What's Your Challenge?

That's a question I ask myself every January 28, and I keep it written down in my journals when I arrive there as “Challenger Day”. Now before you rush out to buy a card at Hallmark because YOU FORGOT another of their made-up holidays that's an excuse to buy presents, gifts, etc., Challenger Day for me is the anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger eighty-three seconds after liftoff in 1986, twenty-seven years ago. I remember where I was when it happened and actually SAW the explosion, but didn't realize at the time it was an explosion; I was fourteen years on my learner's permit and driving home with my dad in the passenger seat. We saw the shuttle trail go up, up, up (easy to do when you live in Florida like I did growing up) and then the giant puff of smoke … until we got home and turned on the news, we didn't realize that giant puff was an explosion.

NOW my challenge is to raise my children in the image of God, become a better husband and father and business owner and on-time payer of my bills – I know in my son's words that I'm NOT a deadbeat because I'm late with a payment (he actually said “Dad, you're not a deadbeat”), but there are times I can feel so adrift and distracted that I don't know what I'm doing. I guess like Luke in The Empire Strikes Back I need to start having my mind on where I am and what I am doing more than on the future. This weekend Sarah, Jeffrey, Martha, and I were invited to a birthday party for our business partners' Michael and Tara's daughter Triniti – only a month and four days separate her and Sarah in age – at one of the new hotels set up here in town, a La Quinta inn. It was a pool party with altogether thirty kids and with the heated pools and food quite humid, as in the humidity I moved from Florida to escape! And the chlorine, even if you didn't go in the pool! But we all had a lot of fun.

Sunday after church where my Sunday school class had four second graders who had a little too much sugar before getting there and our fill-in pastor from Bismarck was … I got something out of Pastor Sharon's message, but I had someone after service say to me they wondered why I wasn't asked to preach that morning. I did the Old and New Testament readings that morning as well, and I don't how to say this (but you know I will anyway) but I read it with a little more oomph than I usually do. The readings were both long, one from Nehemiah and the other from 1 Corinthians, but it was the second reading from the twelfth chapter regarding how the body of Christ has to be comprised of the different parts OF a body (“If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?”). Translated: whatever job I'm doing in the church someone else could probably not do as well. And vice versa.

Sunday afternoon Jeffrey also got to start playing soccer. For five Sundays from now to mid-March, kids from preschool to sixth grade will be practicing drills for a half-hour and then playing soccer for the other half-hour at Jim Hill Middle School, and when he brought this application home from school a few weeks ago he kept asking, “Can I play, can I play, can I play”? For forty dollars we acceded BUT on the condition he bring home no more yellow slips that his teacher sends home when kids do something bad. This year we have received nine of the buggers, two of them last weeks, and so exasperated did dear Martha get that she said if Jeffrey brought home another yellow slip or said again he was “stupid” which he says when he's been bad that she (or I when she's not there) would wash his mouth out with soap! I must admit I've heard about that but never seen it happen …

so when Jeffrey said “stupid” last Thursday morning before school Martha and Jeffrey went to the bathroom and he got to bite down on a bar of soap for a few seconds and then get a drink of water. No issues since, though I imagine the water after the soap was not too nice … well, so far we've had no problems with him, but it IS only Monday, and he's assured (I expect Sarah is too) that each time he has to bite down on the soap it will be longer! And tonight after work I'll meet Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey at our church where the Boy Scout troop we support – I know that's not coming out right – is holding a family fun night. And after closing my office for the night and picking up the free pass for Saturday's Turnaround Party, I will be there and I expect eat very well. As well as show the family how I really miss 'em and would give my life for them, this week before Martha's birthday.

That's my challenge, David