Stepping stones of faith

A few weeks ago, my friend Brandi Rennemeyer contacted me and asked if I'd be a guest blogger in a series appearing this week on StandwithHannahJoy.com. 

Brandi is helping some other friends of mine write a book about the amazing, challenging and faith-building journey they've had with their daughter, Hannah Joy, who suffered a serious near-drowning accident in 2011. To help pave the way for their story, they asked a few friends to write about their own "deep waters," journeys that have illuminated the faithfulness of God.

I initially told Brandi "no." It had been a long time since I'd blogged about anything. I've spent the last five years immersed in caring for my two young boys. As a journalist, I have always been more comfortable writing about other people -- their dreams, struggles, challenges and joys. 

But Brandi was asking me to do something on a more personal level. She encouraged me to keep thinking about it. I did, and felt like the Lord gave me something to say.

Here's that story of God's faithfulness.

"Aha" moments

Most of parenting is full of “everyday” moments – changing yet another diaper, explaining the same answer to the same question, encouraging kids to share for the 10th time in a single hour. But sometimes there are significant moments that change your perspective, not only about your kids, but also your place in their lives. I had a moment like that last week. 

We were at a park, and my oldest (almost 5 years old) was playing with a few boys older than him. After a while I noticed two of the boys hitting and teasing him. 

My first impulse was to step in, but something held me back. I wanted to see what my son would do, but I’m also making more of a concerted effort to let him work out his own problems.

I kept watching as they continued with their teasing, and he pushed them away. He got away from them and hid his face. 

The boys said, "Awww, he doesn't like us." My son looked up. "No, I never said that,” he responded. “I just want you to stop what you're doing. I never said I didn't like you."

One of the boys got in his face. "No, you don't like us." This exchange went on a couple more times. Finally the boys walked away from my son, and he retreated to a place by himself.

I let him stay there for a minute, and then walked over to him. " Are you OK, buddy?" I asked.

"Mommy, those boys were being mean to me. I didn't like it. But now they think I don't like them. But I never said that. I just didn't like them punching me." 

"I saw what happened,” I told him. “I’m sorry. What are you going to do?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I just want to be by myself right now."

So I let him be. A few minutes later, my son returned to the group of boys.

"I don't like it when you punch me, but I still want to be your friend,” he said. “But friends don't hurt each other, OK?"

And they all went on playing together.

As I thought later that night about what happened, I made a couple of observations:

• A 5-year-old can distinguish between behavior he doesn't like and "liking" the person. How interesting that there are a lot of adults who can't or don’t do this. Think of the world we live in, the opinions we read about, the squabbles that take place over social media. Somehow disagreement has become equal to rejection. We have lost the fine art of being honest and respectful -- without writing people off and without abandoning friendships and relationships. We have much to learn from our children.

• My first inclination at the sight of watching this scene unfold at the park was to be a helicopter parent. I wanted to whisk my kid away from trouble and tell those boys to leave my son alone. I'm glad I didn't do that. I saw something in my son explained only by God at work in his life. Sometimes I think we rush take the credit (or blame) for what our kids understand and how they respond to life. Certainly we have an important role in those things. But there is no junior Holy Spirit. When we have Jesus in our hearts and lives, even at the tender age of 5, we get the real deal.  I shouldn't be surprised that God reveals His wisdom to those with simple faith. 

•  After we got home from the park that day, I talked to my son about what had happened and how proud I was of how he responded to the boys. "You did the right thing," I told him. "Liking someone doesn't mean you like everything they do. Loving someone means telling the truth and standing up for yourself. But you went back to them and tried to make amends. You cared about them in your heart." I could tell by the look on his face that he needed those words of affirmation.

My little boy grew in wisdom and confidence that day. So did I. 

I'm back!

I started this blog in 2007 -- eight years ago! For many reasons, I've let it fly under the radar. Mostly it's because life happened to me and my husband in the form of two beautiful sons -- Evan was born in 2010, and Will arrived in 2012. My main job is to care for them, and they are the joy of my life. But they also take up most of my life, so blogging has obviously taken a back seat.

