Odds and Ends

I noticed a Facebook status this week that got me thinking.  It was a Dr. Seuss quote which I will try to quote from memory:

"There is something that is truer than true, that there is no one that is youer than you."

I am very grateful to Dr. Seuss.  How else will I remember the sound that the letter "F" makes, except by knowing that there are four fluffy feathers on a Fiffer-Feffer-Feff?  Anyway, being the ever-so-egocentric person that I am, the above quote (which I undoubtedly butchered, but you get the idea) got me thinking about those things that make me unlike any other person who has ever lived before in all of history.  Here are a few of the oddities that make up who I am.

ODDS

1. I have never been in a Dollar General.
2. I have never eaten at White Castle.
3. I have been investigated by the Secret Service for threats made on the life of the President.
4. I consider myself an expert on James Bond movies, Hardy Boys books and the making of the perfect turkey sandwich.
5. I don't drink coffee, milk or wine.
6. I have one wife and one dog.
7. I have two sons, two daughters, two cats and two cars.
8. I have three dollars in my wallet.
9. I am a lawyer, but you would never know it from the car that I drive.
10. When I was in law school, I proposed to a girl who had just graduated from high school.  We were married five months later (and no, she wasn't pregnant).
11. I once stood in line for over an hour just to get into a McDonald's.  Once I got inside, I was so hungry I ordered two Quarter Pounders, two large fries and a strawberry shake.  I wolfed it all down and thought it was one of the best meals I'd ever had.
12. I am especially obsessive-compulsive when it comes to sports.  When I was in high school, I would shoot 200 free throws every day.  When I was in college, I would spend 2 hours a week working on my snow skiing technique...in my living room.  Next was table tennis (you really don't want to know about this one, trust me).  And then I started running.  I have run six marathons (26.2 mile races) and on May 23, 2008, my good friend Mike Acock and I ran 36 miles together to celebrate our 36th birthdays.
13. I hate McDonald's.
14. I was born in Michigan but have not stepped foot in that state in 38 years.
15. I love music but am a lousy musician.  I've taken piano lessons, guitar lessons and saxophone lessons and am not especially good at any of them.

ENDS

I am a huge fan of the Seinfeld show.  Just this past week, I had a new experience which was right out of a Seinfeld episode (the Pez Dispenser episode for you Seinfeld freaks).  I was in Joplin for my daughter's high school state soccer tournament.  While driving down I-44, I noticed a few things.  First of all, are there any armadillos left in the world or were they all hit by cars in between Lebanon and Springfield last week?  (Seriously, I had no idea there were so many armadillos in Missouri.  And my oh my do they make a mess when they get hit on the highway.)  Secondly, there were a number of classy looking billboards for casinos that caught my eye.  I live right off of I-70 in Columbia and drive by a casino billboard every single day and I can honestly say it has never once got me wanting to go visit the Isle of Capri in Boonville.  (Never been there, but hear that the regulars who go there refer to it as the "Pile of Debris."  How nice.)  But while driving to Joplin, I was captivated by one of the billboards and thought "I've got to go check this place out."

But in order to get the full sense of the story, I have to provide a little background.  One of my best friends growing up has told me stories about going to casinos and dog tracks in his home state of Wisconsin.  Before the days of legal gambling on the "boats," I tried to explain to my friend that I didn't think he had really been to a casino in Wisconsin since Nevada was the only place in the country at that time where casinos were legal.  I will never forget his response: "Oh but this was on an Indian reservation.  They can do whatever they want there."  When I first heard this explanation as a 12-year old, all sorts of images filled my mind of my friend at a casino on an Indian reservation where they can do whatever they want there.

Lo and behold, the casino being advertised on a billboard along I-44 was a casino just across the border in Oklahoma...on an Indian Reservation.  It was seven minutes away from my hotel in Joplin.  I have been to Las Vegas and walked through the ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding casinos of the Bellagio, Treasure Island, Mirage, Paris, Caesar's Palace, Flamingo Hilton, Venetian, but I had never been to a casino anywhere else.  Imagine my surprise when I walked into the casino in Oklahoma and Tonto was not there to greet me at the door.  Pocohontas was not serving drinks and I didn't see a single freakin' headress or anything that looked Indian anywhere in that casino.  What kind of Rez is this?  Where are the teepees?  Where are the buffalo being hunted and the red men?  I was shocked.  I had these images so seared into my brain of what a casino on an Indian reservation looked like that I was having trouble believing my eyes.

