Your Feelings About Wednesday, and Other Pivotal Questions

How do you feel about Wednesday?

"Remember, how you answer has got to say something about you. It's got to say the best about you. You get one chance to answer the question, and your response will communicate a great deal about you. And it will be the only communication you get, the only chance to sell yourself and who you are. So choose carefully."

So went my instructions to my AP students this week. We began our work on college scholarship and application essays and the challenges and strategies connected to the process. The Wednesday question comes directly from a previous writing prompt of one Midwestern university, and it's the first one I gave them the opportunity to write. In 300 words or less.

Before they even saw the prompt, I challenged them to make a chart that listed the answer to two questions: who are you, and why are you good? When I asked them to do that, I told them that what I was asking was hard, so hard that many adults right now might struggle to specifically say who they are and are wildly uncomfortable finding anything good about themselves. No matter. This is the starting point, I told them. If you can't answer these two questions, you really have nothing to say in your response. There is nothing to communicate.

I gave them other advice as well. I told them to be unique. I told them to be real. And I told them no one really wants to hear their resume all over again, because that's just a list of experiences, not who they really are, and the reader probably knows all of that already. The list of accomplishments or activities won't convince their audience; it might get my students in a position to be heard, but it is the real them, the character and passion and values that must speak, because they are what matters. And those 300 words are all they get, ever, with this audience.

Upon finally seeing the prompt, the general student response was initially a combination of nervous laughter, confused smiles, and the occasional guttural yet understated "What the . . ?!" I laughed too. It is funny. It is absurd. And it's a skill that extends much further than this week's prompt or this year's essays.

I'm starting to understand that this is how life works. Every day is an essay question. Better yet, every interaction is a possible essay question. Whether it be a friend, a stranger, a coworker, or the bagger at the grocery store, it is likely you will be faced with an opportunity to influence, to speak, to convince. And it will be in the form of a question that you probably won't see coming.

In your answers to today's questions, were you unique? Were you accurate? Did your audience learn about you, and is it the you that you want to be and want people to see?

Like my students, your activities and accomplishments will probably not impress anybody. They're not going to care how busy you've made yourself or your kids, how many awards or positions you've conquered, or even who you influenced yesterday. They are there, today, and they are asking a question, any question, and your answer today in that tiny space will communicate much about you.

So many questions, or possible essay prompts, every day: How's it going today? Did you watch the game last night? What are you doing this weekend? Did you see that? Why aren't you going?

The question doesn't matter. Your answer does. Are you ready, with an understanding of who you are and what you stand for, to communicate most effectively with your audience of one? There are no throw away questions. No redos. Today's answer may be the only one you get, the one answer that will stick in the mind of your audience about who you are and what you believe in. How careful, how purposeful, how prepared are you?

My students will be ready. They will know who they are, what's important to them, and why it matters. They will know how to communicate it in a limited time and space. And it won't matter the question or who's asking it.

May we all be so ready to answer for the hope we have.

On the First Wednesday

The squirrels are running with impunity in my yard.

This is the first Wednesday night I've had to face since my beloved lab, Coach, died last week. To put it in perspective, this is the first Wednesday night I've ever spent in this house without him, and I've lived here over a decade. I hate it. My wife and girls are doing their Wednesday night thing - the weekly gathering for elementary kids at our church. I'm doing mine - cleaning up the kitchen, taking care of the dishes, keeping the house somewhat organized. But I'm doing it alone tonight. For the first time. There was no one to look askance at my choice of 90's rap for dish-doing motivation. There will be no one attempting to steal a chin scratch or bait me into a wrestling match while doing planks in my upcoming workout. When I swept the kitchen floor, I found the unthinkable: dropped cereal from the breakfast table. Much is amiss in the Dykstra household now that one of our members is gone. And I've decided to face it. Tonight. Right now. It must be done. And it must be done here.

I've got to get this down right, because it's my one chance to do it. If I wait it will be gone, all the half-sentences and broken thoughts and stray emotions that only become tangible through writing. Already I feel the reality of it slipping away, behind a mask of smiles, losing it's grasp on the fingertips of my consciousness as I feed distractions and distortions to my burdened soul. Am I capable of pausing, of staring it straight in the face, of naming it and claiming it as my own? Even now I am scared, knowing that at the keys and the screen of my laptop is a mirror, and it's one that won't let me change the channel or turn up the noise. Breathless, fearful, I type on. Not one to advertise weakness or pain, I know this writing session won't be much fun.

Typically, I write to figure out the world, to make sense of it, to bring clarity to the news and notes, the literature and liaisons of my daily life. I write to discover. I write to understand. That's why I began this blog; sharing is secondary in the quest. If you find understanding alongside me in my journey, so be it. Good for both of us. But I am here selfishly.

I write to understand, but there is nothing to understand here. There is no knowledge to be gained, no mysteries to sort out and pry through with a scalpel or a shovel, one clause or catalog at a time. It's really quite simple; we want to make death and loss complicated, but it rarely is. No, what I need isn't understanding. What I need is to merely feel better. And I've written enough words to know that writing can't do that for me.

Or at least I don't think it can. I've never really tried it. I had another option. Now I don't. The one thing I could count on to make me feel better, every part of every day, in every room of my house, regardless of how bad the hurt, is now gone. Even now, as I type that sentence and feel my heart drop and let out a heaving sigh across my dining room and into the Wednesday evening darkness, I know he would have heard that, felt that, recognized that, and arisen unsolicited from his half nap to run his nose below my fingers.

The missing energy of a bounding hundred pounds of lab reminding you to smile is a clanging, discordant silence.

One line from a book I read this summer and saved to write about until I had something to say came from Karen Swallow Prior's Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me. In this memoir connecting her life with classic literary texts, Swallow writes about about one particularly troubling experience from her teenage years, saying, "I"m sure plenty had gone through a great deal more, but I hadn't." I have wanted to apologize all week for being this scarred by the memory of a dog. Millions of people have lost dogs before. This is not special. It is not significant. And he's just a dog, after all. While I've been mired in grief, people around the world lost their homes, families, and lives in a punishing hurricane and crippling earthquake. Cancer still lords its sovereignty over helpless victims. I can't even claim this was the worst thing to happen in my own extended family this week.

But Swallow is right. Others may have experienced a similar loss, but I haven't. Not this dog. The tragedies surrounding all of us, while offering perspective, have no power to make me less sad. I've decided, then, to not apologize, and to not hide. I have been hurt over this, and I still hurt, and I say that out loud and without remorse.

For this loss was the loss of my companion in everything good. There is nowhere to go to escape that reality. So much of our family's routine, the best parts of what we do, seem a little less crowded right now. And I don't like the extra room. Every book read in our recliner, he was there. Whether it was the gentle and mindless back and forth of my fingers on his head, interrupted only by a sip of coffee or a page turn when he found me there alone, or the strategically placed full-body collapse he used to receive the methodical strokes from my foot when I had children in my lap, he made his presence known. Every weekday evening or Sunday afternoon walk, full of laughter and conversations between members of our family, was strategically planned to maximize his room to run and opportunities to splash. Every guest greeted, every strange dog warned, every dropped chip devoured in our yard and dining room. First in the morning, last in the evening to smile and greet and remind: I am here, I am happy, and you matter to me.

I find myself talking to him, of course. Or wanting to talk to him. To tell him what? I don't know. Whatever I told him on all those still moonlit winter walks we shared to keep me sane during the basketball season. Whatever I'm feeling, unfiltered, unabashed, no matter how ridiculous, goofy, or confused. Whatever I said to him in the times of wordless grief over the past ten years, whatever he knowingly heard that made him slow down and calmly and patiently rest his nose unobtrusively on my knee, his weight softly leaning against me, offering comfort.

It will be okay. Some time. But not now. Not this night. Tonight I mourn, receiving no trite answers, receiving no furry comfort. And so it must be.

But in the mourning I recognize that if he was a part of every good thing for this family, in this home, in this town, then I have much to be thankful for. Because I am reminded of him, by his absence in the good that we have, about eleven billion times a day.

Farewell, old friend.

Preparing for the Season

After a one season hiatus, I return to coaching basketball in three short weeks. While I wasn't sure I'd ever be back, and I appreciated many aspects of a toned-down winter schedule, I know that for me there is no way to do this job half speed. If I'm in, I'm in all the way, heart and mind, emotions and time, committed to the process. In short, I am signing on and accepting responsibility for another busy season in life.

Some people are able to live a somewhat consistent, predictable, stable way of life. I am not. I have seasons, and I love seasons. I can go hard teaching for nine months, with all the work and energy that entails, knowing I have a three month season of relative relaxation. And just as summer turns to fall, and the earlier sunsets indicate a renewed sense of commitment; so also when the snow flies, I feel a call to add a few more hours, a few more smiles, and a few more stressors to each work day, on top of the English teaching reading and paper load. 'Tis the season, after all.

