Santa and the Separation of Church and State

First, I want to say that I love my kids' school. I love their teachers. They are wonderful and these thoughts are not a criticism of them at all. I am not mad. I feel no need to complain about anything they have said or done. It's all good.

However, the whole Santa issue has made me come to the realization that the separation of church and state is a really good idea.

We live in a small school district where holidays are still celebrated. I like that. I think it's kind of weird not to acknowledge what most kids are experiencing in their lives. Roy came home from school with a Kwanza candle holder he had made (I'm sure there's a name for it...displaying my ignorance.) and I'm really good with that. I want my kids to know about what goes on in the world outside their tiny bubble. I'm not mad that there wasn't also a unit about Jesus' birth. My kids already know about that. Teaching them is my job.

What I think is strange is that teachers are so pro-Santa as if everyone teaches their kids that Santa is reality. I mean, I get why teachers don't spoil the fun for the ones that do. I'm not saying that teachers should out the parents and the whole charade, but to be totally Santa-focussed is almost a form of religious-persecution for the poor kids who have been told the truth that Santa is make-believe.

I mean, it would be one thing if they presented the religion of Santa as a belief as they would any other belief system...i.e. Christians believe such and such, Jews believe thus and thus, Hindus believe whatever, Santa followers believe that a big fat man in a red suit is the one who brings your presents on Christmas etc., but they don't present it that way at all. Instead, the teachers have kids write letters to Santa. Teachers say things like, "I hope Santa isn't watching you right now." (Fact, although I will never reveal where I heard this.) They give out Santa gifts. It's all Santa for the month of December.

This has turned one of my kids into an anti-Santa evangelist. We are not anti-Santa, but we have taught our kids that Santa is a myth and something parents play with their kids at Christmas time. We have told them it's not their job to tell kids that their parents are wrong. However, I kind of feel that the constant barrage of Santa propaganda probably made my scrappy son feel backed into a corner where he felt the need to fight his way out.

Today, one of his friends tattled on him to me. "Sarah, he doesn't believe in Santa." As if to say, "Can you believe that? Tell him he is wrong!" I wanted to defend my son but I also didn't want to ruin the whole game for him and his family so I said, "Do you think you can still be friends even though you don't believe the same things?" He said he thought they could.

When an entire group of adults goes to such great lengths to convince my child of something that no one believes to be actually true, it makes me glad that teachers are not allowed to try to convince my child of a belief system that they do actually believe to be true. I mean, I think that people get all bent out of shape about the separation of church and state because they assume that everyone is a Christian and that their kids' teachers would be teaching them Christian principles. But what if my kid's teacher is an atheist? We live in a country where hiring decisions are not based on religion so this is entirely possible. Do I want my child, in a public school, to be taught that there is no God? I really don't. So I think the same can be true of a parent who is an atheist in regard to Christian beliefs.

Frankly, I feel that my kids' spiritual education is my job. Actually, all of their education is my job, however, I am totally OK with getting lots of help from the amazing educators in our public school system. I don't expect them to do it for me. Take reading, for example. I do my job by reading to my kids for hours and hours, introducing new vocabulary, exposing them to tons of books and listening to them read. The mechanics of reading and all those tricky grammar rules, they have learned from teachers. How about math? They pretty much taught themselves by playing and watching sports, but all the rote practice is enforced by teachers. I'm pretty sure that my kids' teachers do not have to love Jesus in order to be awesome at helping my kid learn to read and do math.

When it comes to enlisting help with our kids' spiritual education, we found people who love Jesus. We have a great church community with other families we trust and our kids know. They have Sunday School teachers and pastors and other adults who encourage them in their budding faith. But I don't expect these people to do my job.

In Deuteronomy 5, God gives the people the 10 commandments. Then in chapter 6, Moses tells them that these commandments are to be upon their hearts and that they are to impress them on their children (or teach them diligently to their children). He goes on to say, "Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." Basically, teaching our kids about God is supposed to be an all the time thing that happens in families. God didn't say, "Send them to school so they can learn about me." No, he tells us to do it.

I'm really not bent out of shape about Santa at school. And no, I did not tell my son that he is facing religious persecution because of his unbelief...that's just me being melodramatic. But it did give me some small peek into the life of someone who might hold a different view than the majority and an appreciation for letting parents be the teachers.

Book Review--Where the Pink Houses Are

If you are looking for a reason not to do any housework, go ahead and start this book. If you have too much work to do, wait until you have a day off. You will not be able to put it down!

If you have a Kindle you can download it today. If you have a Nook, you can still download it today through WestbowPress.com as a pdf.

Brenna is a tragic character being both an orphan and young widow. Following her former mother-in-law to Ireland promises to be a needed escape and change of scenery in an otherwise lonely existence. Besides, her mother-in-law is the only one Brenna has left. Where Anna goes, Brenna goes.

The last thing on her mind is love, but apparently her beauty is irresistible and the local lads are drawn to her charm. A short term vacation turns into an extended stay and Brenna learns to forge friendships and navigate a painful new relationship that is wrought with drama.

Brenna's budding faith is growing, but so is the emotional turbulence that leads to a life-changing decision akin to watching a train wreck. This is my favorite kind of story, however. There's plenty of real-life mess with a hefty dose of redemption. It might seem too good to be true, but if you don't want a happy ending, you can watch the evening news.

In full disclosure, this book was recommended to me by the author, Rebekah Ruth, who was going to be a friend of mine in Buffalo had we not moved to Omaha, but through the wonderful invention of Facebook is a cyber friend whom I can observe, admire and support from afar.

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Pink-Houses-Are-ebook/dp/B006K8XPYO/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323748143&sr=1

Confessions of an Email Hoarder

Wow. It's so obvious now, but why it has taken me so long to reach this conclusion is a mystery. I've already confessed my natural tendency toward hoarding so it's not all that surprising actually, but I really thought that I had licked it pretty good. No one would walk into my domicile and accuse me of hoarding. I do a pretty good job of getting rid of stuff so it doesn't overtake the few bits of space that we need for wrestling matches.

But today, I was called out by a complete stranger for email hoarding.

When Yahoo switched to unlimited data storage it was the best and worst thing that could have happened to me. On the one hand, it's awesome that you don't have to delete large documents, photos, etc. to make sure that your emails don't get bounced. Remember those days? Someone would send a few pictures and you'd be done for. Don't even try to go away for a week without clearing the Inbox...you'd might as well have fallen off the face of the earth to anyone trying to reach you.

On the other hand, I completely gave up the discipline of deleting emails. Other than the obvious ones that I don't even open--special offers I'm not interested in, lists I joined and haven't bothered to unjoin and other random junk that I don't have time to read, I pretty much just left everything in my Inbox.

I kept thinking that I would go back and organize them--you know, save important things in well labeled folders and delete the ones I now realize I didn't need to save. The trouble is that every day this task becomes more and more daunting, because the number of emails to sift through grows and grows and grows.

This has been on my invisible to-do list for years (you know the one you have running in the back of your mind that if you ever get a big chunk of time to do something you should probably work on?). Do you want to know how many emails I've been hoarding? I'm not sure I can tell you. It's kind of like divulging your weight, only most people can't really guess just by looking at me.

