Chainsaws and Music Lessons

When I was in the 8^th grade, I asked for flute lessons.  My band teacher had recommended that I find a teacher that summer, sensing that I needed more help with theory.  While working in her flowerbeds one day, my mom had a conversation with our neighbor, Mr. Tobin.  Mr. and Mrs. Tobin were the kind of neighbors who gave loving audience to our entire childhoods.  They watched us learn how to walk in the backyard in the early 1970’s; they worried us through our tree-climbing stage; they forgave us for kicking the kickball too hard into their red wooden fence; they hired my brothers to mow their lawn; and even now, decades later and wheel-chair bound, they still sit in their same kitchen and ask my mom how we are doing.  It is fitting that my story of music would begin with Mr. Tobin. 

                     

As God had planned it, Mr. Tobin has a niece who is a professional flutist.  At that time, she was a 19-year-old college student, still living at home—just a block from our house.  Mr. Tobin told my mom about his niece, and my mom went to visit her and ask about music lessons.  That summer, God answered the desire of my heart by placing me under the tutelage of an enthusiastic, cheerful, and exemplary flutist who agreed to take on just one student during her break, charging us a mere $4 a lesson.  Once, when she forgot about a lesson, she taught me anyway:  In her pajamas!  I loved my lessons with Mary. She taught me for five years, until she left to earn her degree at Ithaca and open a studio.   In those five years, she fixed my bad habits and introduced me to great composers, but most of all, she taught me how to love music.   I wish I could find her again and thank her.  The book I am using to teach Kaitlyn right now is the very same method book Mary used for me.  Her handwriting is spilled all over it, with dates for our lessons in 1984 and reminders to “use more support!”  Our $4 went a long, long way. 

 

There are many misnomers about music lessons and music performance.  From the perspective of a student, a teacher, and a parent, I’d like to share some of my simple observations about children and music. 

 

And Mary--wherever you are—Thanks. 

 

1.  Have a clear goal. 

 

Why do you want your child to play an instrument or take voice lessons?  This will instruct how you approach lessons.  And our goals really can vary. 

 

Some kids clearly do not show any inclination toward music.  I’m not supposed to admit that, in this generation of “We’re all awesome at EVERYTHING!”  But it’s true.  Some kids really are better with a basketball or a scientific calculator than a violin bow.  But that doesn’t mean they should quit. 

 

Music is one of the few disciplines that utilize both hemispheres of the brain, which is why it is used in brain therapy for stroke victims.  When Gabby Gifford (the senator who suffered a gunshot wound to the brain) was trying to recover her language skills, her therapist taught her to sing words that she could not speak.  It created new pathways into her brain, and she was able to regain some of her language that way.  Since most music involves manual dexterity, music lessons also enhance fine motor skills.   For wind instruments, there is an added benefit.  When I took swim lessons, I realized that my lung capacity allowed me to swim longer-than-usual distances underwater.  Yea flute!  Children who work hard at music are always rewarded in some way—even if not on a platform. 

 

2.  There is no substitute for practice. 

 

It’s just in the math:  Lessons last 30 – 45 minutes a week.  Practice (generally) takes 3 – 5 hours a week for an average student.  We’ve all seen what happened to Helen Keller in Miracle Worker, but I wonder if that’s how people sometimes view music teachers.  A teacher is a coach, not a miracle worker.  He can teach and troubleshoot, but he cannot infuse quality into bad playing.  That’s the “miracle” that happens when you put down your cell phone and practice.  J   Don’t ask for lessons if you don’t have time to practice regularly.  

 

I remember a girl in high school who played the trumpet in our band.  She knew that I played the flute, and one day she said to me, “I think the flute is nice.  I just want to play one song on it:  ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’.”  Here’s the deal:  Nobody starts with “The Flight of the Bumblebee.”  They start with “Merrily We Roll Along,” and then “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and then “Lightly Row,” and then, years after starting, they finally jump into “The Flight of the Bumblebee.”  Maybe.  (My dad is still waiting for me to get it done.)

                                                                                            

Put in the hours and take each step seriously.  If it’s worth playing, it’s worth practicing. 

