Change happens...

This past week we celebrated Thanksgiving with my wife's parents and with my Mom and something struck me in what could be a "throw away" moment... it happened in my mind while helping my wife's folks load up their car with all the stuff they brought with them from their home in Indiana and all the new stuff they bought on "black Friday" (i'm thinking with regard to a certain president-elect that day should have taken on an entirely different meaning this year ;)... anyway i had the strangest sensation at that moment... i realized...."Hmm, there may not be a whole lot more family events like this..."

Not because i don't love my in-laws or my Mom or because all we do is fight at family gatherings about religion, politics or this year's embarrassment-to-the-family-family member... but because everyone is getting "older"...

It seems a bit unreal to me that i have one son who is about to head off to college and another one who will probably do the same thing in just a couple more years after his brother... the holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas will be different... it's hard to explain but it is profound.

My family is changing...

My in-laws and my Mom are growing older, Ruthie and i are growing older and get this... my children are well on their way to adulthood.... it's weird. It's one of those things where i think i should be like... happy.

And instead, i became all introspective and things....

Anyway, we had a good time, and tomorrow (Saturday) will go on what could be a last current "family configuration" trip to a tree farm and cut down our own Christmas tree... something Ruthie and i first did when we lived in Calgary... that tree cost us 5 bucks Canadian (in US currency about $2)... oh yeah it was a long time ago... i really need to be more careful about those "throw away" moments...

More Flags.... More Fun?!?

This past week i didn't write for my blog because my family took a couple of days and went to Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois. And except for a couple of minor inconveniences, we had a lot of fun! Of course the one who was most excited and couldn't stop talking about going to Great America for about a month leading up to it was our youngest, Levi.

The most interesting thing to me was the difference between Great America and a trip we took as a family a little over a year ago to Disney World... Now don't get me wrong, Great America was a ton of fun, and Disney was simply fantastic but in many ways the differences were pretty startling. For one, Great America is a place that a typical family could basically afford... my understanding is that the prices for Disney were increased this year... while the prices at Great America decreased! As a matter of fact you could purchase Great America tickets on-line for the typical admission price for a child! Which we did! Very nice!

On the other hand the difference in the parks was very obvious as well. While bands of pre-teens and teen-agers freely roamed Great America, unfettered from parents... at Disney, everywhere you looked it was family after family after family. Not only did you see tons and tons of roaming bands of young people at Great America... but the cleanliness factor was stark. Ask anyone in the church office, i am a freak about bathrooms being clean. i am absolutely convinced that the level of cleanliness of the bathrooms in a public place (like Great America or Disneyland or a library, school or a church) can tell you a whooooole lot about a place! And frankly in the bathrooms at Disneyworld the operative word was "spotless"... at Great America... mmmmm, not so much.

It was sort of weird to me... going to Great America brought me back to my High School days here in northern Illinois. Getting a chance to go to Great America was what you lived for! Back then it was a place of wonder and amazement... but i have to admit i sort of accidentally slipped into my evaluation mode and felt a bit sad that it seemed to have lost a lot of that luster in the intervening years...

It was still fun to go, ride the coasters (it was definitely affirmed *again* that i am too old for wooden roller coasters) and watch my kids have a blast! So maybe there slogan is really true... more flags... is more fun!

Test driving the "vacated" nest....

This past week, we have had a taste of life without our "big" boys at home and just our two "little" ones around. i guess you could say a partially vacated (not even "empty) nest experience! i must admit it's a ton quieter and quite a bit less rushed. In many ways it's a bit of a preview to life with a couple of older kids out on their own and a couple of younger ones waiting in the queue for their day to "launch".

This has caused me to think about my older boys quite a bit... they have both been for the most part "lab rats"... sorry there really is no other way to describe them! We have tried a bunch of stuff out on them just to see how they would react or how it would work and i'm happy to report that after all these years and multiple mis-steps, they are still alive!

We think (and i stress think) for the most part they are fairly well adjusted kids... of course, every parent thinks that of their kids right? You know the old... He-seemed-like-such-a normal kid-until.... Our guys love their parents, their grand-parents, their siblings, their church and of course and most importantly their God. They look out for one another (sometimes to a fault), they back one another up and they will blow the whistle on one another (to trustworthy adults) if need be. All this is good, i think... however, i am still amazed that fairly normal children would result from my input (their mother is normal, i on the other hand... well, talk to my wife).

