Bouncing back...

I would like to ask a dear favor from all of the believers that read my blog, if too much time goes by and I have not posted anything in here please do a little prayer for me. It could be that the only reason that I have not written anything is because I suddenly had to depart of business travel, in which case I can always use your prayers for the simple request to make it back home safely. Another less likely reason could simply be that I finally kicked the bucket and am on my way to hopefully meet the Lord, in which case I believe that I could never have too many prayers to help me smoothen out any indecisions from saint Peter to allow me in. However, the most likely reason is typically tied to me falling into a moment of desperation and frustration with the parenting of my oldest son; in which case I totally could use your divine connections to help me get through the moment at hand.

As much as I would love to report that my absence has been due to a business trip, the truth is much less appealing. We all come to expect setbacks in our lives which will in one way or the other bring us back to that dreadful place of anxiety and despair. When the life experience is tied to a well needed moment of personal growth it is not uncommon for us to eventually get back off our knees, dust ourselves off, and keep charging forward. However, when the event that entangles our day has much less of an “I can beat this problem” flavor, recovery can take a much longer time. In the process I personally feel as if I am being hog tied to the back bumper of a truck and taken for a drag through some very nasty terrain. Unfortunately that is the nature of parenting a child that is not only wired mostly backwards from the rest, but also insists on trying to fix himself and refuses to accept advice, counsel, and any kind of treatment that might help from others including myself. It is a nasty business this crazy road dragging experience. Emotions run high and after a while I start to feel as if the little bit of faith that remains in my heart is the only thing that holds all of my parts together and keeps me from becoming totally unglued.

So here I sit tonight, writing the little bit that I am able to without really letting any of you in. It might sound totally unfair of my part to not share the chaos of the moment, yet I feel as if I have very little choice in the matter. This I do, not because I fear for myself, but mostly because I fear for anything that might be in our path. It is much easier to tell you about it later, when the handle of the pan is much cooler and easier to hold on to. I remember when I was going to college in Mississippi, one day driving back from a long day of classes and my part time job, and as I took the final turn realizing that an old beautiful southern home less than a tenth of a mile from my place had burned down to the ground. Just that morning the structure was intact as I drove on my way to school. How could it be that so much damage could have happened in such a short amount of time? I did not presence the raging fire that had obviously consumed all but the brick remains of a fireplace, but still it was totally obvious to me how devastating it must have all been while it was happening. Charred pieces of lumber revealed the incessant furry of the flames leaving smoking embers as its only evidence in the end. This is just the same with the path I find myself walking about in my life with my oldest son. At times the furry and devastation in his mind wreak havoc on everything that is close to him. Unfortunately I am probably the closest thing to him at almost any instant in his young wreck less life, which means that I am not left intact, much less undamaged emotionally. It takes me a while to recover, to recharge, to find a way to be normal again, but I always do in the end. As Joel Osteen would say, I have “bounce back power.” Just like the mighty palm trees bounce back after a hurricane, I too eventually find my way back to “looking good.” In the meantime, do a little prayer for me…I could really use some Divine intervention!

Dad

Reconciliation...

I walked into the coffee mess this morning at work, did my café mocha routine, and as I was almost walking out of the break room I heard one of the other guys in the area reply to the typical “How’s it going?” query from someone else in the room with an “I haven’t gotten fired yet, so all is well!...” reply. I know this individual’s answer was an intent to humor the inquiry with a clever answer, and just as I stepped out through the door the final part of his reply reached my ears “…but it’s just past six in the morning, so the day is still young!” Again, I know he was just joking, but his answer stuck with me and has really made me think whether this kind of humor could actually be revealing a sense of worry of impending doom from this particular individual and many others. How sad would it be to spend at least 40 hours a week, every week, with the mental anticipation that you might get fired? Yet, even though I make an effort to steer clear from spending any significant amount of time near anyone that walks around with this kind of negativity, unavoidably their presence is more common than not. I am of the idea that it makes very little sense to invite into your life any significant amount of negative energy regardless of its true intent, such as humor, if at all possible. Instead, I rather get up in the morning and tell myself that “today is going to be a great day” and that “anything bad will only come into my life with the intent of eventually opening the door to something better!” I believe that in the past I have made the mistake of allowing my own negativity to trigger incredibly unhealthy decisions on my part. This is a pattern that I have consciously decided to break which in return has allowed me to stir clear from making wrong choices and also made me a much happier individual.