So how was this like a Seinfeld episode?  Well, the Pez Dispenser episode has some great dialogue where George admits that he has never understood why anyone would go to a flea market....because he just assumed that there were fleas there.  (I think this is hilarious because I've never wanted to go to a flea market for that exact reason!)  Anyway, I had similar misconceptions about what a present-day Indian reservation was like.  I'm not sure why I thought I would just cross the border into Oklahoma and all of a sudden be swept into the Wild West with Indians on horseback directing me to the blackjack teepees where Chief Silver Scowl would be dealing out of an eight-deck shoe.

Well...now I know.

Mid-Life Musings: Beginnings and Endings

Two-months ago I crossed a barrier.  I was a young and vibrant 39-year old who then had a birthday that pushed me into the mid-life frontier.  Now here I am, a youthful personality trapped in an aging body as the unmerciful clock keeps ticking no matter how hard I try to pretend otherwise.  As I look around to gather my bearings in this unknown world that is mid-life, I first notice that I'm no wiser than I was yesterday.

What gives?  I thought that was the trade-off...the magical exchange...as the body ages, the mind fills up with wisdom.  Instead, I'm taking what feels like my first baby-steps in what is now my fifth decade not knowing where I am going and why I am even going anywhere in the first place.  So here are my mixed-up musings as I transition into truly becoming an adult.

• I like to begin new projects and I like to end them.  I hate everything in between (you know, where you actually have to be constructive and put in the work).  It is easy to remember the beginnings and ends, the highs and lows, but almost all of our life is lived in the middle.  We like to think we are living a glamorous life, yet we spend so much time putting stuff in our mouths, sitting on toilets, sleeping (or trying to sleep), mindlessly flipping through channels on the TV, driving from one place to another and planning the short interludes that we do when we're not in a car or on a toilet or hypnotized by the TV or sleeping or eating.

• Now about these projects I like to start, I have begun writing four different novels.  I have outlined basic plot structures and begun work on the opening sequences on each of these stories.  Then I get bored or realize how worthless these stories really are and the reality is that I will never get a book published.  So why do I have this urge to keep this hope alive that I will come up with something fresh that people would actually like to read and pay money to do so?  I guess I have this itch that I like to have the option of scratching whenever the mood suits me which makes me think I do have some hidden artistic skills that will at any moment blossom into a beautiful thing.  Any moment now...just wait...any...moment...now...

• I have this strange faith in God which has gotten all jumbled up of late.  One of my best friends in the world knows how jumbled up I am about God so he suggested I read a book that he himself had never even read.  So I read it and it makes all sorts of sense to me but doesn't really unjumble my mess.  So now I'm even more jumbled up than ever.  But now I'm okay with it.  If you want to talk about God and are okay with being messy about it...I'm your man.

• I have four young children.  Four kids is a lot and tending to their every need and want can be overwhelming most of the time.  When they are all around and chirping, they drive me crazy.  When even one is gone for more than hour, I miss him/her and feel like something is just not right in the world.  Surely there is a balance where sanity can actually exist and I can feel like a parent that is in partial control of his family.  (By the way, four kids is a lot these days!  Did I already mention that?)

• Beginning a new thing is usually pretty easy.  Ending it is even easier.  It's sticking with it during the good and bad where the true challenge lies.  Whether it's marriage, raising kids, a job, school or a New Year's resolution, this cat won't be impressed unless there's truly that middle...that's where life really is.  I have learned a lot by reading about other people's experiences, but muddling through the mud puddles in the middle is where wisdom resides.  There are no short cuts.  Trust me, I keep trying to take them and they never get me to where I want to go.

