Reflections from a Week in South Dakota

Our family took a week-long trip to South Dakota in July, and I tried to jot down a few thoughts about it when I got back. I've cobbled it together into what I hope are three coherent posts. The first, below, is some thoughts about fatherhood and my two daughters after a week straight of car time, a shared one-room cabin at a KOA campground, fatigue, picnics, and some of the best scenery on earth:

I don’t want to forget a few things about my girls on this trip, because I know how fast they change and grow, and there are pieces that I don’t want to drift into the shapelessness of vague half memories. 

For instance, how they made friends with every dog owner and dog they saw at our campground, primarily because they missed their own dog. Our cabin was about 100 feet from the little dog park at the campground; and we knew that if we weren’t sure where our girls were, we could look out and see them leaning against the fence, chatting up a dog owner about their trip, or stopped between our cabin and the bathrooms, leaning down to pet a dog that they would almost assuredly describe in terms of how similar or dissimilar it was to a chocolate lab.

Or their independence. Confident, sauntering independence, the kind that makes clear, “This is my campground. I belong here. I need no help,” as they marched off to the pool or the bathroom or the pavilion.

And the vacation journals, of course. The chatty, persuasive prose from the oldest; the descriptive, joy-filled highlights from the youngest filling pages regarding our excursions. Just when I thought I had seen Mount Rushmore from every angle, I was reminded that I hadn't seen it from the angle and expectations of youth. I was enlightened by many sentences from the pens of my daughters.

I hope to forget some of their more memorable violent mood swings, but maybe even those I hope to keep. For few things are more comical to Emily and I than seeing that our youngest is the very definition of the Snickers commercials – the ones where a raging, caustic complainer disappears at the first bite of a Snickers and the eater returns to their true nature. Give our kid some caloric encouragement and watch the rollercoaster speed immediately back to home base.

It was a relief to talk to a friend who had also been to South Dakota at the same time we were, who also had a child who loved to read in the car, a child he had to remind to look up every once in a while and take in what God gave you. I was not alone. Look up!!! You’re going to miss it!!! I wanted to scream this so many times, settling for a toned-down version of it instead, trying to win with the logic that books are about life and this is life, there out the window, life worth writing about yourself some day if you could ever capture it with words.

There’s a desperation in fatherhood to not raise entitled children. I’ve heard the word “privileged” used instead, but I abandon that one because it is privilege that I can’t avoid. My kids are privileged – there is no escaping it. They have been born to parents who love each other, who love God, who have read to them since they exited the womb, who love to travel, and who have the means to do. They have privileges that others do not, and I would not willingly take those from them. What I want to avoid is that privilege leading to entitlement. My girls will grow up taking at least one trip a year, if not two. We’ve been to Austin, Texas four out of the last five years. In the summers they’ve been on extended trips to Duluth, Colorado, and now South Dakota. We routinely go to Minneapolis and Kansas City. We have favorite destinations in our home state of Iowa. These are good places, most of them full of good people who we know and love.

But the danger for me is making travel a ho-hum affair, something to be taken for granted, just another day on the calendar for our kids. I find myself explaining to them often that I took one trip as a kid. One. And it was with four people crammed into the cab of a pickup designed for two. And we loved it. It was special, and I know I have not forgotten most of that experience. Will my kids remember South Dakota? Will they take in its harsh terrain and inexplicable natural wonder with desperation, starving for the visual feast before them? Or will they hear me telling them to look out the window as one loud (but ignorable) obstacle to reading more of their book or playing with a camera?

I remember riding the Cog Railway up to the top of Pikes Peak two summers ago, appalled at the young teenager a few seats over. She was sitting with her family, but she was not with them or the mountain. She was alone, buried in a book, letting the mountain air pass by unacknowledged and unappreciated. She wasn’t rude. She was just not there. And I prayed that someday I would not need to convince my children to soak in all that I had spent 30+ years not seeing, not have to talk around them while they endured some trite little excursion to some other place with some other thing that others strained their necks to see while murmuring distractions.

The struggle is real. But we will continue to travel, here in this privileged youth they are living. And I will continue to point, to speak, to demand page-free hours, hoping to protect them from entitlement and indifference.

