Growing up

As I was praying with the boys on our way to school this morning, I was a little overwhelmed by how they are becoming young men already.

Brendon and I are interacting at a different level than ever before. We're having more "grown up" conversations about life. His sense of humor jumps back and forth between elementary boy "body" humor and more sophisticated teasing and thoughts. Often, we'll sit in my big chair on lay on his bed at night and just talk. If I close my eyes, it's sometimes easy to forget that he's only nine. Of course, then he tackles me in the hall and makes some sci-fi sound effect and his age comes rushing back. :-)

Ian is feeling the pain of his pre-school childhood slipping away. He absolutely LOVES school, but daily reminds us how he misses just playing with his toys. He's moved from toddler to elementary boy. His art teacher caught me this morning to tell me how impressed she is with his maturity. She said, the normal kindergartners take several months to learn to pay attention and manage themselves, but he has been instantly attentive and produces great art already. Guess he is brighter than the average boy...ha!

I love these two dearly. And I pray daily that they would thoroughly enjoy their childhood...that it would be filled with life-long warm memories. I also look forward to watching them grow-up, however quickly that may be, and pray that they mature into passionate followers of the God who died for them.

Warning - Gross boy content

I apologize for the rather gross content of this post, but it made us laugh so hard, we just HAD to record it.

Ian and Brendon spent the night with my mom (Esther) recently. While there, Ian had the urge to go to the bathroom. After a little while, the expected yell came from the bathroom, "Done going pooooottttyyy!" (A little background...Ian has not yet learned how to wipe himself. When he yells, "Done going potty!" he means, "come and clean me up please!").

My mom went in and proceeded to wipe Ian's little bottom. She did it just once and declared he was ready.

Ian looked at her questioningly, "Are you sure I'm clean?"
Mom responded, "Yes, you are."
"But it was only once."
"I know, but you're clean, you can pull your pants up."

She began to help him pull his pants up when she heard, "Yep, you're right, I'm clean!"

She looked up to see Ian holding his finger in front of his face...examining it for any signn of "uncleanness."

We'll leave the rest to your imagination.

That's our boy...

Interesting

Life is interesting...I mean REALLY interesting. Nothing has quite been what I thought it might be and just when I think I've got a good system going, we enter a new phase with new rules and it all starts over. Not that I'm complaining...okay, I'm complaining, but not in an intense, whiny way :). I get bored easily and it keeps things, well, interesting. Now if I can just learn to enjoy change...

Some recent interesting things that are happening:
-Both boys are in school 6 hours a day which means I have more uninterrupted time to work on things
-Ironically, people I've tried to set up play dates with for the past couple of years are all of the sudden free, so I'm spending more time with people.
-Though some rather bizzare circumstances, I find myself co-leading worship for this year's northern zone ladies' retreat. It's rather last minute since it starts in about a month, so we've been scrambling to get stuff set.
-Recently, I agreed to work with vocals for The River Church, which means I'm running partial rehearsals (which I haven't done since Ian was about a year old) again and directing the choir when we have special services where we use a choir. This is what my college training was about, so it's nice to dust it off and use it again, though I find I've let myself grow a bit rusty in a few areas, which leads me to the next thing to incorporate in my days...
-I've realized it's been a while since I've had an intentional system for exercising and strengthening my voice. I've recently started practicing my vocal exercises again and look forward to gaining some of the flexibility I feel I've lost.
-I'm continuing my daily exercise routine, which is quite invigorating, but takes time.
-In the meantime, I need to make sure I get the boys' Halloween costumes made. This year there are three to make since I offered to make one for my nephew too. He saw the ones I made for e-bay last year and my sister said he was so impressed and really wanted one. I was wishing I had known so I could have done one for him last year, but determined to make one this year.

So...my October is pretty well booked up. I'm wondering what the Christmas holidays will bring...

Honesty

One of the things I've noticed among different leaders lately is a sort of passive less-than-honest manipulation.

Sometimes I've been guilty of it.

We see an individual and assess their gifts, talents, skills, etc and "place" them in our mind. Or, we watch them in action and determine that he/she needs to be "placed" differently than they are.

