised; the woman didn’t look familiar to me, and I had no idea where or how she might have seen me and put that together.  But of course I said yes, to which she replied that she used to go to that church and knew several nice people there.  She listed the people…I agreed they were nice…and then I asked, “So where do you go to church now?”  She paused for a second before answering, and then she said this: “Well, I sometimes go to the church across the street here…but I don’t go to church in the summer; it’s just too hot to get up and dressed and out the door”…

Don’t go to church in the summer because it’s too hot to get up and get dressed…?!?!?! I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or try and hold a mirror up to what she had just said; I opted to politely bring the conversation to a close and start looking at books with the boys.  But I’m thinking to myself, “Yeah, you think this is hot lady…you just wait…”

I’ve been a pastor long enough to have heard lots of excuses about why a particular person or family doesn’t go to church or only occasionally goes to worship.  And I’m not unsympathetic to some reasons people give.  I’ve had Sunday mornings as a parent when the kids are tired and sick and we are battling and it would be much simpler to just stay at home in front of a movie or go across the street to a park.  And I know there are some churches and worship services that are not worth getting out of bed for…been to a few of those myself.

But what is both funny and irritating to me is how many people simply offer an excuse without seeing any reason to provide an explanation for why God or a community of faith is simply not important to them.

Being a person of faith is a choice we make; practicing our faith through becoming part of a worshiping community and participating in intentional ways in certain habits of the faith – studying holy scripture, prayer, etc. – these are all things we either choose to pursue or choose not to pursue.  And things that “get in the way” of practicing our faith…well, we make choices about those things too…

So saying, “My son really wants to play sports and the only time the league close to our house is offered is Sunday mornings, so we can’t go to church”…that’s an excuse.  I wish people would simply say, “Well, being part of a faith community is really not that important to our family, and we are teaching our son by choosing to go to soccer instead of worship that it really doesn’t need to be part of his life either.”  That would be an explanation…

Many people offer the excuse that they can’t really find a church that meets their needs or is the right “feel” for them.  Well, I guess that would be an explanation…if worship was about us and what we wanted.  But making the effort to publicly declare praise to God alongside other people in our community is not about us…it’s about God and about giving God the praise God deserves.  So that turns out to be just another excuse…

So let me try and offer an explanation, not an excuse.  People choose to skip worship and stay away from communities of faith because they do not know the God who created them and are not living in relationship with Him.  So instead, people make choices about their time based on what will most please….themselves.  And so when people are too tired or too busy or too interested in the beach or too committed to family birthday parties or too involved in little league or too passionate about fishing or too exhausted from dancing the evening before..or too hot in the summertime to get dressed and leave the house….don’t make these excuses; just explain, “God is not that important to me and I’m just not interested in being part of a community of people trying to follow Him.”  A simple, and honest, explanation…

Faith is a community activity, and so we need a community of others with whom to practice and share our faith.  There are far too many people who claim to be people of faith who really have no interest in pursuing Him and choosing to make God the center of their personal and family lives.  If the churches in our community are awful, then we can find another church or start one in our living room.   But we  shouldn’t make excuses.  We should just go to the beach or go to the soccer game or just stay in bed.  After all, God loves us anyway, and God can be present in all of those places too.  But when we choose this way, we shouldn’t expect God to make excuses for us…to excuse our choice to ignore Him and believe our way and our needs are more interesting and significant than His ways and His desires…

10 year anniversary

So today is our 10 year wedding anniversary…and we are supposed to be in Venice, Italy.  Let me explain.  Amber and I celebrated our first anniversary at a beautiful Bed & Breakfast nestled in the Italian countryside near Perugia.  We were in the middle of an 8 day trip through Italy with friends – a couple of days in Florence, a few days in Rome, etc.  It was a fantastic trip with lots of great memories.  But the way the itinerary worked out, we only got to spend a few hours one afternoon in Venice.  So we talked about making a return trip to Venice at 10 years as a way to celebrate…

Ah, the naivete of youth.  Two kids, jobs, school, and many other responsibilities later…and we will be celebrating our anniversary tonight at a local restaurant with Uncle Marc watching the boys at home.  Maybe we will find a nice Italian place to try…

There’s a temptation to read the above two paragraphs and feel disappointment.  It might sound a bit like all of the (poor) stereotypes and generalizations movies often make about how boring or unromantic or whatever married life is in comparison to being single, or the laments people often make about not being able to do anything or have any fun since we had kids…

But it would be a mistake to read it that way.  I love my life and love being married.  10 years in, marriage is better than I would have dared hope, and I love my wife more than I did the day I married her.  I love my boys and have tons of fun being a dad.  Sure, there are challenges and stresses and more difficult seasons; every life and every marriage have some of that.   But I am blessed, and I am thankful…