Yesterday, in the midst of a cell phone conversation with my mom she mentioned that the thing that she misses the most from her days of being a teacher was her interaction with kids. Immediately I questioned her reason since I would have easily guessed that instead it should have been her interaction with other co-workers. Her reply was honest and to the point, “I miss how the kids always made me laugh with their stories…” she said. How clever of her to recognize that not all social interactions are to be missed. Instead she pointed out that it was more rewarding to share with the kids because they brought a level of joy and newness to her life that could not be found in many of the adult interactions. This is not to say that she did not miss her friends and co-workers; what she meant to say was that of all the things that she got out of being a teacher for over 45 years, the most fulfilling was being able to absorb the innocent positivity that came about sharing with younger people. It never ceases to amaze me how much I am still able to learn from my mother at my age. There is a clarity in her opinions that can only be effectively described as “soulful wisdom.” Her words have always brought clarity when I am having a hard time focusing on something that is in my mind. Other than during my ignorant teenage rebellious phase, I cannot remember a time in which I have ever questioned her insight into anything that is directly pertinent to my life. More importantly, I cannot recall any bad advice either. On the contrary, the sooner I accept and apply what she teaches me, the quicker I recover from my mistakes.

OK, back to surrounding yourself with the right kind of positive input in your life. Who would have thought that the social interaction of an adult with teenagers would hold more value than interacting with other adults? The first thing that crosses my mind is how much I might be wasting in the way of rewarding experiences when I trade any of the time I could be interacting with my own teenage children with others instead. Obviously, the role of a parent can be correlated in many ways to that of a teacher. However, we all know how hard it is to communicate with our own teenagers. The fact that my mother was able to share beautiful, funny, and rewarding experiences with so many of her teenage students is more of a tribute to her ability to bring down the barriers and walls that typically rise between generations. In contrast, I can clearly remember many of my middle and high school teachers of which I am sure that neither I nor any of my classmates would have ever considered sharing with socially. So in retrospect I can pretty much confirm that this success achieved by my mom as a teacher was much less related to her role as an educator, and much more because of her personality and behavior towards these young minds in the first place. With this discovery I then deduct that the same might be true for any of us as parents. We should be able to gain certain advantages in our social interaction with our children if we are able to bring to the relationships the right kind of personality and behavior too.

Obviously the role of a non parental adult with a young adult is not the same as that of a parent with their kids. I have worked hard to make sure that my children don’t just see me as any other grown up, but rather as an authority figure in their lives for many important reasons. In the first place, how effective of a parent would I be if my children thought of me in the same way that they do my next door neighbor? To follow, my credibility as a role model is being constantly scrutinized by my children because of how close we are interacting between each other on a daily basis. These critical differences in my parental role have created a kind of wall that first need to be climbed and crossed before I am able to reach my own children in the say way that my mother was able to reach her students. So what tools do I have in my parenting trunk for me to whip out and utilize in order to climb, cross, or break any barrier that might present itself when I want to succeed in my effort to have a better social interaction with my children? The answer is obvious to me because of my relationship with my own parents. The tool that has constantly kept me, even while I was a rebellious teenager, in harmony with my parents is love.

Probably the most complicated and yet well known and experienced emotion in any relationship, especially in parenting is love. I do not intend to spend a lot of time giving you advice about love, since in reality there are only a few things that you need to know that is truly useful. The rest would be mostly wasted, since I am sure that any and all of you have a great deal of personal experience on the subject of love. To delve in this amazingly wondrous personal subject assuming that I know any more than you would be ridiculous. However, I will point out something that might give you a bit of peace of mind when you find yourself wondering why you make many parenting decisions the way you do in the first place. What surprises me the most about love is its ability to alter my mental state of clarity and cloud my judgment so easily. Because of how much I love my children I have many times kicked myself for haven allowed or disallowed many behaviors and actions on the part of my boys. Yet it is for this same reason that love has the power to overcome just about any barrier or obstacle that is placed in the way of my interaction with them. In parenting, love adds the sweet taste of true reconciliation which adds itself in a very effective way after forgiveness. In other words, because I love my children, not only am I able to forgive their transgressions, but I am also able to accept them just the way they are and allow them to be completely back in my good graces in the end. Think about it, it is not the same to forgive yet stay hurt, than it is to absolve and regenerate the relationship to its original state again. This is truly a thing of beauty that is one hundred percent obvious to me with my children, just as it has always been with my own parents.

I have climbed over the wall, laughed so hard that my belly aches and I am sitting in a great place emotionally because my parents taught me the true value of loving, forgiving, and most of all forgetting the things that have ever hurt me. This is how I not only intend to live, but have decided to be true to myself and my children. I have seen life take away from others some of the most precious part of an individual’s heart. I don’t want to have to ever regret not giving my all to children, so for this reason I walk towards their brilliant lives, and never away from them. Maybe this way one day I will be able to say that the thing I miss the most in my older age is the joy that my kids brought into my life during the years I was a father.

Dad

Holding hands as we cross the street...

