Give Your Family the First 30 Minutes

Give your family the first 30 minutes of your time as soon as you walk in the door

Reconnecting with my family at the end of the day is difficult for me. When I come home after work, I fly through the door with a million things on my mind that usually have to do with what I didn’t get done that day. I love walking in the door and having my son run to meet me but, confession time, sometimes I’m not all that present. As I’m thinking about things I didn’t get done that day sometimes I’ll even make notes about things I’ll try to catch up on later in the evening after dinner. A friend shared a little bit of wisdom and challenged me to spend the first 30 minutes after walking through the door reconnecting with my family. That means the bag goes on the floor, the computer and phone stay off, and the DVR goes unchecked. It also usually means hitting the floor and playing with Thomas the Tank Engine and hearing about all the adventures Greyson had at “school” (a few hours of daycare) that day. Thirty minutes of uninterrupted time also serves to help right my priorities – 30 usually turns into many more as the stress of the day melts away and the joy of being present takes over.

Your kids may be younger or older than mine but they need us dads and moms to be present with them at the end of a long day – something that gets increasingly more difficult as life becomes increasingly more complex.

Thirty minutes. It’s a start…at least before the chores start, dinner needs preparing, and the dog needs walking. What rituals or methods to reconnect with your family do you have around your home? From one parent to another, I’d love to hear.

LudaChristmas: Great Gift Exchange Game with a Twist

Here’s a repost from this time last year:

I hope it’s not too late to get this idea out there.  I don’t know where it comes from or if we made it up.  Let me know if you’ve heard of this before.

When you get your staff, volunteers, parents, students, coworkers, or whomever together for your annual Christmas party, give this one a shot.  If you’ve already had your Christmas get-together then just tuck this away for next year. It takes some setting up and may sound complicated at first but it’s a snap and every year we’ve done it, our people LOVE it.  Now they ask for it by name:  Ludachristmas.  It’s like a White Elephant gift exchange with a few twists.  Part Lunacy, all Christmas – it gets the party going.

Definitions and Roles:

1. “Round” – the time in which the “Batter” gets to select or steal a gift.
2. “Batting Order” – the order in which your people are “up at bat” or select gifts.
3. “Batter” – the person that begins the round, choosing to select or steal a gift.
4. “Timer” – the person you designate to keep time.  Must be steadfast, tough, and show no favoritism (you’ll see why).
5. “Umpire” – most likely you.  You’ll explain the rules.  You must be fair but firm, you’ll have the final call in all decisions (there will be many).  You may choose not to play in order to remain impartial but if you do choose to play then you must be very fair.  You will most likely end up with the lamest gift.

The Set-Up:

1. The game works best with at least 20 people.  Any more than 50, it could be a long night.
2. Everyone brings a simple gift, wrapped, you decide the $$ limit (tip: Starbucks gift cards can be placed in a gift bag).
3. During dinner, count the # of guests and write out individual #’s on small slips of paper. i.e., if you have 20 people, you’ll write 1-20 on separate slips of paper.
4. Have guests select the numbered slips from a hat.  This will randomly determine the batting order.
5. When you’re ready to start the game, have everyone place their gifts in the middle of the room, everyone gathers around in a circle.
6. To begin, designate who will be your timer & umpire (works best with 2 different people) and explain that each round lasts 30 seconds.

The Game:

1. Whomever has #1 (first “batter”) goes first and has no choice but to select from the pile and open the gift. They’ll have opportunities to steal later.
2. Whomever has #2, has two choices:  1) select a gift from the pile and open it or, 2) steal #1′s gift.
3. If #2 steals #1′s gift then #1 selects from the pile.  Round over.
4. Here’s where it starts to get really good:  #3 has two choices:  select from the pile or steal #1′s or #2′s gift – whomever had a gift stolen then has two choices: select from the pile or steal an UNSTOLEN gift.  Gifts may only be stolen only ONCE in each round. You’ll be keeping track but so will everyone else.
5. On to #4 – #4 has the two choices, steal or select from the pile.  You see where this is going:  i.e. #17 will have 16 potential gifts to steal.
6. The round begins (the timer starts 30 seconds) when the “batter up” chooses to either select from the pile (thus ending the round quickly) or steals.  Stealing may last for 30 seconds. If someone is left empty-handed at the end of 30 seconds (timer calls “time”) then he/she must select from the pile.  Next round.
7. If someone has a gift stolen, decides not to steal, and selects a gift from the pile then the round is over.  The next batter is up.