It is easy to get stressed in the busy seasons. So much has to go right to fit everything in. Every unplanned obstacle becomes an emergency. Rather than a nuisance, illnesses become crippling. Just as any problem in heavy traffic turns into a traffic jam, every inconvenience in a busy season ratchets up the rage and affects every other activity on my personal road.

This busy, though, I am choosing. As I indicated above, I am responsible for it. I am claiming it and the way it affects every priority in my life.

A common piece of advice, and a wise one I'm sure, is to not let your busyness affect your priorities. For me, that advice essentially means don't be too tired to be Dad. Don't be too invested that you neglect to invest in your wife. Don't be too busy to pray. And that's all good advice.

But this season I think I'm going another way. I'm flipping the advice. Rather than not let my busyness affect my priorities, I want to make sure my priorities affect my busyness.

Instead of worrying about my basketball schedule getting in the way, I will be more conscious of carrying my core priorities around with me. I will remember that I am a father who treasures his daughters, and that will fuel a respect for the time of my players and their families. My intense love for my wife, and my desire to make her proud of the work I do, will walk alongside me and remind me that every decision, every word, every effort I make matters to far more people than me. Instead of worrying about basketball decreasing my worship to the God I trust and humbly rely on, I will make what I do in my busy hours a worthy offering of praise.

At an English teaching conference I went to recently, one speaker sought to clarify the definition of non-fiction, with I think is sorely needed. For too long, students have been told that fiction is fake and non-fiction is real. It can be trusted. Not so, said the speaker. What we need to communicate to readers of all ages is that the definition of non-fiction is a text that "enters your world and purports to tell us something about it." Rather than being less work, non-fiction is more. It requires a response. With non-fiction, the reader has a responsibility to understand the text, its inherent biases and preconceived positions, and see if it fits into or is strong enough to change his or her worldview.

The sacred texts of our lives, whether they be actual texts (like my precious Bible) or the volumes containing the priorities that stand as the pillars marking all we hold dear, must be read with as much attention, with as much of a demand for a response. But rather than seeing if we have room for what our sacred texts purport to tell us about our world, we must check our world and all the activities therein, and see if our actions fit those sacred texts.

Busy can be an obstacle, or it can be an opportunity to extend all that we love and believe in to further corners of the world. But only for a season. My priorities in this busy season, and I hope in many busy seasons to come, will not be something I save energy for. I will not carve out time to remember them. They will not get my leftovers. Rather, in the heat of the schedule, in all the deeds I enjoy and in the ones that are mere necessities, I will carry them with me everywhere I go.

The Nineteenth Time

It is not courageous to have convictions.

Convictions are easy. Convictions are quick. Convictions speak of who we are at our best, or who we see our best can be, or who the world sees when the lights are on and we are most aware and most vocal.

I believe in writing. I believe in the power of prayer. I believe in all-the-time honesty, all-the-time integrity, and all-the-time service. I believe books change lives, and I believe the television wastes them. I believe in the Bible as my personal foundation, as the foundation of my family, and as the ultimate and true source of wisdom and feasting for my soul. But none of this makes me courageous.

I came to these convictions in many ways. Some I experienced. Some I was taught. Some I am reminded of regularly by excited, excitable, like-minded people who make it easy to stay convinced. All of them I can state, rather easily, in casual coffee conversation or in deep debate.

But it requires nothing of me to have convictions. Yet it has become trendy to place on a pedestal those who verbalize their convictions, as if that were the hardest part. We place a premium on what people say, or post, or tweet, showering them with praise and likes for their courage of conviction if the words they are using mirror the thoughts of our own hearts. But to have convictions, to speak or type or share them, costs little.

Courage, rather, is standing for your convictions and priorities when its hard. Courage is re-upping and relearning a truth worthy of devotion after violating it, again, more passionately and more firmly each time. Courage is acting on the light when you're in the dark.

And you don't display courage because you already have it. I don't believe anyone is innately courageous. Rather, the courageous create courage. They begin, petrified or exhausted or beaten, and they make a small decision on behalf of their convictions anyway because they're tired of being less than who they want to be, tired of disappointing themselves. Then they feed that little shoot of courage, growing it, stretching it, because it might not need to be stronger the second and third time around, but certainly it will be tested the nineteenth and twentieth when it's no longer exciting and no longer popular and there's no one left to impress.

To remain full of courage, the courageous focus on their convictions. They stare at the truth. They repeat the truth. They find people in their lives who will speak the truth to them as well. Someone far stronger, far more experienced, who has lived the truth. Someone younger, energetic, who isn't too tired or cynical to believe it. Someone with great fervor; someone with great calm.

Feelings and excitement will fade. The conference or pep rally will end. Sunday morning's sermon will turn into Monday morning's challenges. You will say good night after the first date, or after the first anniversary. The angelic and pure newborn will become a loquacious, confrontational 3-year old. You will say amen, leaving the eternal to face the immediate. The crowd, the like-minded, will go home. But the truth you found in those feelings won't be any less true.

Can you keep it? Can you act on it? Through sickness and health? Through fatigue and loneliness? Through boredom? Through busyness? Will you still act on the convictions you speak?

That, I find, is courage. Those are the brave. And I want to be one of them.

The Extra That Plagues Us

In our adult Sunday School group this week, the opening discussion question was to describe a trait in one of your parents or grandparents that you admire and wish to emulate. The answers to the question dominated the discussion for the rest of our meeting. Across fourteen group members, there were two commonalities.

One was just how "other-centric" the previous two generations have been. They not only had a heart for others, they also had a mind for them. They planned service. They sought service, looking for opportunities in the likeliest of places instead of waiting until a need arose to respond. They prayed for and spoke about their love for their neighbors, both known and unknown.

The other characteristic that prevailed was a certain stoicism among them. They did what needed to be done. They worked long, hard hours for their families at work that wasn't fun or easy. They sacrificed. They endured. And through it all, they didn't complain. They faced the tasks and duties in front of them and saw them for what they were: necessary obstacles that would only be removed if they removed them themselves. Talking about their displeasure or discomfort was futile, and therefore absent.

After hearing all that everyone had to say, and recognizing the unscripted connections across our parents and grandparents, we sat back and asked what had become of us.

The group was full of individuals I would describe as wise, loving, passionate Christians. And yet nearly all of us agreed that we lacked the characteristics described. We are too quick to be frustrated, too ready to voice our complaints, and more often than not too self-focused to anticipate others' needs before they occur. What happened? What was in our way? Or more accurately, what was causing us to put ourselves in our own way so much?

The easy answer is technology, and primarily Facebook. Social media asks us to advertise ourselves, to brand ourselves and make our pictures, our vacations, our political views, and our parenting techniques front and center for the world to see. It's difficult to think of others when the opportunities to scream, "Look at me! Look at me! Like me! Agree with me!" dominate our day.

But it's not Facebook's fault. Not Twitter or Instagram's either. Those common whipping posts are merely tools of the time, used or misused according to the inclinations of the user. Facebook can be used to learn about the needs and desires of others, to celebrate and support their lives (or the virtual ones they are willing to offer). Twitter can be used to widen a worldview, to stay informed and challenged and growing and connected. If we are using them improperly, it is our own sickly hearts to blame.

So what are the causes? I don't know for sure. Too much money, probably. Too much leisure. Too many activities. Too many channels. Too many things to do and not enough of them really worth doing. We have more of everything, and we seem to be less personally satisfied and less altruistic. That should probably tell us something.

But I also believe that the two qualities described in our predecessors go hand in hand. With one comes the other. Whatever the root causes, when we are self-focused, we have more to complain about. The more we complain, the more we see and talk about and worry about ourselves. And then we're too busy cleaning up our own messes to be of any use to others.

Therein lies the solution, perhaps. Choose one quality, and the other will follow. If I commit to complaining less and stoically facing the day regardless of random odious tasks, perhaps I will shut up enough to listen to others, recognize their needs, and realize the opportunity for service and real joy. Or if I commit to seeking my neighbor's good and planning for ways to serve those in need, I will have realized that I really have little that's worth complaining about.

The extra that plagues us with the temptation to chase empty living isn't going anywhere. If we seek to matter in our homes and in our work, and matter in a way that causes us to be remembered decades later in a gathering of friends, we must purposefully follow in the memorable steps of those before us. They certainly made mistakes that we will wish to avoid as well. My glasses aren't permanently rose-colored. But they got these two qualities right. And we would do well to take notice.

On Quotations and Tweets and Headlines. . .

I've always been a quote guy.

