Allergy

ByHal Hammons

A young girl ate a cookie.  And now she is dead.

It happened right here in Florida, just last month.  She was at a friend’s house.  The cookie had peanut butter in it.  She went into anaphylactic shock.  Her parents administered two EpiPens.  It was all for naught. She died about an hour later.

The story I read said she “accidentally” ate the cookie.  I have eaten many cookies in my day, and (without trying to sound dismissive) that is pretty much impossible.  She ate the cookie on purpose.  She ate peanuts,  and died, on accident.

She was well aware of the risks.  The box was clearly marked, although the warning was obscured.  She simply exercised a bit less caution than she had for her entire life — one time — and this was the consequence.

I hope this does not make me come across as anything less than sympathetic, to the girl, her family and friends, and countless others who suffer daily from the threat of similar circumstances.  My nephew has a horrible food allergy, one that has sent him to the hospital many times.  But his family reads labels.  They ask questions.  Every time.

It’s why we “examine everything carefully” (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22).  It’s the only way we can find the evil from which we must abstain.

Red Auerbach believed to his dying day that Len Bias, who was all set to become the Boston Celtics’ version of Michael Jordan, died the first time he tried cocaine.   Sin kills.  Sometimes it kills the first time you try it.  And how would you like to stand in judgment with a proud act of rebellion as the last notation on your page?

All it takes is one, even if it is an “accident.”  So make sure you don’t have the one.

 

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Audience

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I don’t know Amy Petty, and I barely know her music.  (I’m not much of an indie guy.)  But I appreciate what she wrote in a blog recently about why she is not going to try out for The Voice or one of the other half-million competition programs out there these days.  She says she…

Lean into stress

ByHal Hammons

Run toward your fears.  That’s some billboard-variety advice I get while driving past the local university.  And as we all know, multicolored roadside signs are the most reliable source of life advice these days.

Lean into it.  That’s how the same basic sentiment was expressed in an article I read recently.  Except this wasn’t written by a nameless, faceless intern.  This was from an expert in the field of stress management who woke up one day struggling mightily to manage his own stress.

Dead mice, baby eagles, and children

ByHal Hammons

We saw what appeared to be (from inside a car moving at 30 miles per hour) a dead mouse on the road the other day.  It struck me because I had just been thinking how rare that is.  We see dead possums, raccoons, and various other critters all the time in these parts.  But mice, which surely are as plentiful as any of the others, manage to escape road-pizzadom.  Until last week.

As is generally the case, I have a theory.  I think mice have smaller lives than the other, larger mammals decorating the highways and byways of the Florida Panhandle.  They do not need to roam far from their nests, so they have much less reason to cross 20 feet of asphalt.  That has certain advantages which, given the circumstances of this conversation, would seem to be obvious.  And perhaps they are not worldly wise enough to appreciate the disadvantages.  But we appreciate them on their behalf.  And we can’t help but pity them a bit.  The experience is worth the danger, I say.  I suspect you agree.

I write this having pushed one of my mice out of the nest recently.  The other one will follow one day.  And in many ways, it would be safer for them if they stayed home, keeping their lives small and uncomplicated.  But I want more for them than that.  So occasionally, like the eagle of Deuteronomy 32:11, I stir the nest up a bit.  I remain close at hand to catch them if they aren’t quite self-sufficient, certainly. 

But it’s not my job to make them safe.  It’s my job to make them fly.

I want a full life for my children.  But they have a greater chance of heartbreak if they get married.  A child who is never born to them can never apostatize.  They can’t get fired if they never get a job.  So if my top priority is keeping them from the bad things in this world, the reasonable thing to do is to shelter them from all the decisions that can go poorly.  As a side benefit, I get extra people at the table on board game night for the rest of my life.

And then, one day, I’ll die.  Tracie too.  And two teenagers in the bodies of women in their 60s will be left by themselves, completely unfit for life. 

I don’t want that.  So I let them grow.  When necessary, I force them to grow.

Training a child (Proverbs 22:6) is a multistage process.  First they watch.  Then they help.  Then you help.  Then you watch.  Then you leave.  Whether you are teaching them to bake a cake, build a friendship, serve society, or study the Bible, the process is the same.  You will probably go backward a step or two from time to time to finetune their skills.  But the objective is always to abandon them.  They must be allowed to fly.  And, yes, perhaps crash.  Hey, if Geppetto wanted Pinocchio to stay safe, he shouldn’t have wished for a real, live boy.