17,000

Apparently that's a big number. The guy at the Apple Store flat out called me an email hoarder. To my face. That's when I realized that I do have a problem.

At first I fished for excuses..."I know, I really need to go through them because there might be something important in there."

"Don't you think you could safely delete everything prior to say, 2005?" he politely asks.

"There's no way I have emails from before 2005..." I stammer.

"Let's check," he innocently suggests.

Yeah, my problem goes back all the way to 2001. Do the math--that's 10 YEARS of email hoarding gone unchecked. Seriously. This is embarrassing.

"Maybe I just need to delete them all and start fresh," I say hopefully.

"That's a great idea," he affirms.

"But what if I die? Wouldn't someone want to comb my emails for all of the wonderful things I've written and had written to me?," I'm grasping.

"If you die, I'm sure the first thing your family will do is read through 10 years of junk mail that you never deleted," he says, not unkindly.

"But some of them contain addresses, you know for those Christmas cards that I haven't sent in 5 years," I defend gallantly. Then I realize that in 10 years, that person has probably moved 3 times.

I want you to know that I came home and deleted them all. I didn't even look them over first. There was probably something very important in there that I will be screwed without. My life may end without a trace of evidence that people loved me enough to send me email. But my invisible to-do list just got shorter. I'm feeling a little lighter now.

I'm sorry if you ask me for information that I no longer have. I really don't think there was any other way. I am committed now to clean out my Inbox daily so that this never happens again. Feel free to ask me how it's going. I'm sure I can use the accountability. (A 10 year old habit may be hard to change.)

The truth hurts, but the truth can also set you free. On to my real to-do list now...

Why I May Never Move Out--My 1st top 10 list

Lest you think my stories about crazy people mean that I am dying to get out of this place, I wanted to shed some positive light on our living situation. You may already know that we live here rent-free, which is an obvious benefit. I mean, things would have to be pretty darn bad, or our financial situation would have to miraculously change in order for us to even think about moving. Plus, I told Bo when we moved here that I'm not moving again unless we can afford movers. I happen to know that we can't afford movers yet, so I'm setting down roots.

However, I happen to find apartment living desirable for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that it's free for us (though not really free since I have to earn my keep).

Here's my top 10 list of reasons to like apartment living:

1. It's cheaper than a house. Even if you don't get free rent, apartment living is definitely cheaper. At first, it might seem comparable since some fancy places do charge an arm and a leg, but once you consider utility costs, apartments win hands down. Our highest gas bill last winter (which runs our heat) was $42. That's just ridiculous. If our electric bill is $100 we have a heart attack.

2. It's greener. The other great part about low utility costs is that it also means we are not consuming as many natural resources as when we heated & cooled a house. This gave me great consolation in the early days before I lobbied for a recycling service (no recycling would be a huge down side of apartment living for me, but being the manager means I can fix that!).

3. Noise. It's not a lot of noise, but enough to know that people live around me. Our apartments are very quiet, but I can still hear my neighbor come home and the guys downstairs playing video games. I'm not quite sure why I like it. Maybe it assuages my guilt that we are super noisy so I like it when I can hear other people too. Maybe it just makes me feel not alone in a world of isolation.

4. Bumping into neighbors. We don't exactly have the most social of atmospheres (we don't have a club house or any gathering place, plus there is a wide range of people who live here it's not like there is some kind of affinity group sprouting up), however, I like seeing people in the hallways or in the parking lot or at the mailboxes. Since I know everyone I always say hello and get all nosey about their business. This would probably be true of me wherever we lived, but when people in a neighborhood can drive directly into their attached garage it's harder for me to corner them.

5. Forced simplicity. I am part slob (from my dad), and part hoarder (from my mom). I should say that's whom I would be in my most natural state. I used to have a really hard time getting rid of things, but living in 1000 square feet while trying to maintain some semblance of family order, purging is a skill that I have developed for survival. Also, my office used to be the absolute pit of our house--the dumping ground for everything I didn't know what to do with. Now my office is part of our kitche-offi-dini-living room. I have had to learn to organize paper and not let piles run rampant. Since we have less stuff, my inner slob has less to mess up.

6. Less cleaning. I've finally come to terms with the fact that I will never be a clean freak. I might as well just admit it and stop beating myself up all the time. The beauty of apartment living is that when I do finally suck it up and clean the place (never all at once--I could never be that focussed), it really doesn't take that long. I can vacuum every room without moving the cord for crying out loud. How hard can it be? (It still is kind of hard because I would really rather do just about anything than actually clean.)

7. No maintenance or yard work. When something breaks, I don't have to stress out about coming up with the money to fix it. Now, in my situation I do have to make sure it all gets done and I do plant flowers and rake leaves from time to time, but for the most part we do not have to factor yard work into our family equation. If we're still here when the kids get old enough to start mowing, I envision hiring them to do it so that they will learn how and have some responsibility, but if they decide to get a job doing something else, so be it.

8. I never have to throw out left overs. Furnace filter day is when I get to spy on all of my neighbors and see what goes on behind all those closed doors. What I've discovered is that some people live even more simply than we do. Way more simply. In fact, you don't really need much of anything to live as it turns out. Some people don't even have food. I don't go peeking in cupboards or anything, but you can tell by the trash bin overflowing with take-out containers that there is nothing like cooking going on in that kitchen. I don't offer my left overs to just anyone, but when I know that someone never eats a home cooked meal, they don't turn me down.

9. When borrowing the proverbial cup of sugar I don't even have to put on shoes. Once in awhile I start a batch of cookies without realizing that Bo ate the last egg that morning for breakfast. Nothing like stepping out into the hall and having any number of neighbors to hit up for a favor. I love it when someone asks me for things too. I mean, they all ask me for apartment manager kinds of things, but when they ask for sugar you know they just think of you as a neighbor.

10. Forced togetherness. There is no place to run. No place to hide. We are all together. All the time. Some might include this on the list of downsides, and surely some days it is, however, I have come to love the chaos of cooking dinner amongst the hubbub of the daily wrestling match and the fact that we have one TV to fight over and the times when I have to run into the bedroom to find a quiet place to have a professional phone conversation about the benefits of our apartments when a perspective resident calls. We basically have one room. No basement or family room. It's just us, hanging out together in the kitche-offi-dini-livingroom. The boys share a bedroom, which is...you know, terrible some days and fabulous that one time when they played in there for hours without arguing. In the end though I think there's something to be said about closeness creating.....closeness.

These are a few of my favorite things about apartment living. I sometimes wonder if we will bail the minute we can afford to or if we will continue to choose this lifestyle. Right now we might as well choose to like it because it's definitely working for us. I know that there are things I may never have learned without this season of life so I'm thankful.

Vacant is Better than Crazy (Part 3)

I could probably start a blog devoted entirely to the crazy people I've encountered over the years in the rental business, but I'm highlighting three in particular. What they all have in common is that they arrived in the late fall/early winter and I let them in. Inherited crazy people are one thing--you can always blame the former management. Having to take responsibility for knowingly lowering the bar to infest the community with crazy people is all kinds of humbling.

I did this to us. I did this to my nice, normal, wonderful residents who I worked so hard to attract and retain.