But, instead of talking about it openly, or, perhaps investing in them to grow them into where we thought they don't fit, we begin to offer passive suggestions and comments. We slowly push them where WE think they should be.

I've done this, and am not proud of it. 

The more I understand my role as a leader in the church (which is another discussion altogether - the current view of what leadership is and isn't), the more I realize that my primary job is listening for the direction of the Holy Spirit and then, openly and honestly, acting on His direction.

Is subtlety sometimes necessary? Yes, but only at His direction. We are to apt to be manipulative and I've rarely, if ever, seen that work.

Kind Affirmations

I've felt the Holy Spirit stirring some fresh winds and directions in my soul for some time now. At times they've left me a little confused and, frankly, nervous about what He's doing in me and what He wants to do through our family.

In the last week He has graciously allowed me to receive some affirmations. Affirmation is always good for the soul, but they are also dangerous. I've watched far too many people receive affirmation and suddenly they are making decisions and heading in directions due to an inflated ego that they should not go. I've watched people hear someone say about them, "I think you could be ____________ someday (you fill in the blank" and then, due to that affirmation, they began to subtly offer suggestions and manipulations to worm their way to that position.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that work hard and promoting oneself is a bad thing if it's done with humility and grace. But, I think sometimes that we are too full of ourselves and not full enough of faith in a God who has a future in mind for us. I wonder how often we miss that mark when we're looking to fulfill man's prophecies instead of God's purposes.

As I've received and heard these kind words about my service on the DBMD, teaching with the Spiritual Formation Department, teaching in our local church, and some people's "hints" for what they think might be a possible future for me, for the first time in my life, I can honestly say that these kinds of statements scare me more than they encourage me. Do they make me feel good? Yes, and they should. But, I don't know what the Holy Spirit has in store for me. What I DO know is that my future is His job and not mine. 

My job is to be faithful in the here and now. 

My job is to listen for His voice and act on it.

My job is to fulfill the purposes and calling currently on my life.

My job is to guard my heart from influences apart from Him.

Who knows what He's forming in me?

Who know if the kind words people have said are true? People are fickle.

But I do know, that He is a faithful God who loves to do things with His kids that they can't ask or imagine.

Field Trip

Ian went on his first field trip this week with his kindergarten class. He was pretty excited about it for a few days before and has been since.

They went to the "B" Street Theater downtown Sacramento. My description of the place is that it's "live PBS." Not sure how they make any money. They're probably government supported with an arts grant or something. It's off in a little corner of downtown in kind of a warehouse.

They did a production for the kids called "Go Dog Go!" based on the popular kids' book by that title. It was cute and they did a very good job.

I took the morning off of work and Kiley and I met the bus at the theater (they only allow three parents to ride the bus at a time and there is such a clamor for parents to ride that they do a kind of lottery). 

As we sat in the theater during the intermission with Ian, I asked him what his favorite part of the field trip was. I expected to have him talk about the play. Instead, as usual, he surprised me.

"Dad, we rode on a big bus! There were three of us in a seat and we bounced and we had our own window, but only the top of it goes up and down...and it was SO much fun."

Guess we know what the fun parts of a field trip are now...

A new Season

As fall begins this week, I've been reflecting on the fact that the Skor family has entered a new season of life. I think it's taken Kiley and I a few weeks for this to begin to seep into our consciousness, but we're beginning to realize that we need to make some adjustments in our thinking and family habits to fully "lean in" to this new season of life and grace for our family.

Here are some of the things that are new to us as fall begins:

• For the first time, both boys are in school all day long. This affects Kiley's schedule as well as my Fridays off of work.
• Kiley has accepted the volunteer job as vocal coach for our worship team. She's more than prepared for this, but it takes dozens of hours and energy which was poured into the family.
• We've both realized that we're no longer part of the "young" crowd anymore. Maybe we haven't been for a while and were in denial, but now, we're among those who have experienced life and people look to us as such.
• Our Pastoral staff has expanded. It takes more time and interaction each day to keep on top of everything.
• Our extended family is changing, both with age and with their seasons of life.