I love inspirational quotes. In my classroom I often use them as writing prompts. When reading a novel like The Great Gatsby or Pride and Prejudice, I'll pull out single sentences or phrases to present to the class in order to dissect in terms of meaning and value. We often started basketball practice by giving a player a quote related to basketball or life or both and asked them to comment on its application for our team. I collect quotes on reading and writing and Christianity and leadership, tucked away in random notebooks and computer files to find, or not find, some day. Several quotation collections stand ready on my bookshelf in my living room, or in my office collection, or in my desk drawer at school.

When I write, I use quotes. Several of my blog posts will begin with a quote from this book or that Bible verse or some news article. Quotations will occasionally color my sermons, shining wit and wisdom onto the audience from the projector screen above.

Twitter has revolutionized our thinking in many ways, and I must confess to adding to the social media noise. What can be said in 140 characters? A lot, apparently. Because everyone is finding a way to say it. Anything too long need not apply. Multiple clauses beware: we have neither the time, nor the inclination, to tolerate your complexities. Jubilation, inspiration, degradation, and emulation abound, requesting a favorite or retweet of approval, a personal public claim of tribe and creed and philosophy.

Roy Peter Clark writes in his book How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times this blog-worthy (and tweet worthy) quote: "Americans love to be inspired by two-minute blasts of good writing." I couldn't agree more. I am one of them. Give me a succinct snippet of truth over my lunch hour any day. I just question our willingness to hang in there for a full two minutes.

Brief quotes, verse of the day apps, and book jacket excerpts are all well and good. I refuse to disparage them here. I preach concise writing. Foundational statements that can be quickly recited are necessary bones on which to build a company, a community, or a life. But we are tempted to believe life is as simple as those brief quotes, or those 140 character thoughts, or those 30-second news clips or talking-head diatribes, or even headlines. We want that to tell the entire story. We want it to be that simple. But it's so much more complicated than that.

These short bursts will not carry us through or address reality. If we are not careful, if we are as intellectually lazy as we are tempted to be, they will instead mask reality, serving as barriers to both speaker and listener, keeping questions and complexities at bay. They will inspire us for a moment without changing us for a day. They will confirm our assumptions and question nothing. They will tell us all we want to know - just enough to be confident, not enough to require more of us. The motivation will last as long as the source.

Can you describe yourself appropriately in one sentence?

Perhaps, then, prayer and Republicans and Muslims and joy and parenting and perseverance go a little deeper as well.

I remain a quotes guy who thinks they matter. I will continue to advocate for succinct writing and saying more with less. But those two minute blasts that Clark was talking about only really matter as a glimmer of the whole. Fitzgerald's final line pointing our boats against the current carries the most depth to those who have read of Gatsby's exploits. John 3:16 means a whole lot more in the context of the entire gospel message. The tweets of professional athletes are much deeper if. . . well maybe that's as deep as they go. Strike that.

To be responsible citizens, to be personally growth-minded, and most importantly to see truth and God more clearly, the headlines and tweets and storehouse of Google search results must only serve as reminders, as pictures of the mountain, not the mountain air itself. And I've never breathed in mountain air that wasn't worth the journey.

And Now, The Hard Part

I have done a lot of thinking this summer.

Summer is a time for thinking, for there is time. Alarm clocks do not exist for those of us in the teaching class. The best of days are the unscheduled ones. In those hours unclaimed, the mind speaks - in the quiet of the hike; in the shadows of an evening bike ride on a seldom used blacktop; or in the silent perfection I find in my recliner, book in hand, fresh cup of coffee next to me, and my lab's chin resting gently on my lap before anyone in the house stirs.

I've done a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of speaking the past couple of months. I gave two sermons. I offered advice and challenges. I jabbered through a thousand ideas and wine-inspired goals around a table, around a fire, through letters. But I haven't done a lot of doing.

I haven't had to. It's been vacation, after all. But the summer is over now, and now is the time for doing. It is time for action.

Many people claim to not want to think too hard or too deeply about things; but trust me, thinking is the easy part. Thinking is inspiring. Thinking assumes the best about you and your future. Thinking is full of idealism, and that idealism becomes real in the thinking. Oh, the brilliant teaching ideas I've had! The writing prompts! The acts of friendship! The goals for living and parenting! They all boldly spoke of a wise man living a wise life.

But at some point, then, I've got to get out of the chair. I've got to get off the bike, or put the mower away, or put the cup of coffee down. I've got to clean up the dishes, put the fire out, and get up the next morning. Turning thinking into reality, then, seems possible for another day. Any day but today. And then it is gone.

I do some of my best thinking on Sunday mornings. I typically have time to read the paper. I get great conversation from Sunday School and church relationships. I sit quietly, challenged from the pulpit, inspired by the Good Book during the service. When I walk out of that church door at noon, I'm ready to set the day on fire and then save my little corner of the world all week long. The thinking has been sweet. By some Wednesdays, it's hard to even recognize some of those 4-day-old thoughts as my own.

Stephen Mansfield writes in his book, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men, this quote form Frederick W. Robertson:

Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feelings pass; resolves and thoughts pass; opinions change. What you have done lasts - lasts in you. Through the ages, through eternity, what you have done for Christ - that, and only that, your are.

So what good has my thinking been this summer? What action will I live?

I thought and wrote and preached on submitting to one's earthly master in the form of our bosses. How will I now behave in meetings I don't like, following directives I don't agree with, on the days I feel mired in fatigue and complaints? Will my thinking prevail? Will I continue to pray for my bosses, as I so confidently challenged my audience to do? Will I be different in my daily work, noticeably and distinctly different, humble and servant-hearted and Christ-like?

I preached on standing firm to the truth of Scriptures, despite cultural trends. On loving those with whom I disagree, praying for them and serving them, while not apologizing for the Bible. How will I handle those conversations? In what ways will I serve those with whom I vehemently disagree?

I taught on injecting constant truth into life so that we can overcome deceitful feeling. I taught on not allowing a busy schedule to keep us from speaking and reading truth to each other in our households. So what will I do, now that I've written down into my calendar the soccer practices and games, the AWANA meetings, the basketball season, the piano lessons? Will I write my daughter notes for her lunchbox? Will I read and speak Scripture with them?

And the myriad teaching ideas, scribbled in this book, in that margin, on that notebook, in this file? What of those? What of my attempts to be better, to broaden my knowledge, to know more so that I can teach more? Optimism and high-mindedness drips from my plans. Will my actions?

One may think a number of things. But the thinking is nothing. The thinking flees and changes, darting from one wind-blown intention to another, mangled, mangled, mangled until its ashes return, unrecognizable. One is known by their actions. My actions will reach far greater audiences than this blog or my sermons.

The freedom to think remains. But the demand to act is real, offering safe passage for those thoughts here, to the land of the living.

The Best Part of Every Book

After our family got back from our ten day vacation through Nebraska and Colorado, we did what most families do: we looked back at our pictures. This was the first vacation for Elise, our seven year old, to have a fully functioning digital camera. Therefore we had two cameras worth of pictures to go back through, along with a full CD of pictures from our whitewater rafting experience. Going back through the pictures allowed us to relive the vacation, one day at a time. We obviously couldn't see whole days, but we felt them. We remembered the places and smells and joy and trepidation associated with each. They told our story to us one more time, one highlight at time, in a way that only we who had experience the whole trip could really understand.

Despite the hard time I give my wife about the sheer volume of pictures our family takes, she knows I appreciate having the story. And in many ways, this is the same way I like to read books.

The best part of every book is walking back through, after reading the book in it's entirety, and copying down every passage that I've highlighted or every note that I've jotted in the margin. I gave myself the liberty to read my books with a pen in hand several years ago, and it's one of the best things I've ever done as a reader. The freedom to take my pen and make the text my own, circling and underlining and connecting and commenting, dirtying the clean page with my mess, allows me to breathe a second life into the book - my own. These books were the authors'; now they are ours together.

When I deface the page with pen, I don't spend a lot of time there. I hover, I ponder, I appreciate, and then I move on. I don't want to disrupt the rhythm. The author has established a cadence so that this sentence, the one that has grabbed me in some way, has both a sentence before and a sentence after, and they inform each other and demand that I feel and think a certain way, one clause at a time, as I come across the content.

But there is a time to spend with those pieces. I used to be depressed when I came to the end of a great book. It was not a sense of accomplishment; it was a loss. No longer. After the final period, I wait a day. Or a week. I go back to page one and flip one page at a time, looking for ink. And then I get to relive the text all over again. But it's not only an experience of reading my favorite passages all over; it's also a reliving of each day of reading the book again, of the feelings associated with those days, of the events, of the settings.

