Personal Quiet Time

I have noticed, particularly since having a family, that personal quiet time is both something that I long for and that is in increasingly short supply. So, when I was able to set aside some time explicitly for personal reflection, I was quite excited. Personal time not only refreshes my soul, it allows me time to gather my thoughts and gather what the Holy Spirit has been revealing to me over the past while.

This particular quiet time I had devoted to gathering my thoughts about what I had learned from the book "Generation Ex" and how it applies to my life. Since resolving to give this area of my life up to God, I felt the need to have an honest conversation to God about the subject - call it a first step in my action plan for my 2007 resolution.

Pastor Jerry and Nick Bansback, a friend from the Bridge, are both big proponents of using mind maps to organize thoughts for devotion. I had done many-a-mind-maps before, but had never attempted to put "my life" at the centre of the map. Doing so yielded some pretty interesting results!

At the root were four major branches: My New Roles, My Fears, My "Coping Mechanisms" and "Jesus". As I mapped each branch, I realized there was a pattern emerging. On one side was the circumstances of my life (roles and fears) and on the other were two common ways I deal with those circumstances: through coping mechanisms or by entrusting it to Jesus.

Coping mechanisms are sub-optimal habits we develop to cope with circumstance apart from God. Much like how I know I ought to exercise my legs to deal with my knee injury, but often find it much "easier" just to take pain medication, the same holds true for coping with emotional pain.

Entrusting it to Jesus often involves giving up sense of control over the situation. Intellectually, I know that giving it up to God is the better solution, but pride takes over and I subconciously conclude better the devil I know (pardon the pun) and live with the coping mechanism instead. Yet how often is this so utterly unhealthy for us? God after all did create us, and knows us more intimately than anyone else. If there were anybody who ought to know what "normal" is supposed to look like, it would be Jesus. Yet somehow in our twisted minds, we think our circumstances coupled with our "coping mechanisms" is more normal than entrusting the circumstance with Jesus.

Because much of what I reflected on is personal in nature (and this is after all a public forum), I will not go into the details of my nitty-gritty circumstances and coping mechanisms and how it relates specifically to me as a child of divorce. But suffice it to say that when I boiled my coping mechanisms down to their leaf nodes, it revealed cleverly concealed sin. Isn't "just coping" with something without fully giving it up to God just another form of pride?

In meditating on this, God highlighted one particular story in the Bible: that of the bleeding woman of 12 years being healed by touching Jesus' cloak (c.f. Matthew 9:18-26, Mark 5:22-43, Luke 8:40-56). For years, this passage had boggled me - exactly what is the faith that Jesus refers to in these passages (Luke 8:48, Matthew 9:22)? Is it simply faith that Jesus can heal, or is it more than that? I believe it is more: the woman knew and believed in her heart implicitly who Jesus really was - the Son of Man, and recognized this at a time when it was not widely known. Because she knew this, she implicitly knew that by touching "perfectness", Jesus' "perfectness" would impart on her, and the imperfect would disappear (c.f. 1 Corinthians 13:10). The faith had more to do with the woman recognizing who Jesus is more so than in his "healing powers". Healing was simply a logical result of her faith.

Applying it back to my own life, I draw this conclusion: If I am letting the coping mechanisms help me around the circumstances of life, I am really diminishing who I believe God to be.

Father in Heaven, You are the one who created us, and because of this, you know me more intimately than anyone else. Thank You for giving me this quiet time and directing my thoughts. Thank You for giving me the strength to start dealing with this area in my life that needs work. Help me to understand and recognize You for who You really are. Reveal areas in my life where I am just coping and not fully giving up to You. I confess these areas to you now. I also confess any areas where I have diminished who You are. I pray now that as you help me to take away each of these coping mechanisms you would remind me that You are so much greater than any one of those circumstances. Remind me that because Jesus died and rose again, You have already conquered our fears and we can face tomorrow. Amen.

Eager to go sliding!

We took Erich and Elias to the park on Saturday and watched them play in the playground. Erich really enjoyed the slide. His grandparents have a play slide in their living room that they have set up for the boys and I guess Erich has been practicing. He was only too happy to see a real one on a real playground, 3 times as big! He must have gone down the slide a good two dozen times.

Seriously, I have no idea where he gets his sense of adventure. As I recall, I was dreadfully afraid of the slide when I was that young. Elias' reaction to the slide (shown in the picture) is a little more at par with what I thought of the slide!

More pictures of "Fun in the park" here.

Erich's New Shape Sorter

Erich has started playing with his new shape sorter. This one was given to us at Erich’s baby shower before Erich was even born. Every time he correctly puts in a proper shape, the entire toy lights up with lights and music. He gets it right most of the time. Occasionally though, he’ll just put the pieces in via the “back door”. :-)

On the back side of the shape sorter is also a portable telephone! The funny thing is that this telephone emits the same sounds as another phone I bought him a few months ago.... hrmm - same factory, different brand?

