Today I had a joyful time discussing Amie and I’s goals and desires for our boy’s spiritual formation with a couple leaders at Westminster. Ostensibly under the auspice of consulting on the topic of youth ministry, our conversation ranged longer on the subjects of a parent’s responsibility for their children’s spiritual development (and associated guilt), the different needs of various age groups, the effect of trauma on relational connection with Jesus, and the pitfalls of hypocrisy. I came hoping to offer some support as a consultant by listening well and clarifying purpose, but I walked away receiving support and encouragement (and three borrowed books!).
Royal woke with croup at 11:00 last night. After trying the usual moist/cold air combo it was clear he wasn’t going to be sleeping. He’d vomited his dinner and was struggling to draw breath. So I drove him to the ER.
The staff at the ER were very helpful, but it’s always a long process. After three hours we’d gotten him an epinephrine nebulizer and a dose of Prednisone with a prescription for more. We were home by 2:30 this morning.
I started work an hour late and left an hour early, but somehow still managed to get some work done. Now I’m filling Royal’s prescription and then we’ll have a movie night. Excited to watch Mufasa again!
It’d been so long since I’d written anything on the log that I didn’t realize that my publishing system was broken. It’s really set up to only go one year at a time without manual intervention. Maybe I should fix that…
I’m having a bit of a freeze. What do I write about? I mean, the purpose of this is to post life updates but I’m not even sure what to say. There is so much going on, and at the same time nothing that’s really that exciting. I guess I really want to have something remarkable to report. It’s funny because I still haven’t published anything about our trip to Italy.
Let’s talk about books shall we?
I’ve read the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder series with Graham and Royal. We’ve decided to start on White Fang, and we just finished it last night. Graham is ready to read just about anything that is concrete at this point, even things for which the material is a little over his head.
Royal hasn’t shown much propensity for reading books at this point, but we’ve just made a new discovery that is working really well for us. Audiobooks. We are going through the adventures of Winnie the Pooh right now, and it’s absolutely wonderful. The reader is from the BBC, and he has a wonderful voice and is really excellent at reading the book.
Amie and I are on the second to last book of the Harry Potter series. This may be the first time that I’ll read the entire series from start to finish. I’d read the first five books back when I was a teenager, but I hadn’t read the ones that were published after I joined the military - the last two. I’m finding that my interest in them grows as we get deeper in. You and I have had several discussions about the nature of emotions and children’s literature. I’m more inclined to believe that very young children can handle complex emotions in books. I’ve noticed that the Harry Potter series pretty much eradicates all emotions in the main characters for the first three or four books. I think this is a weakness of Rowling’s approach, since it actually removes one of the most interesting parts of the story, namely how the protagonist is responding to the challenges he faces. In contrast, I really appreciate how CS Lewis offers very complex emotional situations in his book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, such as betrayal, fear, courage, and honor.