I recently went back through and typed out my notes for Shauna Niequist's Bread and Wine, a book I read both at home and on vacation. As I jogged through the last half of the book, I smelled the mountain air of Colorado all over again. I felt the comfortable satisfaction of reading on the porch of our bunkhouse at Garden of the Gods Campground. I remembered the hikes, the swimming, the boundless energy of children on vacation, and whatever else was going on the day I read those pages. Before that, there was the passage that caused me to relive sitting in my recliner at home on a quiet morning before anyone else was up, breathless, as her writing conjured up the emotions and fears of miscarriage, ones that I had long ago attempted to bury. Or the one I read right after a run, in which she describes her marathon experience, and I could see and hear and feel mile 15 with her with the half-baked idea to do it all over again. The best of the best, the most intense, the most thought-provoking, the most condemning sentences - my personal highlight reel of reading Bread and Wine, all played before my eyes.

I'm finding the same experience in my Bible reading as well. Reading back through a chapter, or an entire book of the Bible, reviewing my notes and highlights, ties all of the reading back into a threaded web. What is most interesting is when I'm using my old NIV, the one I got back in the 4th grade, and I can see all that I've ever highlighted or written in the margins. I can tell the season of life by pen color, sometimes even the other books I had been reading at the time based on my scribbled notes. I can see my growth. Unfortunately, I can see my intended growth as well. In the margins is the history of a man, at least the history of when that man was humble enough to read his Bible.

You can't get than in an app. You can't get that in a verse of the day, or quote of the day. Those tools are fine. They have a purpose, and anything that gets us more Bible and more literature and more sentences into our head are tools to be used. And I use them. But they do not communicate experience. They do not tell time.

Tonight I begin a new book. I just got Roy Peter Clark's most recent text on writing. I love Clark's work. I can't wait to start. But I know the best is a long way off, not until after the final page. I look forward to the journey.

Heart and Mind and the Highest Praise I've Heard

"Heart and mind, Elise."

Her gaze returned from its most recent target across the street, back to the table where we were all eating supper. "Oh, yeah. Sorry. Forgot." And she was back, at least for the moment.

Two aspects of summer that I love are open windows and kids in the neighborhood playing outdoors. What my children occasionally struggle with, however, is that combination when we're eating supper. Or working in the garden. Or reading. Distractions suddenly swirl, and all of a sudden we've lost them, or at least a part of them, to the sounds of summer. Especially Elise, my 7-year old.

On Father's Day I wanted all of her. We were spending time as a family in the yard: we set up a croquet course, we grilled and ate supper on the patio, and we hit some wiffle balls. It was time to value our family and what we were doing. I told her I wanted her heart and her mind with us.

"Do you know that that means?" I asked her.

"Yeah. It means that you want all of me."

Yes. Yes I do. And I'm glad I had it, for at least a few hours.

Sunday was the first time I've used that term, but I see it becoming useful with a bit more frequency. It worked, and it communicated well exactly what I want from my daughters and their wandering hearts and eyes. For at least a little while, I want their eyes on us. I want their emotions on us. I want their ideas and desires to be shared with us, and I want them aware of the ideas and desires of the rest of the family. I don't just want their presence. I don't just want their eye contact. I want hearts and minds, the rest of the world be damned.

But lest I rush to claim it only as a target for them, I recognize how difficult it is for most of the adults I know to do this, myself included. But how much better would we all be, if we committed hearts and minds to a singular focus for at least a little time?

You can't do this all the time, of course. Or even most of the time. You must have the room to think for yourself, to learn from other sources, to bounce in and out of conversations and contacts both to get work done and to get play done. I've got eight windows open on my laptop right now, at least six of them currently useful. But surely there is space in the day, in the home, where others can claim yours and my heart and mind?

While meeting with someone from our church recently to discuss possible teaching/preaching opportunities, a mutual acquaintance from another part of Iowa came up. My church friend had recently met with him and made a statement in our conversation about him that captured exactly what it is I love about the man: "You know," he began, "That guy is hard to get a hold of, but once you've got him, you've got all of him. Maybe that's why it's so hard to get in touch with him: he's probably busy giving his all to someone else." I can imagine no higher praise than that.

Roy Peter Clark writes in his book Help! for Writers that "an inhibition to cut relates to an inability to select the best material." The extension of this advice beyond writing to life is clear. At times you've got to cut all but the best, otherwise the best will get crowded out. If you can't cut your phone for your friends or family who are with you, then you are giving your all to no one. If your heart is in church but your mind is elsewhere, you're probably neglecting both. When does your spouse have your heart and your mind? When do your kids? Your best friend? God?

If the answer is never, if you're giving them all Facebook-style attention, a quick glance or comment or thumbs up as you scroll through to find something else, then have you really committed to those relationships? Does quality time with them really matter?

The onslaught of attention-seekers in life can be brutal. Money, health, cooking, exercise, Netflix, laundry and that pipe that still leaks occasionally in my basement. Probably also the thousand things that a smart phone does as well. To be able to commit heart and mind requires a decision: nothing else but you matters right now. Nothing. Rather than sacrificial, this becomes freeing. There is nothing else to be done but to value the here and now.

This summer I've turned off the laptop at the breakfast table. When my daughters are eating, whether I am or not, I'm trying harder to give them my heart and my mind. They seem to like that much better than a barrage of comments like, "Just a second, let me finish this email." I still set aside time for email. Time for Facebook and Twitter and news headlines as well. Time to write, like I'm doing right now. But I've tried to carve out pieces of time where they get me, heart and mind. I find I don't miss the laptop.

After all, the neighbor kids will be out soon, and I've got to take what I can get.

The Measure of a Man

I reread the posts I've written over Father's Day weekend over the past 5 years, and a common theme is my gratitude at learning to be a man from the example my father has set. In my quest for mature manhood I often find myself lacking in traditional manly skills. As I've reflected, though, I've seen many ways I do emulate my father's lessons in my life or seek to as I grow as a father. Most of the lessons I've written about can be traced to time together on the farm. The strongest man trait he's modeled most recently, however, has very little to do with sweat or manure or tools or truck rides. 

There are many measures of being a man and a multitude of skills that must be learned. The Art of Manliness blog and Twitter feed are favorites of mine, as they document requisite skills such as handling the transition of a new baby, wrapping your hands for boxing, most effectively and efficiently using a canoe paddle, negotiating for a used car, or wearing a pocket square, to name some of the recent posts. What I have yet to see from their website, though I am fortunate enough to see in real time through the real life man who has raised me, is how to be a son when it's not easy to be a son.

My grandmother, my father's mother, has seen a decline in health over the past several years. This is not news; it is life. This is what happens, and there is nothing unique in the story. But the story is unique for those in it. I have never watched it happen to my grandmother. My father has never watched it happen to his mother. It is an age old universal tale that only becomes true through experience. 

I remember a visit I made with Emily last spring to see Grandma in the hospital after a rather significant bout against illness. We were back in central Iowa for some event, and we took a morning to go see her in the hospital. I was taken aback by the reality I was faced with upon arrival. Keeping her awake during my visit was difficult, as was maintaining a coherent conversation when she was conscious. I fell to simply talking to her while she slept for the final 15 minutes of our visit, telling her about our lives, our plans, our children's activities. There was nothing else to do. When we left, it was unclear to me whether she would even remember that we were there. I walked out of the room and felt smothered by shock, gasping with the picture of decline I had been faced with.

My father faces that weekly. Or the possibility of that. She improves and declines, improves and declines, both mentally and physically. I don't think he's ever sure what he will experience until he gets there. But he's there. Almost every Friday night. He faces that, for his mother, because that's what a man does. 

Art of Manliness website take notice: there needs to be a guidebook on how to be a son. Many stages exist in the mother-to-son relationship, but it is the one in which my father currently finds himself that perhaps requires the most. 

Up until this point, as a son you spend a lifetime being the beneficiary in the relationship. You take. That's your job. She gives. You get advice, food, concern, scolding, support, attention, and love. For both of you, the concern is for you and your well-being; the conversations usually center on you. 

Then life changes, and there is little left to take. You are now asked to give. The relationship flips; the world and the rules and the comforts of familiarity are changed so that your mother is still your mother, but not quite. You now are asked to give: give attention and advice and food and scolding, and perhaps most of all, patience and love. And it's hard. But the hard part is not the giving; after all, you've had a model for that all your life. No, the hard part is seeing your mother in a position where she can't. 

This is the position in which I see my father now. It is squarely in this position that he sits as he drives the 40 minutes of highway on Friday nights, often alone, to offer to give to his mother. He walks into the room knowing it is likely he will listen to her stories, some of which he's already heard, some of which will be repeated inside of the time of the visit. He walks in knowing that she will probably get his name right, but maybe not his kids and grandkids. And he goes just about every week, to give.

