The Bear Towel

Last weekend my wife and I moved all of our baby stuff out of our upstairs closet and donated it to our church's upcoming Free Market for the community. It had all been just sitting up there, stacked and boxed neatly in some places, scattered in others - car seats on top of a pack and play leaning next to a swing - all of it neatly forgotten when hidden behind the dresser at the front of the closet. It's forgotten no more. We marched it out, piece by piece, and the closet now stands empty where once it was full.

The process was 85% freeing, 15% sentimental. It helped that I had claimed one set of boxes, our books, as untouchable. Those are the hours upon hours I spent with my babies. All the rest was just furniture and clothes, and it was time somebody got some use out of it after it sat dormant for years. I was fine until we opened one box. It was the box with the bear towel.

When they were tiny babies, we wrapped the girls up after their baths into this towel that has a hood on it like a bear face. They have similar ones now; they're just much bigger ones. It's not that big of deal. Except I saw it, and I saw how tiny they once were and that my babies aren't babies any more. And I remembered: that's when I started calling them "little bears." The name remains, many years later.

The bear towel was tough to let go of, and so was the collage of coaching pictures. Or perhaps the idea of it was. For many years, a framed shadow box of action photos of my basketball head coaching career put together by my sister donned one corner of our dining room wall. That came down this week as well. It was time. That period of my life is done, or on sabbatical at the very least, and the targets for my focus and energies has shifted. Down with the old, up with the new: a framed map of Steinbeck Country given to me by a friend who just visited the National Steinbeck Center now offers perspective on who I am and what I do.

As the old wall art has been replaced, and the old furnishings jettisoned, so too must I let go of the past. By nature, I'm sentimental about the passage of time and am keenly aware of losing what's in front of me as it's happening. I feel it deeply, often experiencing what should be appreciation of something great with a mix of foreboding squirrelled away in my gut.

But as always, losing the old makes room for the new. My babies are no longer babies, but if they were, they would not have enjoyed a trip to the Wisconsin Dells this summer, or camping, or the zoo, or any of the other places we've taken them. I wouldn't be experiencing the joy of listening to Elise read to me now. There would be no art classes and soccer games, no two way conversations at the breakfast table, no one else to wrestle our yellow lab. And I am no longer coaching; but if I were, I would not have been home for a picnic on Father's Day. I would not be editing a website of teacher writing. I would not have been on many of those morning bike rides with the girls this summer.

I still think about the past, and that won't change. On many days I still long for the simplicity of Sutherland, Nebraska and the two years we spent there. I find myself occasionally wishing for the time when my friend Steve didn't live hundreds of miles away, or my friend Chad didn't live several oceans away. And while I'm down to thinking about it for several minutes each day rather than several hours, I can't get out of my head the coach within me.

As much as I don't want to get sucked into a love affair with what's past, sentiment is part of the equation, I've come to believe. To recognize all the good gone by is hard evidence of a life well-lived. But today must be lived as well.

Summer is ending for me once again, and once again I feel deeply what I am losing. I clutch tightly to today, to casual breakfast conversations, to cuddles and books in the rocking chair in the morning, to long walks and Legos and playgrounds. To freedom. But I must clutch just as tightly to upcoming days as well. For the present in front of me then will be just as valuable - students to challenge, relationships to build, books to discuss, writing to fumble over or structure or just stumble upon. Those days will matter greatly as well. For everything there is a season.

Emily and I often read to our children passages out of Sally Lloyd-Jones' excellent book Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing. In one of the passages we read this week, Lloyd-Jones writes about how despite the fact that the Israelites were saved by God out of slavery from the Egyptians, they still grumbled about how they thought life was better for them in the past, back in slavery. Writes Lloyd Jones: "Sometimes we're like those ungrateful people grumbling in their tents about onions. That's what sin is - not seeing that every single thing we have is a gift from God."

