Paul is not a Grandfather...yet

Nor does he have immediate plans to become one.

But he is now the last of his living brothers to either have a grandbaby or expect one in the next couple of months.

Paul's "baby brother," David, just welcomed his first grandchild, Gareth Zubrowski, to the clan this morning, 11/23. Gareth shares a birthday with a different nephew. He weighed 7 lbs, 12 oz. The happy parents are Marc and Bekah.

I don't feel much older than I did when it was David and Donna having their second child four months before Ben came along. How do 21 years speed by like this?

For the record, I think I talked them out of their girl's name. It was going to be Ada something Zubrowski. I said, "Oh, she'd be Ada Z." Marc didn't get it. Bekah said, ""Say it out loud. A to Z?" Then he said, "A to Z? We can't do that to her!"

Anyway, I'm tickled pink about this baby in blue.

My Parents Trained me in the Way I Should Go

Scripture says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Many Christians erroneously believe this verse means "Do all the right things as a parent and when your kid grows up, he'll turn out right." What's a parent to do when a kid hits adolescence and his behavior and attitudes seem all wrong? Have Mom and Dad screwed up? Has God made a promise He hasn't kept? It doesn't compute.

But the phrase "the way he should go" means something different. It refers to a person's God-given bent, the way his Creator hard-wired him. It's a bent that shows up in the diaper stage and continues for life. For some the bent is toward analyzing data, experimenting with variables, and logging outcomes. That child is always asking, "What will happen if I do this?" (while jumping off Dad's dresser that he just scaled like Spider-Man). Mom is thinking, "This kid is nuts!" but the kid is trying to figure out how high, how fast, how many times, he can do this and what the outcomes could be. It's a thrill that surpasses the pain of punishment-- which he may or may not have been smart enough to predict. After several trips to the ER, the kid grows up to be an aerospace engineer.

God wired me to teach, and I credit my parents for recognizing, nurturing, and encouraging my bent. Most of the encouragement has come from their modeling. My mom has been a student for as long as I can remember, so books weren't just for us kids. While a pastor's wife, she earned double degrees, one in Political Science and the other in Religious Ed. (Sidebar: she missed her college graduation ceremony because she was recovering from a miscarriage/D&C that caused her to bleed to death on the operating table; she was miraculously revived.)

I grew up watching my mother teach. My earliest memories, of course, are so deep they aren't even observations. They just are. For instance, I didn't watch my mom teach my older sister to read. I don't remember that one day Rachel couldn't read, and the next day she could. I just know that reading was as natural as eating (though a rule in our house was "no books at the table" because it's rude unless you've planned to share it with the rest of the family). Somebody taught her, and that somebody was Mama. My mom taught all four of us girls to read. We had plenty of stories read to us by Daddy, too. (He has the best bedtime story voice; I tease him that I fell asleep during his sermons not because he was boring, but because his voice is so rich and smooth and peaceful.) I also watched my mom teach Backyard Bible Clubs to neighborhood children. Those flannelgraph boards with pictures of Jesus and His miracles made a lifelong impression on me. I grew up believing there's nothing Christ can't do, and subsequently, that I wanted to be a missionary and a teacher so I could manipulate flannelgraphs and flipcharts for a captive young audience.

Mama also taught Women's Aglow Bible studies, English to Chinese students, and taught an illiterate adult man to read so that he could read to his five-year-old daughter. I saw my mom at lecterns, around the kitchen table, and side-by-side students . I saw light in her eyes and heard a lilt in her voice when she taught, when students would have "aha!" moments or exclaim, "I can DO this!"

My dad loves theology, science, antique cars, and genealogy. Einstein is his favorite author. Does that tell you something? Daddy got his Mechanical Engineering degree at KU, met Mama, married her, and moved to Edgewood, MD, to work for the Dept of Defense. He later felt called to ministry, so he and Mama packed up their young family and moved to Missouri where Daddy got his MDiv (Masters of Divinity) at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Pastoring seemed every whit as woven into his DNA as engineering was.

But what I remember my dad mostly doing was helping me with algebra. I cried and pouted and stomped every single night about how stupid I was. "None of my daughters is stupid," he'd say (For the record, he had no sons.) "Let's work this out together. You'll get it." And painstaking after painstaking problem solving, I did. The man who had tutored the famous basketball player Wilt Chamberlain in college at KU was sitting beside a math idiot named Zoanna. And never once complained. Never once let out a sigh of impatience. My dad made me feel like there was nothing I couldn't accomplish if I broke it down into steps. Baptist yet Methodical, that's my dad.

Idyllic childhood I had, with great parents. Then came the teen years. Did my bent change? No. Did my behavior? Oh, yes. The Bible tells us not to dwell on the former things, the hidden things of darkness, so I won't. Suffice it to say that I went through a time of rejecting the Jesus I had once adored on a flannelgraph. I was double-minded and unstable in all my ways. (Good on the outside, rotten on the inside. Fooled lots of people.) But deep down I had an inescapable desire to help others learn things .

I was young. I am now old (er). So all that training up of me in the way I should go, has borne the lasting fruit of a love to teach. I am happiest when watching people of all ages soak up learning.
When they "get it," I have light in my eyes, I'm sure, because my soul is happy. I have not departed from my God-given bent. There's no possible way. I am just immeasurably thankful to God for my parents who didn't try to make an aerospace engineer out of me.