I do not love visiting my grandmother. It is too hard of a thing to love. But I value being in her presence. I value the time and energy she's spent on me, value her smile and laugh when she finds them, value the life of raising my father into the kind of father who displays for his son how to love a mother. Every time I visit I not only see and value her, I see him as well.

The measure of a man, I'm finding, is likely not found in the tools he owns, the stuff he fixes, or in what he creates. Or at least it's not only in that. Rather, the heart of a man can be found in what he does on a Friday night, as his mother awaits, offering him nothing but the opportunity to be a good son. And in that, my father measures up mightily.

Thanks for another man lesson, Dad. Happy Father's Day.

A Man's Goodbye

I thought I was free. Free from frustration. Free from emotion. Free to mentally check out. The clock had mercifully if not stubbornly reached 3:30, and I was done. Just done. But it would not be that simple.

On the last day of school, probably the last day of school for any district in the state of Iowa, June 10,  on the last afternoon, in the last officially contracted minutes, we as a staff were relegated to a professional development speaker. It was not that dude's fault. He was doing the job he was hired to do. It was a miserable assignment. And I felt miserable in the experience as well. Three hours of a speech full of philosophy I am diametrically opposed to in a room where the distraction and false energy of snacks and caffeine are not allowed made me ache for the door, for the entrance into the glorious summertime sigh of relief.

Finally, the only salvation to be had was upon us, that which could be delivered only by the big hand on the 6 and the little hand past the 3. No more. The wait was over. The weight was off. The hard part was done. But then it wasn't. Then came the hardest part of my day.

Out the back door, after almost everyone else in the building had left, I ran into my friend putting the last of the artifacts from a decade and a half of teaching into their proper place: his truck. He would not be back. He had stayed one year longer than he needed to; I always knew that this past year was a bonus year for me, one more go round teaching at the same end of the building with my friend before he retired. It was a bonus year of coffee and conversation before the first bell with the kind of man every school district needs.

I once heard a teacher who I've met but never got the pleasure of teaching with described in this way: "He has a way of making whoever he is talking to feel like the most important person in the room." I understand what that means, thanks to my friend.

And this was it. This was the official exit. All the retirement talk and summer talk and next fall talk and reflection and speculation and official retirement cake were past, and it was time to actually walk out the door for the last time. There was no avoiding the fact that here we were, two guys who had not only genuinely enjoyed working together but had also dared to be unflinchingly honest and even admit weakness to each other, both completely understanding the symbolic nature of this moment, the end, when we would both drive off and away and not do what we do together anymore. It was time to say goodbye.

What is the proper way for two men to say goodbye? I have learned how to do many hard things in my life, but this is not one I've figured out. It's always awkward, for it is generally intensely emotional and emotions are not what men do well. What do you do when you know that your time together is over, or at least will never be what it was, and you both mutually want to acknowledge that yes, in fact, this does suck, yes, I will miss the hell out of you, yes I respect you more than almost anyone I know, and yes, I am pretty damn sad? How do you communicate that, without, you know, admitting to feelings and admiration and love? Do you offer any words, knowing that none of them will be adequate and there is a chance of a quiver in your voice? Do you shake hands? Do you hug? Or do you punch them in the arm, deliver a foul stream of invective, and chuckle your separate ways?

We shook hands. Then we hugged. I'm certain I stumbled over some words, imperfect and forgettable thought they were. Then, I think, we both got in our trucks as quickly as we could so as to move on and get distracted and not linger in the moment. At least that's what I did. Because I really didn't want to feel about it anymore. Unfortunately I had to pass his old classroom on the way out. His empty classroom, devoid of any semblance of the giant of a man I walked past every day on my way to every cup of coffee in the staff lounge, coldly and passively awaited its next tenant.

I have faced this a handful of times over the past decade, and it is harder every time. People move. Jobs change. Duty calls. However much this might just be how life works, I still hate the man's goodbye. I dread it.

But I don't hate what the man's goodbye stands for. The man's goodbye is an acknowledgement that there will be a real loss because of the real quality that stood before. It reminds both that there were sacrifices made, candid conversations, life shared, honest vulnerability, and loyalty. The man's goodbye is a reminder of the consequences of putting in the time and trust with anyone: you care, you thrive, and you have something to lose. Risk, once again, equals reward. And while the goodbye is torture, it is merely the final scene in the final chapter of a masterful novel.

I'm not sure that men have an easy time being great at friendship. Men have lots of buddies. Friends are harder. Inside of us there is a need to be powerful, to be supermen, to be better than others and to pee in corners to establish that. We should not need help, for help is for the weak. We do not have problems, we are not scared of anything, and we are certainly in complete control of our homes. I know this is fiercely stereotypical, but here it stands. There is truth in most stereotype.

Friendship requires more than the beer-drinking bravado, the bombastic diatribes, and the posturing. To find two guys willing to get deeper than this, in the same place, at the same time, with the same interests, is often an act of divine intervention. Because of that rarity, I believe, we simply have little experience in properly walking away from it.

So the awkward man's goodbye stands. Though I began this post hoping to find something out, hoping to reach some answer that would ease the clumsiness of the next one, I come to the conclusion that it must be this way. For it is a loss of the valuable and rare, and one never gets used to losing those things.

Tuesday Work

When it happens, it will be on a Tuesday.

This is unfortunate, because "Tuesday" is somewhat of a dirty word around teachers in my building. Generally speaking, if something is going to go wrong at school, it's going to be on a Tuesday. For Tuesday is "staff development day." Our day begins earlier than all others days in order to provide time for us to be "developed." Whether valuable or not, these meetings are typically viewed as obstacles to the mounting papers to grade, copies to be made, notes to prepare, or students to help. Any day that begins with built-in obstacles has the right ingredients for disaster. Or at least a sub-par day. And it seems I've had my fair share of those kind of Tuesdays.

It is with this attitude that I approach the concept of "Tuesday work" in this post. It's another idea I came across in the Exploring Calvin and Hobbes collection that I wrote about a few weeks ago. For it was his work on the average Tuesday that Bill Watterson, writer of the Calvin and Hobbes strip, felt he would ultimately be judged.

Said Watterson:

"Comic strips are so ephemeral that daily consistency is sort of the test. You might get lucky and knock one out of the park on Monday, but that doesn't buy you much credit for Tuesday. Everybody's already forgotten it. The measure of a comic is those "Tuesday strips," where you don't hit it out of the park. Proportionally those are going to be the vast majority of your work, so how good are they?"

When I say that it will happen on a Tuesday, this is what I mean. It will be on the Tuesdays of your life, on the days you don't feel great, on the days when life is not going according to plan, on the days after a masterful performance when you're tired and you feel like you've given enough already, that you will build your reputation. You will be remembered for your Tuesdays.

I want my kids to remember their childhood for the great trips we've taken or the Christmas mornings we've planned. And they'll remember some of that. But they'll remember more how I father on the other days, the unplanned and unscheduled days, the days where I choose between time with them or time to myself, when we do nothing special other than eat a meal and read a book and kick a ball in the yard.

I want my students to remember me for the great lessons, my players for the great wins, my fellow church members for the strong sermons, and my readers for the most-read posts. But they will not. Not primarily, any way. Rather, it will be for who I am and what I do in the days in between.

You will build your reputation on a thousand Tuesdays, all stacked up one after another, none of them memorable but all of them influential. What will those stack of Tuesdays build? A mountain of forgettable days? Perhaps. But more likely, they will form a complete and accurate picture of you. Unfiltered, unplanned, unprotected you. How good are you when you're not "knocking it out of the park," as Watterson said?

Whatever you want to be good at, whether it be prayer or politics, will be tested on Tuesdays. More importantly, whoever you want to be, especially to the people you most want to be that for, will be determined by how you spoke to them, how you showed up for them, or how you served them when you didn't have it on the calendar.

Claim Tuesdays as yours. Win them all. Not by being fantastic and unforgettable, but by quietly and doggedly being exactly who you want to be.

Parting Words for My Graduating Seniors (And Probably for the Rest of Us)

I've decided to sit down and write to you despite the fact that I don't feel like it right now. It's something I want to have done; however, getting started has proven difficult. And now it's 8:30 PM and I just want to fall asleep in my chair with a book. But I'm here and I'm writing because I feel compelled by our relationship to have some parting words. Or at least my vision of our relationship, one which I hope is driven by mutual respect and my need to squeeze something out of every possible minute I have to influence you because you were gracious enough to sign up for my class. As you are likely reading this during some of your last minutes in here, and because of that allegiance to your time with me, I am compelled to get down some words.