Still, i look forward to their coming home late this week, they will no doubt have very funny and very serious stories to tell about their time away and it will get sort of "nutty" around here all over again but that's okay, not having everyday be "nutty" seemed so far away all those years ago...

Sibling Rivalry?

My "little" brother Ken and his family are coming to spend the Memorial Day week with us... this will be the first time he has been to our new home near Chicago since we moved back to the area a few years back and the first time our families have been together since we spent a few days at Disneyworld last Spring (my brother works for THE Mouse. i am looking forward to him being here for a number of reasons... most of all because i really like Christy (his wife) and my niece (who calls me "the other" uncle Bobby) Julia is a hoot!

My brother and i are several years apart in age but when we were kids we still spent a ton of time together. Probably the funniest thing i remember about my brother is the fact that as a kid i didn't even know that my mother was pregnant with him until the day she went to the hospital to deliver him! Seriously... i was clueless!

Neither of us had a "dad' in our home growing up and so consequently (even though i didn't realize it at the time) since i was older, i sort of became like a dad... at least for the time i was at home before going off to college. i must admit i was clueless about that too!

i think i can honestly say, i never considered or thought of Ken as a "pest" or as a "hindrance" to my cool-ness factor. He was (and is) my brother and it was simply accepted that if my mom or one of our other aunts or uncles couldn't be around to take care of him... i did.

That's just the way it was.

My mom was real clear about another thing too... she made it real clear that under no circumstances was i to ever lay a finger on my brother! No matter what he said, no matter what he did... i was to never hit him. Truthfully though... i think he had my back on that one most of the time... because i remember there being a couple of times, i clocked him!

i can honestly say that in spite of me, he turned out to be a fairly normal person :) Which just goes to show just what God can do despite what how much we may mess things up!

Tradition can be a very good word....

I don't know how many of you have Family traditions, (my suspicion is that most of you do) but if not you should work extra hard to establish a few! Traditions can become powerful statements about what is important and what matters most!
Recently Ruthie (my wife) was explaining to a co-worker one of our Christmas traditions. Every Christmas we purchase a movie or one of the classic Christmas specials to watch as a family. On Christmas eve our family gathers together to watch the video but not before our children check out what is in their Christmas stockings (which this year for the first time in a long time, we did not have the chance to hang above a fireplace BUT we did get to hang them up together as a family all under one roof... for more on that, read my earliest blogs!). Also on Christmas eve our kids for the past ten to twelve years have received new Christmas pajamas. As they dig into their stockings and put on their new jammies, we sit down to watch a movie and drink Hot Chocolate!
After Ruthie explained this Daniels tradition to her co-worker they remarked..."Really?!? Our family should do something like that!"

And so I am writing to you to say.... Yes... if you don't have anything like that you are doing as a family... it's still not too late, Christmas eve and Christmas day are a few days off... come up with some simple tradition that will help your family to remember what matters most.

Have a great Christmas and a safe New Year!

I'm Thinking of...

....an incredible wife...
....four great kids that are amazing and continue to amaze
....a staff that are I call friends
....a church that truly loves all people
....in-laws that love the church
....people that live in places like Edmonton, Indianapolis, Lincoln, Avon, Noblesville, Cromwell, Calgary, Love's Park, and all over Chicagoland
....freedom in this life and in the life to come
....an opportunity to make history
....a warm bed to lay down in at night
....the ability to watch the snow that is falling outside my door
....the food that currently sits in my refrigerator
....great books
....the right to teach our children in our home
....a nation that is a great idea come to life
....my failures and my successes
....forgiveness for my deepest faults
....this quiet moment

and my challenge is to never take any of this for granted and to strive instead for an attitude thankfulness every single day!

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Do You Feel Old?!?

Serving as a pastor for now about twenty years, it was bad enough when the kids from my first ministry in Calgary, Alberta started having their own children... but now comes another blow...

... this past week my oldest son went and took his driving test for the state of Illinois and passed.

There it is... another official notch in the proverbial "you're an old dude" gun!
It's not all that bad though... I mean the fact is, his Mom is technically even older than me (Don't worry, she never reads my blog... just sort of nods when I tell her about it and says "Uh-huh...")!