Jonathan's Personal Reflection - Follow up

A few of you have contacted me (re: my 2007 Personal Reflection) either in person or via email to encourage me or to let me know that you'll be praying for me. I really appreciate this. Those that know me well know that it is a part of my life that is close to my heart.

I wanted to leave a quick note here to let you know that I have set aside some time next week to do some journaling. Part of healing emotional wounds is just having an honest conversation with God about it. I covet your prayers in this area.

Jonathan's Personal Reflection for the New Year

Shortly before I went on my work trip to the Prairies, I tuned into FamilyLife's daily Radio broadcast and stumbled upon an interview with author Jen Abbas. She was talking about her experience as a child of divorce. It was part of a week long series on the effects of divorce in adult children of divorce. Because I too am a child of divorce, this definitely caught my attention! I made a point of listening to the entire week's broadcast. After the broadcasts, I asked Karen whether she could look into buying the audio version of the book for me as I felt I could benefit from reading the book. I felt God had some more things he wanted to work on my life through this. I also knew that in my upcoming trip there would have many hours of driving where I would be able to spend one on one time with my Father in heaven.

Well God certainly did not disappoint. Karen obtained the materials for me (thank you Karen!) and I brought them with me on my trip. Upon listening to the book, I felt an overwhelming sense of encouragement: I was not alone in my struggle to reconcile our culture's often "brave faced" approach to the effects of divorce with the reality that I face every day. Listening to her story and her research on the topic confirmed my deepest yet often cleverly masked feelings of inadequacy and ill-preparedness as I enter into new roles in my life as a husband and father. Children of divorce experience, as she describes, a "sleeper effect" where the effects of one's parents' divorce does not fully exhibit themselves until the child is involved in a relationship himself. Children of divorce also experience an interesting identity struggle as much of what defines who they are becomes tied to the experience of their parents divorcing.

Her articulation of this effect not only brought confirmation but caused me to acknowledge that I too was affected. This acknowledgment brought acceptance; it caused me to wake up. For the first time in a long time, I allowed God to begin healing me in this area.

Part of me is trembling for fear I have awoken a giant. Do I really want God to work on this part of my life? For one thing I am not on speaking terms with my own father, and all truth being told, I feel my relationship with my mother is strained. Working on either or both of these will just aggravate already tense emotions. Yet another part of me feels an overwhelming need to deal with this particularly as I grow to become a better father myself. After all, if all of us children of divorce really experience this sleeper effect what good then would it be if we were to remain asleep for the rest of our lives?

I did some thinking about this over my trip. Early on in my marriage, although I would have never recognized it before reading this book, I had really only one goal in mind for my marriage: I had resolved to make my marriage work, and do everything in my power to stay clear away from divorce. I probably would have never articulated it quite like that, but deep down, divorce and its effects was my greatest fear. I knew the dangers and set my "marriage" compass to steer as far away from it as possible.

Upon listening to the book, I realize that this unspoken goal, although stunning in today's culture is really far from noble. To simply marry and not be divorced isn't fulfilling! So, one of the things God taught me was that I ought to think about what I really desire my marriage to be about. Here are some of the things I came up with:

• I desire for my marriage and family to be one. I desire not only that we not separate but that we purpose to be one, to be whole, to be together.
  
• I desire for my marriage and family to be godly witnesses in our community just by virtue of who we are. I believe that if we allow it, God can work through us to have an impact on others just by virtue of living open, and transparent lives through the power of the Holy Spirit.
  
• I desire to leave a legacy for my children such that they will develop a personal relationship with Jesus and that they will have a heart after God's heart.

There you have it - my 2007 new year's reflection. As you can see, I believe God has been doing some pretty significant things in my life, and I believe He has some challenging goals for me for the New Year. As with many New Years resolutions, things often fall by the wayside when life gets busy or we otherwise get discouraged. Perhaps you can help me increase my chances: If you are a Christian and you are reading this entry, would you please pray through some of the items I have listed below, and leave a comment telling me you have done so? It would be a great encouragement. If you feel comfortable sharing, I'd also love to read your story of how God has healed you in the past too.

• Perseverance: Pray that I will continue to allow God to heal me in this area. Much of this healing involves dealing with issues that bring about emotional pain. Reconciling with people that have hurt you so deeply is a bit like taking the scab off a freshly sealed wound. I imagine that many issues may surface, some of which I may have consciously or subconsciously buried.
• Joy: Pray that I would experience joy as I discover each new thing and I offer the burden up to God. (Matt 11:30)
  
• Renewal: Pray that as God begins to heal me that he would strengthen my marriage through the experience.

