Archive for the ‘Youth’ category
August 12, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. August 12, 2014
“Dad Time”
I’ve been blessed with a great father, Laurence Hubert Wolfe. Dad is now 86 and moving a little slower these days, but he was able to fly from Ohio to Colorado Springs and spend about a week and a half with us.
My mom passed away last September. Dad had been her primary caregiver for the last few years of her life…feeding her meals, sitting by her bed, sometimes having to be firm with her about taking medications and drinking fluids. Because of his energies being directed to her he hadn’t been able to visit us in Colorado. This trip was an opportunity for him to spend some uninterrupted time with his grandkids and great grandkids, and it was…great…deeply meaningful…and impacting.
Our three year old granddaughter, Reagan, came to the point where she looked forward to seeing “Papaw” each day. One day she asked her mom when they were going to see Papaw and her mom said they weren’t going to see him that day. She was not happy!
One morning she entered into our house saying “Papaw, Papaw!” She breathed in through her nose and said, “I know he’s here! I can smell him!”
Dad was amazed and amused by the conversations. The uniqueness of each of his grandchildren and “greats” was obvious to him. He often smiled in satisfied appreciation. We had three meals during the week at the restaurant that our son is chef at. Papaw loved the fish and chips. They are probably not on his diet back home, but we put diets aside for a few days. His grandson personally fixed his meal.
Our oldest daughter had us over for dinner twice during his stay. The green bean casserole reminded him of meals my mom would cook. He visited her fourth grade classroom and was pleased to see a few of the ways she effectively teaches the youngest generation.
Our youngest daughter traveled up from Albuquerque for the weekend to spend a little time with her Papaw. We took him to an air show, and we did it not so much to see the planes but just to be with him, and to see his delight in meeting one of the Tuskegee Airman who was a guest there.
We talked about this and that. He retold some stories that I had heard a few times already, and also revealed some family history that I wasn’t familiar with.
We’d drive my Civic around the area, visiting the Air Force Academy, The Classical Academy where I coach basketball, as well as simple trips to Lowe’s and Walgreen’s and Albertson’s supermarket.
A few times during his stay he wasn’t up for any adventures. He just wanted to sit a while and read. Other times he just wanted to watch CNN as the events in Gaza and Iraq unfolded. On Sunday we watched the PGA championship for a solid two hours.
He ate watermelon and cantaloupe just like our family did in my growing ups days. Watermelon was a more prized treat than ice cream!
When I picked up Dad at the airport he was being wheeled down the terminal in a wheelchair. It’s a little difficult to see your dad in a wheelchair for the first time. When we dropped him off back at the airport I watched him get in a wheelchair again. It was a harsh visible sign that Dad is in his life home stretch.
The readers of this blog don’t quite understand how deeply respected my dad is by our three children. It’s hard to read something and pick up on the underlying value that they place on their relationships with Papaw.
They will remember this visit from him not for places that we went together, but rather time spent with him…sitting on the couch beside him…hearing his chuckles…listening to his accent.
Dad time…priceless!
Categories: children, Humor, love, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Dad, fathers, grandfathers, green bean casserole, Honda Civic, Papaw, remembering, visits, wheelchair
Comments: 1 Comment
August 4, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. August 4, 2014
“It’s been a few days. Have you abstained from the caffeine?”
“Just been busy,” I replied to the Messiah. “Things have been…you know…crazy!” The two of us hadn’t gotten together for coffee for almost two weeks. “I’m sorry! I’ll try to get back into a regular coffee time with you.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“Well…I know you’re always available, and here I am taking two weeks to get together with you. I feel a little embarrassed about that.”
“Get over it!”
“Okay…so you’re saying my sin is taken care of.”ht
“Do you think it was a sin?”
“I’m assuming so. It seems that if I’m feeling a little guilty about something that there has to be sin lurking somewhere underneath it.”
“Could it be that it’s more about how you’ve been conditioned…how you were raised…what the church taught you growing up? Things like that.”
“So you’re saying that I’ve been conditioned to feel guilty?”
“In some ways. Were you told growing up that you should be at church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night?”
“A few thousand times. You know the saying, Jesus…if you go to church on Sunday morning, you love the pastor…if you go on Sunday night, you love the church…but if you go on Wednesday night, you love the Lord.”
“So when you miss spending time with me you start wondering if you really love me?”
“Yes…it comes back around to that again.”
“Why do lovers of God think performance is so important? Why can’t they rest with an assurance that they are in love with the Lord, and the Lord is in love with them?”