It was almost like an out of body experience watching him back the car out of the garage without his mom, another adult or me riding "shot-gun" as it were. He still has a lot of learning to do in my book and the state has the audacity to tell him he is ready to drive our family vehicle without his mom or me in the car with him? Who do they think they are?!?

He looked so.... "independent".

Does that make sense?

It was almost like he didn't need his mom or dad for anything at that point. I mean, I know that's not completely true but the driver's license thing is a significant rite of passage to adulthood in our culture. This is one of those critical points at which what we have invested in our children as they have been and continue to grow into adulthood pretty much shows up.

I'll tell you this much... my son is blessed to have his Mom as his mom because every fiber in my body screamed not to let him even begin learning how to drive... oh it's not that I don't trust him, because I trust him implicitly. I am just not sure about the other 17 year olds out there on the roads.

The upside to all of this however is that having another driver in the family has been helpful... the next hurdle however is on the horizon and getting ever closer (*gulp*)... college.

Man, I'm old.

One Crazy Summer...in a good way!

Non-Stop!

That is how i describe the last few weeks at the Daniels household!

Between trips to hang out with friends in Indianapolis, a missions trip to Mexico, a week at Camp in central Indiana and another missions trip to Atlanta, Georgia... various members of the family have had to adjust to changing time zones, spend 24 hours (one entire day) in a mini-van simply driving, try to live without Mom around (this is huge) and wash mountains of laundry! All of this travel and seeing the world has been a bit insane! But it has been good too!

Pictures of our Mexico missions trip are forthcoming as are pictures from Camp Good News! The trip to Atlanta just happened this morning around 6AM but i am sure that there will be plenty of pictures to share as well when everyone returns from the Dream Center!

The one thing that has struck me with all of this non-stop action around our house has been that our three oldest are growing up... fast.

Of course the three year old is going to be around for a while but the others, well we had a bit of a wake up call to having an empty house might be like one day. Ruthie hung out with our 3 year old and i found out what it was like to make up meals as we went along! With no one in the house there really wasn't any reason to keep the fridge stocked! i am really hoping we stick to that one when the oldest ones are out on their own... hopefully it'll discourage them from thinking they can come and raid our fridge when theirs' is empty! i can hear them now.... "Hey let's go over to Mom and Dad's they always have extra food in the fridge... Uh, check that, no they don't... every since we left the house all they have is ice!"

Anyway, i will be getting photos of our travels and as soon as i do, my plan is to can get them uploaded... uh oh i better go, Ruthie has started the mini-van and the kids are loading up... not sure where we're off to next but it'll be a blast!

Twenty Years and counting....

This past weekend I had the opportunity to celebrate a very unusual anniversary celebration.

My father-in-law and mother-in-law have served for the past 20 years as Senior Pastor of a church in the town of Peru, Indiana which incidentally is also known as Circus City, USA!

They have done an incredible job in the face of some serious odds.

The biggest of course being the fact that the statistical average tenure for ministers at any one church here in the United States is less than four years... what an incredible testament to both that church and to my wife's parents!

In a really weird way, we were celebrating and remembering both their twenty years there and how much of our life as a couple and family has been shared with that same church. For example, that same church has witnessed their Senior pastor and his wife's son graduate from High school, the marriage of their oldest daughter and then that same son's marriage, they have witnessed us move to Canada, our return to the US, a move to Indiana and then a move back to Illinois, they have also witnessed the arrival of their six grandchildren and more than likely will then watch as the oldest of the grandchildren graduates from High school and heads off to a Christian college with plans to enter the ministry and serve the church just like his grandfather!

It has by no means been an easy twenty years, I know my father-in-law (just like all of us) can be a handful and (as you can probably gather from last week's post) churches can be filled with "prickly" people as well but all things considered (and that is a lot) this pretty cool!

I guess the thing that has amazed me recently is that this church of around 200 people, recently purchased, completely renovated and updated a Civil War era firehouse in their town. The Firehouse has quickly become the place locally for catered wedding receptions, retirement parties, birthday parties and just like we did last weekend, anniversary celebrations. On top of all that the second floor of the building is a Student pastor's dream space with pool tales, video games and flat screen TV's. The entire building is a WiFi zone as well!

So while I shared my frustrations last week( So You Think You Can Lead A Church Huh?), let me also say that there are quite a few churches that do allow their leaders to lead and quite a few leaders (like my father-in-law) who when all is said and done, lead quite well.