On October 6, 2009 I wrote a post titled “The Eye of the Storm.”   At the end of this post I wrote…

“I do want to leave you with a motive for my late night posting to share what I discovered tonight. In the middle of every hurricane there is a place of calm called the eye of the storm. The very nature of this tropical weather event creates a beautiful sense of calm filled with blue skies and calm. My grandfather used to tell me stories about how some people in the old days had no idea that what seemed as the end of the storm was actually the middle of it. Once the thirty or so minutes of peace were complete, the other side of the storm came back with a vengeance with winds just as strong and scary as the original ones, but this time in the opposite direction. Not being ready for this second run of chaos was always more damaging than the first part. I too am aware that I am currently in what seems as the eye of the storm. The difference is that I am actually utilizing this time, this in between chaos state to recharge and hopefully tie down the so easily flown away roof of my life. The only one that could change this from being what I am pretty sure it truly is would be God. In some what seemed to be random occasions the eye of the storm actually led to a less than devastating second part due to the storm actually losing its might because of how the centered mountains of the island had battled and weakened its strength. Who knows, maybe the few centered mountains in my life are large enough to have the same effect. Even better, maybe God has taken charge of this story and written a much deserved better ending for us all…”

Six months have transpired since I posted those comments and I feel obligated to make amends with my words.  Indeed, up to that moment the events that were taking place gave all the indications of the makings of a perfect storm.  Yet, as tough as things sometimes got between me and my son during the last six months, enough had already changed for it to never really go back to being as scary as it used to be.  I sit here today trying to figure out what exactly were the changes that took place that made things, if not ok, at least better between us.  Have I grown enough to handle our circumstances in a more productive and healthier way?  Has he made changes that are allowing us to close in the gap of understanding between us?  Maybe it is a mix of what we are both somehow doing that is working in our favor.  I personally don’t see that much of a difference in his behavior other than a bit more kindness on his end.  It is as if his harsh rebellious teenage attitude decided to be dunked in a barrel of honey.  I am still able to see through the transparent outer sweet coating what lies under it all, and it is apparent that not much has truly changed, but at least it doesn’t taste as bad while it’s going down and making it easier to swallow.  On my end, the biggest change that I have made in the past six months has been to give myself the luxury of letting go of many of the things which I have no control of, while trusting that God will somehow take care of it since I feel in many ways powerless to that effect.  This fundamental change has been extremely difficult on my end since it goes contrary to every one of my parental instincts which typically drive me to want to intervene and prevent anything bad from ever happening to my children.  However, I have learned that as altruistic as this attitude might seem, it does not necessarily work in favor of the results that I want to achieve as a parent.  Again, the theme of balance and living a centered life comes to mind, which obviously do not go in hand with being an obsessive parent.

As a parent I have much more choices than simply making rules and then trying to enforce them with my children.  Sometimes it seems that my parental role should mostly be geared around being a good role model, but I have also learned that doing this is not nearly enough either.  Role modeling is only as effective as my teenager’s ability to accept the role model behavior during his “my parents are dumb” years will allow him to in the first place.  Expert parenting advice almost always gives way to telling us that as parents our role is not to be our children’s friends, but rather their guides.  Have you ever tried to guide someone that does not like you?  To that matter, have you ever been guided by someone that you do not like?  Not an easy task, is it?  So in my mind, regardless of what the “experts” write in their not so humble opinions, I have to be “liked” to some degree by my children in order for them to want to follow my lead.  Obviously I am not talking about becoming their BFF (Best Friends Forever), even though in concept it does sound like I should almost be their best friend in order to reach them, but the reality is very different than the concept in itself.  I have learned instead that a reasonable middle ground is found when you are able to gain their respect.  I for one am much more willing to follow someone’s advice if I at least respect them in the first place.  Why then should my children be any different?  So I suppose that what follows for me to be an effective parent is to learn to be able to make rules and try to enforce them without losing my kid’s respect.  Also, I need to focus my role modeling efforts to take advantage of the things that they can easily admire, such as treating them with respect too.

This road of gaining mutual respect that I speak of above seems to be a significant key to gaining back some of the balance of power in my parent child relationship.  Obviously it is difficult for me to stay true to this concept in the midst of chaos, so I don’t expect to get it right all the time.  Once in a while I regress to my “help me God or I’m going to lose it” emotional state, yet these moments seem to be happening much farther apart in time.  These greater gaps in time between moments of frustration allow the tree of mutual respect to grow taller, stronger, and a bit more resilient to high winds and bad weather.  Even though it is pretty obvious that in a sense I have dodged the reverse powerful winds of the other side of the eye of the storm that started six months ago, I have no way of knowing how powerful or close by the next storm might be with my son.  For this reason most of all, I am trying to not just recharge myself, but also learn how to build our mutual respect to a more survivable level.

