Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

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The Father Puzzle

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The Father Puzzle

The cool thing about a puzzle is when it’s all done! Raising boys is definitely a challenging puzzle, 955,152,000 pieces to be exact. That’s how many seconds of intentional fatherhood I have had before the final piece was put on the table with a good meal and a long goodbye yesterday. After we said goodbye to Alex, Miranda, Sophia and the soon coming next baby, I held her hand and heard the tears drip from her face.  I sat next to Jess, and we realized its completeness. Jacob is in Wyoming and has set in roots that will likely keep him there, Chris flew the coop many years ago to Hawaii and Germany, never to return. Alex and Mir are now driving into a new chapter of life out west. And of course, Sam flew to his final resting place only a couple years ago. Although the puzzle is never truly complete, there is a time when we don’t have the puzzle at our house anymore and they start building it at their house, with their own pieces. I guess this is called “empty nesting”, I call it “I’m not ready yet”.

Even though Alex flew the coop many years ago and started his own life, Alex moved “close” before Jacob spread his wings and landed in Cheyanne. I’ve always had a son close at hand to help me. A son to teach my trade and new skills. Now it’s a phone call, text message or a zoom meeting to say hello. No more daily hugs for this old coot. No more sitting and watching my son driving down my driveway for our daily job. No more escorting me while I drive a massive crane truck home. No more “Good morning kid”.

955,152,000 Seconds

15919200 minutes

265320 hours

11,055 days

363 months

30.25 years

Only 44,848 ,000 seconds short of one billion. That’s less than 1.5 years. That is how long I have been performing “dad” duty. Today was my last day teaching my sons face-to-face, don’t get me wrong, I still have Al. But Al will never run a saw, install ductwork, braze a line-set, run a truck weighing in over 50k pounds or pull a trailer. How does a father transition from the one thing he has done every day for over 30 years to being a distant father, teaching over a phone or a text? It’s all I really was good at for my entire life, or maybe I should say “It is the only thing I took so seriously that I never wanted to retire” (aside from my marriage to Jess). I love teaching trades to my boys more than pretty much anything, including ice cream.

I have been choking back my ever-increasing emotions for days and weeks. I have been physically sick and lacking sleep. Is this NORMAL? I mean, do all fathers feel like this when the last son moves away? When you realize that not even one wants to live nearby? My sons have learned these lessons of independence well! They have become dedicated husbands, leaders and critical thinkers. Each one has struck out on a path and has no plans of returning to my basement for the video game console and pizza rolls. I wanted to do the same thing. When I was their age, I wasn’t able to move nearly as far as I wanted to. I was held in a town where my life was torture (aside from my boys), I was stuck doing what I thought I was supposed to do, “Make a happy life” and shut up! I was never encouraged to provide what the Lord put on my heart for my family. Jess has emboldened me to strive and become successful as the Lord leads us. This was the final piece of being a father, teaching my sons to lead with a faithful wife.

So why do I feel this way? Isn’t this exactly what I did? … Absolutely!! And it is exactly what I taught my boys to do… I am so proud of all the boys, striking out, flexing independence and living the dreams I had for them, starting over 30 years ago. 

But don’t you still have one son? Living at home? Well, that’s a great question, and the answer is definitely a resounding yes. But I can’t teach Al to build a family, provide for his wife, lead his children in the paths of righteousness… I can teach Al to water the dogs and not make a mess, I can teach Al to clear the table before he wipes the table. I can even teach him the finer things in life like a quiet campfire (but not lighting it) and a cool evening… but I can’t expect Al to write a killer resume for a pastoral position or how to sacrifice oneself for the family he is responsible to provide for. It’s not that I can’t help Al to become, as he puts it, “more independent” by making a good choice to not get mad when someone else gets a larger french-fry than he did. 

God gave me a unique perspective in life. Here is a little history for you to help see this generational journey. I don’t know much about my father’s father aside from he was a very cruel drunkard. There is a story about how my grandfather brought my father and his brother into the BWCA (a wilderness area in northern Minnesota) when they were pre-teens. He dropped them off on the shore and told them he would be back because he needed to run into town for a few more supplies…after a week (actually I was told it may have been two weeks) he returned, broke, hungover and in a complete loss of time. My father was very abusive as well. I remember a day that I was “disobedient” while I was skiing, and I went into a puddle. My punishment was to stand outside in my white briefs and ski boots that night until I learned to respect him. Or the day I was preschool aged, and I was “afraid of the dark basement” so my father locked me into the basement (no lights) until I stopped screaming (to this day I still have a fear of the dark). I remember screaming until I was horse, and it was no longer a choice to be quiet or scream.

With this being told, I remember a conversation with my father. My father was telling of some stories of about his father, he told me he was trying to do better than his father did. That day, my father passed on his legacy to me… My father’s legacy that I have passed on to my sons is simple, “Do better than I did with your children”. I have tried, I have failed many times, but I have also succeeded, by God’s grace. 

