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My lovely and patient wife Emily will testify (in a court of law, if need be) that I tend to go off the rails whenever my type A stylings are challenged by type B situations. Yesterday serves as an example. I came down with a case of Free Methodist Flu* and was physically forced to lay low for a day. I don’t lay low very well, plus, I get super light headed and out of it when I run a fever. I slept in until about 9:30am, which feels like noon to me. So I got up. By 10am, I felt weak, nauseated, and generally frustrated. Emily suggested that I lay back down and rest, to which I retorted that it was “time for the Legos” and went downstairs and built a monstrosity (which Malachi later destroyed while I took pictures). By 11:30am, I felt hungry for lunch, so I tried eating some delicious bread, cooked in a slotted appliance dedicated to toasting. I chose jam as a topping. It was then that I looked outside, bleary eyed and filthy faced, and thought about how it would be good to move those branches to the neighbor’s yard while no one was looking. At that moment, I think I saw a unicorn.
By 1pm, I had finished watching the episode of MacGyver where he drives his Jeep through a factory. After reenacting key scenes with Lego action figures, I decided to bring my crazies back upstairs, to which Emily lovingly suggested that I lay down and get some rest. I told her about a very kind email I had gotten about how I can save 20% today on shoes, to which she lovingly suggested that I lay down and get some rest. How could I lay down with all those unicorns outside?
By 3pm, I was walking around the house, wondering what it would be like to float. Would we wear weight belts in serious situations?
By 4pm, I was around the kids again, which grounded me a bit. Floating would be a bad idea. The flu symptoms had subsided; the cabin fever set in like a dense fog.
By 5pm, I was ready to go. Emily sent me out of the house (lovingly) and suggested that if I didn’t get ok, she would not be ok. I took the hint and took a drive.
Oh.
Trees.
People.
Cars.
Activity.
It’s ok.
And I’m happy to feel better this morning.

Listen: I’m all about this nice weather we’ve been having here in south central Michigan. However, we live in south central Michigan, which means we are scheduled to get dumped on in December so we can complain about the dirty road snow until Easter. Instead, I look out my back window and see green. I hear confused birds singing. And I see tulips blooming.


Why?

I just read that Michigan has experienced its wettest year ever. Most of the wetness has been rain. I like rain. I respect it as an irrigator of lawns and a flooder of Michigan basements. But we don’t need either of those. We need the weather outside to be frightful. All this rain keeps extinguishing what should be a delightful fire.
Fire needs snow.
Snow needs ground to sit on.
Kids need snow days.
Rain needs Florida.

I’ll try to hide my pride but I simply can’t — Malachi, age 6, just wrote his first song parody. I’d like to share these lyrics with you. Let me point out that I have not tampered with or suggested anything. These are all his.  We typed them up so he could have a print out, and I thought “eh, why not put that on the ol’ blog?”  So… here you are: Malachi’s First Parody.

 
———————————
Up on the Housetop
lyrics by Malachi Davidson

Up on the housetop the glasses pause
Out jumps good old Daddy Claus
Down through the chimney with lots of noise
“All for the little ones” – that’s his noise.

Ho, ho, ho!
He doesn’t go
Ho, ho, ho!
He doesn’t go, oh

Up on the housetop boom Boom BOOM
Daddy just fell into our living room.

———————————

Well done, lad! The fact that you rolled your old man under the bus is just fine, especially for the sake of comedy.

I try to take time at the end of a calendar year and jot down the big stuff, which helps me get an overall sense of what’s different from the year before. So many things have changed, and I dare not try to capture it here. However, even with the difficult stuff, I am looking forward to the whole routine. Seeing again that God has been faithful for another year always leads to this becoming, ultimately, an act of worship. Plus, gaining a 365 day perspective helps me figure out the places where I need to improve. Webber said that “the road to the future runs through the past”; countless organizational strategists have said “you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.” Throw in that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and you’ve got some motivation to look deep and wide. Deep and wide. There’s a fountain flowing. Deep. And wide.

Here’s to the revelations at hand.

