I miss my kids

I miss my kids. The screen saver on the computer in my home office shows thousands of photos of wonderful moments from the past. I sometimes can’t bring myself to stop watching the pictures and do the work I know I need to do. I find myself watching for just a few more pictures. And then, a few more.

Becky on our trip to Las Vegas

My kids are no longer kids, they are all adults near 30 years of age. I am blessed that I get to see them regularly. I love them and am proud of who they have grown up to be. 

But, my kids are gone. The girl who sat in my lap watching the Sound of Music over and over again, the boy describing in excruciating detail the features of the F16 fighter, and the boy curled up asleep under my chair while I'm working from home are all gone. They are memories that photos can conjure, but they are gone. I miss them the way they were. 

I’ve been thinking about this for some time but have been at a loss for what to conclude. Every time I tried to draw a scriptural or general principle, I failed. 

Nathan at the Colosseum

When I looked in the Bible for references to remembering, most of them were intended to exhort people to remember what God had done for them in the past. While I agree with that, it did not seem to apply to what I had been pondering. So, I was stuck with musings and no resolution.  

Recently, however, I went to a Steven Curtis Chapman concert. (As an aside, it was a great concert with Third Day also performing.) Chapman told the story of trying to get his two young daughters to bed so he could work and they wanted to play. Once he put them down, without reading a story, he regretted the whole incident. Based on that and his experiences with his adult daughter, he wrote the hit song Cinderella. If you've never heard it, or it has been awhile, it is worth listening to. It tells about how fast childhood goes by and concludes with dancing at a daughter's wedding. It is a wonderfully insightful song that errs on the side of sappy, but will bring a tear to the eye of anyone with children. 

Davey on a camping trip to the beach

What made the story he told especially poignant was that one of those daughters died a few months later in a tragic accident in the driveway of his home. For years, he was unable to sing the song knowing that he would never get to dance with her at her wedding. Eventually, he felt he needed to start singing the song as a message of hope for others. He spoke knowingly of cherishing the moments he did have with her, but with the knowledge that they are gone. He then sang the song and tears ensued. 

I feel especially blessed that, unlike Chapman, I was able to be at all of my children's weddings. There is, of course, a danger that as when I can't pull away from the pictures on my computer screen, the past can prevent us from doing what we need to do.

I did find a couple Bible verses that caution against dwelling too much on the past:

• Isaiah 43:18 - Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things from the past.
• Ecclesiastes 7:10 - Do not say, "Why is it that the former days were better than these?"

I need to find that balance to remembering, even cherishing, the past while not dwelling on it; to being thankful for the many ways that God has blessed me, while straining forward toward the future that awaits.

I think I need to spend some time with my grandsons!

Now with PT

When I meet people, they often ask about the company I work for, Principled Technologies (PT). I explain that we do fact-based marketing, primarily for technology companies. If they seem at all interested, I then go on to tell them more and describe some examples of what we do. If they are not careful, I will keep on talking about PT as I am very proud of the work we do!

I’m never sure whether those explanations really help people understand what we do at PT. If you were one of those people to whom I tried to explain PT, or if you are just curious, I now have another way to describe what we do. Over the last few months, our studio folks have been working on a series of videos we call Now with PT. About twice a month these videos explain the work that PT has recently completed and have some fun along the way. We’ve done seven of them so far. 

I’d encourage you to check out at least the first episode and our most recent one. We definitely had some fun making those two! 

The people narrating the videos and explaining the projects as well as those doing the video, scripting, and sound work are all folks who work at PT. You may well recognize some of them. You can check out the complete list of all of the videos on the Now with PT YouTube playlist. 

I think our team does a great job of highlighting the good work we do at PT. I hope you think so as well. 

And, if at some point in the future I start boring you with stories about PT, you can just say, “Thanks, but I already saw that on YouTube.”

Quick book reviews (#8)

Here is another set of brief reviews of books. I have fallen way behind on writing these, so these are from books I read as much as a year ago. I have almost twenty more reviews to write in order to catch up! 

As usual, these reviews use a scale of one to five stars based on Library Thing (where I post these reviews as well). I am a tough grader and seldom give out the full five stars, so keep that in mind when looking at my ratings.

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell (4.0 stars)

David and Goliath is a Gladwell book through and through. Like his other books (such as The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers), it is a fun, quick read that builds its case via lots of anecdotes. In this book, he starts off using the familiar Biblical story of David and Goliath. Gladwell argues fairly persuasively that contrary to popular thinking, Goliath never stood a chance. Foot soldiers, even really large ones, were easy targets for stone hurlers and other range-weapon fighters. Gladwell contends through the remainder of the book that overcoming perceived disadvantages is what makes many people successful. He then uses examples of people who have overcome disadvantages (poverty, dyslexia, dead parents, etc.) to show how they were instrumental to their successes. Gladwell concedes that few of these people would wish their situations on others (and indeed they shelter their own children from those situations), but they still understand that those circumstances were critical to their successes. I would recommend this book to almost everyone who wants to explore the causes of success or just wants a fun book to read.

Slaying the Badger: Greg LeMond, Bernard Hinault, and the Greatest Tour de France by Richard Moore (4.5 stars)

This book explores the world of professional cycling through the lives of two great competitors and their rivalry during the 1986 Tour de France. The French Bernard Hinault was a grizzled veteran and winner of a record-tying five Tours de France. Greg LeMond was a young, free-spirited American with seemingly limitless potential. What makes their rivalry even more compelling is that they were on the same team. The resulting clash made that Tour de France arguably the greatest one ever. And, it made this book a joy to read. As such, it was a marked contrast to another cycling book about a five-time Tour winner, Sex, Lies, and Handlebar Tape (see my critique in my last set of book reviews). Moore does a great job of giving glimpses into the lives and motivations of LeMond and Hinault, rather than just recounting the events. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in cycling or understanding what drives competitive athletes. The book is rewarding and well worth the time to read it.  

The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John H. Walton (3.5 stars)

Walton gives a new perspective on the Biblical Genesis 1 creation account by viewing it in light of other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) literature. He does this by working through eighteen propositions/chapters about Genesis 1. The first two are the critical ones that provide the foundation for the remaining ones. The first proposition is that Genesis one needs to be viewed as ancient cosmology not as scientific exposition. The second proposition regards ontology and was much harder for me to get my head around. He asserts that ANE cosmology is function oriented (describing functional ontology) rather than material. The simplest example he gave is that creating a curriculum does not refer to the material manufacturing process, but the process of organizing the ideas and goals necessary to form the curriculum. I found some of what Walton proposes to be compelling, but I confess that I don’t have the necessary expertise in ANE cosmology or the philosophy of ontology to see all the flaws in his arguments. Despite that, I found what he wrote to be well worth considering and recommend this book to anyone willing to be challenged in their understanding of the Biblical creation account in Genesis 1.

Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope. by Christopher Yuan & Angela Yuan (4.0 stars)

This book is a particularly hard one to summarize in a paragraph. The simplest description is that it is the story of a mother and her homosexual son. It is, however, the successive layers of complexity and feeling that make the book compelling. The mother, Angela Yuan, starts out as a fairly stereotypical Chinese immigrant, wife, and mother. Her son, Christopher Yuan is the complementary successful son of immigrants. His struggles with his sexuality, and his life in general, send the whole family into crisis. The book chronicles their intertwined roads to redemption. Part of what makes the book compelling is that each of them write alternating chapters. Neither of them pulls punches nor succumbs to pat answers. I think Out of a Far Country is worth reading for anyone seeking to better understand people in crisis and especially for Christians grappling with one of the most divisive issues of our times.