How to Pray for Your Kid

Recently, I went through Dennis and Barbara Rainey's Passport2Purity book with my son. Inside is a list of valuable suggestions on how to pray for your child. This is a list of 26 suggestions of things to petition the Lord for over the life of your child. I'm hoping the Rainey's don't mind if I re-post that list here!

1. Pray that God will protect your preteen's innocence.
2. Pray that God will bring godly friends into your preteen's life.
3. Pray that your preteen won't forget how to laugh.
4. Pray that God will draw your preteen into a relationship with Him or deepen the relationship that's already established.
5. Pray that God will bring other godly adults into your preteen's life
6. Pray that your preteen will be grounded in the spiritual disciplines of Bible study, prayer, and worship.
7. Pray that your preteen will learn to love the unlovely (reach out to other kids)
8. Pray that God will bring about tests of character in your preteen's life to help him learn how to stand strong in his convictions.
9. Pray that your preteen will develop humility.
10. Pray that you will catch your preteen in sin in order to have opportunities to train him.
11. Pray that your preteen will develop a larger peer group of believers that can have its own identity--enjoying music, parties, and memories together.
12. Pray that intellectual understanding of the changes in your preteen's body will give him cause to praise God for His glorious creation.
13. Pray that your preteen will respect and treat the opposite sex in a biblical manner.
14. Pray that your preteen will develop his own convictions about what he watches, listens to, and reads.
15. Pray that your preteen will learn self-control.
16. Pray that if your preteen is lying to you, God will allow you to catch him in that lie. Pray also that God will give him the courage to follow through with restitution and repentance.
17. Pray that your preteen will not give in to the temptation to use drugs or alchol.
18. Pray that your preteen will develop a loving and caring relationship with his siblings.
19. Pray that your preteen will learn how to manage his anger.
20. Pray that your preteen will learn how to control his tongue.
21. Pray that God will protect your preteen's mind from being polluted by pornographic images and ideas.
22. Pray that your preteen will not develop an attachment and preoccupation with material things.
23. Pray that God will keep the communication lines open between you and your preteen during the teenage years.
24. Pray that your preteen will develop biblical convictions.
25. Pray that your preteen will stand strong wen peers pressure him to do something contrary to those convictions.
26. Pray that your preteen will begin to understand God's mission for his life.
    

Chick-Fil-A, the service economy, and your church

In 2005, Janet and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary with the best vacation ever. We saved money for months and months and blew it all in one week. We went on a cruise to the western Caribbean ports on Royal Caribbean. We loved it!

One of the things about cruiselines and high-end vacation places like Disney is that they are selling you an experience. The commodity is more than the boat, the hotel, the beach, the mouse ears, whatever you may be doing. The commodity is actually everything surrounding it.

Our family has become regular Chick-Fil-A customers. Especially on Tuesday nights when with the purchase of a regular "value" meal a kid's meal is free. The restaurant at this location usually has "the cow," a balloon person, face painter, crafts, plus other freebies for the kids. They love it. We enjoy it.

But the thing about Chick-Fil-A, and the thing about its astounding growth in the last few years relates back to the experience it creates for its customers. Consider this:

• What other restaurants, fast food or otherwise hand out so many coupons for free food?
• What other restaurants have specific family-friendly weekly nights? I mean more than just "kids eat free," I mean actively giving away desserts, doing fun stuff for kids.
• Where else can you go to see a cow walking around on two legs?
• What other fast food restaurant features a hostess that comes out, offers to remove your trash and tray and get you a refill? And no, they don't accept tips.
• The phrase "My pleasure." In place of "your welcome." I would wager the same consulting firm that trained the Royal Caribbean staff must have also trained the CFA staff. The difference is subtle, but significant. "Your Welcome" implies automatic response. I-say-this because you-said-that kind of thing. It also carries a connotation of "I didn't mind doing that for you." "My Pleasure," on the other hand has much stronger service overtones. It says "I really wanted to do that for you, and I'd do it again."
• What other fast food restaurant is specifically and intentionally closed on Sundays because it is The Lord's Day?