Now that I've announced my shame, let's jump right in to the story of Crazy People #3. A couple we will call Crazy Woman and Crazy Man.

They had just moved to Omaha from Utah. She, a Mormon, he, a pack a day smoker, not even pretending to be Mormon. They applied for the apartment on the end so he can go straight out the door to light up (being that we have a no-smoking policy).

Let me pause and say now that though it is illegal, it is almost impossible not to stereotype people who are applying for an apartment. That is why we have a tenant selection policy laying out the criteria for applicants. We screen everyone the exact same way every time. We verify that the applicant's income is at least three times their monthly rent, we ask standard questions to their former landlord, we run a credit check and we do a criminal background check.

My problem is not that I form an opinion and want to turn people down, it's that I form an opinion and want to give them a chance.

Crazy Woman played the Mormon card. We rent another apartment to the Mormon church (actually we rent it to the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Utah Corporation Sole) which is occupied by various young men on their mission. They are some of the best residents ever. They are polite. They are tidy. They are always asking if they can help me with anything. The only complaint I have ever had about them was from another one of my inherited crazy neighbors who called to see if they had asked permission to use our basketball hoop. You know, the basketball hoop that is right out in the parking lot for anyone to use. (Tattle tale is gone now, by the way.)

Anyway, since I'm on this rabbit trail let me burrow a little deeper. I'm not trying to enter some discussion or debate about the Mormon faith. This is not a theological comment. I'm just saying that I have never met a Mormon that I didn't like. I was the coordinator of a Mormon Youth Conference one summer in college. Great people. All 500 of them. Wonderful, respectful young people and a joy to work with.

I was hired by a quasi-famous Mormon once. Mitt Romney's son Taggert was at a career fair in Boston and he hired me to work for a pre-explosion dot-bomb for a few months while I was looking for a real job. We traveled to a conference once where we were trying to get graduating seniors to give us their email address by offering a trip to Europe. Tagg was amazing. Nothing dissuaded him from asking the next group who wandered by, "Would you like to win a trip to Europe?" When I got a negative reply, I became rather passive and gun shy. Not Tagg. He was relentless.

I asked him about that on our plane ride back to Boston and he told me that after being a Mormon missionary for two years, no rejection even comes close. I saw his point. There is no repellent stronger than a pair of clean-cut 19-year-olds wearing shirts and ties riding on bicycles. I've always kept this in mind when interacting with my missionary neighbors. Thanks Tagg.

Anyway, I must have had all those positive Mormon thoughts swirling through my mind when going to bat for Crazy Woman and Crazy Man. OK, so they've had their car repo'd. Their landlord said they always paid the rent. I have all kinds of apartments vacant. Did I mention my phone never rings? Let's give 'em a shot!

And we did.

At first I was so proud of my good instincts. Things were great. He was handy, a mechanic, and he kept our lawnmower in working order. They asked if we could help with anything. Genuinely nice people.

I'm not exactly sure when things started to crumble. The first thing that was mildly alarming was that he traded his truck (he said it was a gas guzzler) for a Batmobile. To be more precise, it was an old Trans Am or something like that. It was hard to tell being that it was spray painted black with a spray painted Batman symbol on the hood. Crazy Man was always working on that thing. We probably have some rule against it, but since I had allowed him to repair our lawnmower I kind of felt weird not allowing him to work on his car. It wasn't too big of a deal except in the heat of summer when he worked shirtless.

I haven't yet described the Crazy Couple. Lest you envision some hunky mechanic sweating away under the hood with his shirt off, let me give you some visual realignment. Crazy Man had some teeth issues. I don't know that I can provide much detail because I tried not to look at them, but I have a fuzzy notion that there may have been some missing and I'm fairly certain that none of them were white. Now move your eyes down the torso to the beer belly. Now cover everything with a filmy sort of grime that never washes away. Add the smell of B.O. and you pretty much have the picture.

Crazy Woman was stout and appeared to have razor stubble...on her face, poor dear.

When I met them I really just had that heartwarming thought that there is someone out there for everyone and these two found each other. I realize that my descriptions probably sound rude, but that's not my intention. I just really think you need to have the picture so you can experience the full shock of what happened with these two.

At this point, nothing had transpired that would be considered a lease violation. They were a curiosity, but harmless. I did have some concerns about our property giving off a slight "white trash" vibe, but sometimes he would be at work and there would be hours with no Batmobile visibility. A few times the rent had been late, but there was always a bailout from the Latter-day Saints. As long as the rent gets paid, we are not particular about where it comes from so as far as we were concerned, they were in good standing.

Then the fighting started. Turns out that the Batmobile was evidence of a mid-life crisis and Crazy Man was out picking up chicks with his sweet ride. I could hardly believe it myself. Not just one, but at least two women find this man attractive. And then it occurred to me...Crazy Man may have been hitting on me all along.

I'm generally naive about such things, but in this case the idea of it is so far fetched I think I just did not see it. At all. But there was this one day that he said something kind of weird and it struck me as funny at the time. I even told Bo about it because it was so odd. I was trying to install an under-the-cabinet microwave and I had reached a point where I needed some help. I'm not that strong and you have to be able to lift a dinosaur of a microwave (circa 1988) up into the slots before screwing it in. I didn't want to make the tenant wait for her awesome microwave and our maintenance crew was busy dealing with air conditioning issues and other more urgent matters so I was taking the task into my own hands. Crazy Man was around so I asked him if he would help me a minute just lift the microwave up so I can get it screwed in.

Our kitchens are small and it's kind of awkward craning your neck under the cabinet and reaching around a sweaty guy to get the thing plugged in and attached. What made it more awkward is when he looked over at me, smiled and said, "We make a great team."

I honestly don't even know what I said in that moment. I was completely dumbfounded.

But when I found out that Crazy Man was a ladies man, it occurred to me that he may have been trying to test the waters, which I'm sure he found quite frigid in this case. At any rate, whether or not he was trying to hit on me is beside the point. Crazy Man was a cheater.

All of a sudden, things got all Jerry Springer on us. The poor woman who lived above them reported that they had slammed doors so hard her picture had fallen off the wall. She also indicated that she's not that big on listening to people yell, "You had sex with her and then came home and had sex with me?!?" Then the police came and took Crazy Woman to jail. Her emotional stability was definitely in question, not that she didn't have a reason to be an emotional wreck, but she was out of control.

And then Crazy Woman told me she is scared because Crazy Man owns a gun.

That kind of stuff is definitely not OK.

So we issued a 14-30, which basically says, "You have 2 weeks to stop doing what you're doing or you will have to move in 30 days."

You just have to love the legal process. Go ahead and keep doing what you're doing for the next two weeks, but as long as you stop on day 15 you can stay.

Well, they stopped. For awhile. Then there was one more incident involving the police and we had a decision to make. We now had grounds to file for eviction based on the 14-30.

She is emotionally unstable. He has a gun.

I will admit, I weighed these options very carefully and decided not to evict them. Instead we waited them out. Things remained quiet, but when their lease expired, we did not renew it. They were given a 30 day notice to move for no reason.

Crazy Man and Crazy Woman were not at all happy with me. They did not understand our decision. In some ways it was hard, but the look of relief on the face of the woman upstairs was worth it all. I know it was the right thing to do.