Scenarios and Wrinkles:

1. The game really speeds up when you get to higher numbers, like #10 or so.  Each person has the same two choices listed above.  Stealing becomes frenzied.  Guests may try to hide gifts – this is against the rules – all gifts must be displayed for potential thieves.
2. If a thief has their hands on a gift when time is called, the thief keeps the stolen gift.  The person who just had their gift stolen must select from the pile.  Round over.
3. You may decide to have a “halftime.”
4. After halftime or late in the game, you may decide to increase round time to 45 seconds, increasing the opportunities to steal gifts.
5. For the last few rounds, you may decide to allow gifts to be stolen twice in a single round.  This becomes more difficult to track but by then everyone will be keeping track with you.

If you try it, I’d love to hear how it went!  Did you find any new wrinkles to add?  Hopefully, no blood was shed and everyone had a blast!

Fix Your Oxygen Mask First

Admittedly, I don’t know much about pressurized cabins in airplanes.  Actually, I don’t know anything about how it works.  In the past, I occasionally listened to the flight attendants giving out instructions over the crackily, ancient PA system but I don’t really know what it would be like to suddenly lose all cabin pressure if, say, a wing tore off the plane.  I know what I picture in my head – gasping for air, ears popping, people passing out, the full catastrophic scene from Airplane.  So I never truly grasped the wisdom of placing your own oxygen mask over your face before helping the little one next to you until I took a flight a while back with my then 4 month old son, Greyson.   Then I listened.

There’s nothing like having the life of a child in your hands to get you to wake up and pay attention.

I used to think that if the cabin pressure suddenly dropped and we’re all gasping for air and screaming at the pain in our no-longer-pressurized ears, the first thing I would do is lean over and put the mask on Grey first.  How could I not?  What kind of selfish monster would ignore the cry of pain or the gasping for air of the little one in the next seat?  Then I realized it:  if I’m passed out unconscious in my seat, who’s going to revive me so I can help my son who probably has even less time than me before the lights go out?  I guess the reasoning goes, worst case scenario, I put on my oxygen mask first and if my kid passes out then I’m right there to help.  I know this sounds catastrophic and my imagination tends to run wild but have you ever been in a de-pressurized airplane cabin?  And if you have, what actually happens?  I honestly don’t know.  I guess I’m thinking, why else would we need oxygen masks unless there’s no oxygen left in the cabin?  So I put mine on first.  And then I help my son.  After all, I’m no good to him if I black out.

In ministry and parenting, we’re no good to our students, staff, leaders, and families if we’re gasping for air.  Teenagers are already dealing with a critical season of life, it might feel like the plane’s going down everyday to them.  How are we to be a safe place in turbulent times if we can hardly breathe ourselves?

We must self-check often.  In addition to all of the wonderful reasons we’ve accepted a call from God to be in ministry or to have a family (yes, ministering to our own families is a high call!), there’s also a dark side.  If we’re honest, ministering to students or our families doesn’t simply fill a need in the lives of those we minister to, it also fills a need inside of us.  We like to be liked.  We may have varying levels of codependent tendencies.   We’re conscientious people and we work very hard but it can be a slippery slope towards workaholism.  The combination of all these traits and the great rewards of ministry and parenting can lead our work towards feeling like some sort of an addiction.  The pace of life gets frenetic as we find ourselves frantically running from one event or meeting or game to another and we start to feel as if we’re on some sort of human-hamster wheel.  The tension we may feel is that all these things we give our time to are good, none are bad, there are just so many of them.  I may just be projecting all over the place here but my experience with leaders and families over the years tells me that I’m not alone.

Within the antidote of the self-check, we must be aware of these tendencies in ourselves because they often lead to overworking.  The stress of overworking leads to a depletion of our inner resources.  Then we neglect what we need most.  We gasp for air.  And we’re no longer any good to those we lead.  Often in these times, we abandon the things we actually need most to be healthy in ministry and parenting:  time to breathe, time to reflect, time with Jesus, space to reconnect with ourselves and God.  It’s all too easy to be so focused on the needs of others that we forget to focus on ourselves and, after all, you can only squeeze so much water out of a sponge before it’s completely dry.

While our culturally-imbued sense of the almighty work ethic may lead us towards feeling guilty for creating space to breathe, it’s actually this kind of self-care that can restore our souls so that we’re better able to serve those we lead.

