Camping with a Toddler

Camping with a toddler is a lot like parenting in general. Mostly it is all about terror, panic, stress, and worry - punctuated by moments of wonder and beauty.
For terror, look no farther than the playground, and watch my 18 month old son, who incidentally does not grasp the whole concept of gravity yet, climb fearlessly to the top of the old metal playground slide and refuse your help in doing so.
For panic, try going to the beach and watching the child who does not know how to swim and thinks it funny when a wave crashes over his head run into the water and wade out until it is up to his shoulders. Granted - that's not quite 2 feet deep - but it is still deeper than he can manage to get back up if he falls.
Stress is found back at the campsite where the child who gets faster every single day decides to make a run for it in the woods. How many times do mom and dad have to run after him and bring him back before he figures out that he needs to stay close by? I don't know. We weren't there long enough to find out.
Worry takes new meaning when you become a parent. I always heard that, and I know that is it true. Worry is making sure that he stays away from the fire pit, away from the grill, that he doesn't get too much sun, that it is not too hot in the tent when he is sleeping, that he doesn't get bit by mosquitos, that he doesn't find poison ivy, that he doesn't play in anthills, that he doesn't get stung by anything...

and then there is the moment when the all three of us are sitting around the picnic table having breakfast together as a family. That moment alone was worth the price of admission. There is the picture of him sitting on the bench with his mother feeding each other hot dogs. How perfect is that? There is getting to stay together, all three of us, for an entire weekend and nobody having to go to work or shopping or anywhere the rest of us can not go.

and then of course, there is the storm.
There is the thunder that woke Aiden up, and him screaming in terror and clinging to us as the rain pounded the tent. Then there was the rain coming through to inside the tent. that was fun too.
fortunately for Aiden, there is very little that Elmo can not fix, so as we strapped him in to his carseat and turned on his video, he could laugh through the rest of the storm as he watched out the window as his crazy parents got drenched taking down the tent and packing everything away.

terror, panic, stress, worry, wonder, beauty, and a whole lot of rain.
I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

My summer project. Man, is this a lot of work. I think there was a point about wednesday of the week I took off of "work" to work on my house when I thought, "OK, this is a REALLY big job - and there is no turning back now!"

a father's heart

Reading in Luke this morning. I'm not sure why, some of my earliest memories in Bible study are of being bored to death by the book of Luke, and conspiring to get the sunday school teacher off track so we wouldn't have to read it. But hey, here i am reading it anyway.
1:17 talks about John the baptist coming as the new Elijah, and I have never seen these words before, "to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children."

What is that about? It's actually a quote from Malachi that says the exact same thing.
I know that being a parent is important, and it is right and just to be a father concerned about your children. But at the same time the world we live in doesn't make it easy to be a dad. At least, a good dad. How do I know if my heart is turned away from my family?

There is a tension between the "world outside" the home and the world inside. And which is right and proper? It's like any time I take to pursue career, I am robbing my household. But when I shift the pendulum the other way, I am a slacker. On the one hand I dishonor God by not turning enough toward my family, but on the other hand I dishonor God by not devoting enough attention to his church. And yet so far, it seems that he wants both from me. Who is equal to such a task?

I wonder what the state of the family was in Bible times that would prompt a prophet of God, God's mouthpiece to his generation, to comment on it. What were father's doing if their hearts were far from their children? Pursuing career? Outside interests? Hobbies?

John was the forerunner - the one who was to make "straight paths" for Christ. You would think that he was to heal people, preach repentance, all that stuff. That his job description includes repairing the family, most notably the father's attitude toward the family, well that just gives fatherhood a prominent place in the church, doesn't it?

There must be something to this whole GenX dads thing. I read an article about how GenX dads are cutting back at work, downsizing in order to be home more with their families. Sociologically compensating for their own absent fathers. I see it on TV and in some movies, that idea that growing up and being a parent is what we have to do is being accepted more and more. Dare I say it - being a good dad is almost fashionable:) Who'd have thunk it.

I got a "world's greatest Dad" t-shirt for father's day. I always thought guys who wore those things were dorks. Like, "come on buddy, you're family is obligated to get one of those things for you, it doesn't mean anything." You know, I didn't feel like a dork when I got it, I actually felt something a little different. I felt, well - pride. Now, who'd have thunk that!

Maybe God really is calling us to be the "world's greatest dads." Maybe that's been his plan from the beginning, we just got bored and started trying to find other things to occupy ourselves. Maybe part of turning our hearts to Christ involves turning them also back to our children.

The blog

ok, so I gave in. I think I was waiting for the whole blogging thing to go away, like a fad that is so important for a little while, and then you're ashamed to admit that you once did it. Like writing a poem is junior high about a girl you just know you are meant to be with, then you have to look back and laugh.
So what do we do now? Bare our souls to the internet? Tell all our deepest, darkest secrets in the obscurity of my computer, in the privacy of the world wide web.
I'm not sure about all that.
But I guess there is not much more to do than to write. Sometimes serious, sometimes not. Sometimes happy endings, sometimes something else. Like life.
and who knows, maybe even jot down a jr. high poem or two:)