So this fall I chose a mantra, "Vacant is Better than Crazy," to remind myself that crazy never works out. Sure, you might get some rent for awhile, but the drama is most certainly going to outweigh the benefits. The unfortunate thing, and I hope I am not writing about more drama a year from now, is that sometimes crazy people find normal people to rent an apartment for them. Sometimes crazy people have perfect credit and good jobs. Maybe I'm just negatively stereotyping, but I do believe that I have moved three crazy people into the same hallway in the same month.

Oh Lord, I hope I'm wrong...but I will keep you posted.

Vacant is Better than Crazy (Part 2)

This is the story of Crazy Person #2 or "The Hard Fought Battle of the Weed."

Our apartments are not fancy. The buildings are 20 years old and starting to show their age. We still have some original appliances and vinyl flooring. Our cabinets and counter tops are all original. We are a small complex with no amenities to speak of. No fitness center, no pool, no club house. We don't even have an office (which is why I can work at home with my kids). We also have this weird set up where you can only exit and enter one way onto 72nd Street, which can seem like an inconvenience until you become a U-turn master.

What I'm trying to say is that we are not going to compete with a brand new, fancy place with all the bells and whistles. If you want all that stuff, don't move here. We will never have bells or whistles.

What we do have, or what people have told me, is nice for the price. When you compare our space with others in a similar price range you will see the value. We have implemented a no-smoking, no-pets policy which greatly enhances the smell of the place. We are slowly upgrading appliances, flooring, fixtures and the like so our units look good. We are in a super convenient location relative to just about any area of Omaha, which is great for Bo in the homecare field. Whether he has to drive to Bellevue, West Omaha or Council Bluffs, it's not more than 20 minutes from home. You can sure find nicer places if you want to pay more, but if you look at places any cheaper than ours you will be entering dumpville...or roachville...or scaryville.

What does this have to do with Crazy Person #2? The point of all this explanation is that we are in the perfect price range for people starting out or starting over. Crazy Person #1 was starting over. Crazy Person #2 was starting out.

A young guy, early 20's, this was his first job and first apartment. He worked down the street, less than a 1/2 mile away at Builder's Supply. He had never rented before so he had no rental history to speak of. He had been at Builder's Supply for quite awhile and he didn't have any credit. This is one of those applicant situations where you don't have much to go on.

It was now winter and we had vacancies. What do you do? I'll tell you what we did--we took a chance.

This was the same apartment that had recently been vacated by the peeing cadet host. The guy downstairs, a very good resident by all standards, was already in a fragile state, having witnessed the peeing. As it turned out, moving Crazy Person #2 upstairs from him was about to shatter every last bit of his resolve to continue living here.

What I didn't know about Crazy Person #2 is that he had a smoking habit rivaling that of Cheech and Chong.

We have a non-smoking policy. For some reason, some people do not consider smoking weed "smoking." I would put this under the category of "Common sense is not all that common." I take some responsibility for this because up until that point I had not clarified that no smoking means no smoking of any kind whatsoever. When the reports started coming in about the smell of pot, I did go have a conversation with Crazy Person #2 about this issue where I laid out all of the things you cannot smoke inside the building. I tried to include anything I know people smoke and even a few things I've never heard of people smoking just to make the point.

Talking does not help in some cases.

Did I also mention that my children were exposed to what I would consider porn in this apartment? On furnace filter day, they were helping remove the old filters when I notice their eyes drawn to the giant poster of a woman wearing next to nothing looking like she could nurse quintuplets.

There are no rules about not hanging offensive posters on the inside of your apartment. I chalk that up as a teaching opportunity to have a conversation about objectifying women. I should thank Crazy Person #2 for providing this wonderful moment for my young boys. Thank you Crazy Person #2 from the bottom of my heart.

I know what you are thinking. We have a non-smoking policy (which Crazy Person #2 signed upon entering this contract), he is smoking, just kick him out.

Well, that sounds like a fabulous idea except that the burden of proof lies on us to show that he is smoking inside his apartment. This is harder than it seems because no one ever sees him doing it. They just smell that smell coming from somewhere. We all know where it's coming from, but can it be proven?

So we resort to calling the police. Do you know that the police can't really do anything? Maybe, just maybe if they are called soon enough and it is happening where they can tell that it is currently happening they might be able to have grounds to enter. But this never happens.

Here's where you can take action. There is usually a clause in most leases about not disturbing the quiet and peaceful enjoyment of the premises by other residents. The only problem with this is that to prove this in court you need other residents who are willing to testify that said person is disturbing their quiet and peaceful enjoyment.

Do you want to go to court with your neighbor?

This is a losing situation for landlords. Residents complain, but they really don't want to get dragged into a court of law to complain to the judge who could actually do something about it. If we give Crazy Person #2 a notice that they are in violation of their lease without any proof, he can stay and make us go to court to get an actual eviction, which we won't get if I show up with the lackluster "evidence" that people are complaining.

So I wait. I listen to complaints. I explain the legal process (which I really don't understand myself). Finally, I have someone crazy enough to offer to go to court. She is one of my long-term crazy people that I inherited from the last management and she does not care what anyone thinks of her. She does not like what she sees and you can drag her butt into court--she will be there.

This gives downstairs neighbor confidence that he too would be willing to testify. A third witness says yes, she will go too.

I have three residents who will not back down. He needs to go. We will not wait for his lease to expire. He must go now.

I deliver the letter. I explain that he can go peacefully or he can face court and get evicted. I make sure to mention that I have 3 witnesses prepared to testify against him. I am very persuasive. We do not evict many people here because persuasion is one skill I do have.

So Crazy Person #2 moves on. Another lesson learned. Vacant is better than crazy. He nearly drove away some very good residents with his antics.

Neither Crazy Person #1 nor Crazy Person #2 hold a candle to a pair of crazy people. Because when you have 2 crazy people in one small apartment, things can really go wrong. Stay tuned tomorrow for the case of "I traded my truck for a batmobile and other really classy happenings."

Vacant is Better than Crazy (Part 1)

Welcome to my life as an apartment manager. I am going to give you an insiders tour. Buckle your seat belt. You might not be able to handle the excitement.

I started this job in June of 2008 out of sheer desperation and an unreasonable desire to be home with my kids. Filled with heaps of self-doubt, I applied with no expectation of being hired. I was hired with no expectation that I would succeed. I simply needed the job and trying seemed better than the alternative. It's not like I had some wildly successful career prior to having children or some really useful skill to fall back on. What I did have is some hard knock experience in being a small-time landlord and a relentless calling to be a stay-at-home-mom. Put those two together and viola--Resident Manager seemed like the perfect fit.

What I didn't know is that the complex I was hired for was a hot mess. My boss, Dana, handed me my first vacancy report and there were 14 apartments listed. In a 48-unit complex, 14 vacant units means things are bad. Very bad.

Next to each vacant address were progress notes about what work had been done and how close they were to being ready. I scanned the list, trying not to look terrified, and noticed the word YUK! in Dana's handwriting.

"Um," I asked, "what does 'yuk' mean?" (Is this some fancy real estate term that I am too green to know?)