Among other things, we’re spending some holiday family time playing the Super Nintendo. With my sister in town, old family dynamics instantly arise in the presence of the 16 bit wonder. Cartridges need the dust blown off of the contacts and the console needs to be switched on and off repeatedly for the game to properly load. Kids, this is what we had to do for early video games — called “tapes” by some neighborhood parents — to work.

We’re playing the old favorites, including Super Mario World, Super Mario All Stars (which includes 1, 2, 3 and lost levels) and even some Kirby’s Avalanche. If you don’t know, Kirby is a genderless blob that will brighten your day and teach you how to explode his colorful friends.* But best of all is Donkey Kong Country. This is where my sister and I are transported back to 1994. Have you played Donkey Kong Country? Donkey and his little brother (I think) wander around a mountainous region searching for bananas. Their quest is ambiguous at best. However, there’s no doubt that a good time is had by all.

All this game play has given me opportunity to think about the similarities and differences between Donkey Kong and Mario.

I have grown bored by my own analysis. Draw your own conclusions, I guess.

——
* this is why I don’t write video game prose.

Sears/KMart has announced that they will start closing stores. One writer suggests that we are witnessing the beginning of the end. Sadly, I agree.

I grew up in Garden City, Michigan, which is known for several “firsts”, including the first KMart. This was a point of (some) pride 40 years ago but probably needs to be expunged from today’s chamber of commerce pamphlets. It’s not that KMart was never great, it’s just that nothing has changed in the past 25 years, except for the demolition of the in-store cafeteria. Mom and I used to go and get apple dumplings with vanilla sauce. Life was good. Our shopping cart, half full of discount merchandise, sat parked in the aisle that separated the cafeteria from sporting goods. Shoppers would get exhausted from pursuing deals, I guess. Over 100 of us could have fit into the cafeteria, if the need arose. Eat. Talk. Ask questions of our parents.

“What does ‘K’ stand for?” “Kresge.” “Oh.” “This is the first KMart.” “Hm. No wonder the apple dumpling sauce is so good.”

I remember the blue light specials. The rolling cart with the big blue beacon on a pole, noisily flashing as its capacitor charged and discharged, over and over again. “Attention KMart shoppers!”

I remember the darkness of the store. Dirty beige. Dimly lit. Glaucoma-ish. But we didn’t have much to compare our experience to… until Target came to Dearborn Heights. The first thing I noticed when I walked into Target at age 7 was how overwhelmingly bright it was.

I remember KMart brands… the red K and the blue/green mart logo… emblazoned upon everything from crayons to coolers. Sewing stuff said “KMart quality”, with the “quality” in cursive.

The mighty reasonably stable have fallen. Merging with Sears probably wasn’t a great idea. The fact that you can buy Craftsman tools at KMart doesn’t do much for KMart, nor does it do much for Craftsman tools.

Closure is immanent. Not if but when. I need to go back and see the Garden City (#001) KMart at least once more, and walk to the back of the store, past the clothing and picture frames, past the bowling balls and toys, and just see where the cafeteria once was, so I can pay my respects.

Someone gave me a pound of holiday coffee. It tastes like reindeer and cinnamon. I’m glad to be able to sit at our table and watch out my window, drinking coffee and watching the snow fall. I’m noticing again that snow delays under tree accumulation until the very last minute.

If you live in Michigan, you know that, when it comes to snowfall totals, we’ve gotten the very short and unseasonably warm end of the stick this season. On one hand, holiday travel has been a breeze on dry, warm roads. On the other hand, I put a bunch of used wrapping paper in the garbage can and didn’t even need a coat. On the third hand, I need a coat with three sleeves. Blame global warming. Blame El Nino. Blame Al Gore. But don’t blame me.

Instead, drink holiday coffee. It seems to be working at my house.

I’m realizing that this blog has nothing to do with my expertise and much to do with what I want to remember ten years from now. This lesson comes courtesy of a blog bio I came across that describes the author as something like “a difference maker and a creative agent”, whereas I just know him as the guy who kept sniffing markers during our freshman year. He may be a genius. I’m just a guy. And no, I’m not saying that hoping that someone will go “no, Adam, you’re a difference maker and a creative agent!” because I too know the smell of markers.