 

3.  Use your gift to serve others.         

 

My brother has a chainsaw which he uses to cut wood to heat his home in the winter.  If we were to log (no pun intended) his hours of chopping and splitting all those cords of wood, it would be staggering.  Many of his “days off” have been spent (along with his wife and six children) working in anticipation of cold Pennsylvania winters. His chainsaw does not sit on the fireplace mantle in a glass case, to be admired by guests at dinner.  While we all enjoy watching the lumberjacks at the fair chopping up blocks of wood into kiddie chairs, a chainsaw is really designed to be a tool for serving others, many times at an exhausting expense.  And so is music. 

 

Children who have a musical gift need to be taught early to share their gift.  Sing at the nursing home.  Play a simple hymn for junior church.  Play your instrument for an offertory.  Kids who never play for anything except an annual recital do not show as much interest in music as children who use their music on a regular basis to serve others.  One of our favorite memories as a family is of Grandpa Valentin coming in the fall for his weekly visit.  When he unloads his van, we all watch to make sure he remembered to bring his guitar.  After our busy days, we all like to sit in the living room in the evening, sometimes reading, while he sings and plays old folk songs for hours.  Music is much, much more than trophies.  Children who have only played on platforms and in competitions have not experienced the real purpose of their music.  Find someone to bless. 

 

4.  Beware of pride. 

 

The middle letter of “pride” is “I.”  Human nature can be pretty ugly, without the Lord’s control.  Remember that the devil was a musician before he was cast out of heaven. 

 

One of the challenges gifted students will face is the tendency toward competition.  Part of this is imposed on them by well-meaning (or otherwise) adults who ask, “When will you learn to play as well as your sister?” or who say, “I bet you could win this year!  You are better than the rest of the kids!” 

 

I once had a conversation with the couple who had served as the youth directors for my husband’s youth group when he was a teenager.  I didn’t meet Jason until college, but their story about him didn’t surprise me at all.  Apparently their youth group once went to a conference where there would be a piano competition.  Before the competition began, a girl from another church was showing off on the piano in front of the other teenagers.  The boys in Jason’s youth group nudged him and said, “Go play your piece!  You are better!”  The youth director’s wife watched from behind the scenes to see what would happen, and she was encouraged when Jason just quietly shook his head and said, “No.”  He was better than the girl playing, and he wasn’t going to steal the piano and put her in her place. 

 

Pride is what takes God’s gift of music and turns it into a showpiece.  It takes songs that were written to praise God and focuses the attention back to people. 

 

Here are three little tips for helping to curb that ugly “spirit of competition” that wants to rise up in all of us: 

 

First:  Pray for the person who is targeted by your attitude of competition. Whether it’s the other pianist in your church, or that other contestant in a competition, pray for them.  Pray they will become a better musician than you are, and pray that God will give them opportunities to use their gift.  When God answers your prayer, He will be making better musicians of both of you. 

 

Second:  Ask the Lord to bring you into the company of better musicians.  One of the reasons some kids experience pride is that they have not been around many other musicians.  They have been heaped with praise and have not had to face anyone who could match their skill level.   To cease growing is to begin dying.  Being around others who are better than us helps us to find ways to improve. 

 

Third:  Learn how to respond Biblically to praise and criticism.  Find a nice way to answer someone who says, “That was just beautiful!  I don’t know how you play like that!”  How can we deflect the glory back to the Lord instead of absorbing it to ourselves?  How should we respond when we fail?  Even if we have done our best and practiced, the Lord may allow us to mess up in order to remind us that we need to depend on Him.  Be thankful for those lessons rather than resenting them.   If someone points out our mistakes, don’t kill the messenger, even if he seems picky.  What can we learn from people who point out our mistakes?  When someone says to me, “I think I heard a mistake . . .” I like to joke back, “Then you weren’t listening very well, because there was more than one!”  J 

 

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Selfish people concern themselves with what we think of them.  Gracious people concern themselves with what we think of God.  In a world full of noise and harshness, music is a beautiful tool for turning eyes upward.  Most of us just need to get out of the way of our own song. 

