Hey all – welcome back. I’ve missed you. Currently Melissa and I are reading a book called ‘One thousand gifts‘ by Ann Voskamp. It’s a great book, but one of the challenges that is coming out of it, basically, is to create my own list of 1000 gifts that I have – things I enjoy and am thankful for. Honestly, where I’m at, this would be extremely helpful – it was to Ann because it allowed her to kill her lack of contentment.

I’m working on separating drive and contentment and I’m working on the later. So, I’m putting a time limit on this little chore. I want to get it done by the time I run my half marathon on April 30th. It’s easy to start, it’s going to be a job to finish. So, here’s the requirements – I’m entering the thick of a stressful time of my life where it’s easy to get distracted and easy to let my health go. I want to find balance, contentment in who I am and what I am about and I want to list off the things that are already here; Ann calls them out as given gifts as she named them. I am hoping to discover a little bit about myself along the way. I want to be content; I want to continue to find joy and peace and I want to see what God has given me and share that with you, dear Internet, as well.

So, here’s my rules:

1. This list has to be done by April 30 – or at least at 1000 by that point.
2. I can list past things as long as it has something to do with my current life.
3. No one can talk about fight club…oh wait…nevermind.

1. running, specifically around the corner of Beach and Shelborne Ave in Normal at either sunrise or sunset.
2. laying on the couch at one end, my wife at the other, reading outloud
3. laying on Aidan’s bed with him at night or in the morning and praying/looking out the window
4. Dancing in the front room with Iona
5. Lightning storms – like the one we had on Sunday night
6. Sitting out on a deserted country road at night looking at stars
7. Electronic Dance Music (aka ‘techno’ for the uninitiated) playing loudly over good speakers while working on the computer
8. The feeling of solving a problem.
9. Being in a small group study that is working ridiculously well and people are growing in community with each other.
10. The taste of mountain dew at 4 a.m. after staying up all night doing something related to technology – playing a game, fixing issues, etc.
11. Seeing a band bleed themselves dry on a stage and the moment after the lights go up feeling the sweat in the air and hearing the ringing in my ears.
12. Whispering secrets to my love in the middle of the night.
13. Mixing sound at church when the music is going well and, as Bono says, ‘God has entered the room’.
14. Really good Ethiopian food
15. The aftertaste of fresh Yirgacheffe coffee that is the right temperature.
16. Watching the grass suddenly start to become green and wake up in the first weeks of spring.
17. Crossing the finish line of a half marathon
18. The feeling of running on Lake Shore Drive on one of the sunniest late summer days I’d seen.
19. Making a great mix while DJing
20. Capturing a moment with a camera with the result being beautiful.
21. The taste of Melissa’s Carnitas
22. Walking around Blockbuster on a friday night looking for movies and the awful smell that hits you when you first walk in the store
23. Seeing Aidan hug on Sam and hear Sam purring
24. The look of the moon in the early morning and
25. The feel of running on warm, wet ground
26. Seeing the sun rise and just before it gets to high how the atmosphere makes it look like the size of a silver dollar
27. Playing scribblenauts with Aidan and asking him the question “what would make the little boy who is scared in the game brave?” “a dad”
28. The feel of waking up by yourself and not having an alarm clock, a voice yelling “dad”, or the anxiety of the day wakes you up.
29. Laying with Aidan in his bed at night watching the moon on the horizon out his window.
30. Hearing Iona whisper “I love you daddy”

More soon…

“your continued participation and confidence in the American economy would be greatly appreciated” – George W. Bush

“we are left with indefinite adolescence and a Peter Pan Syndrome epidemic where men want to remain boys forever.” – Mark Driscoll

I read an article that Mark Driscoll wrote for the Washington Post as part of their ‘On Faith’ series. The gist of it was that our generation is full of men who fail to be men and who stay an extended adolescence surrounded by their XBox, iPad, and self-centered heart.  That consumerism is, at its end, pushing our men towards incompetence in their traditional role of 1) getting an education, 2) getting a wife, 3) getting a career, and 4) getting kids. In short, we fail to be producers and therefore we fail to be men and we are self-centered.

Beyond that many things can get in the way of that traditional path like failing to make it into college, failing to find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, having a wonderful job but not one that is a traditional ‘career’, or even being infertile or some combination of those can kill that man-track.

But where I think Mark really falls short on are two points. First, we live in a consumer society and haven’t seen significant production since the 40s. Our obsession with spending and things found greater steam in the birth of the Internet and was never so more pronounced than when our last president urged Americans at the dawn of the last great conflict to buy to continue our economy. Consumerism isn’t something that we can put directly into the laps of men in our society nor is it a problem that has one source or one thing it eats away at.

Music, for example, has seen a large amount of commodification with the advent of the digital download. It’s been years since I’ve paid more than 5 dollars for a collection of music from an artist. In fact, I just picked up 15 CDs from various sales in the past couple of weeks and have only spent around 12 dollars. Here is art where people pour out their heart and it has been relegated to the sub-dollar level. Yes, it’s accessible, yes it’s available, but I have 10,000 songs in my itunes library. That can be a bad thing when good art is lost in the noise. Consumerism, although it drives our economy, has sociological implications that Driscoll hits well, but falls short of calling it the societal (both men *and* women) sin that it is.