“And when you say “they”…you’re saying “me?”
“Good catch.”
“Because we’ve…been conditioned that way. I’m operating out of a mindset that says this is what it means to be a good Christian boy. It’s hard to break out of that understanding. It’s almost like I feel I’m betraying my roots, all the people who invested in my life.”
“So, to put it bluntly, you’re more conditioned by your culture than transformed by God.”
“Wow…that was pretty blunt. And it’s dead on. To use a rough example…it’s kind of like when I eat oatmeal now. Growing up we always put graham crackers in our oatmeal. The other day I was at Starbucks around breakfast time and I decided to get a bowl of oatmeal. Do you realize that Starbucks doesn’t serve graham crackers with their oatmeal. They give you raisins and nuts to put in it. I protested…to myself…that this wasn’t oatmeal, but since I paid $2.60 for it I went ahead and ate it. Do you know something? It was pretty good! But I had to break out of that “conditioned understanding” of what oatmeal is.”
“You put graham crackers in your oatmeal?”
“Yes.”
“That is weird! And you call yourself a Christian!”
He gave me a slight grin.
TO BE CONTINUED
Categories: Bible, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Humor, Jesus, love, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: caffeine, coffee, coffee cup, conditioned, guilt, guilty, Messiah, sin, Starbucks, Sunday morning, Wednesday nig
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July 7, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. July 7, 2014
Recently released findings from a University of Virginia psychologist indicates that most people are extremely uncomfortable being alone with their thoughts. Tim Wilson recruited volunteers for the research- mostly college students- from a church and a farmer’s market. Each person was placed in an undecorated room and asked to be alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes. Many of the participants admitted afterwards that they had cheated during the time frame and checked their cell phones or listened to music.
After an initial fifteen minute period participants were asked to do another fifteen minutes, but this time they were given an out. They were hooked up to an electric shock. If at sometime during the fifteen minutes they wanted to be done with being alone with their thoughts they could self-administer the electric shock to themselves and they would be done. Of the participants “67%” of the men went for the electric shock rather than be alone with their thoughts. of the women 25% administered the shock.
Amazing, that so many would choose the pain of an electric shock over the uncomfortableness of being alone with their thoughts.
It also may say something about our reluctance to seek quiet. Quiet threatens, so we “self-medicate” ourselves with music, social connectedness, and cell phones. Think about it! A traumatic experience for many people is having their cell phone broken and having to go through a full day without it. As I’m writing this I’m listening to music on Pandora to help me focus.
How did our grandparents ever make it? They must have had to hum a lot!
For me as a Christ-follower there are other implications. How will I hear the whisper of the holy if it chooses to not come through my headphones? How will I see the burning bush if it doesn’t come through a lap top screen?
This is a quandry, a challenge, and an opportunity for me. I’m at the beginning of a month-long study leave. To call it quiet time would be too threatening, and, to be honest, not as productive-sounding. Not many people see a month of quiet reflection as being valuable.
Listen! I’m not necessarily comfortable with it either. If the button for the electric shock we close at hand I would might it numerous times.
I’ve come to believe, however, that I serve a God of quiet moments in a world of noise. It is often in the silence that he entertains and tames my thoughts, and reigns in my tendency to race forward like a wild pony.
Categories: Bible, Christianity, Jesus, Prayer, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: alone with our thoughts, being alone, meditating, quiet, quiet time, silence, thinking, thoughts, Tim Wilson, University of Virginia research
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June 26, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 26, 2014
My home study is populated with pictures. Pictures tell of what was, and provide sweet remembrances of times gone by.
Sitting on my desk in front of me is a framed picture of my granddaughter when she was two, dressed in the same red dress with white lace that her mom wore when she was also two. Reagan is staring at my when a smile on her face. If her picture came alive right now she could get whatever she wanted from her granddad!
Above her on the wall is a picture of the Mason High School Girl’s Junior Varsity basketball team that I helped coach in 1997. I’m wearing a sweet looking pair of khaki shorts and eye glasses that cover about two-thirds of my face. Eleven girls separate me from Coach Don Fackler, who is on the other side of the picture. Don taught me so much about coaching, and I miss him terribly. I find his voice coming out of my mouth so often in practice and at games. The girls in the picture have gone on to be moms, coach other teams, and develop callings and careers that we would never have imagined.
