Supporting families with special needs
My son, Kyle, asked an interesting question the other day:
“Why does the ‘new year’ began on January 1st?”
Admittedly, I didn’t know the answer. I’ve since discovered that it’s a short question with a long and fairly complicated answer.The snapshot version is that Roman emperor Julius Caesar wanted to flex some political muscle and put the entire empire on one consistent calendar. The date January 1was selected because it was the day that new consuls were chosen.
If your family is like ours, and has children in school, the year tends to revolve around the school calendar. For others, the four seasons help to mark and measure the high (and low) points of the year.
But the passage of time is a funny thing, especially when you try to measure its quantity in relation to tasks, or attempt to figure out why some years seem to fly by and others seem to last forever.
A friend of mine told me of a sign that covered the clock in his 8th grade classroom:Time will pass. Will you?Fortunately, he did.
Why is it that the year my son was born, a joyous time to be sure, remains, according to my memory, at least, as one of the longest of my life?Was it because he was in the ICU for a month, then strapped to a heart monitor for six months? Is it because we practically lived at the doctor’s office and our days were full of appointments and all the stress and worry that accompany a premature child?
At the same time that years seems to have lasted forever, it feels like it all happened just yesterday.How could my little son grow so big, so fast? I once pondered the possibility that this strange sensation and differential regarding the passage of time could be explained or proven by a mathematical equation. Could it have something to do with a ratio, such as the duration of the event, coupled with the energy and emotion expended during its occurrence?
In other words, does the memory of struggle help keep a memory more vivid than a season of ease?Maybe yes, maybe no. But does it really matter?
As I walk down my family’s hallway of memories, I’m struck by the fact that each and every moment, whether they seems like they happened yesterday or twenty years ago, have shaped us in profound and meaningful ways.In fact, there are plenty of days lost to the ages, and the winds of time, but they, too, have left there mark on us.
It’s my prayer that in this coming year your family and mine will embrace the time we’re given.As Family Circus creator Bill Keane once said, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery. But today? Today is a gift.That’s why we call it the present.”
It’s time for the annual ritual of making resolutions that usually don’t last the month. Oh, I confess that I have made my fair share of resolutions in years past—and 2009 is no exception. So here it is: I resolve to work off the extra pounds I’ve put on over the past 12 months.
OK, so it’s not the first time I’ve made that resolution, but every year I start off with good intentions. It’s not easy to watch what I eat, exercise, work full time, take care of my family and do all the other things I am supposed to be doing. Life is busy, and I can get weighed down with the thought that it’s too hard to keep up with everything.
I know I’m not the only one who feels overwhelmed. Many of us keep adding to our pile: the car needs an oil change; the boss has a new project list that demands attention; the family is asking about a vacation. We feel guilty when we don’t get everything done.
So why do our resolutions—rather than those extra pounds—seem to melt away? I think that it’s a strange way of prioritizing our already over-extended schedules. I’ll stop occasionally to step on the scale, only to lament my lack of discipline. Then I reach a point where I justify the lapse in my commitment. Eventually, I’ll move on and entirely forget that I made the resolution.
It’s been said, jokingly, that in every movie ever made there are really only ten different plots. Let me give you an example. A woman is in a bad marriage; the man is either abusive or just not a good husband, but the woman is a saint who stays in the marriage because she feels it is the right thing to do. There is, however, a kind, intelligent, good-looking young man down the street who has never quite managed to find that truly special person. Just possibly, this “boy next-door” is someone from her past whom she never expected to see again. When these two serendipitously bump into each other at (insert public location here,) the chemistry is obvious almost instantly. But because she is a saint and he is a good man, they don’t do anything improper, and you feel the tragedy of the situation. The good man is about to leave town or marry someone else he doesn’t love, when miraculously the bad husband is hit by a train or killed in a mining accident. The saint, after a proper time of mourning, is able to marry the good guy and live happily ever after.
I have seen at least one hundred different movies with this theme, and when my son and I walk in on my wife watching just such a “chick flick”, we jokingly call out a plot number. “Oh, this must be a number 3.” It’s a reference to the movie being so very predictable.