I don’t know what this might look like for you but the stakes are high and our families, students, leaders, and staff are counting on us.  This is really difficult work but those we lead need to get the best of us – our time, energy, passion, and resources.   Make sure you take time to breath deeply from your own oxygen mask so that you’ll have your wits about you when called upon to help another with their own mask.

Christmas in Grants Pass

More photos and video to come but here’s what I have for now! Clicking on the link or photo below will take you to our slideshow

Christmas 2009 by Matt Bond

Posted using ShareThis

Faith & a Bear Cub

This one got me. I got all choked up when I saw it for the first time. Maybe because I have my own brown bear…more likely because I have one of these.

A lot of thoughts come to mind:

1. As a dad who knows the world is a hard place, I would stop at nothing to protect my son from dangers in this world that would seek to take him out. He’ll take his licks and hurts but I will always have his back.
2. As a youth pastor, I want to offer hope for hurting students through the message of a great God who will never abandon us and can heal wounds.
3. Sometimes life is a roll in the grass. Sometimes I’m running for my life. Other times, I’m bruised, bloody, and broken, desperate at the end of my rope, but the love of Christ is always present, available, healing.  This is why I trust Him.
4. Bullies are cowards.
5. This strikes me as a profound visual of justice. Throughout the world, we live in oppressive systems designed to beat people down (emotionally, spiritually, financially, physically) and people of faith are called to stick up for those that can’t stick up for themselves. The Kingdom of God through people of faith exists to give a voice to the voiceless and defend the defenseless – orphans, widows, the fatherless, have-nots, the marginalized, the desperate, the sick and hungry, the poor, and the left-outs.

What do you see?

Broken and Growing Hearts

There’s no stress in life like when something goes wrong with your kids.  It’s heart-breaking.  I don’t know how this works but when my heart breaks it also grows.

Our son, Greyson, was born just over a month before his due date, necessitating a week stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.  Standard fare for a premie but initial blood tests came up positive for Galactosemia.  Of all the luck.  Galactosemia affects 1 in 60,000 births and was found in only 7 babies born in California in all of last year.  More than just a food allergy, this disease causes a body to store undigested milk proteins in the liver and it can kill quickly.  Before it was discovered, doctors chalked up infant deaths now attributed to these types of metabolic diseases to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.  It’s very treatable now that the medical community can diagnose it but it necessitates extreme, life-long dietary restrictions.

It amazes me that the State of California includes tests for such rare diseases but as one angelic doctor at CHOC told us, “If we catch one a year and save a baby’s life, it’s worth it.”  It took a month of blood and DNA tests to confirm that he’s only a carrier, only possesses 1 recessive gene, not both that determine the full disease.  So after all that, a month of NICU’s, tests, driving to different hospitals, meeting with the most compassionate, caring, and genius doctors I’ve ever met…he’s all good.  If by chance as an adult he happens to have his own child with someone who is also a carrier then they’ll have a 1 in 4 chance of producing a child with the full-blown disease.  Remember the fruit fly experiment in 9th grade Biology class?

After extensive DNA testing of Katie and I, it was confirmed that I’m the carrier that passed the gene to my son.  Hospitals have only started to test for it along with other metabolic diseases recently (as in, not back when I was born) so it’s assumed that we’ve had the recessive gene in our family for who knows how long without knowing it.  Sorry son, my bad.  I’ll buy you an ice cream.

Today, my son had a febrile seizure in the parking lot of Costco in Mountain View.  He developed a fever last night and we did the usual: ibuprofen, cool wash cloth, etc.  He still had a slight fever this morning and we continued with the same treatment.  Around noon, the fever broke and my wife took him to run errands.  Febrile seizures happen when there is a sudden rise in body temperature, often taking an hour or more in adults, but can occur in children in less than 10 minutes.  We think at the time of the seizure, his morning dose of ibuprofen must have worn off and the fever returned quickly.

He was in the shopping cart when the episode started and as Katie was heading back to the car she noticed listlessness and glassy eyes.  She ran the cart back to the front door of Costco and yelled for help.  At this point, Greyson seemed unconscious or very unaware of his surroundings.  The Costco manager called 911 because Grey seemed to be not breathing.  Apparently, as the ER doctor later informed us, immediately following a seizure it’s common to breathe only 3-5 times a minute for a few minutes, making it seem as if the victim has stopped breathing all together.  The ambulance arrived quickly and they loaded Katie and Grey on board.  The Costco manager took Katie’s keys, loaded all the groceries in the truck and reparked it next to the front door.  We never got the guy’s name, his shift was over by the time we went to retrieve the truck, but what a saint.  Give that guy a medal and promotion along with my undying appreciation.