When I turn around the wall behind me is covered with team pictures of other teams I’ve coached through the years. Each picture is now still life, but my mind is flooded with memories when I gaze at each one of them. I remember the goofballs, the boys who would make me laugh hysterically, and the head cases that kept me awake at night.
Good teams! Bad teams! Teams that worked hard, and teams that didn’t know how to work.
At the top of the rows of pictures is my youngest daughter’s college cheer squad from University of Sioux Falls. She cheered for the Cougars all four years she was there and only experienced one defeat in football, that being one year in the NAIA championship game. The other three years they won the NAIA. She looks so fit and pretty in the squad picture. I’m a little reluctant to remind myself that she is my baby.
There are no wedding pictures in my study. For some reason those are confined to the guest bedroom, like a different exhibit in the museum.
Pictures tell a thousand stories and cause my soul to chuckle in delight.
Categories: children, Community, Humor, marriage, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: big glasses, cheer squad, coach, Coach Fackler, coaching, Mason High School, memories, remembering, team pictures, University of Sioux Falls
Comments: 1 Comment
June 25, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 25, 2014
Today’s mini-story is part of WordPress.com’s Writing 101 challenge for the month of June. Today the writer is to take the view of a twelve year old boy watching Mrs. Pauley being evicted from her house across the street.
Mrs. Pauley baked me the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. She’d see me across the street and shout in that sweet high voice of hers- as sweet as her cookies, in fact- “William, I got too many cookies! Can you take a few off my hands?” She made me think I was doing her a favor.
Then Mr. Pauley died out of the blue. I could hear him coughing all hours of the day, and then he was gone. He was a hard-working hard-talking man who didn’t deserve Mrs. Pauley, but she was his anyway. He treated her poorly, and I could tell from my distant stoop on the other side of the street that she was afraid of him.
They had six sons…all grown up and gone. Three were wearing uniforms like my G.I. Joe play figures. One disappeared right after he got out of high school and had never been seen of again. One was a low-life living in jail, and the last one lived in a big city somewhere. I couldn’t figure out why none of them came home to check on the one who birthed them.
And then a Cadillac pulled up, followed by a police car, and I could hear Mrs. Pauley crying “Please…no! Please…no!”
I saw the man from the Cadillac, who was wearing a suit that looked all snug and proper on him, hand Mrs. Pauley a piece of paper and then her head dropped like she had been cursed or something.
I knew it wasn’t good, and I could tell God wasn’t in it either. My Sunday School teacher had taught me how to see what was good and what was of the devil. This was of the devil, and I watched…wishing I could do something, but I couldn’t. When you’re twelve it’s hard to help elderly women who have had their hearts broken.
I knew this was worse then bad. I crossed the street and went up the front sidewalk. I didn’t know what I was doing, or what words I might spit out of my mouth to make things all okay, but I quietly approached.
One of the policemen asked me what I wanted and I said I wanted to make sure Mrs. Pauley was okay. At that moment her eyes looked up from the depths and met mine and she said, “William, I guess I won’t be baking you any more cookies.”
And then I knew she was leaving, that life isn’t fair even to those who deserve a double portion of blessing. The sweetest sometimes get handed the most bitter verdicts.
All I could say was “That’s okay, Mrs. Pauley!”, and we stared at each other for a long moment before the man in the suit started reading her more of his paper of bad news.
That day I lost some faith in mankind and became cautious and questioning just as I was entering adolescence.
Categories: children, Faith, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: cookies, Life isn't fair!, neighbor, Short story, twelve year old
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June 25, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 24, 2014
Even though I’m sixty I’ve been reading the book Divergent. It’s more of a novel for young adults and teens I think, because there are less words of each page to give the reader the illusion that he is reading a lot.
One of the sections of the book deals with each person’s “fear landscape.” A fear landscape includes all of the fears that the participant faces in his life…from bed bugs to being kidnapped.
I won’t go into the book any more than that, but it did make me think about what my fears are, and what my fears aren’t. I’ve come up with a short list.
I am not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of dying in a way that people laugh. Like the guy who fell into a large vat of wine and drowned! Some might enjoy dying in such a way, but I don’t really care for wine. It would be second on my list to having a truckload of manure mistakenly dumped on you and then suffocating! Death for me will be a welcoming into heaven. The way I die causes me to worry!
I’m also afraid of spiders and snakes. Don’t ask me why…I just am! I am thankful that God has not tested my faith by telling me to handle rattlesnakes. I might be tempted to renounce my faith, or at the least have a fake fainting spell. I know that the Apostle Paul had a viper wrapped around his arm one time on the island of Malta, but I’m not the Apostle Paul. I’m the Fraidy-Cat Bill!
