Toxic Floats!

 

“Mom got us root beer, for root beer floats,” Victoria told me, as I walked in the door from a long day at work.  “Elise and I both had one this afternoon.”

“Sounds tasty,” I said.

“It’s kind of weird though,” Victoria said.  “It isn’t the root beer that floats, it’s the ice cream.  Shouldn’t they be called ice cream floats?”

“That’s a good point,” I said.  I proceeded to look it up and found that in Mexico, it is called an “helado flotante,” meaning floating ice cream.  Clearly, Spanish speakers (at least in Mexico), know what they are doing when they describe things as complex as ice cream floating in soda.

“Can I have another one for supper?”  Elise asked, ready to skip whatever the main course was and jump to the good stuff.

“Now, Elise,” Anna put in quickly.  “Root beer is soda and soda isn’t healthy for you!”

“Why not?”  Elise asked, not believing that something that tasted so good was not also good for you.

“Because sodas are acidic,” Anna said firmly.  “And acid won’t let your stomach work right.”

“What sorts of things does your stomach work at?”  I asked curiously.  Mine never seems to do much other than complain if I eat Ghost Pepper Jack Cheese.

“Oh, digest things and stuff like that,” Anna said breezily.  I was disappointed, I had hoped I could use my stomach to make money, but it seemed like stomachs don’t do that sort of work.

“I thought your stomach had acid in it already,” Victoria put in.  “I don’t know why it would be bothered if you drank root beer, even if it is acidic.”

With this conversation behind us, we sat down to an excellent supper.  Afterward, Victoria and Elise watched as Anna took the two liter bottle of root beer out of the fridge and poured herself a cup of the “very unhealthy” liquid.  

“I thought that root beer wasn’t healthy,” Elise said.

“It isn’t,” Anna said.  “That’s why I’m only taking this much.”  She indicated a point slightly over halfway up her cup.

“That’s way more than I got,” Elise said firmly.  “I guess I’m more healthy than you!  I don’t drink NEAR as much root beer as you do Anna!”

Consistency is something that is really hard to achieve.  Parents often want their children to do what they tell them to do, rather than following the parents’ example.  Even the Pharisees in Jesus’ day struggled with this.  Despite them seeming like paragons of following the law, Jesus said of them, “So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach.”

I think about this when it comes to instructing my children because they are awfully quick to pick up on areas where my actions simply do not line up with the things I’m telling them.  If I am asking them to love other people and speak kindly, but they hear me speaking critically of others or see me acting in an uncaring way, they will see the inconsistency.

For, if root beer is really as unhealthy as all that, big sisters would avoid it completely – not simply fill their glass with the toxic fluid “up to here.”

Planning a Graduation

 

“Dad,” Elise said seriously.  “I don’t want to graduate with boys!”

“I don’t think you have much choice, Elise,” I said.  “It’s an odd fact, but roughly half the earth’s population are boys.”

“It’s true,” Aly put in.  “Boys are weird, but some of them are nice.”

“Do you want Elliot to come to your graduation?”  I asked. 

“Elliot CAN NOT come to my graduation!”  Elise said firmly.  “He is a boy and worse than that, I don’t like him.  He can just stay home.”

“What about me?”  I asked.  “Can I come?”

Elise considered this a little longer than she did for her brother.  “No, you can’t come either,” she said at last.  “You’re my dad and you’re a boy too and I don’t want any boys at my graduation.”

It was such a weird conversation to be having because of course, Elise is six years old and coming down to the tail end of first grade.  She has eleven more years to grow and develop and get more accustomed to boys and even develop a better relationship with her older brother (if that is possible).  The idea of her planning her high school graduation now, just a month before the end of her first grade year is a bit silly.

Of course, she doesn’t think it is silly.  She sees it as important – she needs to set ground rules ahead of time so that everything goes off perfectly when the big day comes.

Paul told the Philippians, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6,7 NLT)

There are so many verses in the Bible about giving up worry and anxiety and trusting God with our future.  I suppose there are a lot of reasons for that, but chief among them is that most of us feel like our lives are uncontrolled chaos.  We have a deep desire to be in control and to order the things around us and somehow the people in our lives resist our attempts at ordering things.

The blessing is that God’s peace will guard our hearts and mind and give us calmness as we face the future – even if that future includes a graduation ceremony, 11 years from now, in which an unwanted brother and dad show up.

Infamous

 

“Would any of you all like to be famous?”  I asked my gathered family.

Six-year-old Elise was the first to put in her 2 and ½ cents.  “I would NOT want to be famous,” she said firmly.  “Because when you are famous, people follow you around and take pictures of you when you don’t want them to and that would be SO annoying.”

“That would be a downside to fame,” I agreed.  “As it is, you only have to deal with your mom and dad taking pictures of you.”

“I would like to be inspicuous,” Anna said.

“Inspicuous?”  I asked.  This was a word with which I was unfamiliar.

“You know – kind of the opposite of conspicuous, but not exactly the opposite – inspicuous.”

“You mean inconspicuous,” Elliot said.  “That’s a word and inspicuous isn’t.”

“No, I don’t think I mean inconspicuous – just inspicuous.  Anyway, I don’t really want to be famous,” Anna said, thoughtfully.  “I’d rather be infamous – like you, Dad.”

“Infamous like me?”  I asked.  “I hadn’t realized I was infamous – notorious, maybe, but certainly not infamous.”

“It’s all of those botched surgeries,” Elliot put in helpfully. 

“What do you think infamous means?”  Elaine asked.

“Oh, it means famous, but only to a select group of people.  So, like Dad is famous in Brookneal and to some Mennonites, but he isn’t famous all across the country.  That's what infamous means.”

“Oh, no, Anna,” I said.  “Infamy has to do with fame for bad reasons.  So, for instance, if I took to the high seas as a pirate, I would be infamous as the first Mennonite Physician Pirate, but hopefully, I’m not infamous now.”

I sometimes think about fame.  It seems as though there are many people who desire a bit of fame and in the internet age, it is possible to get attention from others.  We call some of these people “influencers” and can follow their trials and travails on their You Tube channels.

Of course, most of these people aren’t famous for any particularly great reason.  They haven’t fixed world hunger or brought peace to the Middle East – they simply make content that other people are willing to click on and even sometimes “like and subscribe.”

The Bible makes it clear that our goal should not be to gain fame or attention for ourselves.  Jesus said, “Those who speak for themselves want glory only for themselves, but a person who seeks to honor the one who sent him speaks truth, not lies.” (John 7:18)  If we are representing Jesus, we will attempt to honor Him with the things we say and share – even if we get little or no attention for ourselves.

At the end of the day, our goal should not be to be famous – or infamous – or even “inspicuous.”  Our goal should be to bring to glory to God.  As His fame grows and His name is well known, the world can be changed for good in a way that a million internet influencers never could.