I got the news via text message as I was getting out of the shower.  If you’ve never received a text message that says, “We’re on our way to the ER,” let me tell you it gives new meaning to “pep in your step.” We’re new in town and had no idea where the nearest hospital was so the paramedic gave Katie the address, I popped it into Google Maps on the iPhone (I only mention this because growing up we used this…) and did my best Jensen Button impression on the 101.  Also, by mistake Katie had my wallet and I noticed only half way to the hospital that the gas light was on in the car so I couldn’t stop for gas.  I started calculating how far I would have to run if the car ran out of gas on the freeway.  I texted and tweeted our prayer request to friends and family.  Interesting note: my brother @adamtaylorbond and @prayer_network retweeted our prayer request to 4,500 people less than a minute after my original tweet.  Who knows how many people threw up a quick one for Grey but all of a sudden we weren’t alone.  Technology IS cool.  The car held up and I ran into the ER.  Crying baby.  That’s my son.

His temperature at the time was 103.7 but he was alert and crying.  The nurse said she would rather see a baby alert and crying with a 104 degree temperature than a listless, incoherent baby with a 101 degree temperature.  Good news.  They dosed him up with a fever-reducing cocktail, gave us the full run-down of febrile seizures, and waited to see if the cocktail worked.  It did.

We were discharged 3 hours after intake.  The doctors explained that it’s not necessarily the fever they’re worried about because a fever is simply a symptom of infection.  If he continues to run a high fever for a few more days we’ll have to bring him back.  He’s doing much better now and was even playing with his toys tonight like nothing happened, though he’s had so many drugs running through his system that he was stumbling around like a drunk little sailor.  He’s sleeping soundly at the moment but we’ve been holding and hugging him relentlessly.  It’s funny how we can go days just running through our schedules without fully appreciating the little life we hold in our hands.  I love my son more than my own life but I rush around the home too much.

It’s been said that any fool can make a baby but it takes a father and/or mother to raise a child.  Today, Grey made us laugh, cry, then laugh, then cry all over again.  I guess that’s the life of raising children.  I pray for my son’s safety, health, development, his spiritual life, and relationships and do my best to trust God for his life but my own sense of control is an illusion.  There will be many more times when things go wrong.  We can only do the absolute best we can to protect and raise our kids and then do the absolute best we can when things go wrong.  As a wise and good friend of mine once said, “Our kids don’t give us grey hair because they drive us crazy.  They give us grey hair because they break our hearts.”  And somehow when my heart breaks, it grows.

Thanks for reading.  This is my therapy.

Wanna Get Away?

Imagine yourself in a horrifyingly, embarrassing situation – now imagine yourself in that situation in a very public place.

We were married for 7 years before we had a baby. Kind of a longish time to wait to have a kid but we had our reasons.  As a result, all of our married friends were having kids before us.  And all those friends had the same advice: “Dude, if you’re not gonna have kids right away then you guys must get a dog.”  They said that puppies are like baby “starter kits.”  I guess the logic goes that if you don’t accidentally kill a dog then the chances are pretty good that you most likely won’t accidentally kill a child.  Apparently, a dog is the child-bearing version of one of those Match Light logs you use to start a campfire – not exactly the real thing but almost close enough to simulate the desired effect.  Except that when the dog isn’t doing what it says on the box, you don’t douse it in lighter fluid, flick a match, grab a can of hairspray, and torch the sucker.

We did get a puppy.  A chocolate Labrador Retriever.  Turned out, the color refers to more than just the dog’s coat because that’s pretty much the color our white carpets turned.  Our dog pooped on the carpet so much as a puppy you’d think we fed her only bran muffins and Metamucil.  She was so regular that Swiss watchmakers were emailing her asking for the secret.

I had kind of a love/hate thing going with the puppy-phase of dog ownership.  She was the cutest, most lovable thing I had ever seen but I can’t tell you how many times we’d come home to find a new piece of furniture or my wife’s expensive leather boots completely chewed.  Sometimes, right around bedtime, I’d watch our little bundle, coiled in a cute little fluffy ball, resting peacefully after a long day of mischief, imagining what lighter fluid and a match would do – mentally listing the pros and cons.  Pro: no more destruction. Con: dead dog, ASPCA lawsuit, jail time, and probably divorce.