The problem I see with “helicopter parents,” as they’ve come to be called, is ultimately selfishness.  The parent cannot bear to let the child go, for fear of either the child’s failure or the parents’ isolation; in so doing the parent stifles the child’s development.  Either the child’s life remains small forever, or the child one day wakes up in a world for which he or she is completely unprepared.  And gets run over.  This is fine for parents in the short term.  They don’t have to cut the cord, and they don’t have to watch their child suffer quite as much.  But it hurts the child in the long run.  They can’t sleep in cribs forever.

“The discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4) has to be administered by me, the parent.  I teach them what God’s expectations are.  I train them.  I correct them.  I show them the proper way, both in word and in example.  And always, I emphasize that it is His guidance, ultimately, and not mine.  I teach them to obey me (Ephesians 6:1) so they will be positioned to obey Jesus (Matthew 7:21) — even when I am not around to guide them. 

Yes, it hurts to watch them disappear into the world.  But it would hurt more if I left them unprepared, thinking that day somehow would never come.   HH

 

Parenting

ByHal Hammons

When giving parenting advice, I have gotten reactions that fall almost completely into one of two categories.  One, the listeners will wholeheartedly agree with me; this indicates that my advice mimics what they are already doing or what they are determined to do when the situation calls for it.  Two, the listeners will ignore me; this means they disagree with me and have no intention of changing — and that they likely see me and my ilk as the cause of the downfall of society.  That’s fair, I guess, since it’s what I think of them.

Coincidence

ByHal Hammons

Gail Borden was an early Texas land developer — what they used to call an empresario — in the early part of the 19th Century, before the Davy Crockett and Sam Houston years.  His cattle empire took a bit of a step forward when he developed a process for condensing milk and putting it in a can where it would keep awhile on the grocery store shelf.  Yes, that Borden.  The county seat of Borden County in West Texas is named Gail.  Not a coincidence.

The curated life

ByHal Hammons

The curator of a museum is responsible for the content of the museum’s displays.  They acquire permanent additions, they arrange for temporary exhibits, they generally set it up so that the museum receives the maximum possible amount of positive attention.  “That place is amazing!” would-be attendees say to one another.  “We absolutely have to go there!”

The plumbing problems, the mounting debt, the personality flaws of the artists — those are not to be put on display.  These negative traits of the museum are every bit as real, perhaps even more so, than the positive ones.  But they stay hidden from the public if the curator has anything to say about it.

Social media has been described as a way of “curating” our lives.  We put on display only those aspects that we wish to show.  Generally that means all good news, all the time — pictures of our dinner, or of the family at the amusement park.  That sort of thing.  “My life is great!  Don’t you wish you were me?” is the general idea.  Or perhaps a bit of wisdom or humor we tracked down on the internet — which, presumably, prove that we ourselves are wise or humorous.  Occasionally we may post a vague request for emotional support — “Can’t get into it now, but I need your prayers,” “Feeling especially glum today,” “New shoes, what do you think?”, etc.  But let’s be honest; those tend very strongly to be more in the “begging for compliments” category and less in the “I am weak and I need help” category; after all, if we really needed help, we would actually talk about our problems.

Actually, “talk about our problems” is another example of the same phenomenon.  Sometimes we can’t seem to talk about anything else.  But I would venture to say, in at least 90 percent of these cases the “problems” in question are not our fault; they are topics of conversation mostly to generate pity or place blame.  It’s the same principle, really — allowing people to see the part of our lives that we are willing to expose — and absolutely nothing else.

But that is not how we build relationships.  That is how we build walls.

The Bible tells Christians, “confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another” (James 5:16).  The prayers of righteous brethren “can accomplish much,” as the text goes on to read, because we have created real and lasting bonds.  They know our weaknesses, so they can minister to us in our weaknesses.  Hiding our weaknesses may make us feel secure in the short term, but what they really do is prohibit our spiritual family from doing its job — and hindering our own ability to grow and mature.

The curated life is all about appearances.  We want to act like everything is wonderful — especially when it isn’t.  The vulnerable life is all about realities.  We are in constant need of assistance, and we want to make ourselves available to the ones most willing and able to offer it.

That is not to say you should take to Facebook and begin confessing every character flaw in front of the whole world.  But perhaps privately admitting our frailties and weaknesses to a trusted brother or sister in Christ would not be the worst idea in the world.