Because I’m just a guy, I realize that I have very little to offer that makes what I write stand out from the same stuff that everyone else writes. I could start penning dazzling headlines like “The Top Ten Things Worship Leaders Should Implement”, with numbered lists and flowing prose from my own rich experience. But I’d rather tell you about the fact that the Christmas Tree we have this year smells like pine and is the best one we’ve ever had.

I want to be able to look back and see that on this day, December 19th, 2011, Zac was walking around and telling people he wants to “be one again” instead of turning three this week. I want to remember that Emily was facing the unique pressures of having to produce 4 family Christmas gatherings, complete with meals and gifts and hospitality and stuff. I want to remember that Lexi was particularly interactive and spunky, and keeps slapping Malachi, who takes it in stride and says “gentle, Lexi”, like a big/little brother should do. I want to remember that our friends stopped by and let our boys play AngryBirds on their iPhone while we talked about the best indie films on Netflix. These are far more valuable than my adolescent views on leadership, which are a dime a dozen; no one can write what I’m writing right now. They weren’t here.

There you have it: a RadBlog epiphany. By the way, Epiphany is January 6th, which means that Sunday, January 1 is Epiphany Sunday. It’s a great day to sing “We Three Kings”. There. I added to the pile of internet repetitions for Google to find and archive.

Life is good.

“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence.” Isaiah 64:1 (ESV)

We need Advent. Did you see the story about the lady who pepper sprayed a bunch of people? She wanted an Xbox game. She wanted a competitive advantage. She wants to post bail.

What happened to Christmas? We need to be jarred to God’s reality. You and I need to be pulled out of the trance of ConsumerMas.
Advent puts the brakes on our self-preservation tendencies. It puts us under the authority of the story of God’s salvation and brings significant questions to the table:

- Who is God and what has He done?
- What has God saved us from?
- How do I live in light of this truth?

I need to ask these questions. I need to have these questions asked of me. More than a day or two, Advent is a 4-Sunday ramp up to the Christmas celebration of Emmanuel.

Advent helps us wait. We need someone to shake us and call us to reality, otherwise we keep cruising along as if everything is fine. Spiritually speaking, we tend to be blind to our own emptiness because we’re going so fast, so hard, for so long.

Advent helps us anticipate, which builds tension. During this time of tension, we reflect on God’s great salvation through Christ. We serve a God who is living, loving, and free. He invites us to the same, but this invitation can’t be scoffed or answered without intention. We hunger for God to move, to show up, to renew. The longer we wait, the deeper our realization that only God and God alone who can truly “fix” everything by fixing us.

Indeed, God will pull back the curtains on Heaven and graciously get involved.

The sun has yet to rise upon our kitchen table, littered with empty pop cans and drippings from yesterday’s dinner of wings and pizza, which served as a delicious foreshadowing of today’s thanksgiving feast.

Andrew is rubbing his forehead and thinking aloud that he has spent too much time on fantasy football. “As if that’s even possible” I retort, shaking my head slowly back and forth. Fantasy football is a brilliant combination of our imagination and the statistical reality of the NFL. Where else do we do this? Cram carefully measured data into our fantasy? I’ll tell you: model trains.

When I was a kid, I played with a Tyco HO scale model of the Rock Island Express. In the real world, trains travel across the continent and carry their cargo to consumers in urban centers and rural nothingness. In my bedroom, surrounded by the typical stuff of my 8-year old existence, the Rock Island traveled in a perfect circle, carrying nothing but the nickels I jammed into one of the boxcars. It frequently tipped over. Oh, the carnage!

I wanted my model train to mimic the real life existence of trains. In my head, it did. I played Fantasy Railroad every day for a month after my 8th birthday, which fell on November 17 — about a week before Thanksgiving. I remember having to leave my train circle to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house on this day 24 years ago. As I rode in the back seat, buckled in next to my baby sister, I thought about the mighty Rock Island Express and her cargo, which had to make it to the upper hemisphere of my track circle. Without the safe delivery of their giant nickel palettes, the people would go hungry. No trainman worth his salt would allow that to happen.

We didn’t go hungry that day. We feasted on turkey, pie, and I endured adult conversation the whole time. Then, it was back to the trains before bed. I fell asleep while mentally designing a Lego train station. I was thankful. I just didn’t know it yet.