What my children want, though, is not necessarily beauty they can see, but an adventure they can live. Rocks to climb. Boulders to conquer. Streams to splash. Wild mustangs to beckon. Gold to pan. Prairie dogs to tempt. It is the doing that excites their soul, and I recognize that better now that the trip is over. This is their awe – what they can experience that they had never experienced before. And I see that in their DNA now. I have felt it before. 

The mistake that’s easy for me to make is to want for them to understand and do what I understand and do now. But this is my stage, and theirs is theirs, and if they miss the grandeur that I take in now, perhaps when they are in their 30’s and taking their children across the country, they can take it in then. There was a stirring in my soul to take a full day in the 100 degree heat and hike a 10 mile trail on treacherous terrain in the Badlands. I wanted to go and do and conquer, too. I can only hope that I don’t lose that passion, or the physical ability to do so, when they are at an age where our desires match.

Until then, we will continue to travel, and we will come home writing about what we saw and did, in our journal or in our blog, and hopefully about what we learned about each other on the way.

A Fridge Full of Wisdom

A friend of mine has placed the core truths on which their family is built on their refrigerator. Like most families, everyone in the house passes by the refrigerator dozens of times each day. As they pass, there in dry erase marker is what they believe and value. The list does not change. In the ebb and flow of family life, in the celebrations and fights and laughter and love and frustration, a few key phrases written out serve to remind everyone there that this is who we are.

I was speaking to someone else recently, someone whose family was going through a major occupational change. They chose the change, chose it for good reasons, and now were dealing with the losses associated with that decision. They seemed to be drowning in that loss. A decision they made that they believed in was now clouded by their feelings. I understand what they are dealing with. When Emily and I decided to leave Nebraska, it was the wisest and most rational decision based on the goals we had for our family. We made the decision and were confident in it; but in the final weeks before we left, we realized just how much we had there. We felt the stings of many farewells to people who still mean a lot to us to this day. Saying goodbye was brutal. But we knew why we were doing it. And we had to keep reminding ourselves of that in the midst of the mourning.

In the first century the apostle Paul was in Rome, in prison, with death imminent, and he wrote a passionate letter to his friend and younger coworker Timothy to encourage him. Typically it is the imprisoned who need encouraging, but Paul had a different perspective. He had more to give, more words of wisdom and support and encouragement, and he pours himself out in this letter. It's a fascinating letter when considering this is essentially the last letter to a close friend, a farewell of sorts, and that Paul must write it under the circumstances in which he finds himself.

Eventually in the letter Paul gives a profound reflection on his circumstances: he is "bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything . . ."

Paul will not allow his situation to define him. Being "bound with chains" is where he is but not who he is. More importantly, he will not allow his situation to define God. There is nothing more true and more important to him that the reality of God's grace and his responsibility to spread the hope and salvation provided by that grace. And he refuses to allow his situation to limit God. Paul understands that the power of the gospel is unchanging, regardless of where he is and how he feels.

It is so easy to make this mistake. We allow our situation and our feelings to create reality for us, rather than what we say we believe is true. But we have to fight that. A little anger and frustration does not change the fact that service and sacrifice bring us great joy and purpose. The folly of politicians should not make us forget that we live in a great country that we are responsible to for more than exasperated complaints. Fatigue does not decrease the importance of our values and desires, and we should not let it allow us to push them off for another day. A loss of job does not change your value. A fight does not change the treasure that is your spouse. A day filled with disobedience and constant mess should not diminish the immense gratitude for our children, the same gratitude felt on the day of their birth. It might be gratitude through gritted teeth, but gratitude nonetheless.

Life and circumstance change us, but they do not change truth. That's why it's so important to constantly repeat the core truths that we believe, whether those core truths are founded on the gospel of Christ or not. Whatever is true, we must speak it to ourselves and to those who share those convictions. Because our chains, our feelings, our limitations, and our circumstances will blow us back and forth and turn us upside down and threaten to crush us at times, and we will need to be tethered to the foundation of who we are and why we do what we do.

In one of my favorite poems that I teach to my AP students, A. E. Housman writes that

"Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, 
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good."