Most of the year, these movies bother me. I can’t watch them because they are usually badly acted, and so corny that I will get up and go do something else.
At Christmas time, however, my tune changes: I will sit down and watch a cheesy Christmas movie, and even tear up a little as the girl gets the guy, or the children find out there really is a Santa, or [insert plot number of choice].
Why is it that I change so much between Thanksgiving and Christmas? What softens in me so that I go from being sarcastic to openly emotional?
Maybe pine trees and candles lighten my mood. Or maybe being with family more makes me more congenial; (yeah, right)! Possibly it could be the memories of my childhood, or the wonder of Christmas seen in my children’s eyes. Or is it, as the Grinch says, a little bit more?
This time of year, unlike most of the year, I am more likely to hear the story of Jesus, and not just at church on Sunday. Our pastor has been telling us all month that there is a cost to the hope of the season. To us it is free, but God paid an amazing price to reconcile us to Himself.
During this season, as I watch the news every night, I see groups trying to give gifts and food to children and families that don’t have any. I look around me and see that I am so blessed. God has given me a ministry and a purpose, and a family whom I love and who love me. We have a roof over our heads and food in our refrigerator.
So maybe, instead of being my usual sarcastic self, during this time I am actually remembering to be thankful for what I have been given. Perhaps this is something that should affect all our lives a little bit more.
Merry Christmas.
I’ve been hearing the word “happiness” a lot lately in various venues: movies, advertisements, the bestseller list. Even a radio program dedicates a whole hour every week to the subject itself.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s good to think about big issues and ideas – especially when so much of the world quibbles with small problems most every day.
The problem I have, though, is in defining and understanding what part it has in my life. Afterall, what exactly is “happiness”?
I don’t want to describe it as a smile on my face or a temporary good feeling that ripples though my body on payday. Those might be happy moments, but from my perspective, “happiness” is far more than a temporary thrill. It’s not less than that but rather much more. No, “happiness” is a product of a life well lived; it is to see something in totality as “good; it is to enjoy a spirit of contentment.
Growing up, I remember reading and enjoying the comic strip Peanuts. The lovable loser, Charlie Brown, used to say that “happiness is a warm puppy” and everyone would sigh. Looking back on that, I now realize that what Charlie Brown was saying was that, in reality, happiness is caring about others more than caring about ourselves.
I Googled “how much are we worth,” and this answer was the second result. This value was obtained by pricing out all the chemicals in our bodies and coming up with a sum total. From a chemical standpoint, (65% oxygen, 18% carbon, and so on all the way down to traces of zinc, copper, and aluminum,) $4.50 is the price tag put on a human being. The article said that our skin was the most valuable at $3.50, but they were only basing that on the price of cowhide.
Of course, this estimate is based only on a chemical perspective, and I’m sure we’ve heard stories on the Internet of people selling kidneys and other organs for a lot more. Still, this guess puts the value of our bodies below the cost of some cups of coffee these days. And while I’m glad that no one is likely to kill me to get at my zinc content anytime soon, such a surprising fact forces us to ask an obvious question.
How much are we worth?
An article came out this month in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled, “What Makes Killing Wrong?” The authors were Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Franklin G Miller. They argue that killing is only wrong because it permanently disables the person. It’s not that killing carries some inherent moral repugnance; it only takes away a person’s future ability. They then carry that argument to its logical conclusion. If a person has no ability, as is the case with new born babies or the severely disabled, we should be able to harvest parts from them, parts needed by those with “ability”. I am over-simplifying; their argument its long and you can read it here: (http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/01/19/medethics-2011-100351.full)
While at first I was outraged by this study, it made me think. How could these gentlemen come to such a conclusion? Myself and many others are blown away by the conclusions these men reach, as evidenced in blog posts across the Internet. While many have articulated thoughtful and insightful reasons why these men are wrong, I wonder how they could even entertain such ideas. If I were to ask the authors this question, I can’t say they would understand what I was asking, since they see this as a purely theoretical pursuit, devoid of emotion. We parents and friends of the very people they see as “without value” come to the complete opposite conclusion, and with a strong emotional response.