Instead of replacing the sin with gospel he instead falls short again by providing another series of expectations and definitions to what true manhood is. My confession here is that a core lie I tell myself is that ‘I am a man and therefore significant because I cry, am sensitive, spend time with my kids, because I’ve been married for 12 years, etc.’ Honestly, replace any of that, as a christian, with anything other than Christ and it’s disposable because anything, at any time, can be gone. So, where’s your identity because it *all* falls away in the end.

The beauty of Christianity for me is not the rules. Driscoll really discredits the faith by offering a suggestion that we become producers and sets the mark short by offering a standard for manhood that can ultimately leave you unfulfilled and that is not likely to be the standard in our culture. For me, the standard is grace and the ability to offer others and show others the grace that was given to me; to me that is something that lasts far beyond any petty standard I can give to being a man.

Academia is a cyclical job; there are natural ebbs and flows during the course of a year. For Finals Week, there’s a ‘dead week’ where one could walk the length of the quad and not interact with anyone or even be seen. There are markers for the summer – the start of ‘concerts on the quad’, the bands of america week, Shakespeare festival, etc. For all the peace of the summer, there is the great equalizer known as ‘August’. In the modern era of IT work it seems that August is full of ‘last minute’ projects, tying up loose ends and dropping off the face of the earth for a while.

The problem is this year if I ignore life till my birthday (usually when I unearth from the issues) I’m going to miss alot, and I do mean alot. Aidan’s first grade year is going to start and we’re doing Astronomy (which I’m super excited about), our homestudy will most likely start, and I’ve got me a half marathon to run. So, things to do, blog posts to write, people to see.

BTW, the photo was taken outside Williams Hall on campus by George Wiman; loved it. What was funny was a half a second prior to this, I was chiding Wes Shinault to stop laughing because I was laughing and wanted to look ‘serious’. One must be angst ridden to sit in front of a door like that.

When Melissa and I were single, we used to celebrate Tuesdays with a rose from the local florists. Tuesdays seem like no better day to update you all on what’s going on:

- the garage sale went spectacularly well. We raised over $1400 and due to everyone’s generosity we have the application fee and a good amount of our homestudy costs.

- We are in queue for our homestudy to start. Our agency has gotten really popular and there’s a small line.

- Our (new) old agency for our adoption accepted our application and we are excited we’re back with some old friends.

- Our next bill is $1800 and will be due to our adoption agency within the next six months. Please pray that we are cautious with our spending as we seek to enter this journey with as little debt as possible. We’re currently working on finishing up our car loan and are excited about taking that monthly payment and applying it here. If you’re interested, we have shirts available (check out the ‘get a shirt’ link at the top of the page) and all funds go directly to our adoption costs and move us to this first bill.

- Once we clear our homestudy, we’ll be eligible to start applying for matching grants and no interest loans to take us a bit farther.

That’s all for now!

I want to take a small diversion with what I see the big, practical purpose of this blog as a document of our adoption of our son from China. If you know me, you know I’m an avid biker because I commute to work regularly. As of tonight, it’s now illegal to ride on the sidewalks of downtown Normal (punishable by a $50 fine). Here’s the problems:

This stretch of ‘the trail’ (constitution trail goes down the middle of Bloomington-Normal) is around a round about where people, runners and bikers all compete for the same space. During the meeting tonight, it was mentioned that bikers would not be subject to the ordinance here but yet it goes directly in front of the children’s discovery museum where there is a good amount of foot traffic.

Here is the town’s attempt at fixing that very issue. It’s a bike ‘lane’ (the only one I’ve found in Normal) that is blocked off by a construction site. Rather than going off road, the assumed path of the trail is now back to in front of the Children’s museum. The issue I have with this is that they (the council) totally ignored the Amtrak station 20 feet to the south of the museum in their discussion tonight.

It was also mentioned that there would not be a permanent cop assigned to enforcing these rules but yet there is a stationed officer at the round about who will definitely be enforcing it.

There is a wonderfully urban water feature in the middle of the roundabout that attracts people to walk in and around it and now it’s been discouraged a little further with this ordinance.

It angers me that the road to the north of downtown normal is College Ave where street riding is impractical because of poor drivers who are oblivious to bike riders and now it’s illegal to ride on that sidewalk too.

I’m the first to choose a street (I’d rather not run over or around people), but there are moments where a sidewalk makes more sense when streets are unsafe or when it’s on a supposed trail where bikers are ‘welcome’.

What angers me further is that bikers were courted a while ago to help plan bike lanes and making Normal a friendlier biker town. We seemed to have the political will to force a 4 star hotel next to a state University and plan a downtown that isn’t friendly to college students but yet lost the will to equip our ‘bike friendly’ town with bike lanes. I feel a little dispossessed, if you will because that will be the last time I willingly waste a valuable evening giving my opinion to politicians who could care less and it will also be the last time I bother with voting in an incumbent into a city council or mayoral slot.

