Things Kids Say: What Being Affectionately Overweight and Grumpy Little-People Have Taught Me About Vulnerability .

I'm currently listening to a series of lectures by Brene Brown called The Power of Vulnerability.  It is a completely challenging series for me.  If you've read anything she's written, or heard any of her talks on TED, you know Brown is a shame and vulnerability researcher whose goal is to interpret the data rendered by thousands of sociological and psychological studies and interviews.  In the midst of her research, Brown found remarkable similarities in people she calls "wholehearted".  She has found that many of these people, who stand out from the crowd and truly live full and fulfilling lives, do certain things almost universally.  One of these behaviors that Brown discovered is the ability to embrace vulnerability.  I can honestly tell you, if Brene Brown wasn't such a great storyteller and so magnetically vulnerable herself, I would absolutely cease from reading or listening to anything the counsels me to become more vulnerable.  I don't do vulnerable.  I do calculated imitations of vulnerability to engender myself to people, but choosing to be myself with all of my weaknesses and warts, whether people accept me or not?  Yeah, that's not me.

My greatest shield is and always has been built of words.  I usually have the ability to be very deliberate with my what I say.  I know how to drop a great cuss word for shock value and then apologize for my language as though it was an accident, when I actually planned it all along.  I know how to communicate with people in a multitude of theological camps without offending, unless that's my intent.  I know how to confess the sins that everyone has pity on while skipping over the darker ones that are still tucked neatly inside my heart.  I rarely get careless with my words.  I take communication very seriously.  It is what I love.  I feel like this is a problem for me.  Sometimes my kids show me a better way.

Rebekah is a communicator.  She is six years old and she talks, and debates, and talks, and argues, and talks, and reasons, and talks, and lectures, and talks, and talks, and talks.  I'm told her name means, "the end of an argument".  Though she wins most of her arguments, I've yet to see an end to her propensity for the act.  What I love most about the way Rebekah talks is that when she does it, her ability outstrips her filter.  She says some great stuff.  Though I could fill multiple blog posts with Rebekah stories, I'll pull one from my storyteller's bag to stand for all.

We had a friend over for dinner.  He was a bit overweight, but not nearly as heavy as I was (am).  Through dinner, Bekah stared at him affectionately.  In truth, she looked like a love-struck adolescent girl staring a poster of the latest teen idol.  I don't know what was different about this night, but Rebekah couldn't take her eyes from my friend.  About three-fourths of the way through the meal she finally finds the courage to communicate her new found love.  She said, "You know what?  You're FAT, just like my dad."  This affectionate line comes with a tilt of the head and a dreamy look.  The cruelty of her words were completely rendered meaningless by the obvious tenderness of her demeanor.  My buddy laughed a little a said, "Well, thank you." as the same amount of sincerity that she has used to compliment him.

Josiah has never been as relentless a communicator as Bekah, but he was a typical 2-3 year old.  He asked a million questions a minute and "why" was liberally sprinkled into the mix to keep the answers thoroughly exhausting.  A trip anywhere was accomplished to the theme music of "What's that?", "What's this?", "Where are we?", "What's that?"  Because his questioning was so indefatigable you had to be careful you didn't get to close to people of races that Josiah wasn't familiar with, or the cashier with the really bad acne, or the lady with the toddler who won't stop throwing a fit as Josiah would almost always shout to me, "Why doesn't that mommy just spank him?"

When Josiah was in this phase, before we had so many mouths to feed that we were forced shop at Aldis and bulk warehouse stores, we shopped at the Hyvee that was close to our house.  We usually shopped at night because we liked to do it together and there were far fewer people in the store.  It was very common for us to share the store with a little couple.  I called them midgets back then, but I believe that this is no longer socially acceptable.  If I'm right, they prefer little people.  The family I'm speaking of consisted of a husband and wife, both little people, and a son who was normal sized.  The mother was remarkably pleasant.  She was always smiling and incredibly upbeat.  The father was her polar opposite.  I hate making  a judgement call when I really didn't know him, but he seemed to be the kind of person who disliked his lot in life and assumed that you were going to abuse him because he was small and therefore decided to be overtly prickly all the time.  He always wore a cartoonish frown and crossed his arms in a decidedly pouty way.  We grew as familiar and cordial with them as you could imagine being with someone you see in the grocery story 15-20 times.  We never had dinner together, but as we passed in the canned goods isle, we gave each other that knowing look and nod.  "So we meet again."