 

 

 

“If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God;

if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth;

that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ,

to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever.  Amen.”   (I Peter 4:11)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greater than Shame

“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith;

who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,

despising the shame,

and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” 

Hebrews 12:2

 

Shame. 

 

It first shows up in Genesis 2:25.  Adam and Eve, prior to their fall, “were both naked . . .and were not ashamed.”  Half a chapter later, though, they took the forbidden fruit and immediately needed clothes to cover their shame.  Lacking understanding of what had really just taken place, Adam weakly admitted to God, “I was afraid because I was naked.” 

 

The image of Adam and Eve, crouched in brush, desperately trying to “sew” fig leaves together, weaving them with thorns and vines and whatever they could find, reminds us of our own hearts when we discover sin.  Shame brings misery, even in the middle of a perfect garden.  I wonder how many forces in history have been the result of shame—covering up sin, covering up damage, covering up human frailty, covering up weaknesses.   Six thousand years later, we continue to sew fig leaves.   

 

Shame is the pebble in our shoe that forces us to face our sin and prompts us to get right with God.  It’s the reminder, sometimes daily, that we are sinners, frail and needy, who can’t get very far without our Shepherd.  Shame protects us from further damage by producing inhibitions in our behavior that protect us from sinful scrutiny and evil.   We cover up and thereby prevent further shame. 

 

And Jesus despised His shame.

 

The word “despise” doesn’t mean what you think it means.  Our modern usage would make it synonymous with “hate.”  If someone “despises” cottage cheese, they really, really don’t like it.  If they despise me, I feel loathed. 

 

The Bible repeatedly uses the word “despise” to mean “to think little of.”   When we are told to “despise not” our mothers when they are old, it’s not asking us to stop hating them.  It’s telling us not to throw them, or their advice, away as the years take their toll.  Esau “despised” his birthright.  He didn’t hate it—he just thought nothing of it.  He could toss it aside for a bowl of stew.  Timothy was admonished to “let no man despise” his youth.  He was to “study to shew himself approved of God,” so that no one could dismiss him as “just a kid.”  Leaning hard on the authority of well-placed Scripture, he could stand tall and not be “thought little of.”  The Bible even makes a word play on this meaning when it says, “Despise not small things.”  In other words—“Don’t think little of little things.” 

 

At the cross, we see the juxtaposition of these two words:  Shame.  Despise. 

 

The awfulness of shame—the nakedness, the jeering, the robe being shredded into strips at the foot of the cross, a public execution, visible enough from the top of Mount Calvary to stop an entire city from its Passover preparation—and the triumph of despise—like Esau’s birthright, this horrible death becoming a small thing compared to the joy that was set before Jesus that day.

 

We often sing about what our salvation means to us, but we do well to consider what our salvation means to Jesus.   My redemption meant more to Jesus than the shame of the cross.   As awful and dark as that day was—enough to send fishermen into hiding and a Roman governor into frenzied hand-washing and armed guards to the tomb of a poor Carpenter—the suffering of the cross is a sub-theme of the real story.  The mission of the cross is about my salvation, and the love that drove that mission is so indescribable that it makes thorns and spears and nails seem small.

 

 

“Thanks be to God, for His unspeakable gift.”  II Corinthians 9:15

Plastic

A few weeks ago, I accidentally ended up with a different kind of dish soap than what I usually get.  I’m a big fan of Palmolive Original, with all those shiny bubbles and squeaky-clean rinse, but I ended up with this oily, “soft-hand”, flowery stuff.  Within a few days, everyone was complaining that our water tasted odd.  Kaitlyn finally realized our problem:  Our plastic drinking cups were absorbing the flavor of the flowery-scented dish soap.  Our water tasted like roses.  Ick.  

 

As Christians, we like to think that we are made of glass—or at least ceramic.  We don’t absorb; we deflect.  We rinse well.  Nothing sticks.  But the Bible says differently:  We are plastic—and over time, we humans absorb what we are exposed to, until eventually we are characterized by it. 

 

It is hypocritical to suggest that our lives are changed by a 30-minute sermon on Sunday, but not affected by 13 hours of television the rest of the week; that we are affected by 12 minutes of Bible reading in the morning, but not by 8 hours of country music for the rest of the day. 