I’m no longer afraid of school principals. That means that at one time I was. My grade school principal’s name was Shirley Morton. He’s the only man I ever knew named Shirley, but he was to be feared. I experienced his paddle one time, and my butt sizzled for a week. Whenever I saw the movie Airplane, and heard that one verbal explain where Leslie Nielson says, “And don’t call me Shirley!” the memory of Shirley Morton’s strong forehand with his paddle would come back to me. Perhaps my fears subsided when I got elected to the school board and found out the principals put their pants on just like I do (the men that is).
I’m also afraid of Indian food. I had a roommate my first year in seminary from India, and Bontha lit me up with his Chicken and Curry dish. I would start perspiring just thinking about it. We have a few Indian restaurants in our city, but the scars from Bontha’s cooking are still pretty vivid.
One last fear! I’m also afraid of Oakland Raider fans!
But I think that’s normal!
Categories: Death, Freedom, Humor, Pastor, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: afraid, Divergent, dying, fear landscape, fears, not afraid, Oakland Raiders, principal, Raiders fans, rattlesnakes, school principal, snakes, spiders
Comments: 1 Comment
June 24, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 23, 2014
My life has been filled with lost opportunities and blessed findings. Once in a while the lost comes back to be found.
Or, better yet, the lost is waiting to be found…like the lost and found box at the middle school that is filled with all kinds of coats, hats, watches, and bracelets. Each was forgotten for a while, left to sit until a stranger found it.
There are people who are a part of our lives who disappear around the margins because we forget, we become disengaged and focused on other things and people. And then, later, when we remember, they are no longer there. Neglect has a way of turning friends into acquaintances, and acquaintances into those that we lose track of.
Social media fabricates an atmosphere of connectedness. We are friends with those that we haven’t seen since high school. We comment on a one sentence post and, for some reason, think we are still connected.
In our culture of instant messaging, ironically, it is easier to be lost.
The answer may not be in how many Facebook friends or Twitter followers we have, but rather in having a few friends that we deeply invest in. we seek to find them deeply. The quality of our relationships is much more valuable than the quantity of our relationships.
I think about my life. Who is it that would be greatly effected if I lost my friendship with them? The list gets whittled down quickly, and it is in that downsized list that I find those that I must not lose.
Categories: children, love, Pastor, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Facebook friends, found, Friends, friendship, lost, lost and found, lost and found box, neglect, quality relationships, social media, Twitter followers
Comments: 1 Comment
June 18, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 18, 2014
In my youthful years I lost a lot of young ladies. They would disappear as a result of my cluelessness, being clumsy, and uncertain as to what it meant to court a young lady. One of my friends, who was a bit of a Casanova, gave me some “lines” to use that he was sure would work.
One night I pulled one of them out of the hat. I looked at the attractive eighteen year old brown-haired blonde and asked her, “If I told you that you have a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”
She gave me a confused look that quickly cooled the temperature. If you’re going to use a line on someone make sure they are perceptive enough to understand it.
And then my friend, Jeff Slaga, invited me to a gathering of Young Life kids from Hinsdale Central. He added, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
The night of the gathering we gathered in the living room of Bud Bylsma’s house to meet and greet the number of high school students who showed up. As we stood around in conversational groups I noticed a young woman with long brown hair arriving, and being instantly greeted by Jeff. She looked very young, and yet I could tell she was not just another one of the high school girls.
To this day I swear that she was scanning the room trying to figure out which one I was. I know…I’m certain…that she had been briefed on the prospective male who would be there that evening.
With all my “lost romances” that night was the beginning of a found relationship as I met Carol Louise Faletti for the first time. She was funny and welcoming. We chatted for most of the evening after that, lost in the new finding.
The funny thing is that we dated for a couple of weeks, decided to date other people, became good friends, and then about a year and a half later found each other again in a new way. The second time around in our dating relationship resulted in an engagement two months after we started dating again, and marriage four months later.
Now our thirty-fifth anniversary is coming up in another month. Three children, two grandkids, and two son-in-laws have come along.
Now two sixty year olds continue to find each other each day, as we walk in the evening together and discover who each of us is, the ideas we think up, the moments of laughter.
Sometimes it is necessary that we lose some people, some young ladies who don’t pick up on our pick-up lines, in order to find the one to walk the journey with.