And there lies the path to appreciating the path yet living the present: gratitude. If I am purposefully grateful and appreciative each day, if I recognize the people I see, the food I eat, the opportunities I have, and the air I breath (even in the harsh winter) as precious gifts, then today will always be sweeter than yesterday.

I began writing this with no answers, and I'm not sure I've found any here. Loss and gain, the passage of time, moving on: it's all too complicated to wrap up into a nice neat blog post. But these feelings are universal, I'm led to believe, and writing them down and sharing just seemed like the human way to approach them. Thanks for listening.

A Better Answer to a Daily Question

"So how was your day?"

In a week I will make my grand (though perhaps reluctant) return from summer break into the daily travails of my classroom. My wife and I are fortunate in that we are able to ride together to work on most days; and when she picks me up at 4:15 and I buckle in, one of us will ask the above question. We have ten miles to cover this topic before getting home and starting supper or playing with the kids or going through the mail, and it's important to both of us to share with each other a little about what we did individually in our work that matters to us. It's not such an easy question.

How do I answer? My district would like me to answer after looking at "the data" - student scores on a variety of assessments that I've given for the day - and base the quality of my day on their abilities. Perhaps I should respond based on the amount of relative ease or difficulty faced in doing my assigned tasks? Or based on the absence or mounting heaps of frustration encountered? On my affinities for the curriculum taught? On how much I got done?

Matt Perman's book, What's Best Next, has given me a better gauge. Writes Perman: 

"Productivity is about intangibles - relationships developed, connections made, and things learned. We need to incorporate intangibles into our definition of productivity or we will short-change ourselves by thinking that sitting at our desks for a certain number of hours equals a productive day."

Too often my answers have nothing to do with the intangibles. Or at least not the right ones. A good day is commonly when I can name all that I accomplished, got through a stack of student papers, avoided battles with students or with decision-makers, or got to talk about John Steinbeck. 

I enter this fall with a little better perspective on the question now. Rather, a good day of work is when I spend conversational time with students and co-workers, and not solely to complain about whatever is troubling me at the time. It's when I purposefully carve out time to do good, to smile, to encourage, to challenge, and to work hard to make myself better. It's when regardless of current student grades, regardless of my calendar of duties and meetings, regardless of how I'm feeling about the work, I do the job well and with a heavenly Master in mind, not an earthly one. 

And if this is the measuring stick of a good day, then I have complete control, every day, of whether or not the day is a good one. And so do you.

Tangible results look good. They feel pretty good too. But look to the intangibles for a real, lasting impact on how you spend your day.

****See below for other commentary on What's Best Next:

Postcards and Fruit Cups: A Better Path to Goodness

Obstacles or Opportunities: Why Organization Matters

Obstacles or Opportunities? Why Organization Matters

In a few weeks, most of my mornings will begin in this way: I will be at my desk getting ready for the school day, and a student will walk in and approach my desk. They will want something, and they won't be shy about asking for it. Whatever it is they want, they will want it now. What they want will be an interruption to what I'm trying to get done. I will either feel organized, prepared, and well-caffeinated and therefore ready to help; or I will still be trying to dig out from underneath the six piles of yesterday's randomness, with no real idea of what my 1st hour class, which will meet in 20 minutes, is going to look like. If the latter is the case, my help will likely be begrudging, rushed, and forgettable.

In his book What's Best Next, Matt Perman writes this:

One of the best places for efficiency is being efficient with things so that you can be effective with people. If you become more efficient with things (for example, by setting up your computer, desk, workflow system, and files to operate in the most efficient way possible), you will have more time to give to being effective with people without feeling like you are always behind on your tasks.

This is the best reason I've ever heard for getting organized.

I've been a student of leadership and motivation and personal effectiveness for many years, and there is no shortage of material out there about how to be better at doing whatever it is you want to do. But I've been slow to consider that the central purpose in getting better at getting things done is not solely for me. Yes, I can get more done when I'm efficient and organized in my tasks; more importantly, though, I can be more for those around me.