Finally, the refills. Has anybody encountered a Chick-Fil-A where the soft drink dispensers are available for you to use? I used to think it was a mistake for CFA to not put them out for everyone to serve themselves. Now I am convinced it is intentional. I believe they keep them behind the counter because they want you to come ask for a refill. They want to force the service interaction, and create another opportunity to say "My Pleasure."

So how do the Chick-Fil-A principles apply to our churches? What lessons of service and kindness are Chick-Fil-A stores teaching by example that the church should already know? If a fast food restaurant can exemplify Christian values, stick firmly to biblical principles, and produce a quality product enough to generate a blog post like this, how much more should people be walking away from a gathering of any kind at a church and want nothing more than to come back?

Is the Tooth Fairy Real?

How can you prove to yourself once and for all whether there really is or is not a Tooth Fairy?

My ten year old Austin had an idea. I thought it was clever.

For some time he had a loose tooth. A molar that was really starting to bother him when he chewed food. I offered several times to just yank it out and be done with it, but he didn't want to hear it!

Finally one day it fell out. But it fell out while he was with his friends at the Y. He told no one about it. Thus began the test. If he keeps this information from mom and dad, what will happen when he puts the tooth under his pillow at night?

He tested it. Like Gideon awaiting the dry ground and wet fleece, he put his faith in the Tooth Fairy to the test. And, well, his tooth was still waiting for him when he awoke in the morning. He tried it again the next night. Nothing.

His conclusion? There's no such thing as the Tooth Fairy. Surely a benevolent Tooth Fairy, who freely gives quarters and dollar bills for baby teeth would also be omniscient!

But Austin, we said, you have to tell us you lost your tooth so WE can tell the Tooth Fairy.

He didn't buy it.

Unfortunately for him, Austin has forfeited his opportunity for some cash flow over the last remaining years of baby teeth.

The Five Love Languages of Children

The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you have children, you should read this book. The love languages apply to more than just children of course, they relate to everyone, but this book focuses on relating the love languages to children.


The authors, Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell say that by the ages of five or six you will be able to see characteristics of a dominant love language emerge in your child. The five love languages identified by the authors are 1) Quality Time, 2) Physical Touch, 3) Words of Affirmation, 4) Gifts, 5) Acts of Service.


The reason the love languages are important is because it is how you can uniquely identify with your child to help the feel loved the most. It is also a way for you to recognize when they are attempting to dispense love in their most meaningful way.


Besides simple recognition, the book spends a couple of chapters dealing with the love languages related to discipline and learning. Without a full "love tank," children will not respond well to either discipline or learning.


Again, for parents with children living at home, I would highly recommend this book.


View all my reviews.

I have a 10 year old

It's hard to believe that Austin is ten years old today. Janet has been reminding him of his difficult delivery for the last 24 hours. THAT was a story.

What does this ten-year-old want for his birthday? His own email address and his own blog. He got what he wanted but his blog is invite-only so if you want to view it, email me and I'll send you an invite. (he is a kid, after all, grateful for the security built in to blogger.)

I also took him and a couple of his buddies to Adventure Landing today where they played arcade games for an hour, played a round of 18 holes of miniature golf, a game of laser tag, ate lunch, played a different 18 holes, and called it a day. Here are some pictures of their adventures.

No posts=I've been gone

If you've been following my twitter, you know I've been gone for a while. We had a good time seeing friends and family, a little mechanical drama, but when everything is said and done, I have to say there's no place like home.

It's hard to read that GPS. I reset all the numbers before we left. The total miles driven in two weeks is 3087.3 miles. I know that's no record, but it sure did feel like one!

