The Minivan Years Read online

  CHAPTER 2

  Mini-Morsels

  CONSUMING MEALTIMES

  An eight-year-long study conducted by Columbia University revealed that kids who have dinner with their parents fewer than three times a week are much more likely to smoke, drink, or use drugs than kids who have dinner with their parents five to seven times a week. Kids who dine frequently with their parents also have reduced factors of boredom, academic problems and overall stress.*

  Unfortunately, the study didn’t measure what all those meals together does to mom’s stress level. So I thought I would shed some light on the subject.

  During our B.C. era (before children) Kurt and I enjoyed dinnertime as a chance for the two of us to set aside the demands of our respective careers and devote all our attention to each other. Even a quick sandwich with chips served to calm our chaos and allowed us to look into each other’s eyes as we enjoyed two of life’s great pleasures—dining and conversation. After the meal, we spent even more time cleaning up our dishes together.

  After God added children to our table, mealtime became an entirely different experience. We still occasionally go to a restaurant, but candles have been replaced by ketchup packets. Rather than the time of day I anticipated as a chance to relax with my husband, mealtime became the hour during which Kurt and I would most likely have nervous breakdowns. I had to plan and prepare the meal, inevitably send Kurt to the store in the middle of preparation to get that missing ingredient, set the table, and then corral the kids. Once we got the food and family to the table, the real drama began.

  DAD: Whose turn is it to say the blessing tonight?

  NICOLE: I’ll pray!

  MOM: Nicole, you’ve prayed every night for the past two years. I think it might be one of your brothers’ turn.

  NICOLE: But I want to pray!

  DAD: Okay. First Kyle will pray and then Nicole can pray.

  Every night we made the same compromise. So every night the food cooled while we waited for Nicole to thank God for every imaginable blessing—from her most recent toy to her playtime with friends to the lovely sky to each member of the family. Very sweet, but hunger pangs do call.

  “Amen!” Dad gently interrupts five minutes into Nicole’s prayer.

  I jump up to zap the serving dishes in the microwave and return to the table with hot food. In our B.C. years, I warmed up leftovers. Now I warm up meals before the first bite.

  As soon as we begin passing the food around, the countdown begins. Within five minutes, at most eight, someone will invariably knock over his or her drink. As the law of gravity assures that heavy objects will fall downward, the law of mealtime assures that kid elbows will catch cups. Sure, I warn the children to keep their drinks away from the edge. Sure, they slide them toward the middle of the table. But preventative measures are futile. The cups will end up back on the edge after their next sips.

  Like a crowd doing the wave at the baseball stadium, every member of the family jumps up from the table with hands raised in reaction to the splash. I quickly take charge, ordering the little ones away from the mess and the older boys to start clearing. Kurt typically rushes to grab a towel, right after angrily calling down judgment on the child whose elbow created the mess.

  I’m convinced whoever coined the phrase “No use crying over spilled milk” never had kids. For I used to cry—or at least yell. But I learned that it only makes matters worse. Besides, after the five hundredth spill you get used to it.

  Confident the spill quota has been filled for the evening, we restore the table to order and again heat the food so we can carry on with our meal. We work through the rest of our routine, including our favorite mealtime activity, which Kurt triggers with the phrase “high low!”

  “High low!” means the time has come for each person to share the high point of his day and the low point of his day. I might share, for example, that my high point came when Troy wrote me a little note of encouragement—while my low point came when Troy’s elbow hit the cup.

  Kurt, on the other hand, might share that his high point came when he kissed Mommy upon arriving home from work—while his low point came when Mommy didn’t name it as her high point.

  Kyle might share a high test score as his high and showing up late for band practice as his low.

  Troy’s high typically involves some sporting activity, such as a roller hockey goal or beating Dad playing HORSE in basketball. His low, on the other hand, probably came when he missed a shot or lost to Dad.

  Nicole doesn’t quite get the point of the activity, since she typically lists everything she enjoyed doing the preceding two months. She loves life and has a hard time limiting her celebrations to a single day.

  Our high-low routine took on special significance during Shaun’s fourth-grade year. I remember the evening he skipped naming a high and went immediately to his low. Suddenly, mealtime became more than a chance to feed the family and overwork the microwave. It opened the door to uncovering some deep hurts in our second child’s life. My heart sank when I learned his friends had turned against him at school. But it enabled us to intervene. Before long, Shaun’s sagging head returned to its former confidence position. If it hadn’t been for our mealtime routine, however, I fear we might not have learned about the problem until more damage had been done.

  Other mealtimes brought on other kid challenges. It was during a postspill conversation that we learned of Kyle’s debate with a biased science teacher, opening the door for Kurt to help him defend the intellectual rigor of Christian belief. We discovered and corrected Troy’s disrespectful attitude toward a teacher after he listed getting in trouble at school as the day’s low. And we found out Nicole hadn’t been as nice as the preschool director implied when it came to sharing. All thanks to a little routine called high low.