• And the world keeps moving, while some pass on...Our family suffered a loss in January when our cat Nemo was run over by a car.  Nemo was a good cat and was loved by all.  He was more than just a family pet.  He represented something abstract -- a touch of grace at a time when it was desperately needed.  His sudden death seems harsh and cruelly unnoticed by all of humanity except for the few who knew him during his two years of living.  We have all suffered loss in various forms and I don't pretend that the death of a cat can even compare to the loss of a loved one.  Yet for my kids, this was their first taste of the death of something that they loved.  My heart was broken for them as they grieved.  What surprised me though, was how my heart seemed to enlarge as I held them while their little bodies were convulsed by sobs.  I did not think it was possible to love them any more than I did, but there it was -- a newly discovered compassion that was triggered by a horrible event.  I hated their pain, but loved them more for seeing how brutally they loved and how brutally they experienced loss.

• College basketball is dead to me.

• Life is a paradox.  We often utter clichés to express this fact, such as "the more you know, the more you know you don't know."  Wisdom is a thing to be grasped, yet when you do grasp it in those random fleeting moments, it's nothing like you thought it would be.  As I age and mature, my wealth of knowledge has been exposed for what it really is -- a single drop in a vast ocean of all that there is to know.  Unlike the connect-the-dot puzzles I did as a child, I have been connecting dots all of my life and the pattern that is emerging is more mysterious than ever.

As you can see, there really are mud puddles in my mind.  Thanks for reading.

To Exist

I believe in God.  More precisely, I believe in the God described in the Bible.

I had a thought which hit me while I was in church this past Sunday which has been rumbling around in my mind ever since.  It has become a mud puddle.

When someone asked God who he was, his answer seemed a bit strange: "I AM."  Just in case that wasn't entirely clear, God was kind enough to clarify: "I AM who I AM."  (Ah...now we are getting somewhere!)

Okay, God, you are wanting to tell us that you are...that you exist.  And not only that, that your very name implies that YOU ARE.  Nothing more than that really; but nothing less either (which is a lot).

Before I ever came into existence, God existed.  While I exist, he still exists.  Once I stop existing, the dude will still abide.

I've never done drugs before, but I've always thought that when one gets high there is this fleeting moment of clarity when things come together and you get a glimpse of ultimate truth and you remind yourself to not forget this one important thing when you come back to reality.  Well, I experienced something akin to that when I was in church and I thought about God naming himself I AM.  (Most of us don't get to name ourselves, but God was not so unlucky.)  If I may be so bold to paraphrase God's own description of himself, he chose to name himself EXISTENCE.  He exists.  And because he exists, we exist and everything that has ever existed has existed.

One of the more popular philosophies of the day is atheism.  People like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (RIP) are celebrities who have become famous by denying that God exists.  I have friends who have embraced this ideology and thrown off what they consider to be the crippling yoke of religion/faith.

But I do believe that EXISTENCE exists.  I believe there is a purpose in the randomness.  I believe that everything that exists points to EXISTENCE.  As I type these words, I am reminding myself that He is.  I so easily forget and spend so much of my time (existence?) as if he isn't.  But he is.  It's his name.  Why did he name himself that?  He does't want us to forget.  I guess I was reminded again on Sunday.  He is.

"And that has made all the difference."  (Final line of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken)

Smooth Sailing: The Year in Review

2011 has been a challenging year.  In fact, that's putting it rather kindly.  2011 has been a difficult year.  Now don't get me wrong -- that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I keep hoping that as I grow older that I will get more organized and the wisdom that comes with age will help me better control my environment.  But instead, I find myself frustrated that as life flies by I am holding on for dear life with absolutely no sense of control.  If I had thought ahead and was better organized, I might have sent out a Christmas card this year (my first ever).  I was blessed by all the cards/letters/pictures that many of you sent to me.  With every card I get, I think "some day I'll be as together as [insert your name here BUT ONLY if you sent me a Christmas card] and send one of these out."

So I failed again, but it's not too late to do something.  Here is my last-ditch effort to put together a Christmas Card.  I give to you the Barton Family Year in Review, with the seemingly-paradoxical subtitle "Smooth Sailing."