So we must train. And we train through repetition. We need teachers and coaches and mentors in our lives speaking wisdom through experience when we struggle. We need dinners and stories with friends that remind us of what really matters, matters more than our comfort, more than our job, more than our last argument, more than our to-do list. Christians, we need the repetition and unity of the Bible. We all need those words on the fridge, reminding us one snack or drink at a time, who and what we most hold dear.

The Right (and Wrong) Kind of Memorable

There is a moment, or a collection of moments, from a high school baseball game that has stayed with me for longer than the night of the game. Last week was my last week of umpiring for the summer, and much of it has been forgettable. Forgettable is good, generally. Forgettable means that people behaved as people should, at least most of the time, that we marched inning to inning slowly or quickly, kids maybe made memories while my partner and I facilitated, offering structure to this activity that they say is important. Memorable is often bad. Bad like the unspeakable quagmire of a display last week we had to witness from a team and a community who appears to have no adults to speak of, at least none with any contact or concern with their baseball program. That embarrassing evening, a 4 hour marathon of affronts to humanity, was not forgettable. I hope I can wash it away soon.

But it is a different evening I linger with here. A better evening. It was forgettable in most ways. I don't remember the score. I remember who won, but I won't in six months, and I know none of the players. I couldn't even tell you the first names of the kids who pitched. What I remember is the demeanor of the head coach. It's simple, really: he taught. He taught the whole game. He taught on nearly every pitch. Mistakes or successes, ahead or behind, first inning or last, he taught. He encouraged, but not the fake kind of encouragement that no one believes; instead, it was the encouragement of instruction, of saying that Hey, you said this is important to you, so I'm going to make you important to me and teach you how to do this thing. I'm going to show you the way, and I believe that you are not perfect and never will be perfect but can be better, just a little bit better, right now, and again next time, and again next time, and I'm going to keep speaking better into you so long as you're here and valuing this.

This is hard. Unspeakably hard. Few people know how hard it actually is. If you've been to high school athletics, I'm sure you've heard encouragers and teachers. For the whole game, though? It's rare. If you see it, value it. Take it in. Listen and appreciate to the job few are willing or maybe able to perform.

Full-time teaching says a few things. It says that every action matters. That each movement, each decision, is of consequence for the player and for the team. And it is. Full-time teaching says that the player himself is important. Instruction implies that improvement is both possible and important. Full-time teaching tells a player that you're not done yet, that you're not a finished product, that you never will be, that while you are not now good enough you are better than you were and you will continue on this journey during this minute, and the next one, and the next one, with a coach who sees a spectacular and unwritten future for you if you just remember all the time that you're not done yet.

It's easy to see what's wrong with youth and high school athletics today, particularly from the perspective of an umpire. I see a lot of disinterested people, not quite sure why they're doing what they're doing. I see a lot of ultra-interested people, defining this as life and not a mere part of life or a preparation and means for living well. I see money - lots and lots of money - and how many people are making it on the backs of children. I see self-promotion as the new idol, rather than self-sacrifice. Frankly, I often don't see a lot of joy. But then there are nights, nights like this one, where I get to see what's good and right about a bus-full of kids on a diamond in a town 30 miles away on a Tuesday night.

I don't think this team will ever be state champions. Conference championships will be rare enough. But what they will be are carpenters and farmers and real estate agents and fathers who will have had a time in their life when someone told them to get better today, because you matter, because what you do matters, and it matters to a whole lot more people than just yourself.

The team I described in the opening paragraph is also full of kids who are learning. But they are learning without the teaching. They are learning to act on impulse. They are learning that comedy, particularly self-deprecating and self-promoting comedy, is a lot easier than success. They are learning victimhood. And they are learning the silence of adults, the silence of coaches and parents who have decided that they are just not quite worth the effort. I am sorry for them.

I'm not sure how many people think about that when they're watching a high school baseball game or looking at scores in the paper. But I do. I've got a lot of time to think, inning after inning, mile after mile, season after season. I've got time to consider why we're all doing this - umpires and coaches and players and parents alike. And on both kinds of memorable nights, I know.