  I think I understand why kids who eat meals with their parents five to seven nights a week do better. Despite the stress it adds to my life and the mess it creates on my table, I think the time and energy invested pay handsome dividends in the lives of four very important people.

  In addition to strategies like high low to discover what is going on in your children’s lives, I’d like to suggest several approaches for instilling values and beliefs into your child’s mind and heart. Try some of these to turn mealtime into one of the most meaningful, spiritually rich parts of your family life.

  DINNER TABLE DEBATE

  A great way to help our children better grasp and defend what they believe is to create dinner table debate discussions. Choose the day you plan to hold your debate during dinner and assign different sides of the issue to individuals or teams. (For example, Mom and son take one side of a topic while Dad and daughter take the opposite side.) Give the teams several days or weeks to prepare for the debate. When the big day arrives, remind everyone to bring his or her notes and be prepared to begin the debate immediately after eating. It is wise to assign a moderator or clearly establish rules for the debate in order to keep everything fair and under control.

  If you choose to have dinner table debates in your home, consider several important points. First, you may be concerned about seriously entertaining arguments that oppose your beliefs. However, it is better for your children to struggle with these issues in the safety and spirit of a believing family than wait until they are exposed to these ideas in a less supportive context. Second, this requires some work on the part of the parents. You must be willing to learn along with your kids—including taking the time to read and prepare. It may do more harm than good to organize a debate in which you can’t engage. Ask your youth pastor to recommend some helpful resources.

  “WHAT IF” DISCUSSION

  Use “what if” questions to help your children think through important truths. For example, help your kids appreciate the implications of a Christian view of personal worth by contrasting it with other belief systems. Schedule a dinner table discussion in which you pose the following “what if” scenarios:

  Question: What if Mom and
Dad (or God) only loved and accepted the person in the family who was the best at playing marbles?

  Answer: Most of us would be unhappy and spend all our time trying to become marbles experts.

  Question: What if those who became slave traders had believed that all people have personal worth?

  Answer: They would have opposed rather than promoted slavery.

  Question: What if the Founding Fathers had believed Darwin’s theory that only the fit will survive?

  Answer: They would never have written our Constitution on the idea that “all men are created equal. . . .”

  Question: What if Adolf Hitler had believed that all people deserved respect because they are created in the image of God?

  Answer: There might never have been the Holocaust.

  The possible topics and questions are endless, providing another way to make mealtime conversations meaningful to your children.

  THE JOB INTERVIEW

  Set aside one dinnertime discussion session to have your children place themselves in the shoes of an employer who is looking for a good worker. Create a list of different careers and jobs, and for each one, ask your children to describe what qualities they would want in the person they want to hire. Keep a list of similar themes that should emerge with every role—such as working hard; being on time, friendly, obedient; etc. You may even want to role-play with the children by pretending to be a job applicant and answering questions they create for you. Use this discussion to reinforce the qualities we should strive to build into our own lives.

  The next time you find yourself cleaning up a dinner table spill, instead of becoming angry, use it as a reminder of just how important mealtime conversation can be. The mini-morsels you and your children receive from intentional conversation might just become the tastiest part of your day.

  * * *

  Mini-Tip

  HIGH AND LOW

  Begin the habit of going around the dinner table and asking each person to take turns sharing his or her high and low for that day. When you proclaim high low, everyone will know it is his or her opportunity to be open with the family about the best and worst moments of the day. You will be amazed to learn what your child considers the highlight—perhaps something small that gives insight into what brings him joy. You will also discover painful moments you might not have otherwise known—providing an opportunity to comfort, encourage, intervene, or do whatever might be appropriate.

  CHAPTER 3

  Mini-Prayers

  REQUESTING MIRACULOUS TIMES

  I’d like to think of myself as a woman of prayer. But then, I’d also like to think of myself as a size four. Motherhood, with its hectic schedules and leftover baby weight, seems to have placed both out of reach.

  The real prayer warrior in our family turns out to be Troy. At eight, he is too old to merely parrot “God is good, God is great” prayer poems, yet young enough to still take seriously Jesus’ invitation to “ask, and it will be given to you.”

  I offer as evidence our 2006 trip to attend Kurt’s family reunion. We awoke early that morning in order to finalize packing and get to the airport on time. Since the Denver airport was about a ninety-minute drive from our house, we planned a “no later than 10 A.M.” departure to catch our 12:30 flight. But something went wrong in the space-time continuum that day.

  While casually pulling out of the garage to hit the ATM before stopping off at the library on our way to the freeway, both Kurt and I noticed the clock mocking us by displaying 10:30 A.M.—a full thirty minutes beyond our no-later-than limit. Each assuming the other had been time monitor, we simultaneously glared at each other with identical looks: You realize there is no way in the world we are going to make it in time to check our luggage, get all six of us through security, and make our plane before departure—and it is your fault.