Elly
I am finishing this blog entry on December 28th, which happens to be our wedding anniversary.  Today marks 15 years that Elly and I have been together as husband and wife.  We hope to celebrate each other by having a romantic dinner at a posh Columbia venue.  I can honestly say that I am proud of my wife for being more attractive, thinner, smarter, more creative and more loving than the day that I married her.  It hasn't always been easy, but that's what has forced us to grow together.  I love you Elly.

Elly never finished college as we decided to start our family and have her be a stay-at-home mom.  But this year, she decided it was time to head back to school to get her degree.  She has been a very dedicated student and is excited about obtaining a degree in nursing so that she can go to work once all of the kids are in school.

Back in January, Elly surprised me with a trip to San Francisco on my birthday.  I had never been to California before.  We did all of the typical tourist stuff (Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, Muir Woods, Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge) but probably enjoyed our drive down to the Monterey Peninsula the best.  It was nice to get away even though it was only for 3 days.

Elly and I also got away for another quick trip in May when we went to Nashville to see Neal Morse in concert and meet up with John Elefante.  I previously blogged about this trip here.

Serai
Serai turned 13 this month and is partially to blame for this being such a difficult year.  I feel as if our family has been taken hostage by Serai's sports.  Serai played on a competitive soccer team this fall which meant that most of our fall weekends were spent traveling to her games.  While it is always fun to watch her play a sport that she loves, the constant travel took its toll on our family (I thought).  As soon as soccer season ended, high school basketball began.  Serai, despite only being 13 and an 8th grader, is playing on the varsity team at Christian Fellowship.  She appears to have improved nicely from last season, though she still gripes about all the running she has to do in practice.  Serai is an excellent student and Elly and I are grateful that we never have to get on to her about doing her homework.  She is very self-motivated as far as that is concerned.  She looks like a grown-up woman and I still have a hard time believing that I have a child who looks like that.

Marek
Marek is now 11 and is also a good student.  Following in the steps of his older sister (and dad, for that matter), he is learning how to play the saxophone.  Marek is almost always pleasant to be around as he has a great sense of humor and is usually happy.  He loves to read.  Earlier in the year he finished the Harry Potter series along with the Percy Jackson series.  He is now enjoying other books along similar lines.  Of course, most of his recreational time is spent playing games on the XBox.

Silas
Silas just turned 7 and is in 1st grade.  Of all of my kids, he is the one that I most worry about in school.  However, he has surprised both Elly and me with how well he is doing.  Silas underwent a rather significant physical transformation when he decided to have his hair cut short.  He went from having a blond, curly mop on his head:

To this:

Most of his friends didn't even recognize him after the haircut.  Ariya assured us immediately afterwards that "his name is still Silas."

Silas is now a cub scout and the two of us are doing that together.  While I enjoy spending this time with him, I find that hanging around a bunch of 1st grade boys (whenever he has his den and pack meetings) provides quite a challenge to my patience.  Seven-year old boys are wild and I have found that I don't have quite the grace for other people's out-of-control children that I have for my own.

Ariya
Ariya is 3 and is going to pre-school two days a week.  She is about as cute as a little girl can be.  She is also taking dance lessons and soccer lessons.  While she loves both dance and soccer, she actually appears to have a lot more skill when it comes to soccer at this point.  She really got into Christmas this year and that was fun to see.  Elly is usually a nazi about taking the Christmas tree down as soon as possible after we have opened our presents on Christmas morning; however, Ariya's pleas to leave the tree up this year have melted her heart and it is still standing at this very moment.  Here she is standing in front of the tree:

Perhaps one of the most difficult challenges of the year has been dealing with Ariya's health.  While we initially thought that she was suffering from severe allergies to gluten, we're not entirely sure that's what has been going on.  She has very little appetite and is constantly complaining about stomach pain.  She has improved since she has been on a completely gluten-free diet, but still has times when her stomach swells up and is in pain from constipation and intestinal inflammation.  What concerns us so much is that we have no idea what it is that we are dealing with and no doctor has been very helpful or interested in determining what the problem is.  This has been especially hard on Elly as she tends to worry about things a lot more than I do.  She (Elly) frequently has dreams or intense feelings that Ariya has cancer or some other deadly disease that is going to take her from us.