 

God is the One Who created us to be “plastic.”  It is this quality that allows God’s Word to transform us through constant exposure.  It’s what allows parents to influence their children for God, and enables godly Christians to disciple new believers.  But in the wrong hands, our “plastic” nature can harm us.  God warns us of this characteristic by admonishing us to “make no friendship with an angry man, lest thou learn his ways.”  He reminds us that “evil communications corrupt good manners.”    

 

When the Allied forces stormed through Germany at the end of World War II and liberated concentration camps, their grisly discoveries shocked the world.  LIFE magazine photographers caught images that still make us shudder—living skeletons blanketed in prison garb, staring out from barracks.  Even General Eisenhower famously reacted upon his discovery of those awful camps and the real story of the Third Reich that had lain hidden under Hitler’s deceptions and his vigorous handshakes with cowards who had fallen under his spell. 

 

Yet, beyond the skeletons was a story of how real people learned how to live among monsters.  They came back from Warsaw, Auschwitz, and Ravensbruck with their stories of survival—how they sat on straw in the lice-ridden barracks of Auschwitz, exchanging detailed recipes and stories, and playing card games with pieces of rubbish they found.  Similarly, the POW’s of Vietnam came back home thirty years later, after severe torture and isolation, and told how they named ants and rats, how they played checkers with bits of gravel, and how they created intricate knocking codes that went undetected by the cruel captors who guarded their cells.  They adjusted.  In the face of horror, they eventually shed their shock and learned how to live among demons.

 

The coping mechanism that God created in us to help us survive life on this sinful planet is part of our “plastic,” our ability to stop being shocked at what we see so that we can proceed to make rational decisions that can save our lives. 

 

I remember one of our kids coming home one summer and telling me how an adult had shown “concern” that we homeschool our children.  This man told our daughter, “It’s too bad your parents have sheltered you so much, because someday you will really be shocked at what’s out in the world.”  

 

The Bible tells us that when Paul discovered an entire city given over to idolatry, “his spirit was stirred in him.”  (Acts 17:16).  When he discovered what was “out in the world,” he didn’t shrug his shoulders in wise, all-knowing indifference.  He was moved.   

 

I hope I never stop being stirred.  Numbness is a coping mechanism for those who are victimized, not a practice of those who are living in liberty.  Anesthesia is not a gift for healthy people.  The emaciated prisoners who stared back from bunkers, dull emptiness glazing over their eyes, were no longer shocked by murder, rape, torture, profanity, abuse, and starvation.  General Eisenhower was.  I’m with Ike. 

 

Desensitization tears down our inhibitions, making us more accommodating of sin.  It is a method used on kidnapping victims and prisoners of war.  It is what happened to the precious Indian girls who were sold into debauchery in Indian temples a hundred years ago.  The more we watch and listen to sin, the less we can be moved by it.  We cannot be used to sin and stirred by it at the same time. 

 

The Bible says that Lot—a “righteous” man, by the apostle Peter’s assessment—was “vexed” from living in Sodom.  His years of surviving in a world where wrong seemed right, where gross sin was glorified, took their toll.  And like my plastic drinking cups that now add a sickening floral scent to water, Lot’s life and family were eventually characterized by the sin that probably had shocked him at one time. 

 

We are commanded to be “simple concerning evil,” and not even to “ask of those things done . . . in secret.”   While God does not want us to be taken advantage of, we are not to make ourselves students of sin.  Anyone who has read the Bible in its entirely will not be surprised by what man can do.  The Book of Judges?   Enough said.  But only God is able to convey sin in a way that does not corrupt the reader. 

 

Our society is regularly plagued by people who admit to killing and attacking others because of the influence of violent video games.  Many studies have proven over and over again that those games make killing machines out of kids.  Yet, when was the last time you heard of someone who beat his brother to death because he read Genesis 4?  Likewise, God gives us a glimpse into the sins Pharaoh, Ahab, Judas Iscariot, Herod, and Jezebel without drawing us into their sin and thus making sinners of us.  The Bible can discreetly educate us on sin in ways that the world cannot. 