The Kids Join Me For some Laptop Time

Kids Pictures

SoCal adventure, Day 1

I enjoy traveling from east to west. And I don't mean from Capital to Glenwood, I mean from Raleigh to SoCal. The thing about leaving early is that even though you spend what feels like most of the day traveling, once you arrive, you still have plenty of time to do things because of the three hour time change. In my case, I arrived so early, I almost had too much time.

I decided to go spy out some famous streets in North LA, in an area known as Hollywood. Maybe you've heard of it.

I got a couple of pictures of the famous Hollywood(land) sign, but this may have been my best angle.



After spending some time finding a place to park, I stepped out of my rental car (which, by the way, is a red Mustang--truthfully, I don't really care for it) and found myself at Hollywood and Vine in the midst of the "Walk of Fame." I took a few pictures of the stars with names I recognized.














One of the more interesting things about this to me was that this was in an area full of regular stores. Below is a picture of a line of stars along Hollywood Blvd next to a tire store. But this is just a downtown area. The stars continue around Sunset Blvd and several of the connecting streets adjacent to a CVS, a Borders, an auto repair shop, a McDonalds, etc.



Another feature of this area are the homeless people. This caught me off guard as you had a surreal mixture of touresty people like me, taking pictures of the side walk, regular people scurrying from place to place to either shop or go to work, and homeless people asking for change. The whole juxtaposition was not at all what I expected.

The whole reason I hung out in this area of town (not specifically to see the sidewalk, I can assure you) is because I had arranged to meet my cousin, professor Joe at a restaurant. He is teaching at USC in San Bernardino, and teaches mostly Children's Literature. It sounds like he's enjoying it. We had a great time talking about families, interests, and life stories. I was surprised at how similar our interests in understanding things are, but with specialties in different disciplines.

We had decided to meet at Taix French Restaurant on Sunset Blvd. in part because I thought I might go to see the Dodgers play the Indians. We were SO CLOSE to the stadium, but we didn't finish up until after the game started (we were chatting nearly three hours) and I was beat up, having gotten up at 3:50 that morning.



I had about an hour drive down to Orange County where I am staying. It was fun to listen to the legendary Vin Scully call the CLE/LAD game on the radio. He's been their broadcaster since 1950. Once I got back I stayed up a bit, finished the game, discovered I had a full-sized refrigerator, sink, dishwasher, microwave and two stove top burners in my room (it's a Candlewood Suites hotel) so I went and got some food before I went to bed.

"You know, when I was your age...."

I was both surprised and disappointed when I heard myself say those words to my nine-year old the other day. As the words fell out of my mouth, what I had to say seemed really meaningful and relevant to the conversation. For a fleeting moment, I imagined Austin would actually be interested in what I was about to say.

I pictured him leaning forward in his chair, "Yeah dad, what were you going to say about what it was like 30 years ago when you were MY age?" It never happened like that.

The context was what fun he had at the library that day. Not because he enjoyed perusing the books but because he serendipitously met his buddy Lewis there. Why was that fun? Because they got to play on the computers together.

Next came my well-intentioned, but heartily ignored statement: "You know, when I was your age, libraries didn't have computers."

Austin, again, can't picture a world without Mario, much less computers. This is a kid who takes pictures on a digital camera, and uploads them to Picasa so he can view them and organize them. He knows about Janet's diligent posting of our family photos, and this has led him to ask me if he can have a blog.

Are you kidding me? "You don't even know how to type," I said. What are you going to do with blog? "Put up pictures." He said. "And I can too type."

Back to the library without computers. Raise your hand if you remember card catalogs. Try explaining the concept to a nine-year old.

"Well, there were these drawers with little cards in them. And the drawers were divided up by the author's name, the book title, and the subject of the books. That way, if you knew the thing you wanted to look up information about, but didn't know a book title, you could search in the subject cards. If you like a book somebody wrote and you wanted to see if he had written others, you can find out by searching through the card catalog by author."

Using a card catalog is nearly an obsolete skill. Austin will never need to learn it, and I will probably never need to use it again. Just go to the computer, type in what you're looking for in the little box and all the possible options will be brought to you. Amazing.