When I'm organized and effective, it doesn't feel like a burden to chat with peers in the hallways between classes. I'm not too rushed to share a cup of coffee and good conversation at the start of the day. I view students as opportunities, not obstacles. I have time to laugh and to think, especially with others. It's taken 12 years of teaching to figure out that my happiest days (because they have room for all of the above) are my most organized days. The days that go wrong, and in which I subsequently react wrongly to people, are those in which I begin scattered and maintain a state of rushed chaos as I limp to 4 pm.

And the same is true at home. I either am diligent and organized about what I want and need to get done, or I exist in the middle of 10 personal projects in various stages of completion and a mass of housecleaning chores I'm ignoring in favor of sitcom reruns. Why does this matter? Because my children awake looking for me to meet their needs. They want breakfast, and they want it their way. Some juice as well, and a Thomas the Train spoon. Then it's time for whatever activity they feel like at that particular minute, and they seek my help in preparing or participating. What they want might take a minute, ten minutes, or an hour. 

I have experienced the joy of serving them and being their provider and protector, and I have experienced the maddening frustration of wanting to get ten other things done (that should already be done) but instead being "bothered" by my chattering bundles of needs. I understand now that the difference is not them and their behavior; it's me and my organization.

So I resolve (once again) to better organize my activity. This time, however, I do so with the understanding that there is much more at stake than just getting things done.

(***Previous Post on What's Best Next: Postcards and Fruit Cups: A Better Path to Goodness)

Postcards and Fruit Cups: A Better Path to Goodness

Back to some sense of summer normalcy after a couple of whirlwind weeks away on various trips, I've started reading Matt Perman's book What's Best Next. This summer I've typically waited to write about what I've been reading until after a book is completely done, and the number of posts from me this summer reveals just how well that's been working. I've left at least ten posts in my head, waiting for a better time, a time that has never come. When I go back over my notes, the ideas from the author are still there; my thoughts in prose, however, are not. For this book, I intend to write as it comes to me. This is the first of several I see coming from this book.

The first idea that has struck me is that of planning to do good. Writes Perman:
The biblical call on our lives is not to do good randomly and haphazardly. Rather, God calls us to be proactive in doing good . . . We often think of doing good simply as something we are to do when it crosses our path. But Isaiah (32:8) shows us that we are also to take initiative to conceive, plan, and then execute endeavors for the good of others and the world.

While I'd like to think I'm someone who does good in this world, this passage makes it obvious that I am far from where I could be. For the good that I do most often is reactionary. It is in response to a need. If asked, I'm usually good for whatever favor is requested. Need help moving? Sure. An extra set of hands? No problem. Someone to listen or provide advice? I'm there. My wife asked me to water her tomatoes this morning. They're wet.

When I think about it, though, this pales in comparison to those like my wife who plan to do good and act before the need is in sight. She prepares and thinks of others before they ask. She writes postcards from home and sends them to friends and family, offering good cheer or support or encouragement without ever knowing if today is the day they'll need it. She cooks and bakes and cans so that she can readily offer caloric goodness at random. Craft projects are furtively tucked away in drawers, ready to entertain our children when the time calls for it. My freezer is full of a never-ending supply of fruit cups because she knows they are one of my favorite summer treats.

On the rare occasions when I do plan a good act prior to being asked, I often suffer from a lack of execution. There is still a card in my school bag that I meant to send to a friend in April. Letters and phone calls I've meant to get to just have not happened. Like so many blog ideas, good intentions and good ideas have gone to the graveyard via the "I'll Get to That Later" Expressway.

Being ready and willing when called upon is noble and good. Tragically, this type of people seems to be a dying breed, and I will continue to clutch tightly to the friends and family in my life on whom I can depend. However, there is a better goodness in all of us, a goodness that we plan ahead for.

It is not mighty acts of heroism in the face of adversity that we are each called to. Rather, it is simple acts of goodness, planned and executed, that will help us make our gospel-centered mark on the world.