This might all seem totally irrelevant to many of you, since it is very likely that your children are wired in the same way as my youngest son is wired and these challenges that I speak of are totally unheard of in the first place.  Even so, there is really no reason to dismiss the importance of rooting much of your parenting on the concept of mutual respect.  However, for those of you that find my situation to be akin to yours, I highly recommend you take advantage of this lesson which I've had to learn the hard way.  The sooner you work on attaining a higher level of mutual respect with your children, the easier it will eventually be to have any kind of impact and influence on their teenage lives.  It might all sounds like "pie in the sky" talk, but I am here to tell you first hand that it matters much more than you can imagine.  "Well of course I should always aim to attain mutual respect with my children," you are telling yourself right now.  The challenge is not in just recognizing what you need to do to be an effective parent, the real challenge is in doing these things when it counts.  Myself, I have found it very difficult to bring my own feeling of entitlement for respect from my kids to a level that is at least equal to how much I show that I respect them too.  It's easy to make the mistake and assume that because they might be on the wrong path at any given moment that I can use that against them to make them feel less deserving of my respect.  I have learned this to be a huge mistake on my part, and all I have to do to recognize this is imagine them being disrespectful to me just because I make a mistake in my life.  If this were the case, none of us would be deserving of any respect ever, right?  Remember, the key is not just respect; it is “mutual respect” what I am aiming for in the first place.  I believe that the lesson that I teach them with my tolerance and forgiveness for their mistakes is the same lesson they will use when I don't get it always right too.  Try to keep in mind that these many times not so adorable creatures are mine and not just some stranger with whom I started a friendship a while back.  There are no refunds, no takesie backies, and no justified reason for me to divorce myself from my kids.  So I might as well learn what it is that I need to do to earn their respect so that we can find a way to be happy together.  Whatever I do about this will eventually be the role model they will look up to when they are raising their own children.  

I can still remember how I felt as a child while holding my parent's hand as we crossed a busy street.  I suppose this feeling safe came about because of how much I liked and trusted them in the first place.  Liking, trusting, respecting are all emotions that are somehow tied together in the same knot when we are speaking about family ties.  The stronger the like, trust, and respect, the tighter the knot that will keep your relationship with your children together.

Dad

Top 10 reasons you should not give up as a parent...

10. What else would you do with your free time?
  9. What else would you do with all your money?
  8. What else would you do with all your extra gas?
  7. Who would be left to challenge your never ending patience?
  6. It would take weeks to get used to being able to sleep all night straight again.
  5. Shopping at Costco or Sam's Club wouldn't make any sense.
  4. It would take forever to have a full load of clothes to do laundry.
  3. You would have to find a different hobby other than cleaning.
  2. What would you do with all those locks you bought for the medicine and liquor cabinet?
  1. You'd get bumped off the list to become a Saint after you were sooo close!

Dad

Just hold your breath, relax, and let yourself go...

Given the choice between sailing in smooth or rough waters, I am sure that most of us would pick the kinder and gentler option.  Yet every once in a while we all crave the adventure that comes from getting into a small boat and paddling down a river in which eventually the white water rapids will pump up our adrenaline levels and make us feel excited and alive.  This does not change the fact that while we are riding inside the wildest ride of our life, fear, anxiety, and confusion typically manage to overwhelm most of our senses.  However, there is something to be said about coming face to face with our fears and mortality that has the ability to teach us to appreciate in a more powerful way than ever our otherwise simple lives.

I remember once paddling down the beautiful Tuolumne River in a white water rafting expedition that my then wife and I joined with a group of friends.  The adventure could all be done in a single day for those that did not want to spend a night camping in the wilderness. However, we truly wanted to submerge ourselves in the whole experience instead.  The two day, one night outdoor adventure was my first taste of white water rafting that included a Category 5 portion named Clavey Falls.  Category 5 means that any harder than that and it cannot be done at all.  You need do this at least once in your life in order to appreciate the sense of overwhelming power that water possesses when nature creates these impressive rapids.  It is as if the water has a mind of its own and is able to do at will whatever it wants to you and your raft while traversing this portion of the river.

A few days before we took off on this trip, one of my co-workers and a participant of the planned vacation brought in the local newspaper with an article addressing exactly the same kind of adventure.  In the article there was quite a bit of advice and some definite warnings.  The writer was morbid enough to include a few statistics and stories of how many people get hurt and some even drown.  He explained how risky each of the categories was, and included quotes from individuals that had almost lost their lives in a similar adventure to ours.  After reading the article, my then wife and I looked at each other with owl eyes and wondered if we were doing the right thing or simply being too risky.  The trip had been planned months earlier and by the time we were having second thoughts, all of the expenses were non-refundable.  A few minutes of pondering and eventually we came to the same conclusion that we were not going to lose our four hundred dollar per person fee, and of course, we would be extra careful. 

In the article, one of the accounts read of an individual that when tossed overboard from the raft got sucked under water by what was called a whirlpool effect.  The rapid motion of water mixed with the right underground shape of the river sometimes creates an effect that is similar to what you see when you open the lid of your washing machine and the clothes that are on top get sucked down towards the bottom.  After struggling for a while and as the victim began to feel too tired and weak to get out of the water sucking whirlpool, he simply got pulled under towards the bottom of the river and eventually emerged a few tens of feet away in a much calmer place.  The victim recalled this anxious moment as if finally letting go and stopping the struggle to survive and accepting fate, whatever that would be in the end.  Finally, I remember the author of the article sharing the advice that if you ever found yourself sucked in by the whirlpool effects of the white water rapids, not to fight it since this would only be pointless and probably make you expend the required energy you would need to swim back into your raft afterwards.  Instead, the author wrote, you should just hold your breath, relax, and let yourself go.  Once the whirlpool has sucked you under it should then release you at a different location which hopefully will not be so turbulent, and you will be able to swim back to safety.  This is one of those lessons that most definitely can only come in handy if you know it before the fact and in advance.  Letting yourself be sucked in by the river in order to survive, goes contrary to your instincts.  Most of us would struggle against the current and probably lose the fight eventually and most likely drown.  But knowing this little bit of information could save our lives instead.