Dana replied, "When I went to check out that apartment, I opened the door, said 'yuk,' closed it and decided that will be the last apartment we deal with."

Oh, so yuk actually means yuk.

That was just the beginning. I have a story or two to tell about those early days, but then I will never get to the point, which is, "Vacant is better than crazy."

See, what I have learned the hard way, both as a landlord and in working for a landlord, is that screening tenants is the most important work we do to improve a property. Laws generally protect tenants over landlords so it's really important to keep the crazy people out because once they are in, it's pretty difficult to get rid of them.

Back up to 2008. By the grace of God, and through the desperation of not wanting to lose my stay-at-home-mom job, I rented apartments like crazy that summer. It was shocking actually. I would walk a potential resident through a half-finished apartment, my wild kids would be tackling each other in the living room or flipping themselves over on the breakfast bar and the person would actually apply to live here. Nice people. Decent people. With jobs. It was really more than I could have asked for.

Fast forward to 2009. Over 16 leases came up in a span of 2 months, mostly in the late summer and fall because of our initial leasing options. We did not think that through obviously, but I'm pretty sure no one, including myself, thought that I would actually lease all of those apartments by fall.

Many people stayed, but a handful of people moved on for very valid reasons (since this place being a crap-hole was no longer the number one reason people were moving). One couple was going to pick up their daughter in Vietnam to come live with them after 2 years of being separated. Another guy got married. One young couple bought a house. One guy retired and headed back to Chicago where his family lived. Stuff like that. Oh, and one guy couldn't stop himself from hosting parties for young cadets who thought it was funny to pee off the balcony. We asked him to leave. (Sometimes credit report does not indicate all possible factors of decent tenancy.)

When it all shook out I had 4 or 5 apartments becoming vacant over a 2 month period of time. Still thinking that I could get fired any minute, I panicked. It's true. I totally freaked out. The economy was bad. That whole 1st time home buyer incentive was keeping people out of the rental market. It was really slow and it was fall. I rented a couple in the early fall to some very nice people but then I got stuck.

November and December are terrible months to rent apartments.

I don't think one normal person even called. Every. Single. Person. Was. Crazy.

Why would you move right before or during the holidays? Why would you move in the winter in Nebraska? Only crazy people do that. I'm sorry if you've done that. You are crazy. Just go ahead and admit that it was crazy and you wouldn't do it again. It's OK, we all make mistakes.

So there I am thinking my head is on the chopping block, not one normal potential applicant is on the horizon and crazy person #1 comes along. She is moving from another city in Nebraska because her 20-year-old, drug addicted daughter is threatening to destroy her life and the life of her 17 year old daughter. They left town to make a fresh start. She transferred to the Walmart down the street and her daughter would be homeschooling high school.

Let me just pause here. This incident just proves that you can never make assumptions about people. I think the moment they said the word homeschooling my mind conjured up images of all of the wonderful moms I know who have chosen to home school. You may have some other stereotypes of home school families that could trigger your crazy meter, but every single one of the families I know that home schools is amazing and their kids are amazing.

So when she applied and did not exactly meet our qualifications I somehow found myself going to bat for this crazy single mom and her home schooled daughter. As it turned out, "home school" can also mean sitting at home all day watching your Rent-a-center TV and texting all of your friends you met on the internet. They lasted almost a year, but in the end, crazy person #1's choices continued to follow her and she agreed that moving is better than being evicted.

When it gets to that point the emotional drama becomes very taxing because kicking someone out just stinks. The fine women in our main office knew then what I know now, crazy never works out. It might be a temporary fix, but long term, it is not a great move for the neighborhood.

This I learned the hard way through crazy person #2...stay tuned tomorrow for the hard fought battle of the weed...

Thanksgiving!

Instead of making a New Year's Resolution this year I chose a word: Joy. One of the things I've been working through is looking up every verse in the Bible with the word joy. There's quite a few of them, and for some strange reason I'm doing it backward (starting in Revelation, ending in Genesis). I look up the verse, write it down and try to squeeze out anything I can learn about joy.

I've made my way to Ecclesiastes (Thankful to be through with those major prophets who remind us that if we ignore God there will be no joy...) and here was today's verse:

"Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do." Ecclesiastes 9:7

I'm frequently amazed at God's timing, how I would land on a verse about enjoying eating and drinking on a day like Thanksgiving! I'm not always sure how to interpret the book of Ecclesiastes because it seems so sarcastic, but I think the point is that our lives are so short it's ridiculous so we really should enjoy the great parts that God has given us.

Today we enjoyed a great meal and games with good friends. My heart feels merry and God approves. He is the inventor of celebration and it's a great gift to be able to have a day of rest and enjoy all that we have.

I hope you have experienced the same form of joy that we have today!

Conversation Gone Wild....

I grew up in a generation and a family in particular that had rules about what could be discussed openly. Many topics were, or at least seemed to be, off limits. It was never OK to share anything that happens in the bathroom and certainly no one talked about what happens in the bedroom. I don't know if these were imaginary rules of my own making or if I just picked up on them as I went along. I'm just telling you how it felt.

I know that my mom did want me to have good information about sex, for example. In fact, I still have a book that she gave me about How You Got to Be You or something like that. I don't remember her giving me the book...if she handed it to me and said, "Read this and let me know if you have any questions." Perhaps she did. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt because she was, and is, a great mom all things considered.

One thing I did feel is that I already knew more than I thought my mom thought I knew, if that makes any sense. I'm not sure if she thought that she was my only source of information and so if it wasn't something she had told me I was in the dark. Particularly in my teenage years I can feel the eye rolls coming on as she tried to give me warnings or instruction or whatever she felt I needed, and believe me, I did need all of those...it just seemed so uncomfortable because there was not an openness to talk about any of it.

Men, you can check out right now as I give a distinctively female example of the lack of communication about all things bodily related. No really, go ahead and skip to the next paragraph. OK, now that they are gone, let me tell you this super embarrassing fact. When I got my period, I made my own pads out of toilet paper for months before asking my mom for feminine hygiene products. I remember laying out one summer at my grandparents pond refusing to get in the water past my knees because I did not want my toilet paper pad to disintegrate in the water. I think back on that now and I almost feel sad that I was so scared to ask my own mom for maxi-pads.

OK, hopefully any male readers have done themselves a favor and heeded my warning. Thanks if you did. If you didn't, I'm sorry. Anyway, at some point I rebelled against the secrecy and became probably too blunt about things and have allowed my big mouth to get me in trouble countless times. Fast forward to motherhood and now I'm trying to figure out how to make sure my kids feel comfortable talking about absolutely anything.

The problem with this is that I have boys. They do not seem to have any hang ups about sharing anything bodily related. I may have created monsters.

So yesterday after Rex's 7 year physical, I'm giving him the lecture about this being the only acceptable time to let another person handle his privates and we talk about how some people might seem to be nice, but they might just be nice to take advantage of kids. And I'm trying to use proper terminology and discourage the slang that he has so aptly picked up in public school and the conversation is going swimmingly until I think, "Wait a minute. It's not true. There are other appropriate times for such behaviors..." and before I can put a lid on it I say, "Well, someday it will be appropriate for your wife to touch them."