When I was a kid I hated roller coasters and never road them; then I became a parent and now that’s how I roll. Today was a roller coaster kind of day for Aidan. There were flashes of brilliance mixed with evidence of incredible naivety.

At lunch, we road out to the no kill animal shelter to make some donations and take a look at the kittens. Of course, we found two interspersed between the raft of dogs, big cats and little kittens. This place had a ton of animals and they all were excited to see as. Walking down the main hallway of dogs I got a small feeling what it would be like to do a perp walk down a jail block. Every dog, small and large, decided they would great us. Of course, Iona who is now afraid, literally, of flies decided this was a little intense. So, we went upstairs to the cat rooms and started with the kittens. Maybe it was they were a little more her size but she, Aidan, Melissa and I warmed up to two specific ones. So, of course, pragmatic dad gets voted down into the ground and we are now signed up to adopt them after some runs to petco to grab the necessary gear.

On the way out, Aidan made the comment that he wanted to take his savings and not get a toy for him but contribute to the costs of the cats because ‘cats are a little more important than toys’. Amazing. I was ridiculously proud of my little empath.

Flash forward to 5 p.m. and I’m home. Iona was knocking down Aidan’s block towers because two year olds do that sort of thing. Aidan was getting increasingly upset due to lack of sleep and lack of patience and the heat and finally he blurts out ‘I WISH SHE WASN’T AROUND!’ (in a lot more mean way than I just said). So we had a great discussion on how  you can rebuild towers but not relationships and when you say or do mean things to your sister; it takes time when you say hurtful things and sometimes they can be damaging. He didn’t want to get off the block tower issue but eventually got it it seems that words can hurt and be damaging and in the age of the Internet they don’t always go away quickly.

It’s obvious Aidan ADORES his sister and when he saw that his words were rash and not thought out he got it. I appreciate the opportunity to be Aidan and Iona’s dad. I’m wrestling with the temporary nature of these moments. They seem like they’ll go on forever, but I know my role is temporary; they’ll eventually be adults, they’ll eventually be ‘peers’ and not the same dad/son/daughter relationship that I have now. So I see this as a long term discipleship opportunity with lots of up days and lots of down days and a whole ton in between.

Today we got a chance to get out with some dear adoption friends, the Treats, to see replicas of Columbus’ ships The Niña and the Pinta. After taking a brief walk around the diminutive Niña the two big questions we had were ‘How many people worked this ship and how long were they on it?’  After doing a search on the Google, I came across these two links for wikipedia’s entry on Columbus voyages and a short page on the specific ships he sailed and how people lived on them.

The tour was worth while, except for the temperature – you’d be surprised about the relationship between temperature and lack of food has on children under 7; while we waited for our food (for an hour) at Joe’s crab shack, we were treated by the two high chair’s taking turns hurtling their coloring sheets onto the floor, and the other littles launching attacks at each other with dinner implements of destruction (did they have an appetite for destruction?).

One interesting, incredibly dark thing the Juvinall kids are doing now is that they are getting each other in trouble. Like a world cup athlete when the ref has his back turned, I occasionally hear screams from the other room of ‘he…he….aida…hit…me’ or after chasing his sister down and facing her pushing him back ‘Iona!’ So, creativity on their part is getting met with creativity in understanding what the truth is.

On the way to fireworks last night

‘It’s so funny I’m laughing my throat down!’

‘Aidan, it’s not ‘laughing your throat down’, it’s ‘laughing your head off”

‘oh’

‘You can’t laugh your throat down’

‘Yes, but you can’t laugh your head off either’

Garage sale update: We’re closing in on $1000 after two days and we’re really excited. If we can do another couple hundred tomorrow, we’ll be able to get off to a great start on the fees. We’ll have the application fee for our ‘new’ old agency as well as our homestudy costs.

I also had a great daddy moment with Aidan today. I was giving a friend who’d not been over to our house a tour of the place when Aidan took after Iona, ending up pushing her down and when i got in his face I got yelled at and called a ‘stupid daddy’.

My first temptation was to turn to the regular discipline (e.g. time out, more egregious problems like this end up being a spanking) and I grabbed him and took him up to his room and we talked. The big issue for him was patience and his lack of it. I and he didn’t remember exactly what he did, but the discipline was him picking up all the toys around the house (at least a 20 minute job). He’d been doing it as a chore, but spending 20 minutes cooling down and thinking about what he did seemed like a good idea.

At the end of it, we had a great talk about Santa’s naughty list. He had said he realized how bad he was and what an awful thing he did and was glad that he’d generally been good for Santa. I told him I thought Santa’s naughty list was stupid. He asked why. I said Santa’s naughty list isn’t how the world works and isn’t how we love him or God loves him; that we don’t not love him because he did something wrong and that God loves him equally as much and that nothing changes how God loves him. Then we chatted about how the naughty list makes the assumption that someone is so bad that they don’t deserve love.

It was a great daddy moment that really offsets the million other times I screw up during a typical week with him .

Hey all, we just finished day 1 of the big adoption garage sale. Among the coolest items sold was a star trek enterprise phone. We also were able to get our area rugs sold from our old house. Total from today was $569. It made for a great first run. Can’t wait for tomorrow.