I can think of many moments in life that have similarities to the effects of being sucked in by a white water rapid whirlpool.  Sometimes I tend to get myself so tangled up in situations that the more I struggle to get myself out, the harder it seems for me to survive the moment in the end.  We've all been there as parents, opposing everything that our teenage kids do that from the go instinctively make the hair in the back of our necks stand up.  "Dad, I want a tattoo...it's only a piercing...everybody else drinks...smoking pot is not addictive...everybody else is going..." all are words that once you hear them coming out of your child's mouth the waters begin to rise and the powerful swirl starts its sucking act of dragging you into an argument.  Of course, as a parent you feel the responsibility of having to impose some kind of rule in hopes that in the end you will be able to enforce it.  However, most of your reaction is truly originated out of the same survival instinct that you would feel while swimming as hard as you can to get out of a whirlpool.  As a parent you know it is insane to simply accept the crazy requests of a 17 year old teenager asking permission to spend the night at another teenager's home without supervision.  So you stand your ground and do what comes natural and is reasonable, you simply say "No!"  For the next day or so the struggle continues since the child knows that he or she can eventually wear you down, because they are relentless, just like the water rapids.

I have learned to pick my battles sort to speak.  It is not that I will give in to the tireless efforts of the teenage voice that keeps nagging its request for some most impossible act.  I simply have learned that instead of struggling from the beginning, tiring myself almost to death, I make the point of addressing the issue once, and then walk away.  The child obviously knows that if he persists he will have power to try to wear me down, so of course he pursues with his efforts.  The true lesson comes in what I do next, which is pretty much the same as getting me out of a sucking whirlpool in the middle of a raging white water rapid.  I just get the air I will need to survive, relax, and let myself go.  No more fighting, no more arguing, and definitely no more allowing the moment to cause excessive anxiety, stress, or worries.  The only difference from the advice given by the author of the aforementioned article is that I also do what most of you might guess...I say a little prayer too.  As I struggle to not allow my instincts to kick in and put me on a totally defensive posture, I close my eyes and pray..."God, Bless this child that I want so badly to yell at!  Keep me sane in this moment of anger and frustration.  I know I can be much more effective as a father here, than from prison...Amen."

The act of letting go of what is pulling me down into moments of frustration, anger, and pain can be truly empowering and liberating.  Instead of fighting every battle, I have decided to allow God to take on some of the biggies for me.  I cannot make my oldest teenage son change any reckless or dangerous behavior on my own.  As far as I can tell, this task requires supernatural powers which I do not posses.  I for one am not a superhero and lack mind altering abilities.  I can take care of him to the best of my abilities, but I cannot make him think in any particular way.  I know that God is working in the background making things happen as they need to happen for him to eventually learn whatever lessons he must learn to become what he is destined to become, a great man.  If you are not a believer, and more so if you are an atheist, it probably crosses your mind that this is a total copout on my end.  To be honest with you, I can live with that assessment on your part without a worry in the world because in the end, I am the one that has to handle the situation and not you.  On the other hand, if you have any kind of higher power belief system and you find yourself in circumstances similar to mine, where your struggles have worn you down and pretty much sucked the life out of you, I suggest you also find a way to get the air you need to survive, relax, and let God take care of the parts that are way out of your hands too.  All I can say is what good can come out of not being able to survive the struggle?  Will you have the strength, the energy needed when the time comes for you to swim back on to the boat to continue your ride down the river of your life?  What sense does it actually make to struggle against something as powerful and that is truly and mostly out of your hands?

I don't want to get all preachy, but I do want to make sure you understand that as long as you believe that God can take care of your needs, you might as well give him those needs that are truly beyond your abilities and control.  After all, what would you have to lose?  I am not talking about being lazy and expecting God's blessings without doing your job, not at all.  You do have the responsibility to do your part, and I am pretty sure you know what that means.  If you already know that swimming against the current will not solve the problems in your life, becoming a martyr in the process seems pretty silly.  I might not understand how it is that God will fix my child in the end, but I do know that it will be exactly as it should be and that my job is not to know how, but to trust in Him.

