Last night the Cuban Assassin made me throw up for the second time. We were only about halfway through the workout when it hit me, I darted off to the bathroom and, well, you know.
I thought I was just a wuss. An overheated out-of-shape wuss. Until a couple weeks ago I hadn’t exercised in a couple months.
No doubt being a wuss was a factor in last night’s hurling, but this morning I woke up feeling awful-er. Maybe I’m pregnant, Becky says. Wait a second…
Oddly, feeling this bad is making me feel better about my physical fitness level. Perhaps I’m not as wussified as I thought. (Shut up.) Perhaps there’s an actual virus going on here. Please, God, let me have a virus.
So, all that to say, today is Becky’s day off. She’ll be sippin’ sweet tea somewhere by herself. I have the kids and a day filling up with stuff to do with them. And my stomach is angry with me. So today I won’t be blogging anything of substance as previously promised. And if you sent me e-mail or called over the weekend, I won’t be getting back to you on that either. I’ll be (slowly) playing with my kids and lying down a lot. (How do you get an eight year-old to take a nap?)
I don’t know if they’re hiring, but I’d like to apply for the job of chapel worship leader guy at Compassion International headquarters. On Friday I was honored to lead the folks at Compassion in some singin’ during a special chapel service celebrating the one millionth child sponsored.
Maybe it was the larger than usual crowd - at least 800 people. Maybe it was having something so momentous to celebrate. Or maybe Compassion hires a lot of Pentecostals. I don’t know what it was, but these people were very loud and very fun.
So loud that I couldn’t hear my monitors over their singing.
So fun that I was far more sarcastic than usual. And before noon even!
It’s no secret I’m a bit of a fan of Compassion’s president, Wess Stafford. I got to travel with him to Ethiopia a couple years ago and to know him better. He’s an engaging storyteller - animated, witty, moved or amused as if he’s never told his tales before. He’s an inspiring guy - very smart and with quite the resume but never self-promoting or behaving the least bit entitled or even aware of his own stature. Best of all, he doesn’t take himself too seriously - or me either.
I can’t stand being introduced at a concert or other gig with a list of my so-called accomplishments, or by someone reading from a record company-generated bio that greatly exaggerates my abilities and worth. It’s painfully embarrassing. Incredibly awkward. It feels - and I don’t know why - wrong.
Wess knows this about me. Or maybe he feels the same way sometimes. I was so relieved when, after introducing me with a few kind words, he unleashed his full wit with a solid sarcastic jab. He told the story of how he spoke at Northwestern University a few months back - for a few days - and not a single child was sponsored. Then I came the day after he left the school and over a hundred kids were sponsored. He did all the work, he said, but I got all the credit. He threw his hands up in feigned disgust with me and stormed off the stage. It was much funnier in person than in text, I swear.
Of course, I retaliated, not sure how the folks at Compassion would like me taking a shot at their revered leader. But thankfully they laughed. They laughed hard. As hard as they sang.
I might be reading too much into all this but I wonder if it says something profound about the folks who gathered for chapel Friday morning. Wess, even though he’s their president, was not the focus of celebration. He said very little. There was no standing ovation or tribute to him of any kind. There was no credit given to him for one million children being sponsored. Instead, everyone within Compassion celebrated one another and their God who is greater than poverty. Obedient sponsors were cheered. Marketers, spokespeople, donors, board members, project workers, every employee - these folks shared equally in recognition. It was a truly egalitarian affair - no one and no one’s efforts more appreciated than another’s.
Oh, I know there are folks who revere Wess and other leaders at Compassion. I know. I know. But these leaders don’t seem to revere themselves. And that’s astounding. If ever there was a group of leaders who have accomplished something extraordinary, who would be given a pass for patting themselves on the back just this once, it would be these guys.
Instead, we laughed. At each other. With each other.
And we sang. To the only one worthy of praise.
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By the way, here’s the best Compassion-related video ever created...in my opinion - shown for the first time at the chapel service.
On the flight back from New York City, I watched a very smart lady give a very boring talk about how to feed the world. But one thought was interesting enough to stick with me: At no other time in history have so few been responsible for feeding so many.
On Sunday, my friend Andy said something else that’s stayed with me: Throughout most of human history people have spent most of their time putting food on the table, clothes on their back and a roof over their head.
While I was at the American Museum of Natural History last week, I saw a film about space. It was projected above us on a dome ceiling. The film began by talking about the earth and how the moon was created from a collision. Then the “camera” zoomed out slowly to show the vast sea of darkness our marble of a planet is floating in. It zoomed out farther and farther until the dots above us were no longer stars but entire galaxies the size of our own. Robert Redford’s voice told us how far our galaxy is from its nearest neighbor.
Small isn’t the word for how I felt. I felt insignificant. At the same time I felt afraid of God, of his magnitude, the scope of his knowledge, the size of his hands.
I imagined myself stepping out of a tent three thousand years ago to spend my day meeting three basic needs. My to-do list would have been succinct: Get food, find shelter, make clothes. I wonder if spending every day standing between my family and death would have made me stand a little taller - though still humbly - under the sky each night, knowing that I’d played an important part in the day’s creation.
Then there’s me.
