Hypocrites

Now that the fireworks season is behind us, I can look back over the 15 day selling season and enjoy most of it. Our youth group does a fund raiser each year, and we sell fireworks from June 22 - July 5. It's a great FR that only requires two weeks and provides enough money that we don't have to do any other FRs, including but not limited to: Selling candy, selling gift wrap, selling cookie dough, selling worthless sheets of coupons, selling travel vouchers, selling pre-paid coffee cards, selling cheap jewelry, cheap perfume and or having to do a "free" car wash.

It really is a great couple of weeks and this season was no exception. The students worked hard and we had a great time spending many hours together.

One of the downsides of this FR is that I haven't had the joy of spending the 4th of July with my family over the past five years. So instead, I always buy a little bag of goodies and somewhere between the 5th and the 7th, we light off our goodies. Naturally, my 5 year old boy loves the loud ones. In fact, the louder the better with him. He wants it to scream, shoot flames of death into the air, smoke like crazy and then move somewhere across the cul-de-sac. And of course, it better be booming or screaming as it moves.

Next to him, my 3 year old daughter is repulsed and somewhat terrified of anything loud. In fact on the 4th (or 5th or 6th...) her typical firework watching position involves being inside a building safe from the terrifying screams of Killer Bees and piccolo Pete's. She likes the sparks (though sparklers fizzle too much for her to actually hold one!), but the crackles, pops, booms, whistles and snaps just freak her out.

Here's the interesting part: My daughter is, without question, the loudest person in the house. I could easily make a case that she's the loudest person in the county, state and quite likely, louder than anyone this side of the Mississippi! Her voice reaches decibel levels that locomotives can't achieve and that's when she's using her "indoor" voice. Cut her loose outdoors and the neighbors start calling. Problem is, she loves to use her voice. She talks non stop from the moment she gets up to the moment she goes to bed and when she's not talking to anyone in particular, she just keeps practicing for the next coversation.

She sings, too. And don't worry, you won't be able to recognize the toon or the song because the words and music are created on the spot. She's a walking, singing impromptu concert vocalist. And when she finishes she always ends on a loud sustained note followed by these words: "Clap mommy, clap daddy." Trust me, it's just best to clap.

It's funny how my daughter hates loud things, but of course, loves to be loud. In a very real sense, my daughter is hypocritical about her 4th of July behavior. I mean, how can she say she hates loud things on the one hand, and then on the other, be the loudest thing around?!?! Honestly, isn't that a bit contradictory?

As a minister I have people tell me all the time, "I hate church because of all the hypocrites." My response is little cutting but I think it makes the point well, when I say: "You're right, there are a lot of hyporcrites and that's why you and I are welcome!" It takes a minute for that to set in but then they usually relax a little and we begin having a meaningful conversation about the nature of people. And the truth is: There is always some aspect of life in which any of us can find ourselves hypocrites. It's true. But universality doesn't make the problem ok, it just means that when you stay away from something (in this case, church) because of the hypocrites, you are in fact, being hypocritical! After all, if it's hypocrites you're trying to avoid, then you better leave the office (MAJOR hypocrites there!), the tee ball support club (HELLO?!?!?!) and the highways (because you never want to drive behind anyone with a Fish sticker on their bumper!) Yikes!

You're a blessed person if you've ever held a conversation with my daughter or have heard her sing. Even though she's a hypocrite about loud noises, she's a darn cute kid and brings sunshine into almost any room she enters. In fact, I don't think you'd even notice her obnoxious hypocrisy after spending just a few precious moments with her. I think the same thing can be said about church and the people there. Spend just a few minutes in a good church and rub shoulders with redeemed hypocrites and you might find out it's not as bad as you thought. After all, there's plenty of time to avoid hypocrites on those days between the sermons; don't worry about making Sunday another one of those days.

Flip Flops and Forgiveness

I have one of the most beautiful daughters on the planet. I kid you not, she is stunningly beautiful. I have probably two of the prettiest girls on the planet sleeping in my house right now and if you include their mother in that list, without question, all three of them would make the top 5 of anyone's list!

I digress.

My middle child is a typical middle child. Has struggled the most with the birth of the new "baby of the family" all the while fighting hard to keep her space. She is not the eldest and misses out on the perks there in, and she is not the youngest, and misses out on all the attention that used to be hers!

You should also know that she is all girl. There is not an ounce of boy in her. She plays with dolls, she doesn't get the whole sports thing and doesn't understand why "go down fresas" (fresas is Spanish for Strawberries) is not the same as "Down goes Frazier" (a great boxer whom AJ and I like to imitate all the time!). She dresses up in princess clothes and changes outfits at least 4.9674 times a day. She is moody (don't think I'll let me wife preview this entry) and loves to shop. Need I go on?