This and That
In March, we spent our Spring Break at Disney World and had an amazing time as a family.  I believe it was one of those trips that my kids will never forget.  We laughed and enjoyed one another so much on that vacation and will probably always compare our future family vacations to this one.

As most of you know, my faith in God is of paramount importance to me.  From my perspective, I've had a very challenging time in my spiritual life where I've gone from thinking about God all the time to the last three months where I've felt very dry and distant from him.  It disappoints me that I'm in this apathetic state, yet I trust that His purposes are being fulfilled in some way that I'm not privy to.  I will continue to trust God with my life, with the lives of my kids, with my marriage, with my job, with my overall time and place in this world.  Since I believe that God is always at work in the lives of those who trust in Him, I guess things are probably going better than I think they are.

During this season when we reflect upon God coming to earth as a baby and on new beginnings, I am going to challenge myself to remember that His mercies are not only new each year, but every day I can have a fresh start being a precious child of God.  Having this faith, I do believe that my life -- despite the stress, busy-ness, worries and disappointments that are always front-of-mind -- is going along just the way it should.  Now that I consider all of this, I guess you could say what seemed like a tough year really was just smooth sailing.

Random Thoughts

Man...Gary Pinkel.

Knowing people is nice.  I saw an executive from a record company this week who gave me a CD which I'm not sure has even been released yet.  It's "God's Not Dead" from DC Talk...I mean, the Newsboys.  Anyway, I figured the worship album from rock groups got old years ago, but the Newsboys have one now.  I must say, it is outstanding.  When it hits the stores, check it out.  Good stuff.

Remember when I used to blog?

I ran four miles this morning.  The first two miles was into the wind and I was cursing the winter weather.  After turning around, the last two miles were with the wind at my back and I was cursing the summer conditions.  Darn wind.

I think I finally paid off my credit card balances for last Christmas and here we are.  I propose to have Christmas every other year.  Wouldn't that make it more special...you know, kind of like the Olympics.  Besides, then I would know what it feels like to be financially solvent again.  Actually, we can still have Christmas, just without the gift-giving.  Gift-giving is every odd year, so as not too get too busy with presidential elections, the Olympics, my sister-in-law's birthday and all those other things which keep us on our toes during the even-numbered years.  Anyone with me on this idea?  (Occupy Retailers!)

Gary Gary Gary.

The next two months may be the scariest two months ever for me.  My daughter turns 13 next month and in January, I turn 40.  Forty!  I'm too young to have a child who will be getting her driver's license in three years.   I'm too young to be 40!  I need some Calgon.  (Or do housewives who watch daytime soaps the only ones who get the benefit of Calgon?)

James or Colossians?

In case I forget to think about it next week, I want to express how thankful I am for so many things.  Today as I was looking at myself in the mirror I had this weird self-awareness moment where I thought "Well, that's you.  You made the cut.  You got the chance to live and breathe and look at yourself in the mirror."  I'm thankful for life.  It's a weird thing and I don't understand anything about it, but I'm grateful that I got to be a part of the universe and history.

As I type this, I am watching my son eat (or lick) Fun Dip right now.  Wow...has anything ever at one time in life seemed so amazing and now sounds totally disgusting as Fun Dip?  Why yes...that would be Circus Peanuts.  (No offense to all of you who still dip from time to time.)

If you are ever bored and need something to entertain you for 30 minutes, I highly recommend you find and watch the Seinfeld episode known as "Muffin Top."  It's not one of the episodes normally talked about whenever a Seinfeld conversation inevitably strikes up.  However, I challenge you to watch this episode and then describe everything that goes on in it to a friend in less than 40 minutes.  It's a testament to Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld and the writers of that show that they were somehow able to regularly weave an unbelievable number of plot threads into a 24-minute TV show.

I bet Gary Pinkel could use some cheering up.  The Muffin Top episode might just do the trick.  No, on second thought, Gary just needs some Calgon.