At no other time in history have so few been responsible for feeding so many. Someone else made the tools that someone else used to plant the seeds that someone else harvested and someone else took to market and someone else purchased and processed and someone else packaged and someone else put on the shelf for me to simply choose and pay for. I feed my entire family by driving to a store. And I only do this once a week. I prepare that food for them by pushing a handful of buttons on a stove or microwave and waiting a few minutes.
Buying clothes is even easier. Again, someone did all the work: harvested the materials, processed them into textiles and thread, sewed them together and put them on a rounder at the mall. Or, in a warehouse somewhere that I “shop” by clicking a mouse. I could clothe my entire family without leaving my laptop. And, if I wanted to, I could do this only once a year or even more seldom.
And shelter? More expensive than food and clothing, sure, but just as easy to “make.” I can put a roof over my family, and walls around them too, in a few minutes to a few days. Motels, hotels, RVs, mobile homes, apartments, condos, houses - there’s no shortage of shelter readymade for us to choose from.
Amazingly, I woke up this morning with every one of these basic needs totally met: food, clothing, roof. Before the day even began I was already unnecessary to its completion. No wonder the sky scares me. It’s a reminder of how pointless we really are these days.
Don’t feel that way? I dare you to face Robert Redford and his little film while holding your to do list. Stare up at the cosmos and shout out the goals of your day with all the enthusiasm you think they deserve: Pick up dry cleaning! Buy cat food and bread! Call mom! Turn in TPS report! Softball practice!… and feel the stars’ laughter.
At no other time in history have other people been so capable of meeting my needs for me. Strangers are doing all my life-alteringly significant chores and leaving me with nothing to do but wake up every day and simply ask “What do I want to do?”
You and I have more time than anyone has ever had. More education. More money too. So now what? What will today be about? And how will it make us feel when we stand under the stars?
Some guys ignore their wife and kids by working long hours away from home. I’m a bigger loser than that. I ignore my family while I’m in the same room with them.
I spend a lot of time inside my own head, lost in thought about this or that, building rhymes or melodies or mulling over something I read or would like to write. Several times a day, after one of my kids has been talking for a solid minute I’ll come to and apologize: Sorry, I wasn’t being a good listener. What were you saying?
I’m afraid of what this teaches my kids about how they deserve to be treated or how they should treat others. I worry about how unimportant and unloved I make them feel every time I drift away like that.
I’m working on this.
Something incredible happens when I’m fully present. I notice my family. And I feel like I love them.
I always know I love them. But when my brain slows down and I really look at them and hear them I feel like I love them. And that feeling makes me greedy for more of them and less of everything else.
This last week in New York City, I managed to look and listen to my family non-stop for two days. And here’s what I rediscovered I love about them.
Gabriella’s eight now. She has her mom’s work ethic - always planning something, making something. Or she’s outside with friends. Very busy these days. Just as her vocabulary and maturity are making real conversation possible, I’ve got all this competition for her attention. In New York I loved just standing with her on the Staton Island ferry hearing her talk and watching her be still, looking out across the water, thinking girly thoughts about adopting kids someday and raising them on a farm with her cousin Natalie and some horses and owning an earring store too.
I love that she’s her little sister’s comforter.
How selectively brave she can be.
And how much that little sister has taught her about patience; about loving by giving up her own rights, preferences, and even photo-ops.
Speaking of the little sister: I know the day is coming when my adult children will open the pictures folder on my laptop and say, “See?? He does love her more than us!” I have five times as many pictures of Penelope in my laptop than I have of both my other kids combined, but it’s not because I love Penelope so much as it is that she loves herself. Mirrors and cameras, she’ll tell you, are her favorite things.
If you’ve ever wondered what Madonna was like as a child - and, really, who hasn’t stayed awake at night wondering that exact thing? - I give you Penelope, age four, performing for my camera, Becky and a massive crowd of one strangers.
I have lofty parenting goals when it comes to my other two kids. I want them to discover their passions and talents, to be lifelong learners; to love and obey God with their heart, head, finances, relationships, everything. I want them to be compassionate and generous, to be peacemakers, to kill conflict with kindness and to walk away if kindness fails. I want them to be holy even if it makes them or someone else unhappy. I want God’s will to be done on earth through them, for them to make the crooked straight, to introduce hope into hopeless situations. And there’s more. I have it all written down. But I just want to keep Penelope off the pole. That’s the only goal I have as her father at this point.
So far, not so good.
I love that she cannot contain her excitement and that she is never happier than when she makes someone else smile.
And then there’s Gresham, now six. He’s more boy than I know how to be. He loves basketball, football, anything with a ball. He dresses like a coach - athletic shorts, those shiny swishy pants with a stripe down the side, t-shirts with balls on them. All he lacks is a clipboard shoved down the back and a whistle around his neck.
I love seeing him juggle being a spastic goofy little boy and a teen-aged jock. He’s a strong silent fifteen year-old one minute…
...pretending he’s not at all impressed by a room full of dinosaurs.
Then he’s pretending he’s one of them the next.
I even love his weaknesses. “Smile, buddy, and I’ll buy you a hotdog.”
He’s not as impenetrable as he thinks.
I love my kids. Even better, after just a couple days of hanging out with them more than my own thoughts, I feel like I love them.