But it's been on my heart for a while now to resurrect this little writing experiment of mine. I've never intended it to be anything but a place where I can express my thoughts, dream a little and ask questions. You can find me on Facebook and Twitter. But those things have their place in the world. A place to dream, to think, to ponder, they usually aren't.

I'm glad to be back here. I'll post from time to time, as the Spirit leads, starting tomorrow with some of my thoughts as of late. On Friday there will be a little something special.

Happy reading, my friend.

Merry Christmas!

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Overcomers

Yesterday Mike and I went downtown to cheer a friend of ours on in the Denver Marathon. We saw him at mile 18, mile 20 and at the finish line. It hasn't struck me until today how much of an accomplishment this really was. I've never run a mile in a my life unless you count an elliptical machine running. I'm a walker and a hiker, not a runner. Mike said yesterday that when he runs less than a mile on pavement, his ankles and knees start killing him. Granted, both of us could probably run a marathon if 1) we really wanted to and 2) if we trained. But from our vantage point today, running 26.2 miles is quite a feat.

Our friend finished in just over four hours -- about 10 minutes over his goal. He took the missed goal in stride, though, admitting that he hadn't trained as much as he wanted to or needed to. He has the Ironman triathlon in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, to look forward to and train for next June. My younger brother and uncle just did the Ironman Wisconsin in September, so I know what our friend is about to endure.

After the marathon, our friend said he started to struggle at about the half-way mark. As his legs burned and he willed himself to keep going, he told us he praised God for the pain, praised God that he even had the legs to run the race. Several fellow marathoners along the way -- one blind, one in a wheelchair -- served as inspiration for him to keep going.

I saw this article (linked below) today about a man who was paralyzed, learned to walk and eventually run to compete in yesterday's race. All we need is stories like this to remind us that we are capable of far more than we imagine. The battle to overcome is in our minds, not in our limitations.

Denver man overcomes paralysis to complete Denver Marathon - The Denver Post

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This image by cartoonist Drew Litton captures exactly how I and a lot of Colorado Rockies fans feel about our team today. They lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Phillies Monday night. The Phillies will go on to play the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. We Rockies fans are left to reminisce about the year and look forward to next spring.

It was a disappointing finish because the Rockies this year were a better team than maybe they've ever been, winning 92 games in the regular season. The last time they went to the playoffs in 2007, they went all the way to the World Series. But that doesn't happen every time. In '07, the Rockies were the hottest team in baseball in September and October, even though they fell to the Red Sox in the actual World Series. The Rockies ran over the Phillies and the Diamondbacks in the divisional and championship series, making it look easy.

I had to remind myself last night as I watched the Rockies lose that baseball playoffs are tough, and the better team really does usually end up winning those series. Compare that to the football playoffs, which often involve teams that have no business being there. And if football teams had to play one another multiple times in the playoffs as in baseball, the result would likely be different.

Baseball is not football, however. The sheer length of the baseball season makes it mirror life in so many significant ways -- the anticipation of a new season, pressing through losses, injuries and other hard times, the excitement of a winning streak, the disappointment of a losing streak. A team that wins only half of its games is considered pretty decent -- imagine that! But take your own life over the course of six months -- how many of us have about as many good days as bad in that length of time? And then when the playoffs come, and we fans get to see the best baseball of the entire season, there are more ups and downs. How many times have the Los Angeles Angels, for example, gone to the post-season in recent years and not made it to the World Series? How many decent teams are still waiting to get into the playoffs at all?

Speaking of the Angels, I'll be rooting for them to go to the World Series and win this year -- mostly because they aren't the Yankees or the Dodgers (I can't bring myself to root for either of them). And the Phillies won last year. Besides, friends of ours in California are HUGE Angels fans . . . and if our team is already knocked out of the playoffs, we'll join our good friends in rooting on their team.

Finally, this is from my husband Mike. It's a little commentary he wrote about the Rockies:

TOO OFTEN IN PRO SPORTS, THE OUTCOME IS THE ONLY FOCUS. THE RESULT IS TOO OFTEN ALL THAT IS CELEBRATED OR CRITICIZED.