Why? Why on earth would I say such a thing to a 7-year old? Oh, but it's too late. It's out there and I can't undo it. But the why comes from everything I just explained about how I was raised and do not want my kids to feel that this is a closed conversation and that they are not allowed to ask questions about this stuff. Or that they were not given the right information. (She said no one ever is allowed to touch them--she lied to me!)

So he asks, "Did you have to do that mom?"

"Um, no, I don't have a wife." (Lame, lame, lame! I am in so much trouble now.)

"No, I mean, did you have to touch your husband's privates?"

"Uhhhh....."

It's too late now, I have to be honest.

"Well, yes, but I don't really feel comfortable talking about it right now. Let's talk about something else. What specials do you have at school today?"

And I've done it. I've closed the door and made it clear, "This is not something we talk about." Now I know how it happens. Door closed...and rightly so.

I'm sure if I really thought about it, I could give many examples of conversations gone wild in our house because my reaction to my upbringing is to swing the pendulum to the opposite direction. I have not found the balance and so I pray for grace that can cover over the multitude of parenting mistakes I make.

A Tribute to My Secret Admiral on His Birthday

People say you will just "know" when you meet the right person to marry. I did have that moment when I knew, but I wanted to make sure that I knew because I was coming into the thing with a not-so-stellar track record of relationships or any kind of positive family example of marriage. The fact that he stuck around long enough to win this drama queen is tribute enough.

Believe me, I tried to sabotage the thing, but he never took the bait. That was different. Then we did have some real life drama of our own making, but through the whole thing he never wavered. He did the right thing. He sacrificed his plans. He did not play games, though I tried to drag him into many. He faithfully stuck by and let his overly emotional girl ride her own roller coaster. He was always waiting for me when I was ready to get off.

There was early talk of marriage and I once shared my fears with his parents. "I just don't want to wake up one day and ask myself, 'Why did I marry YOU?'" They laughed and said it would likely happen no matter who I married.

Maybe that day will come, but it hasn't yet. Because I know exactly why I married this man.

...his humility. I have married a man who does not rest on his laurels or recount the glory days. Instead, he digs in to the present and pours himself out for others.

...his priority is his family. He is certainly capable of climbing the ladder, but he doesn't because he wants to be there for us.

...his quiet confidence. For someone who can blab, blab, blab all day and have no idea what I'm even talking about, this is the best quality I could have in a husband. When he says something, he has thought it through. Oh the calm security we have because the man in our home exudes quiet confidence!

...his servant heart. This man asks me regularly if I need him to do anything for me. If he doesn't ask it is because he has seen something I need and has started doing it.

...his willingness to take risks. I used to think that his steady nature and love for the Mid-West would become boring, but we have been trying new things all along. Not everything has worked out the way we planned, but that leads me to my next thing...

...his unwillingness to wallow in defeat. Were it not his determination to move forward, I would probably be in a pit of despair somewhere. Instead, he pulls me along and doesn't let me throw pity parties.

...his unwavering belief in God's goodness. Just when I think that his silence means lack of faith, he reminds me that God has always taken care of us and will not let us down now.

These are some of the things I treasure most in my Secret Admiral. (Perhaps one day I will write our story for those who haven't heard it.) My respect for him grows each year and I know now, like I knew then that I could never live without him.

Happy Birthday Bo.

Black Friday--Love it or Hate it?

I have been asked more than once in the last few days about whether or not I am planning a Black Friday shopping trip. I confess that I have never gone shopping during hours when I normally sleep. Have I mentioned that I need a full 8 hours or I will turn into the world's largest cranky mama? The whole watching accidents happen outside the bedroom window incident this week has nearly wrecked me.

My dental hygienist actually admitted that she still goes shopping on Black Friday despite the fact that her grandma was trampled one year. As in, rushed to the hospital in an ambulance bleeding trampled. Yeah, still totally worth it according to her.

I guess I don't really get it. Maybe I'm irresponsible and don't understand what a great savings you can get by camping out all night at the store and fighting fellow shoppers for great buys. Maybe I don't really need anything that bad that I feel good about trampling grandmas.

Another friend seems to just like the thrill of it. Again, I don't know how thrilling it can be to wait in line for hours to save $50 on a laptop so I truly don't mean to judge. Perhaps I should try it. I guess I still enjoy the thrill of sleeping through the night after years of children ruining my slumber. It could take years for me to get over the beauty of a good night's sleep.

So I can't offer an opinion just yet. I might love it if I tried it, but I actually hate the idea of it. Does that count as a vote for "hate it"?

Respect--The "R" in SCORE

Our definition of Respect is treating others how you want to be treated. It’s obeying the golden rule. This is what we expect from all of the boys and girls in our league from how they treat coaches, fellow players, officials, parents and the facilities we have the privilege of using. Respect is acknowledging that everyone we come in contact with deserves to be treated with dignity.

Tommy Lasorda has said, “I’ve learned that the only way to get respect from people is to give them respect.” How true this is. Have you ever tried to teach your kids how to be respectful by screaming at them? If you haven’t, take it from me and don’t even bother. It doesn’t work. Some of the hardest parenting moments come when we have to choose to respond to our child with respect when their behavior is not worthy of it. It is in those moments when I have to remember that their innate value as a human being is what makes them worthy of respect and if they are to learn how to be respectful to others, they need to see it in practice.

One of the best ways to show respect to our kids is to really listen to them.

I am so guilty of giving my kids half of my attention as I juggle work, household tasks, phone calls, email and the ever distracting time warp called facebook. I am reluctant to admit that at least one of my children have asked me, “What is more important: facebook or your kids?” On the surface the answer is obvious, but why would my kids have to ask that question if they didn’t feel threatened by this competitor vying for my time and attention. Sometimes they rattle on about things while I mumble, “uh huh,” without having truly heard anything they’ve said. No wonder they turn into disrespectful urchins, cranking up the volume and whine factor in their requests.

Showing respect is actually harder than it looks because we have to respond in the right way regardless of how we feel. It takes a measure of discipline, sacrifice and self-control to truly develop a character of respect. If it were easy, we would not need to emphasize it in our homes, our schools (one of the top 3 rules at Ralston Elementary Schools!) and our basketball league.

Thanks for helping us emphasize Respect this week with our kids!

Accidents Happen...Sometimes right outside your bedroom window

Screeeeeeeeeeeech....boom!

I was startled awake at 1:08 am to the sound of squealing tires and crunching metal.

In a fog, I think, "Did a drunk driver take out our utility box again? No, the electricity is still on."

A minute later I am on the phone with the 911 operator. "I live at the Ponderosa Pointe Apartments on 72nd St. and there has been an accident."

"Did you see the accident?," the operator asks.

"No, I just heard it."

They are getting other calls and sending help.

I still do not see the accident, only a car on the side of the road with its hazard lights on. When I go back to my room I begin getting dressed. Bo is up and sees that there are two cars right outside our bedroom window and they are a tangled mess of metal and shattered glass. Two other cars have stopped. Someone has approached one of the vehicles and is talking to the victim. She is not getting out but is conscious and seems OK.

I pull my jeans from yesterday and grab some slip on boots.