One night Josiah and I went grocery shopping together.  It was a guys night out and Hyvee was the venue we were rocking.  With my son in his seat and my list in my hand I set out to hunt.  The very first isle that I turned down, once I cleared the produce section, had a family in it.  It was the little family.  I looked down at my son and terror shot through my body.  I could only imagine the questions that Josiah might ask if he saw them, especially since he had watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on VHS lately.  I literally backed out of the isle and went to the other end of the store.  The next 30 minutes were spent playing a game I titled, "Dodge the Little People".  I can't find my wife in a grocery store with two cell phones, a GPS, a team of rescue dogs, but every isle that turned down this night had little people in it.  I became a professional at backing up a shopping cart.  I finally made it to the check out unscathed and guess who get into the one and only open checker behind us.  Yep.  Josiah's eyes pop open like he just saw the most interesting thing, ever.  I quickly stepped to the side to shield his view.  He shot the other direction.  I intercepted.  I could only keep this up for so long without looking ridiculously obvious.  Josiah shot back the other way and got a clear view.  A gigantic smile spread across his face followed by a disturbed look of confusion.  He sat back up straight, looked me in my eyes, ignored my begging "shhhhhhhhh", and said at the top of his young voice, "Hey Daddy, that one must be Grumpy Dwarf!"  The cashier did that snort thing you do when you are trying to hold in a laugh but fail, I heard the mom behind me snicker, and I actually heard the dad "harumph".  It was audible.  I turned, hoping to use a handful of my well-crafted words to fix things but found that the best that I could come up with was, "I'm sorry."  Incidentally, as I looked at the dad, his non-verbals were also screaming "harumph".

Why do some of the things that kids say make me so uncomfortable?  Why does unguarded, honest talk scare me so bad?  Why am I so tempted to go up and edit some of the self-revelatory parts of this blog?  The answer is vulnerability.  I don't like vulnerability.  Kids simply speak from their hearts with no fear of judgement and no accompanying filter.  When a little girl loves her daddy and she sees a man who reminds her of him, she says so in whatever words come to mind.  When a little boy who is fascinated by little people (incidentally, Josiah is still fascinated by little people, he considers it a major highlight when he sees them) sees a person who fits neatly into a category that he already has in his little head, he says it.  Kids hearts are open books.  They are vulnerable because the know no other way to be.  When Jesus says that I must become as a little child, I have to assume this in one of those traits that he is speaking of.

Combating chaos

My wife labels.  I've tried to do an intervention, but she'll have to accept that she has a problem before she'll be willing to get help.  She has a Brother model PT-70 labeler.  It is not the Cadillac of labelers, but it's a solid mid-range sedan, maybe a Camry or an Accord.  I bought it for her with several colors of labeling tape and she was more moved than she would have been had I purchased flowers, chocolates, or diamonds (diamonds because she does the finances and would never allow me to spend that much money).  Esther once spent a summer doing a thorough inventory of the entire house, room by room, drawer by drawer, shelf by shelf.  Everything that we owned, except the stuff in my sacred Junk Drawer, made it on the inventory.  The goal was to place this inventory in clear plastic sleeves, place the sleeves in a three ring binder, and place the binder where everyone could access it.  She also ran all over the house sticking little printed labels, both square and level, on everything we own.  Using the inventory binder and the Brother PT-70 labels, every person in the house could pick up a misplaced item and find out exactly where this lost thing belongs, and hopefully return it.  It was a rock solid plan except for the fact that we never used it.