One Friday night around sunset a few years ago when Bella was still a puppy, my wife and I decided to walk the dog down to Blockbuster and rent a movie. The Blockbuster in our very dog-friendly town was kind of a scene on Friday nights (it’s Orange County after all; everywhere is a scene of some sort).  People actually got dressed up to go to Blockbuster – families, children, college kids, people on dates, the place was packed.  We walked inside and everyone cooed at the puppy. “Look at the puppy, look at the puppy.”  I’m thought, “Yeah, she’s great, you want her?  Bored with your clean, white, carpet?   Longing for that really-shabby-chic-chewed-sofa-cushions look?”

We were in there for not even a minute and out of the corner of my eye I noticed our little precious fluff ball assume the squat position…that blank, off in the distance stare and a slight, sideways half smile that comes from exerting yourself in a certain way.  Turns out it wasn’t the usual neatly-coiled sausage links we’d come to know and expect from that end of her.  It was kind of half soft serve, half yoo-hoo, half something demonic I’d never even seen before but it definitely smelled like evil spirit.

In an instant, the scene at Blockbuster turned from parents and kids happily enjoying a night out to something resembling a hysterical Haz-Mat scene – like if a chemical truck overturned on the freeway, spilling deadly noxious biological weapons material.  Kids were screaming, “Eww, gross,” and parents were yelling “ Get away from there, find your sister, find your sister!!”  Lights illuminated on the floor directing customers to the nearest exit, people were donning chemical gas masks like we’d just been attacked by an 18 pound puppy terrorist.  I made that part up; there were no lights on the floor.

But people were actually screaming. I thought, “I can’t believe this is happening,” and immediately imagined lighter fluid and a match.  I panicked.  I made the mistake of picking up the dog in mid push and handing her to my wife.  That’s a hard lesson to learn.  If your dog starts to take a dump in a very public and inappropriate place, let the dog finish; both for the dignity of the dog but also so you don’t leave a trail of sullied yoo-hoo across the carpet of whatever establishment you happen to be soiling.  My wife took the puppy and ran out the door yelling at me as if I willed this to happen.  As if I coaxed the evil substance from our dog like a primeval snake charmer with my turd-extracting flute and ancient Egyptian poop enchantments.

So I’m left there in the middle of Blockbuster all alone (except for screaming customers) standing over whatever it was my dog ingested 6-8 hours ago.  I devised a plan.  I ran over to the guy behind the counter and told him, “Hey dude, I’m really sorry, but there’s some poop on the floor over there.”  He says, “Sir, we have a restroom, if you’d just ask…”  I explain to him that it’s not mine.  Well it’s technically mine but it didn’t come out of me, “See we were walking our puppy…you know what, we don’t really have time to talk about this, if you could just help me out with some paper towels and maybe some carpet cleaner…”  I ran back to the scene of the crap.   By chance, this all went down next to the Keanu Reeves section so I quarantined the area by grabbing random DVD’s and using them like a cop with traffic cones.  Purely by coincidence, each of the movies I used happened to have a lot in common with what had just come out of my dog.  People were trying to step around me and I apologized, trying to explain, “Sorry, ma’am, it’s not mine, honestly. Sorry sir…”

The movie wrangler brought out paper towels and carpet cleaner; it was the powdered kind of industrial cleaner and it didn’t really clean so much it bonded with whatever you might be trying to clean, in this case it made a unique poopy-powdered cocktail.  It felt like mixing some kind of macrobiotic cement.   It was only spreading and grinding into the carpet.  The dog poop was definitely not coming out.  It was only spreading around and staining like some evil “Cat in the Hat” story gone horribly wrong.  The stain continued to get worse and I realized that I’m just rubbing it in to the point where I can tell that this is going to be a permanent stain.  The Blockbuster guy got so angry with me; he yelled “That’s enough sir, please leave.  Sir, just get out, get out!”  At this point, I’m seriously considering taking a dump in the corner myself and just walking out.  But I figured it was probably time to just leave while I still had my dignity.

But before I left, as this guy was screaming at me, all the customers were now either running out trying not to breath or just staring dumbfounded at me on my knees trying to clean this thing up, I did the first thing that came to my twisted mind:  I quickly took the last clean towel I had left, dipped it in poo like some organic ink well.  I pretended to be wiping things up but instead stained my first initial on a bit of clean carpet as evidence I could point to when sharing this story with friends.  You can go check it out for yourself.  Then I ran for it.