Bo is giving me a play by play. The girl in the other car has gotten out, did something in the trunk and is walking away. You could call it fleeing only she is very calm.

Screeeeeeeeeeech....CRUNCH!

"Holy crap," Bo says. "The police car just hit the car with the girl in it."

The Douglas County Sheriff is the first responder and boy is he sorry about that now I'll bet. He is busy looking on the other side of the road at the parked cars and completely misses the fact that the accident is right in front of him. Boom. Hitting one of the cars he jumps the median and is now facing the wrong direction on the opposite side of the street. The siren is still blaring.

Now it's chaos. Screaming. A woman with a baby is standing there freaking out.

Many more police vehicles arrive now....the Omaha fire department...An ambulance. I am dressed, but I have nothing to offer that isn't already there. Instead I pray out loud for everyone involved. I thank God for all of the emergency responders who are dealing with every aspect of the situation in a matter of minutes. Police are questioning witnesses. The blue car lady has been retrieved with her hands behind her back. The Sheriff is trying to explain how he ended up in the accident he was supposed to be helping with. The girl in the car is out and taken away by ambulance. A Hazmat truck comes to start cleaning up. The witnesses get in their cars and drive away.

It is almost 2 am now. Bo looks over and asks if I had been sleeping in my jeans. "No," I say, "I was going to run out there, but I don't think they need me." I take my jeans back off and crawl into bed.

We lay in bed watching the flashing lights bounce off our walls through the curtain cracks. I wonder if I will ever be able to fall back asleep, but I have to sleep...I am the guest reader at school and might not be able to handle a simple children's book if I pull an all-nighter.

I am vaguely aware that they are loading the demolished vehicles to haul them away. I don't look, you can tell by the scraping metal sound. I must have dozed off eventually because I was startled awake by the alarm clock. I wanted just a few more hours of sleep, but the thought of hearing about our accident on the early morning news was enough to shake me out of bed early enough.

The news report was vague. They didn't tell us anything we didn't know. We had seen it ourselves.

If I look like a I need a nap it's because I had a brief moment of almost going to help someone in the middle of the night. Aside from that little Sheriff car smashing incident, I'm sure they are glad there are actual professionals who are dedicated to that role since they were there before I could even get pants on.

This really happened last night. I didn't make it up, though I do have a wild imagination sometimes. It turns out that I have no lack of material to write about. Happy Monday!

They Make You Do That?

One of the factors in my decision to step down from my job at Christ Community is a change that happened this summer in my other job as Resident Manager at our apartment complex. When I first started with Dana Mann, the job was completely overwhelming. There were so many vacancies it was ridiculous and every apartment we turned over was a mess. Both boys were home full time that summer and it was a really difficult adjustment back to work even though I was working from home.

In order to keep up with the demands, Dana gave me permission to have our hired laborer help with cleaning and general labor around the buildings. Once our apartments were full the job really became so much more manageable, especially since the boys were in school. So when I was offered a part time job at church I felt that it could work with my schedule. I knew summer would be a challenge because that's when apartments turn over and the boys are home, but during the school year it was a perfect fit.

Well, after 3 years of having extra help, our company decided to let our laborer go. This really pained me for many different reasons. First of all, I really liked him a great deal as a person. I had even taken gifts to a family member of his when I traveled to Peru last year. He was a really nice person and a hard worker. The other reason was that I knew he would not be replaced and that the many hours of help he helped me each week would now fall on my shoulders since those duties were in fact part of my job description. Sigh.

So now I am doing those things myself that were so easy to delegate...cleaning hallways, entryways, laundry rooms & apartments. I'm happy to do it since it is my job, but let me tell you I see now that having help was one of those many graces I was talking about in my earlier post. I never could have done both without it. This fall as I was trying to get used to the change I really felt that I could not do both responsibilities well and that one needed to go.

There was a part of me that wanted to consider taking on more hours in ministry and abandoning my apartment manager gig. Roy had to stay home sick one day and that cured me of that. I truly love being at home and we are not at a stage yet where I am not needed at home. So though I don't bound out of bed every morning to joyfully pick up after people, I know that my life is not that hard and I am thankful to have a choice about where to work.

One of our residents saw me vacuuming the hallways the other day and with surprise in his voice he said, "They make YOU do that?"

I replied, "Well, no one makes me do anything. They hired me with the understanding that I would do it. They gave me grace for a few years by hiring extra help, but this is my job and it's not that hard so I'm happy to do it."

He answered, "Oh, well I'll be careful not to litter now that I know you are the one who does it."

I thanked him, although I really wanted to lecture him about not littering no matter who is responsible for cleaning hallways. That's a whole different issue. Bo told me not to get started on that one since he probably just didn't think about what he was saying. Deep breath. Letting it go.

One thing I can see now is that I have a completely different attitude about work than when I first started. I really did have a hard time with the idea of doing menial work and picking up after people. I was kind of mad about it actually and I did feel that it was beneath me. It's true, I am a spoiled ivy-league brat. I would compare myself to my peers who were executive VPs of lahdeedahdeedah whatever and I felt like a loser picking up cigarette butts and scrubbing ovens. I'm probably not over it completely, however, the joy I experiencing in serving my neighbors and doing whatever needs to be done to make this place "a diamond in the rough," as one resident called it, is exactly what I needed to experience.

And I remember that no one makes me do this. It is a privilege to be home with my kids and to be surrounded by people who really need to be loved and served in a way that is different than what the rest of the world offers. I am an imperfect servant to be sure, but I am working on it.

Why Daily?

I'm already feeling the pressure 3 days in. I mean, why this relentless commitment to publish something on my blog every day?

Here's why I made this decision:

1. I am a lazy person.

2. I need a deadline to finish things.

3. I want to become a better writer.

4. Writing takes practice.

First let's address issue #1. Laziness. Sometimes I call it being easily distracted. Sometimes I call it being tired. Sometimes I call it being busy. Let me just tell it like it is: I have a lazy streak. At 35 years of age, I think it's time to address it.

Here's what I've noticed though--I am quite a mover and shaker when I have a deadline (issue #2). Usually I wait until I'm up against it to start moving and shaking (sometimes I call it procrastination) but then I am a model of activity and effort.

Because of issue #3, I have decided to give myself a deadline so that I will regularly focus and diligently practice my art (#4).

I have been inspired by the book Linchpin by Seth Godin. In it he quotes Steve Jobs who said, "Real artists ship." What that means is that when working on our product, at some point we have to declare it good enough and "ship" the thing. I can't tell you how many times I have had an idea of something to write about but never sit down and do it because I don't think I'll have enough time to develop it well enough. It's that perfectionist inside saying "Anything that's worth doing is worth doing well." (so if you can't do it well don't even bother!)

So this is me "shipping." This is me staring my perfectionism in the face and saying, "Anything that's worth doing will bring me joy and satisfaction even if it is not the best I could do. Some effort is better than no effort."

A Tiny Glimmer of Generosity

I just had to share that I actually witnessed a moment of generosity from one son to another. I wish I could say that it happens frequently, but alas, we have many more moments of animosity than generosity. It's not for lack of working on it. Doesn't every parent have visions of their children being best friends and filled with love and camaraderie? Why then, do we end up with our own version of the Cain and Abel story?