Categories: children, Humor, love, marriage, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Casanova, Courtship, dating, Hinsdale Central, pick-up lines, romance, Young Life
Comments: 4 Comments
June 16, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 16, 2014
There are some families who are well acquainted with dirt. It is welcomed into the house like the family dog, reclining wherever it pleases and shaking itself into a cloud of castoffs.
My family was different. Dirt, mud, and the other suspects were expected to stand at attention at the door and not advance from there. Our house was clean. The bald head of Mr. Clean was featured prominently in the closet, ready for action.
I wasn’t that into it! You might say that it was mandated to me to be clean. A bath at night, brushing my teeth, even cleaning my plate…those were like Biblical commandments. My underwear and socks always needed to be clean, also, because the threat of being in an accident and being found with dirty underwear was always a dreaded possibility. So every morning I had to make sure I put on a clean pair of Towncraft tighty-whities! My mom worked at Penney’s, so Towncraft was the only option for our family in those days.
My dad was clean…in a different way! Yes, his clothes were always neatly folded, but his cleanliness could be seen in tasks. When he sliced a tomato or an onion it was almost always a clean cut…a perfect slice ready to grace the top of one of his hamburgers. When he cleaned the grill it shone! The inside of the family car was always pristine. The lawnmower was seldom dusted with grass clippings, because Dad would keep it clean.
Mom was like an army sergeant inspecting the barracks. She would come in the living room right when the latest episode of Combat was at its tense climax and tell me that my room looked like a tornado had hit it. I was beg for a few minutes of “clean leave”, but would always be denied. Down the hallway I would run only to discover that the extent of the bedroom tornado damage was a bedspread slightly uneven in its slope down the side, and a closet door halfway open. To Mom “clean” was a state of utopia that could not be allowed even the hint of chaos.
My hair was clean…not from shampoo but rather from the barber. I was buzzed clean until I was in high school. Sometimes a few hairs in front were given amnesty, but the rest of my head resembled Mr. Clean.
When I look back on those days I realize that our family didn’t have much, but our house was always so spic and span we just thought our lack of clutter was because we were neat freaks.
Cleanliness was next to godliness, and our house was so clean we could touch godliness with a white glove!
Categories: children, Death, Faith, Humor, Jesus, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: clean, cleanliness, cleanliness is next to godliness, Combat, dirt, dirty underwear, godliness, Mr. Clean, order, shaved head, tight whities, Towncraft, underwear
Comments: 3 Comments
June 15, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 14, 2014
Most Saturday mornings I leave the house about 7:00 to lead a men’s Bible study group at church. Today was no different except…when I opened the garage door I discovered that I had been pranked.
It was a harmless prank, a trail of styrofoam cups leading up the driveway from the street and continuing all the way to the front door. Hansel and Gretel should have used styrofoam cups instead of bread crumbs. No chance of them being eaten.
On the first step by the front door the styrofoam cups ended right beside an empty donut box and milk carton.
I’m not sure what it all meant but it was creative. I never would have thought of pranking someone’s house with those three ingredients. In my day toilet paper was as creative and risky as we got.
My wife heard the “styrofoamers” about midnight and looked outside the window. They were hustling away and she was more tickled than upset. In fact, she left the cups and stuff for me to see the next morning. We’re pretty sure it was girls from my high school basketball team. The voices were suspiciously soprano-ed. I just wonder what happened to the donuts. You would think that they would have left one in the box, but no!
Over the years we’ve been pranked several times. One year some of our youth group “forked” our front yard. Plastic forks…about two hundred of them! Another year some of our youth “candy-caned” our yard. I was still finding candy canes four months later. A long, long time ago some of our youth group TP’ed our house and got caught in the act. They went ahead and came inside and we served them Pepsi’s. They left the unused rolls of TP for us to use.
About four years ago our youth group “sticky-noted” my office. They put sticky notes all over the place. I’m still finding them. I’ll get a book off one of my shelves, turn to page 121 and there will be a sticky note saying “Looking for something?”
I don’t mind the pranking, especially if we can use the pranking materials afterwards. Carol was cutting out the bottoms of the styrofoam cups to use for a Children’s Church craft tomorrow morning. We’re resourceful people!
What the pranksters don’t realize is that we have a secret resource. Our next door neighbor has surveillance cameras, one of which shows our front yard. I’ll be viewing film footage tomorrow…perhaps with a donut and glass of milk.
Say cheese!
Categories: Bible, children, Community, Humor, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: donuts, practical jokes, pranks, pranksters, styrofoam cups, TP, TPing, youth group
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