  Moments later, we found ourselves speeding past the ATM and library toward the freeway, Kurt shouting near obscenities while I dialed the airline on my cell phone to find out whether the plane might be mercifully delayed.

  Fifteen minutes and two hundred automated agent questions later, I finally reached a live person who checked our flight status. She perkily responded by informing me: “We are proud to say that we project yet another on-time departure.” Great.

  Fearing a mad rush up the freeway would be both dangerous and futile, I suggested to Kurt that we give up and book ourselves on the 5 P.M. flight—a prospect neither of us favored, since we had a six-hour drive ahead of us after reaching Chicago. While the two of us shouted pros and cons of our options as if weapons in the unspoken You got us into this mess! blame game, Troy spoke up from the backseat. “We could pray.”

  Silence overtook the grown-ups arguing up front.

  “We could ask God to help us get to the airport on time and safe so that we make the flight,” Troy continued.

  After a brief pause to regain his composure and slip into a more spiritual tone, Kurt responded, “That’s a good idea, Troy. Will you lead us in prayer?”

  “Dear God. Please keep us safe and help us make it to the plane on time. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” Simple and to the point. Not to mention infinitely more appropriate than Mom or Dad’s behavior.

  Having evaporated the tension in the van air, our youngest asked if she, too, could pray—which she did.

  Our faith was less than strong, but we continued driving. I suppose we were a bit like Peter who took a few steps on the water before sinking. He wanted to believe but saw the ominous waves. We wanted to believe, but saw 11:08 A.M. on the clock with forty-five miles to go.

  Don’t ask me how, but we made it to the airport precisely one hour before the scheduled departure time. Call it a mini-miracle. Call it bending the speed limit laws. Call it what you will. All I know is that Kurt dropped me and the kids at the counter in time to check in our bags. As he sped away from the curb to find what ended up being the last open parking spot on the premises, the rest of us looked down at our little prayer warrior, who was grinning from ear to ear.

  Other opportunities for Troy to remind us of Jesus’ invitation to prayer emerged on that same trip. Like the time we accidentally left the backpack containing our camera on the Chicago train requiring “miraculous” retrieval, then doing it again exiting a departing city bus, and another mad rush to the airport trying to return our rental van on time. All of them silly little incidents. But none too insignificant for a Troy-inspired prayer.

  Only a few weeks before that family reunion trip another prayer aimed at saving our daughter’s life. Nicole and Troy were playing with a pile of LEGOs in the bedroom. Kurt, reading in our room, jumped from his chair when he heard a panicked yell from Troy.

  “Nicole! Oh no! Oh no!” Troy screamed.

  Clearly something bad had occurred, much worse than a typical childhood mishap. Kurt rushed into the hallway, where he saw Troy jumping up and down while clasping his hands in a posture of desperate prayer.

  “What happened?” shouted Kurt as he looked at Nicole on the floor just outside the bedroom door.

  “It’s in her throat. She can’t breathe!”

  As Kurt approached a crouching Nicole and tried to process Troy’s statement, our precious little girl coughed up a small plastic ball. She had been sucking it and had accidentally swallowed it. It had lodged in her windpipe and prevented air from getting in or out.

  I arrived home from the store about thirty minutes later. As I listened to Kurt explain what happened, tears filled my eyes at the realization of how close we had come to tragedy. I hugged her and hugged her and hugged her some more. I then glanced over at Troy, my little prayer warrior, who was grinning from ear to ear.

  To say that prayer is important is a bit like saying the sky is up. Who would ever argue? But, in truth, I sometimes find myself wondering what, exactly, prayer does.

  I participate in a ministry called Moms in Touch. Every Wednesday morning after dropping the kids off at school, I join a group of mothers who gather at a designated house n
ear the high school campus in order to pray for their children. Unlike at our small-group gatherings at church, there is no food served or chitchat about this and that. We start at 8:30 A.M. and by 8:35 A.M. get down to the business of prayer for anything and everything related to our children at school. We pray that the Lord will keep our kids safe. We pray over fifth period math exams. We even pray for the teachers and school administrators.

  One day our group learned that a boy had been arrested at my son’s high school after it was discovered that he had a gun in his locker. Immediately visions of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shooting their classmates at Columbine High years earlier came into our minds. We breathed a collective sigh of relief that the gun had been discovered. But we also worried that such an unthinkable possibility had entered our zip code.

  “We should give thanks.” One of our in-touch moms shared from her heart before we began praying. “We’ve been praying that God would protect our kids. He has answered that prayer!”

  Who can argue with that? And yet, I can’t get away from certain questions.

  I recall sitting on a plane next to a sweet old lady who told me the story of her granddaughter. Despite a thriving Moms in Touch ministry among the parents of Columbine High, her granddaughter nearly died in that shooting spree. The girl’s best friend did die after answering “yes” to the “Do you believe in God?” question. While the lady’s granddaughter survived, removing the shrapnel from her body has left terrible scars and required removing one of her virgin breasts—with the other still vulnerable to lingering infections.