To continue on down this rat hole, consider for a minute other skills that have become obsolete. Here is a web site with a growing list of obsolete skills. Some of my favorites are

• Setting up a modem using AT commands
• Putting a needle on a vinyl record
• Operating an overhead projector
• Using a rotary phone
• Blowing dust out of a Nintendo cartridge
• Autoexec.bat editing

Feel free to add more to the list!

Philly Cheese Steak

If you've ever spent any time in the Philadelphia area, you probably have picked up on a local food tradition that is unique to that region: The Cheese Steak Sandwich. Now, before you object, let me just set the record straight on this issue. You will walk into national chain restaurants such as Subway, or Applebee's, and you will see a menu item that they call a Philly Cheese Steak or something like that. But be warned. It is not a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich.

The formula is not complex, nor are the ingredients scarce, yet for some reason, folks outside of a, say, 60 mile radius of South Street have no idea what they're doing. What you need is a roll. Just the right kind of roll too, not hard, not too soft. Locals claim the secret to making the rolls just right is found in the Philly water. (or "wuter") as it often comes out.

Next you need thinly sliced beef, onions, tomato sauce, mushrooms* (these are optional, of course) and let's please not forget the CHEESE. This is where so many others falter. You cannot forget the cheese. And it must be melted. Not little squares or triangles neatly lined up on the side of the bread.

Why am I investing a post on this glorious food item? First, because every time I go visit my parents in West Chester, I make certain to get one. Second, I the last time I was there, I was so excited about indulging I took a picture of it. For you.

Now I don't know what is worse, really, the fact that I took a picture of a sloppy (but very delicious!) Cheese Steak Sandwich before I ate it or that I ate the whole thing on the day after Thanksgiving. As if I hadn't had enough food to eat already that weekend. Thanks dad for being easy to convince that I need proper nourishment!

*This is the pizza steak variety found with mushrooms and tomato sauce. Mmmmm....

Summer update

I feel like I owe someone a blog post. Truth is, I have so many things I could post about, I don't know where to start. Maybe I'll do the Gary Underwood bullet points to get caught up and go from there.

• We recently returned from a long trip. First a drive to Iowa, where we spent time with Janet's family, here sister in the Waterloo area and her folks 45 minutes away on "the farm." While we were there we celebrated Lindsey's 6th birthday and the Chezik's 50th wedding anniversary. We had a great time!
• We stopped in at the National Farm Toy Museum. An interesting slice of Americana.
• I got to go to a worship conference at Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA. it was great! more on that some other time.
• I visited the Y a couple of times while in CA. I like the Y in Raleigh better.
• On the first night in the OC I skipped early registration and went to an Angels baseball game. They played KC who swept them in the three game series.
• It's humorous to me that in CA, the highways are all qualified by the locals with "the." It's not "take 405 to exit 106," it's "take the 405 to exit 106." I'm gonna start referring to 440 and 540 as "the 440" and "the 540" and see if it catches on.
• At church, I feel like we could do a lot of things better, but I also feel like we do things as well as most churches. I'm mostly referring to music and tech here.
  
• I had the largest pork tenderloin sandwich I had ever eaten at this fair, in IA.
• The Mississippi River begins in Itasca State Park, Minnesota, and flows south 2,350 miles, to the Gulf of Mexico. I learned this at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, in Dubuque, IA.
• I have become a fan of Hampton Inns.
• Before our trip, we had to spend about $860 in our van, plus get it inspected.
• While returning to Iowa from CA, via DFW, I missed my connecting flight and had to sleep overnight in Ft. Worth. I hooked up with a couple of dangerous characters:
  
  
  
  
• Over the course of many hours of driving, one of the ways I entertained myself was to "read" by audiobook Crime and Punishment. I'm about 1/3 through it.
• Man, was it hard to go to work this morning. The services went well, but it was a lot of work! God works in spite of us.