From the early days of my life as a child and later on as a teenager, the one consistent and unwavering Truth in my life has always been that God has never forsaken me.  What actually surprises me the most about me is how as soon as my life became stable and rewarding, that was the moments in which I decided to backtrack in my faith and give less credit to my faith.  Science ruled my mind and managed to give me answers to my questions allowing me to be less reliant on God for answers.  However, there is no doubt that the less I prayed and the farther I walked away from the spiritual part of my life, the hollower the answers that I discovered via science became in the end.  I am by far one of the most skeptical men you will ever meet, attributing almost everything that happens in my life to logical reasoning and probabilities.  Yet I have also grown to develop an amazing sense of reasoning that is able to find answers not only in what I am able to measure, but also in what I am able to feel.  For example, I challenge you to sit down and figure out the mathematical probability of finding true love.  I can imagine that a formula could be generated with a plus and minus percentile of accuracy based on your personal preferences, belief system, the number of individuals that might meet your unique likes and dislikes within the age range that would make them most compatible with yourself, chances of meeting them randomly or by presentation, geographic location, marital status, and at least twenty more significant factors.  In the end and once you have plugged in all the data and made your calculations, a statistical value can be generated that will tell you what are the chances of you finding true love.  Yet, chances, probabilities, and odds mean absolutely nothing unless you yourself go out into the world and seek true love, give it a chance, take the risk, and open yourself to the possibility of experiencing it in your life.  The emotional exposure that you give to your life will magnify the chances that any scientific probability might suggest possible.  In this same way I feel that making yourself accessible to the grace of God works towards your spiritual well being.  Even if God surrounds you with all of His love, compassion, and blessings, you too have to go out into the world and seek Him, give him a chance, take the risk, and open yourself to the possibility of experiencing Him in your life in order to partake of His blessings.

Just as within myself I am able to find the connection that God's supernatural intervention is key to bringing the best out of my own children, you too can enlist His grace to bring to pass the secret desires that are inside of your mind and heart.  Don't waste your time struggling against the life sucking whirlpools in which you tend to fall into when things get tough.  The sooner you realize that if you hold your breath, relax, and let yourself go eventually you will emerge in a much better place where the waters are much calmer for you to get back on the boat that is your life.  A lot of what you have been fighting for is truly out of your hands.  Spend your energy and efforts on what you have true influence over and leave the rest to God.

Dad

Getsemani...

How could I get myself into any real trouble if my mind was typically full of ideas that required long hours of planning and later executing?  Somehow, at the age of 16, I had been able to convince my high school principal to give me money to go on my own to the hardware store and purchase six electric light dimmer switches, four regular light switches, twelve color flood lights, 9 spot lights, adjustable light fixtures, spools of wire, plugs, insulating tape, soldering materials, and a few other things that I would be using to build the switch board and the stage 21 lights for our production of Jesus Christ Superstar.  For days I had worked on the design, dreaming up color schemes, placement on stage, and trying to figure out how much of everything I would need to create the effects I had envisioned in my mind.  The selection of materials at the hardware store was limited, so afterwards I still needed to modify my ideas to conform to the reality of what I was able to purchase.  In the end, I converted a classroom pupil desk that was donated by the school into the control panel for every light on the stage of our high school production.

As much as I also wanted to be the creative hands flipping the switches, dimming the lights, and controlling all of the light effects that I had created for the musical play, I was forced to train and delegate the job to a classmate because of other responsibilities that fell upon me.  You see, by the time I was 14 years old, genetics and hormones had covered my face with a full grown beard.  So by the time I was 16, nobody else in my class was actually better suited to play the role of Jesus without having to wear a fake beard instead.  Anyway, after all, I had already memorized part of the dialog of the role of Jesus in order to perform it during my performance in a speech competition for which I was fortunate enough to win the first prize just a few weeks earlier.  After spending the two previous years competing in the "Original" speech category, I finally decided to give it a try in the "Drama" category instead.  For this effort I borrowed the Jesus Christ Superstar album from a friend of my sister, made copies of the lyrics booklet, redacted the scenes of the trial before Pilate and the crucifixion, and set myself to the task of memorizing and practicing my acting for days on end.  Somehow, after winning the competition among all the participating schools, my classmates all got caught up in the moment and decided to turn the one man show into an entire class production instead.

I have never been able to put in half of me into anything of which I felt that I could put in all of my effort instead.  Soon I found myself dreaming up light effects, so I had to build the control box to make it happen.  Then I dreamed about how to be able to hold the cross in place during the play, so I went about for days building the cross and all of the attachments and gadgets to keep me and it safely in place.  Even the crown of thorns had to be perfect, so I spent hours weaving a crown made of long skinny branches of thorned "trinitarias" and then removing all of the thorns that aimed themselves inwards to avoid getting pricked.  An old white bed sheet was all my aunt that lived next door really needed to make the outfit, since she had always been a wizard at sewing just about anything I needed.  I do not recount any of this to brag since in essence this stuff came natural to me and anything less would have been abnormal behavior.  Yet now as an adult I look back in time and am still amazed that any adult actually trusted me in doing all these things without supervision or guidance.  I think that if I suddenly found out that my son was about to wire up 21 lights for a school production, first I would probably faint from amazement, but then after I would wake up from my head having hit the deck I would definitely want to see what he was up to in hopes of keeping anyone from getting electrocuted in the process.  Now that I look back at it all it truly amazes me that I was able to survive my own crazy inventions and adventures!