As 27 year old newlyweds without kids, we didn’t really anticipate what a European vacation for just the two of us 9 years down the road might involve logistically, financially, etc.  But there is so much more we couldn’t have anticipated either.  The joy and wonder of becoming parents and loving and shaping our boys…the personal growth and depth that comes with sharing a life with someone and putting their needs before your own…the spiritual growth of learning what it means to mutually submit to one another and how that deepens our understanding of Jesus’ own humility and His compassion for us…the romance of waking up each day next to the person who has said before God and everyone that she will be faithful and love you and you alone…

Venice can wait.  Maybe we’ll try for a trip at our 20 year anniversary, and maybe we’ll take the boys with us.  In the meantime, I will continue to tell my wife every day I love her and honor and serve and respect her like I promised…

Motherhood

There is so much to say that I’m not sure where to begin.  I guess I’ll start with a couple of memories of my mothers…

One of my earliest memories of my Mom is her scooping me up off the floor, rushing me into the bathroom, and laying me down in the tub as it quickly began to fill up with blood.  I had just tried a flip off the fireplace and hit my head on the brick on the way down.  Anyway, I remember her voice and face trying to reassure me while (I’m sure) she was in a panic…

One of my earliest memories of my stepmother was a showdown at the dinner table.  She served a spinach souffle casserole for dinner.  I wasn’t interested.  She insisted I was going to eat it.  I insisted I was not.  She said I wasn’t leaving the table until I had eaten it.  I proceeded to drink some milk, take a bite of the casserole, and then pretend to vomit in my plate.  It gets fuzzy after that, but I’m sure it didn’t end well for me…

Cracked heads and spinach casserole.  Blood and vomit, panic and picking battles.  Motherhood…

I had the pleasure of spending time today with a brand new mom.  Our families had a picnic dinner in the park and then the adults visited while my boys played on the playground.  Tomorrow is her first mother’s day, and she is still glowing 2 months after giving birth.  What a wonderful thing to see her little boy’s eyes look for his mommy’s voice…to see his cries comforted by his mommy’s embrace…and the joy and light and happiness of a new mom excited for the newness of each glimpse, each expression, each coo, each moment of each day…

A deep sense of joy at bringing life into the world, caring and loving and nurturing a child who is so dependent, so attached, so innocent…and so completely yours.  Motherhood….

I have found many more reasons to love my wife Amber in the last seven years that she has been a mother.  She always has amazing insights into the uniqueness of each of our boys and creatively suggests how we can become better parents.  She anticipates needs with such wonderful clarity and so often cares for her boys (all three of us) in ways that we never really notice.  She continually displays a fierce loyalty in coming to their defense, a shrewd wisdom for teaching and shaping their morals and spiritual compass, a compassion and warmth in healing their hurts and mending their hearts, an endless encouragement that builds their confidence and esteem, and a vivid and beautiful imagination in telling them stories of knights and princesses and their futures filled with adventure and love.  And she has enthusiastically embraced life with boys in all of its adrenaline and aggression and wrestling and dirt and scouting and football and bodily noises and smells (though I think she could live without the noises and smells, and I think she wouldn’t mind borrowing someone’s daughter occasionally for a tea party or ballet class)…

Encourager.  Teacher.  Healer.  Dreamer.  Defender.  Provider.  Motherhood…

I’ve known mothers who didn’t deserve their children; and I’ve helped mothers bury children they didn’t deserve to lose.  Someone close to me was taken from her biological mother at 6 months old (and later adopted by another family) after the “mother” tried to sell her for drugs.  Several other women I know have struggled with infertility and suffered through miscarriages.  I’ve stood alongside mothers as they wept…powerless and in anguish…as the lives of their children spiraled out of control due to poor choices and terrible circumstances.  I’ve also stood alongside mothers as they wept…proud and awed…as the lives of their children have blossomed into accomplishment and happiness.   And there are countless stories to share of women who have taken on the mantle of motherhood for those who are not “their own” through mentoring, friendship, professional teaching, social work, extended families, Sunday school teachers, etc., etc., etc….

A gift.  A choice.  A responsibility.  A privilege.  A risk.  A reward.  Motherhood…

Jesus had a mother.  She carried him as an unmarried teenage girl, undoubtedly scorned by her community.  Early in John’s gospel, Jesus’ first miracle – turning water into wine to help out a wedding host – was done seemingly at the request of Jesus’ mother.  At his crucifixion, his mother is there with a handful of others; and in one of his final breaths, Jesus asks a close friend to look after her…

Unwavering commitment to her child.  Powerful influence on her child.  Staying until the end with her child.  Motherhood…

So let’s all give thanks for mothers and for those women who have mothered us…

Daddy Time

Besides being Holy Week, it’s also spring break for Miami-Dade Public schools, which means Gabe and Michael are home and Amber and I are working.  So we’ve been shuffling them back and forth (with the assistance of one of my babysitting students).  This morning was my turn.  After a family trip to one of those places where you paint your own pottery (grammy is coming this weekend and we all made a present), I took the boys while Amber went to make a visit and run some more errands…