We were actually reading that story this morning when the glimmer happened. It could have been what inspired the act, but it's very hard to tell because we had gotten extremely side tracked. Somehow Roy got in his head that he had enough money to pay off the Alabama sunglasses we ordered online (on mom-credit). When we actually calculated things, however, he was $5 short. Roy is still working on handling disappointment in an appropriate way. Who knows, maybe his reaction to disappointment is completely appropriate for a 9 year old. He's my first one so I have to get concerned when he freaks out.

Boy was he freaking out. I had to give myself an internal pep-talk....hold your ground, hold your ground, I kept repeating in my head. I'm not big on seeing my child miserable even when I know it's not a good idea to give in when they throw a tantrum. You non-parent people reading this can go ahead and judge all you want. It's easy for me to be the tough guy when it's someone else' kid, but I have a huge soft spot for my own. This morning I was successful and I'm so glad because that's when it happened.

Rex actually ran to his room and got $5 out of his money box and gave it to Roy so that he could pay off his debt. This sounds like a small thing. In our world, $5 is no big deal, but to a 6 year old, $5 is a really big deal. So when he so freely offered this to his brother I took notice. Roy did too--he jumped on top of him to give him a giant hug.

There was a part of me that wanted to talk Rex out of it so that Roy would learn a lesson, but I stopped myself because I think a better lesson is highlighting the act of being generous...so I went with it.

It's just a glimmer, I confess, but I have hope that they will grow in this.

Obedience--The "O" in SCORE

Here are my thoughts on Obedience--for our SCORE basketball league website.

This is not one of the most talked about character traits in America. It smacks itself up against our free-spirited, individualistic culture that tells us we can do whatever we want, whenever we want. When I tell people about SCORE and what it stands for, I almost cringe when I say, “O is for Obedience.” I don’t know what I’m expecting…some kind of parental backlash declaring, “My kid is not going to be a mindless drone, blindly obeying some harsh authoritarian dictator.”

So far, no one has said that. Maybe it’s just something in me that has a hard time with obedience. I don’t want my kids to be mindless drones, but obedience has become a very important rule in our home. It is almost impossible to run a peaceful household when there is no one in charge and everything is an argument. At the same time, I don’t want my kids to merely obey because I’m bigger than them and can take away their ipod if they don’t.

Obedience comes down to two issues: Authority and Trust.

If no one is in charge, you don’t need obedience. That works OK in certain situations, but when it comes to a basketball team, a coach takes on responsibility for making decisions that impact that team. In a family, parents take on responsibility for raising kids to be independent adults. When you join a team, you are placing yourself under the authority of the coach. When you take a job, you are under the authority of a boss. When you swim at the local pool, you are under the authority of the lifeguards. When you are born, you are under your parents’ authority. When we are kids, we are not offered a choice. Until we can be fully responsible for ourselves, our responsibility is to obey the ones who are responsible for us.

The second part of obedience has to do with trust. Of course, there is an obedience motivated by fear. It’s that kind of obedience that makes us hate the word. We’ve all encountered an authority figure that has inspired our outward obedience while inwardly shooting daggers with our hearts. At the end of the day, that is not what I want from my kids. I want them to be motivated to obey because they trust me. I want them to understand that everything I ask them to do has a purpose and that I have a bigger picture in mind than meeting their every demand or catering to their comfort.

Now I don’t actually expect my kids to understand this at the moment. In fact, I am sure that neither of our boys could articulate that they want to obey us because we are trustworthy and have their best interests at heart. We have to have a rule about obeying because it does not come naturally at all. For me, I try to recognize that when they struggle to obey I need to work on building their trust in me.

Here’s the flip side of that. When kids obey, it builds our trust in them. Let me give a coaching example. Bo was coaching a flag football team this fall and he noticed that the opposing team placed all of their good flag-pullers on the outsides of the field. In the huddle, Bo told the kid who was going to receive the hand-off to run straight down the middle. What Bo saw was that the kid with the ball was so quick that their inside guys didn’t have a chance at pulling his flag. What the kid saw was a bunch of kids right in front of him and some space on the outside.

The kid ran to the outside.

The other team got to him and pulled his flag. The play was over and they ended up losing the game.

I overheard Bo saying to this kid as they trotted off the field, “I need you to trust me.”

This kid chose not to trust the seeing eyes of the coach and obey. What that ended up meaning for him is that Bo lost trust in him. When a coach sees an opportunity, he wants to give it to the one who will follow through.

On a practical level, one thing we do is talk about the times that Bo and I choose to obey. I work at home so when my kids ask why I am doing something out of the ordinary I will tell them that I am doing it because my boss asked me to and it is important to obey so that she will trust me and value me as an employee. We talk about our faith in God and how we show our love by obeying His word. It’s tempting to give them false hope that one day when they are on their own they won’t have to obey anymore. It’s true that they won’t have to obey us, but obedience is a life long process with life long rewards.

Blog Revival

Our family is wrapping up a very busy season of life. OK, it's mostly me. I am wrapping up a busy season of life by stepping out of paid ministry at our church. Two and a half years ago I was asked to consider working part time (10-15 hours) in Kids Connect on Sunday mornings overseeing our birth through preschool classes. At first I said, "Absolutely not. I do not need one more thing to juggle." But as I thought and prayed about it more, I realized that I really wanted to say yes. I don't know if it was wise. Working two jobs was definitely a stretch, even though they were both flexible. There were definitely times when I felt pulled in too many directions.

Here is what I do know. We had been continually praying for God to provide for us. I was offered a job where my employer said they would work around my current commitments doing something that fit my gifting and was meaningful. I knew that I couldn't handle it on my own, but as I prayed and sought God's direction these are the verses I believe He gave me:

"I know, O LORD, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps."
Jeremiah 10:23

"If the LORD delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand."
Psalm 37:23-24

"A man's steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?"
Proverbs 20:24

I wrote in my journal, "God I feel like taking the job at CCC Sarpy makes no sense on the one hand. On the other hand, I really want to do it."

So I said, "Yes." It didn't make sense. I was pretty sure I would fail unless God's hand was leading. I've struggled and wrestled with feeling like I was not "enough" in just about every facet of my life from ministry work, to my full time job to motherhood to being a wife. I kept waiting for the hatchet to fall, but no one would fire me. Instead I have experienced grace everywhere.

The grace of a husband who took on laundry folding duties without being asked.

The grace of a boss who says out loud, "Thank God you came to work for me."

The grace of a boss who says, "There is always "more" you can do in ministry so good leaders say no."

The grace of volunteers who say, "We like working with you." (and I fill in...despite my lack of organization or other good qualities that I feel that I should have)

And a thousand other graces that have come in this season.

At one point during this journey I was really feeling like I could not maintain this pace, but when I would read God's Word he would take me to Nehemiah and I would read about the workers who by day would build the wall and by night become soldiers to fight off the enemy. And I would be strengthened again to continue to do what God had for me in this season.

I will share more about this season coming to an end because I am reviving my blog and have committed to myself to publish something every day. This is one of the things I feel like I must do with my "extra" time. It might not be pretty or polished, but I will push publish whether it's ready or not.