A Post About Nothing

As you may have noticed, I am prone to making allusions to those things which I like.  If I had to pick my absolute favorite TV show, I would without a doubt choose Seinfeld.  (I used to hear all the time how much I looked like Jerry Seinfeld in my college days when I was super-thin and had big hair.  Now that I'm older and have added some weight, people now tell me I look like Ray Romano.  But that's a topic for a different time.)  Anyway, Seinfeld satirized itself by claiming that it was "a show about nothing."  And what was so stunningly brilliant by that claim was that it was basically true, yet somehow so many of those nothingisms we related to and have now transcended to become ingrained icons of our culture.  For example, there is a whole episode that is centered around someone noticing Jerry picking his nose in his car while he was stopped at a traffic light.  ("It wasn't a pick!  It was a scratch.  There was no nasal penetration!")  I wish there were more TV shows about nothing.

Well, this blog post is about nothing.  I thought I would sit down and write about everything that has been going through my mind of late.  And here it is ... nothing ... zilch ... nada ... the big ole goose egg.  I am sure it is as riveting to read such words as it was for me to type them.  Just this morning my friend Dale chided me for encouraging everyone to write only for me to then go into complete radio silence mode.  I figured I could just pull a Jack Nicholson and pound away on my keyboard like his character in The Shining but that wouldn't be very edifying (or original, for that matter).

So how's this for originality: a nothing confession and a nothing apology.  If you aren't familiar with these terms, allow me to enlighten you as I demonstrate them to the best of my (full of pride) abilities.

The Nothing Confession:
I confess to all the world that I have nothing.  Nothing to write about.  Nothing to say to people who ask me what the secret to life is.  Nothing is unfortunately...no thing.

The Nothing Apology:
I am sorry for not having anything to give today.  Check back tomorrow.  Maybe I'll have something then.  For now, I'm sorry.  That's all I've got.

I guess that's something.

"Be still and know that I am God." -Psalm 46:10

Great Inventions: the Diving Board

On July 23rd, Josh Kezer posted the following status update on Facebook:

 "went swimming this evening at a Christian Fellowship Church event and dove off of a diving board for the first time in 20+ years. It was a blast. I did a flip for the first time ever, followed by more, tried and failed at several attempts of half backward flips and dives, face planted even more with flips and twists that the body wasn't built to do and loved every minute of it. Thank God I'm a free man."

As I read Josh's status, I was gripped by the gratitude that I have for my freedom ... and for that matter, diving boards.  To get a better appreciation of why this was such a big deal for Josh, I recommend that you visit his blog and read his story.

Everyone should have the chance to jump off a diving board.  There is a magical sense of anticipation as you are thrown up into the air, momentarily suspended, with various body parts moving in different directions as momentum, and then gravity, carry you to the inevitable destination -- the pool of water that breaks the fall of the diver.  I have spent countless hours honing my acrobatic skills as I have attempted an assortment of different dives over the years.  My wife likes telling a story that I tried to impress her before she even knew me by performing a gainer while she was visiting the neighborhood swimming pool.  (Pure fiction I say!  Well, the gainer part was most likely true, but not the part about me only doing it to impress her.)  I now enjoy watching my two sons delight in the fun as they dive, front flip, back flip, barrel roll, cannonball, can opener, twist, watermelon, pencil, etc. off the board and into the pool.

Freedom is one of those things that you normally don't think of having until you no longer have it.  Many people choose to never jump off a diving board or frolic in a swimming pool and I love that they have the freedom to make such a choice.  However, Josh was denied that opportunity for a large portion of his life.  He knows more about freedom than I ever will.  And I love how on this particular occasion he enjoyed his freedom with the use of a diving board.

I did not get to see Josh flip, somersault, smile and laugh as he recklessly sprung from the board that day, but I know it was a beautiful thing to see.  As summer comes to a close, I might make one more trip to the swimming pool.  If I do, I'm going to make a point of enjoying my freedom.  I'll also take a leap off of the diving board.  Since I no longer need to impress the ladies; Josh, this next gainer is for you.