Quoting Myself and Something About a Battery-operated Jesus

My son's latest post title made me read it (besides the fact I love to read whatever my kids write. You moms can relate.) The post is a charge to memorize scripture, believe it or not. Reading it has reminded me again of the value of memorizing scripture, something I used to be faithful in doing. Question: if you're currently finding a certain method of memorization helpful, please let me know. My age has really been a factor in the difficulty level of this spiritual discipline.

As far as quoting myself, I seldom think of it the way Stephen put it. Once in a great while someone will remind me of something I said so long ago that I've forgotten. (That's a scary thought in itself.) Just yesterday, for example, a friend at church was telling me about how she is going to decorate her table for the Ladies' Christmas Breakfast. (There are usually about 25-30 tables in all, each one decorated by a different woman of the church. It's gorgeous and I love the creativity.) This friend told me that I had remarked last year that there was not a single nativity scene on any of the tables at the Ladies' Christmas Breakfast. Plenty of snowmen, but no Jesus. She said the comment made such an impact that she has purposed to put a nativity scene on her table this year.

I don't say that in any way to cause guilt; I've been decorating a table for this annual church occasion for probably 8-10 years and have never put a creche on it. For one thing, they tend to be one-sided, and so half the guests would be staring at the backside of a stable. Or worse: the backside of a donkey. I've been on the prowl for many years for an open nativity set where Jesus looks Jewish and so do his parents. I would love to find one where Mary's hair and complexion have that blotchy "just gave birth" look, Joseph appears bedraggled and is holding an empty wallet in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other. Mary holds a colicky baby nervously at her sore, bulging breast. (The baby would be a battery-operated Jesus that has no "off" switch. I mean, Jesus was, after all, a human baby.) And though He created the "aroma" of fresh country air, shall we say, I doubt His infant lungs appreciated a steady whiff of it while he was trying to nurse. Once again, I'm mystified by the why of His choice to come to earth and subject himself to that. It was least of the all the stenches He would endure in his tenure on earth.


My point is--if I had one--oh, yeah, I did!--is that what we say can stick with others a lot longer than it sticks with us. Lord, may those words be ones that keep pointing people to you, not away from you. Remind me to be quoting You, Father, to myself and to others. May your Word never have an "off" switch in my thinking.

Christmas Tag

This came as an email, and I was supposed to copy and paste it into another one, send it on, you know the drill. But I'm gonna do something different with it: use it as a blog tag.

These are my answers. Can't wait to hear yours.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Both. The sooner I buy it the more likely it is to get wrapping paper.

2. Real tree or Artificial? Real. Love the fragrance!!
3. When do you put up the tree? Usually the second weekend in December

4. When do you take the tree down? by Jan 5th I'm ready to send it bye-bye
5. Do you like eggnog? Yes (the non-alcoholic kind; I've never had any other kind)
6. Favorite gift received as a child? an overnight bag
7. Hardest person to buy for? ......my mom and my husband
8. Easiest person to buy for? my daughter Sarah and dear friend Barb
9. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes, I'd like more, but most of them picture a blond Norwegian Jesus or one with his fingers extended like he's holding a cigarette in each hand.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? I think I'll email a newsletter and mail actual cards. I've cut back on postage without regrets in recent years. No one seems to have missed my corny Christmas poem last year when I didn't send it. (Sniff, sniff.)

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? a purple towel from my husband. I told him I wanted a heart-shaped amethyst ring to commemorate our last child's Valentine birth (an extremely long-awaited birth but an intensely long and painful recovery). I thought my hubby was being creative and had a precious, little ring wrapped in a big, thirsty amethyst towel, so I opened it ever so carefully. He thought I looked silly being timid with a towel. Well, then, I shook that towel, and nothing fell out. Nothing. "No ring? Is this all?" I said hopefully (greedily?). That. Was. It. "You like towels," he said. Yes, I do, but not instead of something I really wanted and asked for!!!!!!!!!!!

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Charlie Brown Christmas (okay,so it's not a movie; fave movie is A Christmas Story)
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? In stages. For the next Ladies' Christmas Breakfast at church, I buy right after Christmas during the 70-90% off sales. For gifts? I start with Operation Christmas Child gifts in late August. The rest I make or buy in Nov/Dec.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Of course. What comes around, goes around, don'tcha know?

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Barb's peanut brittle and Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies
16. Lights on the tree? colored
17. Favorite Christmas song? Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Stay home. We do Hanukkah at my folks' place.
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? ......... Yes
20. Angel , star, or other tree topper? .... Angel

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? .........One on the Eve, the rest on the Day
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? parents bribing their whiny brats with lies that Santa won't give them anything if they act like that
23. Favorite ornament theme or color? anything handmade
24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Last year our second son made a Greek dinner. It was wonderful. Best part was dessert: baklava!
25. What do you want for Christmas this year?. to see extended family; I also want new furniture, white dishes, comfy socks, a professional massage, large silver earrings,
my wedding rings sized, maid service for a year, painless feet, a self-grooming dog, lots of compliments on my hair or anything else, really (I'm not picky) and for everyone to master to the use of apostrophes. (I got this email w/ the question ,"Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's?" Well, first of all, the plural of reindeer is still reindeer (no "s") and if you forget that, please don't compensate by adding an apostrophe, also. Okay, so I really want to see extended family for Christmas BECAUSE they all know how to use apostrophes. :)

You're tagged. Gift-tagged.