A few weeks back I took a chance and purchased some pretty expensive theater tickets hoping that my oldest son would want to go with me to see the Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar in the newly renovated Fox Theater in Riverside, California.  Ted Neely was 33 years old when he first played the role of Jesus in Broadway, and later on also in the movie.  Friday night, Good Friday, this beautiful rock opera musical was once again brought back to life with a now 66 year old Ted Neely playing the role of Christ.  Years back, when my son was only 10 years old I bought some college theater tickets to take him to see this play and to my surprise he loved it.  Now, at the age of 17, I had prayed for days that God would bless him into wanting to go see it again with me.  The challenge was not so much that he would want to go, since I already knew that he liked the play, the real challenge was that he would make himself available and not back out at the last minute making me waste the cost of his front row seat.  In an act of true faith, I bought his ticket without even asking my son if he wanted to go, and then every day, several times a day; I told God how grateful I was that He was making sure that my son would go with me.  In my heart, even though I can see his lips move and hear the words coming out of his mouth saying things that are in line with an atheist, I have no doubt that God is working in supernatural ways to touch his heart.  All I wanted to do by having him attend the musical with me was to plant another seed in his mind, heart, and soul of the same experiences that changed my own life as a young man.  I cannot change him; make him into anything that he does not want to be.  In fact, I do not want to change him and make him into anything he does not want to be.  That is not my job as his father.  If I would set my goals to such high standards, why would I need God in my life anyway?  Instead I'll settle for trying my best to be a good influence, a positive role, and a dependable source of hope in his life.

After a few tense moments of one of his female friends arriving at our home crying for reasons that only they were privy to, and at our agreed time of departure, the young man with the long dark hair, psychedelic shoes, purple jeans, black trench coat, interesting but needless Johnny Depp eyeglasses, and black fedora hat boarded my car.  At that exact moment I sighed and made a silent prayer thanking God for keeping His end of the deal.  The play was nothing short of beautiful and marvelous.  Other than getting up at the beginning of the second act and missing three of the songs to go answer a phone call from the still apparently distressed female friend, my son behaved in his own unique and typical fashion, which pleased me to no end.  On our way out of the theater and back to the car I told him that he had missed the song "Getsemani" when he left to answer his phone.  Immediately he replied, "Oh, then I will just have to sing it..." for which he then began to sing from memory and out loud the entire song from beginning to end without a care in the world of who might be around him during this impulsive act of joy.  Yes, he was right, he actually had not missed anything at all since that particular song, also being his favorite, had already been saved inside his amazingly powerful and beautiful mind.

There must be a reason for which when I was 16 years old my life took a path that overwhelmingly consumed my every thought in order to memorize the lines of the first musical that Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber produced on the professional stage.  In this same way I believe that there must be a reason for which my son has already memorized the song of "Getsemani" without much ryhm or reason, since he has never been involved in any acting and very much not a religious individual.  To many, this might all just seem as pure coincidences.  To me, however, it is much more than happen stance and random acts of events.  I know that one day, when my son is having to deal with his own parenting challenges he will transport himself to these shared moments between us and find answers in some of these experiences.  It might turn out to be the blind act of faith of his father buying a ticket not even knowing if he would agree to go, or the willingness to accept him just as he is regardless of my own beliefs and the difficulties that lay in between our differences.  Maybe it will be something as simple of him realizing how much joy a father can get from sharing special moments with his children.  Regardless of the final outcome, and the fact that Ted Neely can definitely sing "Getsemani" much better than my son, a deal is a deal, I bought the tickets, God got him to go, and life was good!

Dad

Planting seeds of hope and love...or not.

I admit to being one of those people that gets hooked on a TV show when its content is to my liking.  In my younger years science fiction appealed to me the most with a tendency to not want to miss any episodes of the Lost in Space, and Star Trek television series. Eventually my taste buds grew and I learned to enjoy other genres which planted me in front of the boob tube watching endless hours of M*A*S*H, Cheers, Taxi, Saturday Night Live, and a many other shows that with their whit had the ability to make me laugh all by myself.  If there is one thing that I have to give credit to the entertainment industry, it is their endless source of creativity that manages to transform just a few minutes of fantasy into lifetime experiences.  I find it amazing how fictional characters have been blended into our culture and minds with the rest of our real lives creating an amazing sense of belonging to fictional situations.  Consider how some of these shows and their characters are irreversibly locked into your own sense of who you are in real life.  Who of you from my generation has not heard of Big Bird in Sesame Street and so many of the characters in all of those shows that we have watched throughout time?  If you want to refresh your memory go to CrazyAboutTV.com and take a peek at an amazing list that will light up the neurons in your brain and make you remember a lot more than you can on your own.  Compared to today’s standards, television shows from our era were simple and unsophisticated.  Today’s technological advances have created many television shows into movie going experiences.  When I sit myself down to watch episodes of CSI, Lost, House, Criminal Minds, Bones, Fringe, and many others, I am blown away with the degree of complexity and amount of research that must take place in order to create a single episode.