In conclusion of this blog post, I admit I am falling short in many areas of life, I also think I am doing pretty darned good in others. When my life is complete, I want one thing at my funeral to be read… “His father’s legacy was to do better with my children, and I did!”

My story will now continue with a new challenge in life, to help Al become as independent as he can be. To help Al achieve in his life all that I can teach him so he may become the best man he can become. You see, the legacy will continue, it’s just a different type of puzzle with Al, it’s a puzzle Jess and I will always work on, one piece at a time, together. But we will never actually complete this puzzle or pass this puzzle on to Al to build by himself.

May Gods amazing Grace fill your heart today in whatever the struggle.

How can a day change the lives of so many? Or Vertigo, party of one?

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How can a day change the lives of so many? Or Vertigo, party of one?

The early morning is by far my favorite time of day, everything is waking up, stretching and yawning as the sun starts its daily pilgrimage across our late winters sky. This was just another normal Sunday morning, the cool temperatures of our bedroom calling to me as the sky was still and quiet, even Drax was calm last night. I woke at my normal time, it’s Sunday, 4:15 am. The stars seem to be just a few inches outside my window, so close I could smell the spinning colors of the night sky. Wizz… zipppp… buzzzz….. Ohh goodness, I’m going to PUKE!!!! That was how my morning started yesterday, spinning colors of stars and moon, twirling like a demented ballerina twisting on her brain piercing toes and portraying the most horrific sequence of blurring, twirling, spinning visuals, the most detestable sights imagined.

Yes, I lay in bed wishing the world were not tormenting my every thought and making my every move a sequence of gut-wrenching experiences and vivid examples of torture. It’s Sunday, I blog on Sunday mornings, but this morning was having none of that. Instead, I lay in bed… counting the time…. 4:20…4:30… 4:45… 5:15, it is now time to wake up Jess. “Hunny?” I called from the pillow “Jess? I can’t get out of bed, it’s time for you to get up” with her deepest concern as she tried to wake up. “Are you ok” all I can muster is one more word “vertigo”. My day was pretty rough, but we did make it to church and back home. 

I had planned to blog about the days that led to Jess and I making the final decision to move away from everything we knew and land on this little 40 we now call home, but today I was not able to do much more than not fall over. 

I remember the day very clearly, we were having a normal day, or so we thought. Al was outside doing what he does best, looking for stuff. We had seen a few frustrating situations in the past but today we discovered we could not keep Al safe, safe from himself. As Jess watched today unfold like a nightmare, I stood by trying to understand the un-understandable situation, she started to get weak in the knees and I tried to hold her up, and Al was thinking this was a most excellent adventure, it was so fun for him. 

Let me set the scene: We lived about 800 feet from a busy commuter highway in Chanhassen, this highway carried thousands of commuters to the cities and back every day, but the buffer of elevation and trees made our home almost invisible and certainly not effectively bothered by the busy road. It was a perfect balance of convenience and sheltered quiet from the road. Next to us was an old gravel pit that seemed more like a miniature forest, a place where Al could explore and look and find all sorts of things like melted plastic mower housings, melted aluminum window frames, piles of wood, trees and rocks scattered around the winding path that lay just below the abandoned railway, but now was actually an abandoned bike trail. It was surprisingly quiet, and solitude was never begging but rather it was easily found with a comfortable spot in the backyard. 

This particular day, Al had the great adventure planned out and was implementing this marvel of fantastical fantasy. As he snuck into Jacob’s room and poked around in Jacobs’ surprisingly well-organized trunk, Al found exactly what he needed. He quickly snatched it up, tucked it into his clothing and slipped unsuspectedly out the door and down to the highway where he would make his great mission a completed quest for this adventure of great delusion. After he was done, or perhaps because he had a sense that he should stop, he slipped back into Jacob’s room and returned this great prop that was so well suited to his wondrous fantasy, now being complete in this quest, Al was back outside, and we would never know what he had been up to… or so he thought.

A few minutes later, this fantasy played out to Jess and me, she was almost ready to collapse. You see, this item that Al took was a plastic airsoft pistol (not supper real looking) and the way we found out was a swarm of 9 police cars screaming up the driveway and chasing Al down and cuffing him. All the time, Al thought he was the “Head of the Bloods and the Crips.” (Rival gangs in Las Angeles Ca.) For some unknown reason, Al thought that he was the leader of these two rival gangs. The Cops were chasing him down because he was waving a gun around at cars on the highway during rush hour.

I remember the look on Als face as he sat in the back of the car, admitting to this and so much more, like his gang colors (a sweatshirt covered in marker) his bandana that was part of his “attire of ganging stuff” and his communication with this gangs by means of microscopic messages written on tree bark by the highway. 

I remember holding Jess that night and I remember these words… “I can’t keep him safe here!”

We bought a 13-foot fiber-glass camper and started driving, looking for a new home, a safe home, a quiet 40 where Al could finally be away from the people’s stares, the hustle of the cities and be safe when life gets out of control and starts to control what we think. I had bought that little house in Chanhassen to live out my days as a bachelor, as a grumpy old man working on my motorcycle in my living room and sleeping whenever I pleased, but now, I am a stepdad and moving into the middle of nowhere to keep our Al safe, with no regrets, we moved.