 

David wrote, “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.”  (Psalm 101:3).  When making entertainment and music choices, our question ought to be, “Do I want this to become a part of who I am?” 

 

We are plastic.  We will become what we listen to, read, and watch.   To choose what you allow into your mind is to choose who you will become.  Choose well. 

 

“That thou mayest walk in the way of good men,

and keep the paths of the righteous.”  (Proverbs 2:20)

Broken Pictures, Mended Hearts

I remember hearing a news report many years ago of a criminal on death row.  He had committed numerous unspeakable crimes, and the night before his execution, people carried signs of rejoicing outside the prison in celebration of his impending death.  That grim night, he received one phone call:  From his mother.  She called to say goodbye, and to tell him that she still loved him. 

 

I am not familiar enough with this man’s story to be able to say whether his mother was at all culpable in his demise, but her phone call makes a remarkable statement about motherhood:  If you sell yourself to work evil and to multiply tragedy to innocent victims; if you find yourself the most hated man in the world; and if righteous people must take the most drastic of measures to protect their society from you;  then be assured that in your darkest final hour, part of my heart will lie down and die beside you anyway.  Because I am your mother. 

 

Motherhood is an earthly picture of God’s great love for us.  Like the mother of a criminal on death row, making that last anguished phone call to the child she once held, God demonstrated His love to us in that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” 

 

Mother’s Day is not just the story of how powerful a mother’s love is; this is the human picture of how much God loves us.  You want to measure God’s love?  You want to know what it means to be loved by someone who loves you even more than you could love yourself; for someone to feel your pain even more acutely than you can feel it yourself?  Here is your yardstick:  That’s what a mother does.  I am so blessed to have one of those spiritual “yardsticks,” a mother who prays for me, loves me, and has consistently demonstrated God’s love to me.  I never struggled to understand God’s love.  My picture is intact, and with each passing year I am more and more thankful for how well my sacrificial, godly mother has illustrated God’s love for me.    

 

But for some people, Mother’s Day is a painful reminder of what wasn’t.  The picture of God’s love has been marred by harsh treatment, abandonment, neglect, and absence.  Mother’s Day cards, with their sweet sentiments, sharply injure where hurtful words and selfish decisions have left gaping wounds.   The "natural affection" that God gave mothers, to protect us at all costs, has disappeared in some families.  The metaphor has been shattered. 

 

God once created an Old Testament metaphor for salvation.  As the Israelites traveled through the wilderness on their long journey to Canaan, God used a rock to illustrate Jesus Christ, the Rock of our salvation.  At first, Moses was instructed to strike the rock (which he did), and water gushed out.  Later, in Numbers 20, Moses was told to speak to the rock.  This time, though, Moses lost his temper with the people and struck the rock instead.  His disobedience totally disrupted God’s picture of salvation.  God was so displeased with the blasphemy that Moses lost his entrance into the Promised Land.  Yet, miraculously, water still came out of the rock.   Even when an earthly leader smashed God’s metaphor with an impulsive and fleshly snap-decision, God still met the needs of the people He loved. 

 

When human failure breaks down God’s picture, skip the metaphor and run straight to God.  David said, “When my mother and my father forsake me, the Lord will take me up.”  The God Who made water gush from a desert rock, despite the disastrous mistake of a frustrated leader, can work despite human failings.  He can meet your needs, even when the human hands He created for showing His love to you are sadly missing from the picture of your life.  For those of you whose mother was not there—let God fill in those places.  For those who struggle today with the scars of a dysfunctional home, remember that where your mother cannot understand you, accept you, forgive you, or love you with the unconditional love God meant to show you, that is the place where you go straight to the nail-prints and let those hands instead wrap around your hurt. 

 

God is big enough to make water rush from a rock, and He is big enough to be your “mother.”   Choose your focus wisely this Mother's Day.  Turn from your shattered human pictures and aim your eyes higher, to the One Who can mend your heart.  And remember:  "You are loved with an everlasting love."   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fifty Things to Learn from All These Internet Lists

(OK—three things, since we’re busy.)