It is that word "compel" that I want to emphasize today. It is not a word that gets much attention. I don't hear many kids running around saying "I want to be compelled when I grow up!" and I certainly can't find any inspirational graduation cards with trite quotes about finding that which "compels" you as you head off to your next journey. No, in our self-reliant, self-promoting, self-satisfying culture, we rarely stop and think about finding that which we allow to compel us in our lives.

Of course we don't. The word originates from the Latin "compellere" meaning to drive together like cattle, or to force someone into something. It indicates that motivation for an act has come from the outside, as if any who are compelled are slaves, merely doing another's bidding out of fear or guilt or bribery. Synonyms include "force, pressure, press, push, urge." Haven't you earned the right, now that you've done the bidding of parent and teacher and director and coach for 18 long years, to just do whatever it is you want to do?

Sure, you have that right. You've had it for a long time already; some of us were just slow to let you in on that secret. But I hope you want more for yourself that the "freedom" to do as you wish, when you wish, for yourself.

For the best work of my life has been that which I've felt compelled to do.

I am compelled daily by the most fantastic, devoted, caring woman that I could ever imagine. I am compelled by my love for her to pick up my socks when I don't want to, to be wiser that I ever thought possible, and to put the needs of my family above my personal wants. I am compelled to wash dishes some times, vacuum the floors most times, and consider ways to make her smile all times. I have not yet been compelled to believe in Valentine's Day, of course; but she hasn't tried to drive me that way either.

My parents compelled me to avoid a lot of stupid mistakes that I desperately wanted to commit in my youth. My friends compelled me to get out of my own way, to see the world through the eyes of those with significantly different worldviews, and to try many things that I was hesitant to try. Like Chinese food. Or actually talking to girls. My grandparents compelled me to embrace where I came from.

I have been compelled by books. Stacks and stacks of books. Some required by coursework I didn't feel like completing, others recommended by friends or authors, still others mere accidents. But they drove me. They pushed and pressured and demanded in ways I wanted desperately to go and ways I never thought I would.

Teachers have compelled me. Teachers I've liked, teachers I've hated, and even teachers I've forgotten made me go where I didn't want to go. Grazing, cattle-like, I instead was herded into philosophies that I now cling to.

I was compelled by a pompous, bombastic Humanities professor and his atheistic badgering to actually dig in, commit myself to knowing the Bible if I was going to profess it, and purposefully mature in a faith I could barely call active, despite the fancy Jesus fish on the back of my car.

Now I am compelled by God, both through my head and my heart, to live sacrificially, to grow consistently, to love my enemy, and to crave truth desperately. And every day, when I fail in some way, I am compelled all over again.

And I am compelled right now, by duty, by love, and by respect to type these words and offer them in a last-ditch effort to compel you.

Some people are self-starters. They can muster up the motivation to be more than they are right now all on their own. If that's you, I envy you. It's not me. And my experience tells me that I'm not alone. Left to myself, to do as I please, when I please, I would have decades of regret tugging at my soul.

To be compelled is to make something else more important. To get outside of yourself. To submit. It is a reminder that you are not a god. Trust me, you will need that reminder.

So I urge you to put yourself in positions to be compelled by worthy "drivers." That will require many that you don't agree with. Or like. That will require you to personally seek out opportunities to be compelled, and it will require you to keep your eyes open and simply say yes when a compeller finds you. Most of all, to be compelled is to make the decision that something else, or someone else, is more important than yourself today.

Go forth, to your classrooms and workplaces and peer groups and new communities and old communities and families and strangers. Allow them to compel you.

And feel free, whenever the need arises, to compel me to serve you once again.

The Amish Life for Me

A few weeks ago I had a student claim that I was Amish.

He meant it as an insult. It was another good-natured day of intellectual sparring in the classroom, and he took his best shot. His best was accusing me of living an Amish lifestyle. I only knew it to be an insult because of the confident glare and self-satisfied combination of crossed arms, conspicuous lean backwards in his seat, and smug smirk. I wasn't quite sure how to respond.

"I'm not even sure what that means," I responded.

"You know, you're like those Amish people. Your Amish." Another smirk.

"Make me a list," I demanded. "Tell me what you mean. Tell my why I'm Amish." By the end of the class period, he had.

Here's what I got (**used with permission):

Apparently this is what it is to be Amish. Or perhaps I should say "Ahmish," as he spelled it, before listing off his "Ten Reasons" and skipping number 6 completely. Whatever sense or logic failed in this exchange, it did provide good fodder for entertainment in our competitive tête-à-tête. And then I forgot about it, until the Amish were in the news.

In the May 10th edition of the Des Moines Register, there was a feature story on the 50th anniversary of Amish civil disobedience in Iowa, protesting compulsory public school attendance for their kids. I had never even heard of this. It's a fascinating article, if you get the time. Apparently, the Amish were being forced to send their kids to public schools rather than their own schools due to state law, which was hugely problematic for the beliefs and values of those Amish citizens. They were backed into a moral corner, testing their traditions and core convictions. They fought back.

It's easy to read their plight and think, of course they fought back. But it's only that simple in retrospect. Here they were, facing off against public opinion, public pressure, and law enforcement. It would have been much easier to comply. It would have been easier to compromise and send those values gently into that good night. Instead, they raged. Rather than publicly obey while even privately grousing about the direction of society, like so many of us are wont to do, they said no.

I now hope my student was right. I hope I've got a little Amish in me. When the pendulum of public opinion swings one way, a way far from my values, will I sit in silence and wait until no one is listening to state my case? When the world's path to success for my children strays from our family's faith and value system, will I have the strength to say, "Not us"?

Yes, it's the Amish life for me. At least I'm hoping so. For convictions are easy, until they're not; which is why finding models, even those whose beliefs run counter to my own, is so important. These models, fighting for a way of life I don't necessarily understand, battled not to change minds and increase the numbers of their team. They didn't read poll numbers to find out when it was okay to publicly state their position. They simply gripped onto a firm vision of what they wanted for their homes and for their families and were unwavering in the face of the opposition.

Where insult was hurled, I'm capturing motivation. I'm not sure that my ancient cell phone (see reason #7) or my small town residence (#4) have any resemblance to the Amish way. But if it's an unshakable adherence to my family's way of life that gathers me under that title, then I'll keep walking that way.

She Showed Up

A few months ago I wrote a post about the fact that 80 percent of friendship is just showing up. As I reflect today on a lifetime of being cared for by my mother, I realize that the same is true for parenting as well.

This week on Tim Challies' blog, he wrote about the effect of looking through old pictures of his kids:

"There are thousands of these photos, each one a little link to days gone by and to time that has already passed. While there is joy in looking at those old shots and losing myself in memories, there is also a deep sadness. Why? Because every photo looks like an opportunity lost. Wasn't it just yesterday that the kids were toddling around, barely able to walk? Wasn't it just last summer that they ran in circles outside trying desperately to get some dollar-store kites to soar into the air?"

When my mother looks back at the past, as she undoubtedly does, and she ponders the fleeting nature of time, she won't look back in regret. At least she shouldn't. Because she showed up.

When I consider the major events of both my youth and my adulthood, I remember my mother being there. Even a cursory glance around my office displays memorabilia from priorities I've had that all come with thoughts of Mom. There are the relics from coaching high school basketball in two different states; she was there. 

I have an old picture of one of my youth flag football teams that I coached while I was at UNI. Those same kids enjoyed football helmet-shaped treats from my mother after a game.

There's even a poster-sized picture of the night in high school I crossed the finish in time for our relay team to set the school record.

When I look at that poster, I remember exactly where she was on the infield of the track, shouting encouragement. Because she was there.

What I am most impressed with, though, and what I find hardest to do myself as a parent, is to do more than show up for the major events. Mom showed up on the average days. In the long hours of the afternoon and evening, with the weight of work and 3 kids and a husband and a house to care for, I remember her showing up when no one else was watching: showing up to play wiffle ball in the backyard, or showing up to play UNO on a Sunday afternoon, or even showing up on the back of a hay rack to stack bales with me in the summer. 

We were usually a Sunday morning and a Sunday night church family growing up. If you asked me or my siblings, however, you'd discover that we were quite sure that Sunday morning was enough. Some Sunday nights, if we could time it just right, we would start ping-pong games in our basement maybe twenty or thirty minutes before it was time to get ready for evening church. If we could get Mom to show up, and if we could get the intensity level of those games at a high enough level, we had a chance of "accidentally" running out of time to make the service. I'm confident the sermons of time spent together in shouts of triumph or despair in that basement were far more important than any we missed while not in the pew. And I remember all that because Mom showed up.

I've got a lot of pictures of the event days in my life when Mom showed up. I have even more pictures in my heart of the non-event days, when I didn't know her level of fatigue because she didn't want me to know, when she showed up as well.