So we stopped by the house, picked up some juice boxes and a soda, ran by Little Caesar’s for a $5 pizza, and went down to Black Point Marina and Biscayne National Park.  It was a gorgeous day, and we all wanted to be outside for a picnic (I guess a pizza can count as a picnic).  We parked, found a bench near the water, and ate our lunch watching a few boats idle in and out of the marina.  After we finished, we walked down the path the entire length of the point, a pretty good hike for the little guys.   We stopped on all the little bridges to look for manatees and fish; we only found lizards, bottles, and graffiti (hey, it’s Miami).  We also saw some birds nesting, rocks sticking out of the water, several more boats, a handful of fishermen (and foul fish stench to go with them), and a number of very interesting mud puddles.  At the end of the point, we spent a few minutes having a rock throwing contest and enjoying the view of the ocean stretching out on both sides.  Then we made the long trek back to the car with only a little bit of whining about how tired they were…

Good times with my boys.  I’m always grateful for days like today.  We didn’t talk about anything profound or important – lizards and rocks mostly.  It was just time together, and it was good.

It was especially good after listening to a father talk about his son yesterday at a memorial service.  His son’s life cut tragically short; times with his son over long before they should have been…

So I am especially grateful for my boys today,  and grateful for my time with them.  May God bless and watch over them, surround and protect them, grow them into young men of courage and compassion.  And thank you God for beautiful weather, $5 pizzas, lizards and mud puddles, and an ocean to throw rocks into…

My Birthday…Wife’s Outing

Yesterday was my birthday, and to celebrate, I wanted to go on a date with my wife!  I arranged a week in advance for one of my students to babysit for the evening; so after opening cards and presents and eating cupcakes with the boys, Amber and I headed to Homestead for a night out….

On the way to dinner, Amber mentions she wants to stop by Kohl’s to pick up a few things for the church bathrooms before Sunday (they were just renovated and needed some decorative refurbishment).  OK sure, that’s fine.  So we had a good dinner at Chili’s courtesy of a gift card we had been saving.  I made a point to sit where I couldn’t see any of the TVs showing the NCAA tourney games I was missing so I could zero in on Amber and enjoy our time alone.  After dinner, we swing by the movie theater, but there is nothing showing we both want to see.  So we head over to Kohl’s…

We get to Kohl’s and begin looking at items.  A song about being in love with your best friend comes on, and we smile and smooch a little in the store [my students are laughing and thinking TMI as they read that].  She asks my opinion about items for the men’s room and I give it.  We make our way to the check out, pay for the items, and head to the car…

It turns out that in the same shopping center as the Kohl’s, there is a Michael’s.  So Amber wants to take a quick look in there.  We go in.  She begins to look for more bathroom decor…then frames for the boy’s rooms…then moves on to Easter decorations.  The Pointer Sisters are playing, and Amber sings and dances a little and shares a story about the song from her childhood.  At some point, I begin to wander aimlessly up and down the aisles, pretending to be browsing.  Oh, look…animated classics for children. I wonder if Gabe is ready to start reading The Mutiny on the Bounty?  Wow, that’s a huge picture frame; it must hold 30 4×6 photos…where could we put that? Then I start to people watch.  Hmmm…that older couple is dressed a little different; they both have accents and he has a beard.  I bet they are part of the Anabaptist group that runs Knaus Berry Farm…

After awhile, I go back and find Amber still looking at things.  She mentions again all that she needs to do to the house before my mother comes in a couple of weeks, and how wonderful it is to be able to look for things without the boys distracting her and running around.  I smile and make a comment about how being at Michael’s on my birthday with her is so much nicer than watching March Madness.  She says, “aww honey, I’m sorry…let’s go right now.”  So we head to the checkout [stopping for a few minutes on the way to find masculine Easter baskets for the boys].  At the checkout, she presents a tax exempt certificate and inquires about opening a church account.  My eyes are glazing at this point.  A Harry Connick Jr. song comes on that I sang in college; I share the story, and by the end of the story…we are still waiting.  Several minutes later…after a trip to the back to make a copy of the form and a conversation with a store manager…we are (finally) back in the car and headed home.

So is that how I had envisioned my evening out with my wife?  Not exactly.  But that’s OK.  No really, it is.  Truth be told, being with her anywhere is much better for me and my soul than watching basketball on TV.  And my willingness to let her use some of that time away from the boys to help accomplish things she needs to do – in other words, helping her check some things off and thus reduce some stress – is good and wise on my part as a husband.  Marriages are filled with outings like this one – time together just trying to get things done.  Marriage is also filled with lots of small compromises, lots of give and take, lots of “if my spouse is happy, then I will be happy” kind of moments.  I can promise you that sharing life with a happy wife is much more important for getting older than sports on TV…

Besides, I still got home in time to watch my Longhorns lose to Wake Forest on a last second shot.  Happy Birthday…