But she is the comic of the family and will be, I'm sure, the life of things in our family for years to come. She does great impersonations and is funny than heck when she does that Nextel Dance commercial. You should see her dance to Shrek's Swamp Karoake Party. It's good stuff.

Yet as I talk about her being a dancer you may get a slightly misshapen image of her in your mind? You might envision a graceful ballerina prancing about the stage in perfect cadence with the music. You might see a trendy young lady giving it her best shot for a panel of judges on some TV "reality" show. But friends, while my daughter is a beautiful, girly, articulate, princess-like, shopping while dancing fiend, she is not, in any way, shape or form, coordinated. It's as if an entire segment of genes was omitted from her DNA.

I'm not saying her mom and I are the next winners of Dancing with the Stars, but I am saying that we're both athletic and can manage to get by each day without the following: Hitting a random wall in the house 3x; falling off the dinner chair 4x; walking off the front step of the porch without realizing it, 317x; walking in front of brother while he swings the bat at the pitching machine, 2x; kicking the leg of the couch, 9x; tripping on anything in our paths, 17x; skinning up some previously unskinned up part of our bodies, 1x. Please don't think these numbers are exaggerations, one day with my daughter and you will be fairly confident we missed a few!

For example, yesterday she came home from an event at church looking like she had run as fast as she could and just face planted herself on the pavement. In fact, she had. But not just a face plant, we're talking about this sweet little princess girl running, glancing over her shoulder to see where brother (or "Bluther" as she likes to say) was when her flip flop catches on the ground. I watch in horror (I honestly didn't laugh until over an hour later) as her feet go air born, head-over-heals and I realize that this will hurt. Amazingly, she catches herself -- briefly -- on her hands and if you had not known her at that moment, you would have thought she was trying to do some acrobatic maneuver involving a hand stand and a front flip and incredible gravity defying aeronautics. But you would have only thought that for a moment. Suddenly her arms gave way under the full weight of her body. Thankfully her fall was stopped short; unfortunately it was stopped short by the parking lot. With her face. The screech went up and when she turned her sweet but recently-bloodied face to me, there was an enormous bump on her forehead, road rash on her nose (from top to bottom!), a cut and bleeding upper lip along with some special road memories left on her chin. It only took her seconds to do what some people will never accomplish in a lifetime of falls.

Then today, for no apparent reason other than total disregard for life's lessons, she was booking it at a play ground with some kids. Deja vu. She turns around to see who's chasing her and boom...this time her knees took the brunt of the fall and she made a matching set for her nose and chin. She is after all, all girl.

Sometimes it's hard not to laugh at little pains like that, but to my daughter, they are anything but little (and to anyone within a 9 mile radius of her scream). After your heart goes out to your child, you might find yourself chuckling but only because you and know something they don't: Life gets harder than skinned up knees. Imagine if all our pains today only occurred when we fell -- life would be pretty easy, because we'd all stop running, or at least, stop running with flip flops on!

There's another reason we chuckle after-the-fact: It's that we know that after a few kisses, a few hugs and maybe one Hello Kitty bandaid, that she's going to get up and run like she had never fallen. She won't hurt again until she sees her knees in the mirror while getting ready for bed and when that little princess wakes up in the morning, she'll prepare for her day of bumps, bruises, falls, trips, snags, lunges, head bonks, knee bangs and butt busters like she has every day for the past 3 years.

Sometimes I catalog my bumps and bruises. Oh, it's not as easy as looking in the mirror, it actually involves looking through the mirror. Looking through it, through it to the person in the reflection. Sometimes those bumps are enormous and sometimes those bruises practically come to the surface. Strangely, most of them, even when they show physically, have a relational source. They are there because some relationship isn't right, some connection with a fellow human has gone astray and I am bruised, I am bumped. And I am faced with a choice. Will I go out tomorrow focused on my bruises, or will I choose to be like my daughter?

It's interesting, my daughter's cuts, scrapes and tire tracks don't disappear when she wakes up, she just chooses not to make them the focus of her life. It's almost as if she can't make them her focus. It's almost as if it doesn't matter how hard she would try, before long, her day would be cruising along with not a thought towards her wounds. It's almost as if God gave us kids to show how to cope with life's bumps and bruises but then we do our best to show them how not to.

I guess I want to choose not to let my relational bruises fester. I want to remember Paul's words in Colossians 3, "bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another" because there is freedom in forgiveness! A freedom that lets me live with the pain that doesn't just disappear, but that I'm also not reinjuring in order to keep myself miserable.

I choose forgiveness because it lets me run between the sermons, with my flip flops on.