A favorite show that I watch for which I am constantly being teased about because of my ability to be able to spew out the lines that are about to be said by the characters is Two and a Half Men.  A few years back I took the plunge and decided to add to my list of favorite gadgets a digital video recorder, or as they are more commonly known, a DVR.  Being able to rent it for a few bucks a month instead of having to buy one, made it much easier for me to make the decision of owning one in my home.  The gadget is an extremely easy to use recording device that allows you to quickly select anything and everything that you want to have recorded to watch at a later time.  This toy is a wonderful thing to have if you are as busy as I am in my life and can almost never be in front of a TV when any favorite show is scheduled in real time.  At the end of my day, as I am ready to relax, I simply turn on the TV and DVR and peek at all the shows that got recorded and then decide which one I want to watch, with the added advantage of being able to fast forward through any annoying commercials, pausing to answer any phone calls or kid’s request, and save to finish watching if I fall asleep from and exhausting day.  Almost every day at least three 30 minute episodes of the above mentioned show gets recorded on my DVR, which when you skip through the commercials only add up to an hour of watch time.  The dysfunctional interactions of the lives of the two brothers and son in this show are just hilarious.  The writers have managed to build characters that when placed into all sorts of real life circumstances typically say many of the things that we ourselves are thinking yet manage to censor in our own lives.  In a recently shown repeat episode, Charlie, the brother who lives pretty much a free spirit careless kind of lifestyle is in the process of escorting out of his home a previous night female conquest when the young beautiful lady says on her way out the door “I think I love you Charlie Harper,” for which he simply answers “Thank you!”  Obviously this honest yet self-indulgent reply sets horribly in the mind of the young lady and after a few queries from her part for clarification, and some even more brutally honest yet horribly selfish replies on his end, she quickly curses him out of her life and leaves in total disgust and anger.  Who could blame her, right?  Yet at the same time, who could blame him?  After all, should he of said “I love you too” just to make her feel good even thought their relationship was based on a single night together?

I am far from an expert on the impact that is caused on a person when their emotional needs are not being met in a romantic relationship.  However, it is not that difficult for me to be able to tell when my own actions hurt the emotional expectations of those around me.  In real life we do not live from one short 30 minute television episode to another, hardly.  The actions that we take, the words that we pick, in essence our entire lives are filled with moments that could have the ability to nourish the lives of those that surround us, or simply not.  It is truly our choice to make if we live our lives from moment to moment planting seeds of hope and love, or not.  I have spent the better part of my parenting days trying to make sure that my children understand that regardless of what happens in their or my life throughout time, the one consistent and never waving thing that they can count on from me is my love.  There is no secret recipe that I need to follow from any parenting book of instructions because I learned this lesson at a very early age with the unwavering example of my own parents.  Through the years my mother and father slowly perfected the selection of all the right ingredients and portions that were required to create the sweetest love potion a child could ever need to feel blessed.  Not once in my entire life have I ever felt not loved.  When I compare how this simple matter of fact statement plays in contrast with many of the lives of the people that surround me, I feel as if I am the luckiest man in the world because of the certainty that this boundless source of love has provided me throughout my entire life.  How could I then, in all fairness not return the same degree of caring for the people that matter to me in my life?

To me life sometimes seems in many ways like a dramatic television series, with all of its ups and downs.  At moments I also feel as if I was merged inside of a comedy show with all of the crazy things that happen to me and all around me from day to day.  However, I do not have a choice in my life that allows me to select the parts that I want to or don't want to live or experience.  I cannot skip through the moments that annoy me like I am able to do when I fast forward my DVR during the commercials.  In essence, I must watch the entire show, commercials and all, and in the process I might as well enjoy it since regardless of how exciting or boring it can get at times, it is my life to live.  You might want to consider that while you too might find yourself wishing someone would of said things differently, behaved better, or simply given you more of what you felt you needed to be whole, it could serve you well to play your part as well as you possibly can in order to not cause others the same discomfort that was caused to you.  Becoming bitter because of tough moments serves absolutely no purpose other than to make things worse in your life.  I for one prefer to be able to look back when I rewind my own life and feel proud of my efforts to become a better father, a better man, a better human being, than having a bucket of regrets instead.

In the end, if I do not lose my mind, I should be able to remember most of the events of my life when I exit this world.  In many ways I think that I am my toughest judge, since I know everything that I have done right and wrong throughout time.  How will I judge my entire life in the end?  Hopefully by the seeds that I have planted and may be able to eventually see grow in those that surround me, especially my children.  If in the end, when my boys grow up to be men, they are able to find inside themselves the seeds of hope and love that I have planted with all my heart, they should grow up to be good men, amazing men, outstanding men.  This is why I do what I do for my children, it is my job.

Dad