 

 

1. We all need help.

 

Why do we have lists floating all over the internet, gently educating us on all the stuff we’re not supposed to say to each other?   It's true:  We’re all a little tacky.   We actually do need to be taught some of these things.  Having read many of these internet lists, I realize that at times I have been saying some of the very clichés that people beg us to stop using.  

 

In areas that are particularly painful and personal—such as infertility, divorce, and bereavement--a blog can do a world of good and spare someone the trouble of having to look us in the eye and admit, “You’re killing me with your nosy questions.  Just. Stop.”  Bloggers save us some grief.   I can think of at least three blogs already this year that have completely changed the way I interact with people who are dealing with situations I have not personally encountered.   Why do people have to come along and show us how it feels to be disabled, or lonely, or suffering?  Because, without their education, most of us do very poorly at empathy that requires us to think outside of our own natural experience. 

 

2.  Some kooks  out there are kookier than the rest of us. 

 

I once heard of a guy who, within hours of a funeral, asked the widow what would become of the deceased individual’s valuables.  Seriously?!  Where do these people come from?  And how can we send them back? 

 

Here’s the bad news, on the blogging front:  Some people don’t read blogs any better than they read body language.  They just skip merrily through life, asking personal questions, suffocating us with their nuclear-powered body odor, and answering cell phones during our children’s weddings.  It would be a waste of their giftedness to read someone else’s ideas about convention.  After all, they already know everything.     

 

If blogging helped, I would write a hundred blogs, starting with this one: 

”Three things to remember about showering:   1.  Do it.  2.  Every day.  3.  With soap. “

 

 But I’m also realistic enough to know that the guy who is choking us to death with his fragrance, sitting in Subway, leeching their Wifi in eight-hour shifts and watching Netflix day in and day out, is not reading blogs about manners.  Not gonna fix him—outside of a miraculous accident involving a car wash jet spray and a gallon of Mr. Clean.  Some problems are just here to stay. 

 

3.  We can over-analyze. 

Fellow bloggers, may I tweak and crop a few of your lists just a teensy, weensy bit?  We are listing, detailing, and evaluating everyone to death.  Almost every single day, a new article pops up, sensitizing me with specific bullet points on what I am to say, and not to say, to every group I meet.  Sometimes the bloggers themselves don’t agree on what I am supposed to do.   Everything is getting so carefully scripted that it’s starting to feel more like a play, where I pose as Florence Nightengale, desperately trying to remember what I’ve been told to say for each situation.  Sharing “from the heart” is getting engineered out of the whole sequence, and I’ve got so many lists floating in my head that I’m tempted at times to say nothing at all, lest I accidentally step into one of the many sayings I’ve been admonished not to say.    

 

The Listing Phenomenon is not too different from what evolved with wedding registries.  Back when we were kids, people got married, opened their gifts—and promptly owned 18 toasters.  They spent most of their first year tracking down department stores, making exchanges, or selling all their gifts at garage sales so they could purchase milk and orange juice.  Someone (presumably an executive at Target) came up with the idea of “wedding registries,” where couples could sign up for what they needed, and everyone else could buy accordingly.  It actually worked pretty well at first. 

 

I remember the first time I received a link to a wedding registry that included sporting equipment.  It occurred to me then that we had officially witnessed “the shift”.   Showering impoverished newlyweds with necessities so they wouldn’t have to drink out of tin cans while they paid off their honeymoon had somehow evolved into sponsorship of Parks and Recreation.   No, instead of wading through a ten-page online listing for several stores,  I just send gift cards or checks, and let the honeymooners pick out their own towels and tennis racquets.  Or toasters. 

 

Like a wedding registry that is so detailed it renders itself unusable, some of these internet lists leave us feeling overwhelmed enough to give up trying to help each other out.  When we over-manage each other, with such deep analysis that no one can say anything anymore without it being rigorously tested, we strangle the very compassion we seek

 

I’m listening to your lists.  But please see my heart and forgive me if I mess up sometimes too.  J 

 

What Is Reality?