CLEARLY THE ENDING OF THE SEASON - AND HOW IT HAPPENED - IS NOT WHAT THE ROCKIES OR THEIR FANS WANTED.

HOW THE ROCKIES HANDLED THEMSELVES IN DEFEAT IS MORE THAN ADMIRABLE...HOW THEY HANDLED THEMSELVES IN MOMENTS OF TRIUMPH THROUGHOUT THE SEASON IS EQUALLY IMPRESSIVE.

THE 2009 ROCKIES GAVE US A SUMMER TO REMEMBER AND ALSO WHAT EVERY BASEBALL FAN YEARNS FOR...DRAMA IN AUTUMN.

FOR ALL THOSE THINGS I SALUTE AND THANK THEM.

Memories of Disney

Do you remember the first time you went to Disneyland? If you were a kid at the time, you probably remember it as being larger than life . . . the big castle in the middle of the park, the rides that made you feel like you were in another world, characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, no longer in a cartoon but right there, alive and in person, walking around and posing for photos.

Mike and I had a chance to return to Disneyland in July for the first time in about 20 years for both of us. I have to credit our fantastic experience to good friends we visited before we went, who gave us two-day passes and mapped out everything we needed to do and see before we got there . . . everything down to indulging in the HUGE piece of chocolate cake at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon in Frontierland.

The first thing that struck me was that everything at Disney is so much smaller than I remembered it . . . the castle in the middle is actually pretty small, the rides are still fun but not quite as scary, and the park itself is contained in a much smaller space than I thought it was.

Here are some other impressions . . .

. . . My favorite attractions were in California Adventure, the park next to Disneyland -- the Toy Story ride, Screamin' California, Soarin' and the Aladdin show. The Aladdin show alone was worth the trip. It's a shortened version (45 minutes) of the Broadway show. Very well done with a genie who, no kidding, outdoes Robin Williams' humor in the movie.

. . . Many of the oldies at Disneyland are still the goodies. Pirates of the Caribbean, for one, is still pretty cool. I remember being freaked out by this ride as a kid. When I was little, I hated anything remotely dark or scary. The ride now has Captain Jack Sparrow (a very realistic image of Johnny Depp) in several places along the way. I think this one will remain one of my favorite rides at Disney. An oldie that is NOT a goodie, though, is the Jungle Cruise. I have fond memories of that when I was a kid, and those fond memories will stay in my "kid" brain. The Jungle Cruise experience as a grown-up wasn't quite the same.

. . . Space Mountain is also still quite the thrilling ride. It's hard to believe this ride is so old. It opened in the 60s and has since gone through several updates. It remains the most unique roller coaster I've ever been on.

. . . Fantasyland (it was called Storybookland when I was little) transported me back to my childhood, with Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, Peter Pan, Small World and more. We didn't go on any rides in this part of the park (the lines were amazingly long with no Fast Pass option--see below). But we walked around, took lots of photos and recalled a lot of memories from when we were kids.

. . . Some of the newer and most popular rides weren't as big of a deal as I thought they would be. The special effects that went into the Indiana Jones ride are amazing, but the ride itself was too short, really jerky (it mimicks an off-road jeep ride) and left me feeling like, "That was it?" I was glad we did this one early in the morning and only waited about 15 minutes.

. . . Disney has really done its guests a huge favor with the Fast Passes. These free passes reserve you a time to get in line and cut down on the wait time by a lot in some cases, especially with the popular rides like Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, etc.

. . . There is something to be said for just strolling around, people-watching and otherwise just taking it all in. Disney is an amazing place. When you leave, you really feel like you've spent the entire day transported to another world. That was Walt Disney's purpose in creating the park. He called it the "happiest place on earth" and wanted it to be a place where children and parents would enjoy being together.

I have to say our trip turned us into even bigger Disney fans. We've loved Disney movies for years. We went a little crazy and bought too many Disney stuffed animals while were at Disneyland. (We have plans to put up a shelf to display them all.) Now we are talking about going to Disneyworld, where there are even more theme parks to enjoy. We'll get there, I'm sure.