Christmas 2006

Christmas 2006 was a relatively uneventful year. As usual, on Christmas Eve, the Ngs invited our extended family (both Grandmas, Grandpa Hans, the Tso family and Aunt Joycelin) over to our place for a giant roast. We had not noticed that our dining area was so small until we discovered that we were actually accommodating two additional people at dinner this year! It took some creative thinking to crowd 9 people around a table designed for maximum 6. This is of course not Erich and Elias' first Christmas - that was held last year at St. Paul's Hospital. However, this is the first year they have joined family dinner.

Photo (above): The family gets together for a family photo. Left to right: John, Erich, Grandma Lam, Aunt Joycelin, Karen, Katherine, Grandma Stein, Elias, Grandpa Stein. Photo (below): Karen browns the roast in preparation for dinner.

For the roast, we purchased a giant uncut 12 lb rib roast from Costco. It tasted wonderful after we had carefully cooked it to just the right internal temperature. We'd just never cooked anything quite so big before in our oven!

The boys were well behaved for the most part. It appears they particularly enjoyed the carol singing which we did this year without the aid of a piano - just a few guitar chords to keep us in tune. We cannot wait until they can sing along with us!

Christmas Day was spent mostly delivering Christmas presents to those whom we had not managed to see prior. After seeing the Erich's grandparents again, we dropped off a small token of appreciation (for helping with Erich during Jonathan's business trip) at Nick and Rebekah Bansback's place and was subsequently drafted into their annual Christmas quiz. It was great meeting Nick's parents, albeit "online" via web cam, and we enjoyed being part of their Christmas tradition.

Photo (above): The Ngs join the Bansbacks and their Chilean friends on their yearly Christmas quiz.

After the Bansback's place, we headed off to Uncle Preston's to drop off another few gifts before doubling back to meet up with Katrina. We wanted to express our gratitude to her as well for helping us out with Erich. It was also great to see Katrina's mom.

We spent the evening just the three of us. Thanks to Joe, I was able to show Erich the Dr. Seuss film "How the Grinch stole Christmas" for the very first time. I wanted to treat him to a cartoon I thought he might enjoy, and he obliged. In fact, he loved it except for the exclusive shots of "Mr. Grinch". He didn't take too kindly to his character.

Erich celebrates ONE year!

Erich celebrated his first birthday today at Grandma and Grandpa's place amidst many friends and family. It was so exciting for us to see so many people from past and present celebrate this momentous day with Erich. A friend of ours, Tanya, baked Erich a birthday cake in the form of a sailboat complete with sails. Thanks Tanya! Grandma, in her ingenuity, bought a lettered candle set that spelled "E-R-I-C-A" and then promptly substituted the "A" with an "H". Thanks Grandma!

For Erich, it was a day filled with intrigue. "Why did mummy and daddy invite all these people over and what are all these weird boxes wrapped in funny looking paper for?", he must have thought. Well, he soon found out that some very fun toys were inside those boxes with the the funny looking paper! Thanks to all who came and thanks for the wonderful gifts you brought Erich.

Of all the gifts that Erich received, one brought about much laughter. If you've had any contact with Erich (or have otherwise been reading this blog!), you will know that he is somewhat of an adventurer - insisting on learning how to climb and fall by himself. So when he received a T-shirt with the words "I do all my own stunts", people roared in laughter. Erich, apparently, didn't find that so funny. :-P

Happy Birthday Erich. May you have many more, and try not to do too many stunts! :-)

Trip to Alberta and Saskatchewan

As part of my (Jonathan's) work, I was sent to three municipalities in Alberta and one in Saskatchewan to deploy some new workstations and VPNs. Although there could be much to be written about the fascinating IT work (and indeed my colleague has written a bit about this in his tech blog), I found more interesting the opportunity to see how the various parts of my company's operations work. Seeing the more industrial end of how things work puts into perspective the work that I do on a day to day basis. Shown above is our plant in Brooks, AB.

While I was away on my trip, I kept in touch with Erich and Karen through the use of a web cam. I have a web cam mounted on top of our TV. This camera feeds into the computer underneath the TV which normally serves as a digital VCR. I was fortunate enough to borrow an additional web cam for the road, and so every night just before Erich's bedtime, I had the opportunity to say hello to him. I learned afterward that when Erich was told that daddy was on the phone he would point at the TV in eager anticipation of seeing my face. How very exciting!

During the trip, I also had the opportunity to stop briefly in Calgary where I visited my good friend Kyle and his family. Shown here to the right is a picture of Kyle, myself and his youngest daughter Cora.