As a rather disorganized person myself, Esther's behavior has always struck me as a compulsive disorder.  She squirms in her seat at church whenever she hears a sermon about taking a Sabbath because a day with no work means a day of losing ground in the war against chaos and disorganization.  Esther used to love watching the HGTV design shows where a team of experts would walk into a house that had been overrun by clutter and would transform it into a well organized, labeled space.  Her soul resonated with this work.  In 22 minutes of pseudo-reality TV, she would experience the presence of God.  With this divine connection in mind, she once tried watching an episode of the pseudo-reality TV show, Hoarders, but literally broke out into a cold sweat and had trouble breathing simply by looking at how disorganized life can get.  I would have to say that when preachers discuss hell, Esther doesn't picture flames, she pictures dusty piles of magazines and news papers stacked six feet tall and trash bags full of unworn clothes.  I, unfortunately, could learn to function just fine in Esther's hell.

I have been thinking a lot about this idea of combating chaos lately as I've been talking with my homeless friend, Greg.  Greg lives in a tent.  He used to have a big tent, but other than it's size, there wasn't anything fancy about it.  It was a tent that anyone can buy at Walmart.  His tent was packed with stuff that most people throw away, but it was all Greg's stuff, and he was therefore attached to it.  As the city emptied the homeless camps by the river, Greg had to move and as he couldn't haul all of his stuff on his back, he was forced to abandon his clearing, his stuff, and his tent.  We bought Greg a new tent, but when I gave it to him, though he was thankful, his depression was palpable.  Though there are some deeply seated issues that contribute to Greg's situation, he still has a certain vivacity.  He is playful and ornery.  The first thing he says when someone walks up to him is, "I didn't do it."  That spark has been missing since he had to move.  Last Sunday I found out why.

Greg is overwhelmed by the thought of clearing a new space in the woods.  His previous space didn't seem to me to be anything worth an emotional attachment, but according to Greg, it was completely overgrown when he "moved" there.  He removed small volunteer trees, cleared brush, created paths, and established spaces to accommodate all of the necessities of life.  His tent was level and there were no stumps poking him in the back.  In short, Greg had fought the chaos of nature and brought enough organization to one little spot to accommodate his life.  His current deep sadness is in the fact that he has to start over.  In Greg's heart, chaos won this battle and he's wrestling with feeling that he may not have the strength left to win the war.

People much smarter than me have noticed and taught the idea that the initial metaphor for human habitation on earth is a garden while the conclusive picture is a city.  The general idea is that the progression of human existence is away from chaos toward organization.  I don't want to over-think this comparison because there is something beautiful and organized about nature and especially gardens and I have seen far too much chaos in the city, but I think the basic structure of the metaphor is sound.  A Biblical picture with which I am more familiar is that of Noah.  A couple of weeks ago we read this story during our morning devotions with the kids.  We read about Noah's exit from the ark, which incidentally usually gets left out of the Sunday School lessons as Noah wound up drunk and naked and making a fool of himself.  I can relate.  The idea that we focused on over breakfast was the fact that Noah's first instinct upon leaving the ark was to plant a vineyard. He was drawn to clear space, till earth, plant in rows, harvest, ferment, and bottle.  His first instinct was to move from the chaos of a flood to the beautiful structure of a vineyard.

Chaos comes in many forms.  It can be in the woods, in a junk drawer, and in our hearts.  Part of what makes us human is the desire to fight against it.  We turn a patch of grass into rows of radishes and beets, we use a Brother PT-70 to keep the "stomach and digestive meds" in the right box, and we endlessly hunt for ways to bring peace to our souls.  One of the major themes of the Bible is Shalom.  It's peace, but a deeper kind of peace than the English word indicates.  Without pretending to be a Hebrew scholar, I will say this of Shalom, it is the opposite of chaos in all of it's forms.  It is the deep sigh of satisfaction we get when we finish a project, it's the hug after making up from a fight, and it's the incredible rest that comes with finally realizing that we are truly loved by God. We were made for shalom. This is why we get depressed when we lose our tent, why we plant veggies in rows,  and it is why a Brother PT-70 can cause tears of joy.