She still shows up. She shows up at events, like when I'm giving the sermon at church or my children have a birthday party. She shows up at non-events, like when we're remodeling our house and she commits a weekend to rolling primer on our walls. And she shows up on the phone, around 8:30 every Sunday night, to talk about the week. Her example challenges me to show up for my kids too; not just when they have a program or a game or an event, but when I'm tired after a long day and they just want to play soccer in the yard, or Sequence at the table, or even when they want to "style" my hair.

My wife is in our kitchen right now with our children on this cloudy Sunday afternoon. She has shown up to teach them more about cooking and the art of making jam. She is a wonderful mother. I should know: I've spent a lifetime watching what one looks like.

Happy Mother's Day.

So When is This Due?

Though retired for twenty years now, Bill Watterson and his Calvin and Hobbes comics live on. Recently I acquired an exhibition catalogue put together by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at The Ohio State University that was published this year in March. Not only has the catalogue collected, organized, and commented on Watterson's art and various aspects of the strip, the book contains a long interview with Watterson about varying aspects of his experience at the helm of this popular comic. One exchange between Watterson and the interviewer that stood out to me was in regard to deadlines.

Watterson was speaking about the limitations and constraints of the comic strip as an art form. There are rules that must be followed, constraints that must be respected. The daily strips require one format, the Sundays another. There are color limitations. And then there are the demands of the deadline. Every day, 365 days a year, there's a demand for new content. Right now. Immediately. He spoke of the fact that, in hindsight, he appreciated what those limitations did for him:

"It's going to be black and white, it's going to be ink on paper, it's all got to fit in this teeny little space, and it has to be done by yesterday. Okay, thank you, now I can get to work! I think the hardest part is the deadline. But even there, I've come to respect it. A painting is infinitely perfectible, so I can't tell when to stop. The strip deadlines are so relentless that simplicity and speed become great virtues. . ." (p. 26)

What I found illuminating was the response of the interviewer: "Without that deadline constraint, it wouldn't have been possible to complete so much work."

And there it is. Without someone forcing Watterson into demanding, sometimes unreasonable deadlines for content, one of the greatest, most well-known strip writers would have created only a fraction of the thousands of strips that have captured the hearts of generations. Simply put, without this pressure, he would have accomplished less. Far less.

Dear English students: this is why I am so demanding with you. This is why I don't push deadlines back when you beg and prod and verbally abuse my supposedly non-existent soul. If I did, you would accomplish less. You would read less, write less, learn less, and create less. You might be okay with that, but you won't be in twenty years. Bill Watterson hated the daily demand for new content and the unrelenting stream of pressure on his abilities. At least he did then. Now? Now he's being interviewed on his artistic gift to the world and all the success and fulfillment it's brought him.

Most adults are vocally appalled when I tell them that a national trend in education is to do away with due dates and deadlines, that new conventional wisdom has it that you can't put a timetable on learning and that holding students to a due date is in essence giving up on them. They talk about the real world. And I'm with them. But one question that begs to be asked is this: how many deadlines are adults being held to? Or perhaps more importantly, how much more could we all accomplish under the pressure of a deadline?

I know the temptations to procrastinate that which should be done. I clean the house more and with more vigor when the deadline of company coming to visit approaches. I haven't completed my baseball online rules exam yet despite having it for a week and a half; after all, the season doesn't start tomorrow. My drivers license got renewed 6 months after it was past due, and only then because I feared a stiffer penalty if I didn't finally take care of it. Netflix has no due date; some DVD's have stayed in a drawer for months. Absent a clear and present threat of "past due," I'm mostly worthless.

I know this about human nature. I know this about myself. So I've put myself on a writing deadline every month. Every month in 2015 I've met the deadline. Most months I've met it on the last day of the month. Other than avoiding the self-loathing involved with failing at a simple personal goal, I've also found that what was true for Watterson is true for me: I've accomplished well more than I ever could without it. I'm at over 26,000 words of typed prayers for the year. That's more than all of last year. At 1/4 of the way through the year, I'm over half of the way to last year's blog total. I am thinking better, loving better, enjoying better. The only change is the deadline.

Tomorrow some of my students take a high-stakes AP Exam. We've been in heavy exam prep mode over the last two weeks. I have some students who have considerably ramped up their efforts to learn more before this deadline. That sense of urgency did not exist in December, when perhaps it was a little easier to take a few days off from reading and writing. I don't fault them for that. Rather, I see myself in them.

If it matters to you, give yourself a deadline. Or put yourself in a position where someone else is holding one up for you. See what you can do. If me and my friend Mr. Watterson are any indication, it will be far more than you thought possible.

So How Does This One End?

"Nothing spoils a story more than a weak or inappropriate ending." 
- Roy Peter Clark, Help! for Writers

In my last post, I referred to the importance of leads in the writing process and the connection with "conversational leads" that people use, particularly in apologies. Tonight I look at the flip-side: the necessity for a strong ending.

The quote I lead with says it all: write a strong ending, and it will crown the passionate prose in the middle. Muddle it up or coast to the finish line, and no one will remember the middle anyway.

As it goes in writing, so it goes in life. I think back to some of the endings to stories in my life and feel the weight of Clark's statement.

I remember the ending at Towanda. Camp Towanda was a summer camp where Emily and I worked the summer before we got married. We both had one year of college left and decided that summer freedom was there for the taking, so we took: we met a guy named "Z" on the UNI campus during a summer work fair who convinced us to come live in Northeast Pennsylvania for 10 weeks over the summer and work the camp. 

I'm tempted to fill the space here with cliches about how great the summer was, but they will be just that - empty words. They will not bring the story to life. I could write books about my experiences that summer, and I hope I do some day. Working with other twenty-somethings from most U.S. states and several countries from around the world, along with the couple hundred Jewish kids attending the camp all summer long, has a way of treating you to life experiences. Our summer at Towanda is not a story; it's a volume.

But that volume has a clear chronology, a beginning and a middle, and suddenly the end was upon us. The ending of the story needed to fit. And it did. As Clark wrote, nothing could have spoiled this haloed time more than a forgettable ending. Instead, I'll remember that night forever. It was an hours-long party at a small-town bar, pitchers of Yuengling Black and Tan flowing, a consistent, raucous din of uproarious laughter and back-slapping and tears and Aussie-slang. We tried to make time stand still, just for a minute; but it didn't. After a few short hours of sleep in a hotel room crowded with Israelis, my future wife and I got up, hugged our two newest lifelong friends, shed a few tears, and closed the story. The concluding paragraph fit masterfully.

Our Sutherland story ended just as perfectly. In English class I teach something called "circular structure" or "framing." In a frame, the conclusion refers back to the lead. It's an effective way to make sure that whatever you're beginning with, it's important and relevant enough that it will make a powerful end as well. Our Sutherland days ended at a grill-out with our friends on the farm of my assistant coach, the same one who invited me to come meet my new team at a grill-out when we first moved there.

My senior year of high school basketball was filled with victories and top ten rankings and endless success. I don't remember any of that nearly as well as I remember the ugly upset we endured at the hands of our rivals well-before the state tournament glory we had envisioned. On too many days, I remember the bitterness of saying goodbye to my beloved teaching and coaching job at Nora Springs under circumstances I didn't think were best for anybody, rather than remembering three of the best years of my career.

The ending matters. No matter how well you've done something, or how good a relationship is, a faulty goodbye, a half-effort near the finish line, or an abrupt and misplaced word can alter the taste of the story so much that the middle of it barely rings true anymore.

I will remember that this month, this final month with my seniors. Five years down the road, for most of them I'll probably be just somebody else whose class they had once upon a time. I know there are some things that I do wrong in the classroom, but I'm also pretty sure that I get a couple of things right. In our final month together, I'll either punctuate my strengths and leave them remembering my classroom fondly, regardless of the demanding schedule I held them to; or instead I'll coast, letting distraction and busyness and grading and self-focus slowly separate us until it was like we never spent a year or three together at all.

We've all been given time. Time to work, time for relationships, time to parent, even time for vacations. And time ends. There will be a close to all of the stories you and I are currently in. Finish those stories strong. The magnitude of the middle depends on it.

In Writing and Apologies, The Lead Says it All

English teachers like myself work tirelessly trying to teach our students the importance of a good lead.

A lead is the first thing a reader will see, introducing the content and the tone and the reliability of the piece. It provides a statement in it's attempt to lure the reader not only regarding the subject matter at hand, but also the type of reader whose attention it is attempting to grasp. A good lead speaks volumes in approximately 100 words or less.

Roy Peter Clark, one of my favorite writers about writing, even went so far as to rank the leads of Pulitzer Prize submissions, citing one in particular that effectively uses 25 semicolons. Now that one goes straight to the heart of this grammar guru, dangling that prize on a shiny hook.

