Musings on Life and Living

When I started doing my student teaching in Champaign in 2006, I started listening to the radio as I drove to my assignments in the morning. I bounced around from station to station, looking for a morning show that I enjoyed. I eventually settled on Mix 94.5 and discovered t he morning show hosted by Kevin Lambert and Sarah Addison. I have listened to their show almost religiously ever since. Kevin and Sarah kept me company as I drove the 35 miles to Paxton each morning during the Spring 2008 semester before I graduated. After graduating, I continued to listen to their morning show. I often keep my radio tuned to the station and I listen to the other radio personalities but, in all honesty, it has been Kevin and Sarah that have kept me on the station. I have caught up on news headlines, sports scores, celebrity gossip, weird news, stupid things people have done, local weather and traffic conditions, and random topics. I have enjoyed their easy banter, their obvious friendship, a...

For almost three years now, I have had the immense privilege of teaching the 9-, 10-, and 11-year-old Sunday School classes in my church. Due to people moving and other changes, our Primary President, asked me to switch to co-teaching the 6 and 7-year-olds' class. I openly admit that this was a very hard thing to be asked to do. I didn't want to do it. I have built such remarkable relationships with the budding young men and young women in my class and with their parents and I was worried about what would happen to my students who don't always deal well with change. All the way up until 10:30 this morning, half an hour before church started, I was angry at the change, angry that I was being asked to leave these children in the hands of another set of teachers when I had just a handful of weeks left before the year was up. Then something remarkable happened. Our choir was rehearsing for our performance of "Prayer of Thanksgiving" (also known as "We Gather T...

I was at our Boy Scout District Roundtable meeting tonight and spent about an hour or so afterwards  talking with some scout leaders tonight and realised something very important: humility.  If you have just two boys and they are both relatively young Scouts, it doesn't matter if your troop has been around for 90 years and your leaders have all the training they can possibly get; you still need to have the humility to ask some experienced Scouts (not Scouters) to come in and mentor them.  I was amazed to hear a fellow Scouter complain about dwindling numbers and lack of enthusiasm and then complete toss aside my suggestion that the council find experienced Scouts to serve as mentors to the smaller units. I focused on mentors because they have experienced leaders. What they need are boys in their peer group who can show them the way in a way that those who are not cannot. But instead of considering my advice, she insisted they weren't small because they are the oldest ...

In May of 2012, after talking with friends and then discussing it between us, Gretch and I decided to "go public" with our infertility. We had been learning a lot about ourselves and about this issue and had two good friends who had encouraged us to become advocates for awareness and for ourselves. We decided that we would be open and honest in discussing our infertility, the various treatments and procedures we would undergo, and how the issues were impacting us, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the process of doing so, we have learned that many of our friends are also infertile for a wide variety of reasons and we have become the friends that others turn to when they have questions. Both of us have repeated expressed our willingness to do so and appreciate all those who have come to us with questions. As part of my quest to be an advocate for infertility awareness and understand, I have, from time to time, shared blog posts related to what we have gone throug...

I teach a group of three 11-year-old boys in my Sunday School class. There is another teacher who usually has three girls and one boy between the ages of 9 and 11. When the one boy is gone, I usually bring my three boys in with Derek's class and we take turns teaching. Our course of study this year is the Old Testament but we had both decided to do something different this week in recognition of Easter. It turned out to be a week that we combined our classes, and it was my turn to teach the whole group. I started the lesson by sharing a video that showed some of the last moments of the Saviour's life. It was produced by my church and published on their BibleVideos.org site. This video is called "My Kingdom Is Not of This World." I asked the children to think about why Jesus came to earth. They shared some of their thoughts: he came to teach us, to show us the way back to God, to atone for our sins, to die for us. Then I asked them to think about why the...

First, a story.  I didn't learn how to swim until I was 15 years old. There were several reasons for this, although I don't think I ever articulated them as I grew up. Most of the time it was simple a matter of me saying "I don't know how to swim" and leaving it at that. Now that I am older, I can point out that I really don't like swimming. When I get into a pool, even a wonderfully heated one, my body temperature plummets and my lips turn blue in about 20-30 minutes. I will still go swimming every now and then, usually to make Gretch happy (because she loves swimming) but personally, I could never go swimming again and probably be perfectly content. The reason I finally decided it was time to learn how to swim was that I wanted to become an Eagle Scout. In the Boy Scouts of America, the Eagle is the highest rank a youth can achieve. My three oldest brothers didn't earn it, but the next two did and I wanted desperately to be the third in my family...

I watch the Super Bowl, but not particularly for the game. I don't really care for American football. I do enjoy watching athletic championships, though, so the Super Bowl usually catches my radar. But I really watch the game for the commercials between. The game is perfectly poised at the start of the year to establish the start of the advertising calendar. Super Bowl commercials are remembered for weeks, months, sometimes even years. One of the commercials aired last night was for Coca-Cola. I almost always enjoy their advertisements, even if I don't actually like their original beverage. (Cherry Coke, on the other hand, is my poison of choice thanks to years of working in Dining Services with free access during shifts!) Anyway, this particularly ad was no exception. In case you missed it because you a) don't watch television, b) don't watch the Super Bowl, and/or c) don't follow trending topics in the media, here's a video of it: This delightful...