I am pretty sure there is at least one gray hair with Als name on it, somewhere up there, as few as there are nowadays. My hope is to offer someone encouragement that God is in control, and If you dont feel like therre is his presence in your life, ask him today for his comfort.

May God’s love for you guide your footsteps and fill your heart as much as mine is filled tonight as I sit and finally scribble out this post.

Putting on overalls

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The years slip past like the spring rains filling the earth. The rains come and go and the day after we hardly recall their sweet aroma as they approached our dry land. I had such great plans, as the step dad days approached and I welled up with pride over raising three great sons. Plans to teach, learn, play and build a relationship with Al, Plans to build projects like the clocks we have made, the rock tumbler gems we made, the shelves for all the magical little collections of mysterious and radically unique things. 

Like nearly every person, me included, that has met Al, we find Al to be so excited and passionate about whatever it is he has an interest in, I have seen this over and over hundreds of times. Al walks into church and starts talking about rocks, the normal reaction is to think he is passionate about rocks, and you wouldn’t be wrong… necessarily… Or perhaps Al yells across the building about his favorite sports team and your immediate assumption is that he follows sports or at least this sports team, again, you wouldn’t be wrong… necessarily… Or perhaps you are a World War 2 vet and Al shows an enthusiasm to know everything about the war, you wouldn’t be wrong in that assumption either… necessarily…

Let’s take a walk into how this works, how can one person have time to be interested in all these sports teams, find the most exquisite agates and amethyst gemstones, know all there is to know about every war ever fought, be the self-taught expert in the “Byzantine” era, still play so many sports yet have time to watch every food network show ever aired? It’s super simple, He doesn’t, kind of, but then again, he does. As a “step” in dad, I have had a wonderful opportunity to see this from the inside out, I have had a few years (10 years now) of living with Al every day, to study him and try my best to provide for him the things that he can’t provide for himself, to teach him things like: pouring milk into a bowl instead of “at” the bowl, how to open the cereal box rather than “exposing” the cereal in the box… or one of my favorites, how to put peanut butter on a cracker instead of putting the crackers into the peanut butter. There are so many different areas I have worked with Al but the most evasive of them all is “thought control”.

With that being said, I feel like an explanation is the next paragraph rather than creating another long run on a sentence… (Run-ons are my favorites). Thought control is like creating the “Thought police” out of Orwell’s book “1985” but you are the government, and you need to make valued decisions on how to form this world that you can create inside the gray matter we are so fond of declaring autonomy over. When Al thinks about something it’s the only thing he can think about, even when it is not an appropriate time to indulge these thoughts. For instance, when Al is setting the table, he needs to be reminded as many as 20 times to focus on setting the table, why? It’s not a random distraction like in the movie “UP” when the dogs get distracted by a ball, or in the movie “Finding Nemo ” when the gulls are calling out “mine” at every presentation of what may be food… it’s more like 50 or more thoughts that are on a continual loop, much like the old 8-tracks, you could switch from one track to the next but you couldn’t really fast forward, you could never rewind and you had to “hunt” to find the right song… you couldn’t just “click” on the title and play that one song… now imaging the button was sticky and would randomly jump from track to track, but at the same time, wont switch tracks no matter how much you try.  Sticky buttons that would sometimes switch tacks when least desired and other times wont switch no matter how hard we try…

I really try to help Al in thought control, and he has come a long way in ten years, but imagine if you would, the road traveled is only a mile long, with ten lanes, and it is a looped highway, you can’t ever get far, but you sure do a lot of driving. I hope this helps someone out there. I hope this helps to understand that there is progress, that Al has learned a lot of thought control, and his daily “chores “are able to become more complex over time and he feels so much success at things that most of us take for granted. Here are a few successes that Al has recently celebrated, and when I say “celebrated” he is so proud of his success, and he so often yells out “MOM!!! I DID IT!!! I DID IT MOM!!” getting the bread bag twist tie off without ripping the bread bag apart. Slicing a banana into chunks using his new knife or hanging up his jacket at church without breaking the hanger, and one of my favorites, making hot chocolate from a package. 

I understand this is not an easy thing to truly put into words, it’s taken ten years for me to articulate these ideas onto paper, some days are bad, some days are good, but the step fathering is not a task to be taken lightly.

“Fathering by choice rather than obligation” is a big, big deal!!! I’m not trying to beat my own drum, but stepdads need encouragement more than they let on and your support is like the oxygen needed to keep going. 

In closing, remember the spring rains, they come and go, and everyone forgets the sweet smell after the flowers start to bloom, but the spring rains are what gives the flowers the water needed to grow. Stepdads are much like the spring rains, look for a stepdad and say a word of encouragement, they need it.

God bless and thanks be to our creator for unanticipated opportunities.  A man once said opportunity is missed by so many because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.