It is in a lead that we learn where a piece of writing is headed, and it's also a great indicator of where a conversation is headed. I have found that's especially true if the conversation is an apology.

The apology I write about today was a fairly public one. Another star in the world of professional sports acted boorish and awful, exploding in a tantrum of arrogance and villainy. Which is fine unless you're caught on tape. She was. The apology came a day later, through Twitter, America's favorite place for apologies.

The apology was fine. It hinted at remorse. It accepted responsibility. It could have been dowright genuine. Except. . .

There was a qualifier. That qualifier came in the form of the lead, the first couple of words, the attention-getting precursor that shines a light onto the truth of what is coming. Her lead? "In an intense and stressful moment. . ."

And there it is. As a reader, I can stop there. The tone is set. I can see where this is going. My actions were bad, I'm sorry, there's no excuse for what I did, except for the one I'm leading with. Even though she's taking full responsibility, it isn't really her fault. Her emotions got the best of her. She was pushed into these actions by extreme provocation. Her guard was down. This isn't who she really is.

Except that it is. It is a tired excuse, but an age old one. I was tired. I was really frustrated. I was having a bad day. I was at my wits end. I was just really upset and I took it out on you. But the reality of frustration and stress and fatigue and irritation is that our "guard" is, in fact, down. The guard that we put up to protect others from our real selves, the carefully crafted persona, thick and vibrant as makeup, is only a facade. That is who we want to be. Or perhaps more likely, who we want others to think that we are.

But behind that mask is who we really are. And that mask gets washed away under intensity and fatigue. Who are you really? You are who you are when you are unguarded, unprepared, unexpecting, and bare of all comforts. How do you treat you're wife when you're tired? How does your parenting change under duress? What words and behaviors accompany you in a gym or a field when an official's call goes against you? What kind of a student, employee, sibling, and citizen are you when you haven't been treated well? Or, as Snickers commercials have so entertainingly reminded us, when you're "hangry"?

It's an important question. Duress doesn't bring out the worst in everyone; it just brings out the most real. And rather than excusing away our behavior on those days, perhaps we more appropriately can use those days to see just how loving, just how open-minded, just how forgiving and patient we are.

I've come to understand that most days I get a chance to see this. Most days I will get tired, stressed, frustrated, or wronged. If I'm going to face the real me on most days, then I better go to work improving the real me that everyone will see.

You Gotta Look Where You Want to Skate, Even If It's Backwards

I do not have fond memories of roller skating when I was a kid.

Skating for me couldn't have been all bad; I remember voluntary returning for several trips to the skating rink for assorted occasions. But I don't remember anything good. Poor coordination, little experience, and an unwillingness to be taught much of anything conspired against me. I vividly recall a wooden bench attached to the wall around the perimeter of the rink, mid-shin high, that I routinely used to immediately stop all forward momentum. Purposeful movement with a specific target in mind was routinely interrupted by unexpected falls. Perhaps most painful of all were all the times the lights went down, the speakers crooned some love ballad, and skaters were instructed to take the hand of their beloved, all while I watched said beloved skate hand-in-hand with someone else. In hindsight, it was probably for the best. Injuring the secret objection of my affection probably wouldn't have done much for my love life either.

My daughters have attended a few skating events now, and I know that I've passed down my inferior genetic material to my oldest. It took her a while to get at least a little comfortable out on 8 wheels. When she asked me if I wanted to go skating with her at the most recent opportunity, I politely declined. I just don't skate, I explained to her. Too much pain. No skill. Many crashes. I winced when I explained this to her, just to emphasize my ineptitude.

"No problem, Dad," was her response. "I can teach you. Just like someone taught me last time." I was listening. There was nothing she could say that would change my mind, but I was listening. "Wherever your eyes go, that's where your skates will go. You gotta look where you want to skate. That's the secret."

I have no idea the validity of this advice. It could be meaningless or spot-on, and I'll never know. No more crashes for me. But it seems to have worked for her. Also, it's advice that's stayed with me that I think has further practical application. It's all about where you're looking.

You are headed - mind, body, and soul - wherever your eyes go. Your line of sight speaks volumes for your goals. Where do you spend most of your time looking? At the markets? At your spouse? At literature? At Facebook? At Amazon? At your television? At the flaws of your house? For wherever you look, that's where you'll go, whether that's somewhere or nowhere, feast or frustration.

In 2 Peter 3:14, Peter writes, "So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace." The "this" in verse 14 refers to "the coming of the day of God."

The vision of Christ-followers should be dominated by looking forward towards eternity and the day of the Lord. And keeping our eyes fixed there should affect our heart and behavior. It's when we lose sight that we falter.

Those today clinging to Biblical truth in the face of the moral momentum of the masses face the accusation of being not forward-focused, but "backward thinking." They are accused of not joining the modern world in their desire to hold on to a forgotten time.

Backward thinking? I embrace that label too. Go ahead and heap "intolerant" on as well. Because you're right - I am stuck in the past. My point of focus reaches all the way back to the cross.

That's where I'm skating. When my eyes are on the target, all 8 wheels are on a smooth backwards ride. And when I follow my daughter's advice, it's a crash-free and joy-filled journey, lack of coordination be damned, all the way there. I'm even ready for a little limbo music.

"All About That Bass," and my Bilingual Home

After my girls and I got into the car while coming out of Target last Saturday while shopping for Emily's birthday presents, the radio was barely audible. At the first stop light, though, my 7-year old excitedly yelled to the front seat, "Turn it up! I like this song! Turn it up!" I learned many years ago that on most days I've given up the right to the driving music, so I acquiesced and gave her some volume. I didn't recognize the song until inundated with the chorus:

"I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass. I'm all about that bass. . ."

While no avowed expert on pop culture, I can at least comprehend that the premise of the song is a celebration of the singer's backside and her ability to shake it. Apparently the singer has "all the right junk in all the right places."

So that was my rather instructional Saturday morning.

I'm fairly certain that my daughter's eternal soul isn't in jeopardy because she's heard this song or finds it catchy. If it is, I'm in trouble; I myself couldn't get the cursed chorus out of my head all afternoon. But it did get me thinking: how? It's not like we've put up some kind of brick wall around our kid and the rest of the culture, banning all hints of secular society from her. But this music? In our house, we play Johnny Cash, CCR, hymns, and classic 90's hits from back when music was really music. How did these lyrics become a part of her lexicon?

Later that afternoon while doing yard work, which is the absolute clearest time to think about anything of this nature, I was reminded of our friends that we stayed with in Austin, Texas over Spring Break. Both husband and wife are bilingual, speaking both Spanish and English. She grew up in Costa Rica; he in central Iowa. Before they had kids, I was intrigued to listen to them switch back and forth when in conversation with each other, depending on the central topic of said conversation and any audience with whom they shared the conversation. Now, however, they have two kids - one almost four and the other closing in on his first birthday. They now speak only Spanish in the home.

Obviously I asked why when we were there. I was exceedingly jealous that they were able to raise their kids bilingually and begin their language education at such an early age. But why just Spanish at home? "They get English everywhere else," my friend told me. "Everywhere they go in the city - school, church, stores - they hear English." So the home became their best chance at consistent Spanish dialogue.

Their oldest is smart enough to switch back and forth depending on audience. All conversation with his parents was in Spanish; with me and my family, he spoke English. Once I exhausted the 15-20 Spanish words I know, I let him teach me some. But he recognized a poser when he saw one. Fortunately, he refrained from giving me condescending looks when he had to switch to English. I found it all fascinating.

This experience came to mind on Saturday. We have a "language of the home" as well, and it's not "All About That Bass." We have other values that we hope run counter to pop culture, other ways of speaking our worldview and priorities. I hope our home sounds profoundly different than many corners of society. But I realize now that it has to. I've got to make sure to speak full-time "Dykstra Family Dialect" and all that it entails in the home, not switching back and forth into "world-speak" or dwarfing into some weird hybrid. They get the world's language and priorities everywhere else. If I want them to know our language, I've got to be purposeful about using that language at all times during our hours together.

My friend admitted to me that he worries about the day down the road when his son comes to talk to him and the conversation requires English due to vocabulary or nuances of situation. English, he admitted, will most likely become his sons' dominant language over time.

Now I understand that very real fear. I want my girls to be in the world and effective in it. Effective at communicating, effective at service and sympathy, effective at navigating adventures and obstacles. But I don't want them to become of the world. I don't want that to become their dominant language. And that fear highlights all the more my responsibilities at home. Without purposeful effort, they could lose their native language.

And whether that entails UNO trash talk or a Biblical worldview, I want them armed with the language of their homeland.