About two years ago, one of the students on Jason’s school bus decided he wanted to bring a Bible and read it on his way to school.  He came to Jason at the end of the day with a look of shock and said, “I didn’t know Noah got drunk!”  Indeed, Noah got drunk.  Students of Genesis might be tempted to wonder why God included that in the Scriptures.  We admire Noah for finding grace in the sight of God, for his persistence at preaching for 140 years with only his family as his converts, for building the ark precisely as God commanded, and for surviving the only world-wide flood ever to occur.  But we find ourselves a little disappointed when see Noah get off the ark, grow a vineyard, and get drunk.  Why such an ugly ending?  Theologians will have to help us dismantle the story better than I could and decide whether it was a post-flood accident (maybe Noah had never made wine before), or whether it was just God’s reminder to us that all men have feet of clay.  Whichever the case—one of the most popular Bible stories does take an unusual twist at the end. 

 

What if the story of Noah were made into a reality show?  Not the Noah movie—which was as far from reality as any producer could get—but what if there had been cameras, a crew, and an editor to catch reality as it happened?  I suspect there is at least one scene that would have been edited out.   The image of Noah, drunken and naked in his tent, being mocked by his own son, would be replaced with commercials, and we could go on with our happy ending. 

 

One of the troubles with reality shows, social media, and the plethora of images that cross our phones and computers each day is that most of it has been cherry-picked and sometimes even photo-shopped, thus rendering it “partial-reality” at its very best. 

 

Let’s face it:  For your sake as well as mine, I’m not posting pictures of my sons’ bedroom on this bright, Monday morning.  They were told they could not take a bite of breakfast until they cleaned up The Pile.  I think three of them obeyed.  But I can still hear #4 making siren sounds as he distractedly wanders around the bedroom, completely forgetting what I sent him in there to do.

 

Regardless of how much time you spend on Facebook, perusing friends’ vacation pictures and first-day-of-school shots, or watching the various reality shows that come on each week, here is a grain of salt to consider:  Reality is what we can’t cut and splice.  And nobody truly lives the reality that makes good television. 

 

Reality is a one-year-old spitting out his food. 

Reality is spankings for naughty words.

Reality is bad hair, extra pounds, and carpet stains.

Reality is a checkbook that doesn’t always balance.

Reality is a toilet that runs and a fridge that doesn’t. 

Reality is having to repeat a homeschool class. 

Reality is when not everyone likes us.

Reality is a puppy that marks territories--in the living room. 

Reality is egg shells and coffee drips and toast crumbs on the kitchen counter, and an urgent phone call before I can clean up the mess. 

 

Reality is why we need love for each other and God's grace in order to get along.

 

One summer day when Josh was about two, he discovered that he was strong enough to open the sliding door to the deck.  That summer, we also had temporarily adopted a nanny goat—who turned out to be pregnant, thus making us the proud owners of two goats within 24 hours.  Since the kid (the goat, not Josh) was not big enough to restrain with cattle paneling, he ran freely around our property, like the dog, sometimes hanging around on the front porch and sometimes racing in the woods with Tippy.  That sunny day, I discovered my deck door wide open, Josh toddling around on the deck, and a goat in my dining room.  Sometimes that’s reality—the unchecked, unedited version.  And life would be awfully boring without it. 

 

Enjoy your Facebook and your reality TV—but just remember, as you watch and click and scroll, your reality is just as “real” as theirs.  Don’t let picture-perfect families and images steal your joy.  Five-year-olds who dress themselves in mismatched clothes are lovably cute too.  So are buck teeth, frizzy hair, and acne.  Paid-for carpet, with its stains documenting decades of family memories, is just as valuable as shiny hard-wood and an impeccably clean house, where the cameras can roll easily behind the carefully cropped scenes. 

 

The battles we face as families—correcting unpleasant attitudes, instilling manners, and working through the self-doubt of teenagers—do not make for good television or Facebook statuses, but they make strong families when the battle is over.  Fingerprints on the wall, windows that don’t shut quite right, a broken van radio, Ramen noodles for lunch,  disappointing haircuts, parents who sometimes crash on the living room sofa for a power-nap, snoring away with their mouths hanging open:  Life isn’t always tidy. 

 

Don’t let reality shows and social media dim your own reality.  You are the only you God made.   J