Serving others: the gift I always forget

I want to be better about service.

I always feel like I'm too overwhelmed to help. I remember the proverb in Luke 4:23: Physician, heal thyself. I often feel like before I can really serve, I need to be happy enough with myself, healthy enough to do so. However, the trick is that part of healing ourselves only happens when we serve. So, I start small. I help my wife more. My kids. I try to offer encouragement to others.

But I don't take my kids to soup kitchens. Or to nice old ladies' houses. I have in the past. And it makes for a marvelous experience and, at this time of year, a more memorable Christmas.

I want to do that again. Feel that again. So, I guess I'm trying to say that, along with the physical gifts we give, maybe we can do something for someone else that will ease their burden a bit.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

[Note: this short was made by a wonderfully talented team led by my friends Jed Wells and Gavin Bentley. My wife put in hours hanging lights on all of our neighbors houses and made everything look good. Our house, tree, and family has a 2 second cameo.]

Santa was seriously injured, but he doesn't have to die

Photo from koikoikoi.com

Author's note: This contains my frank feelings about some Christmas traditions and will shatter the illusion for some younger readers. Parents be advised.

Our kids have stopped believing in Santa.

I told my daughter that if she stopped believing, he'd stop coming. Amelia didn't like that. Neither did my daughter. She has the Malibu Dream House on her list this year.

It was probably harsh of me. I was trying to joke about it. It's not like Christmas is canceled. But my point to them—that was missed—was when you stop believing in the Tooth Fairy, you're out a few bucks. When you stop believing in Tinkerbell, she can't fly. When you stop believing in Santa, Christmas Eve is a little less magical. Christmas morning is a little less anticipated. The Christmas spirit is just a little less bright. So, I tried to smile and laugh it off and then I went into my bedroom and cried.

I didn't always have such a pro-Santa agenda. When I was single, I had this idea that when I got married and started having kids, I'd never perpetuate the existence of a real Santa. I thought that maybe, if I read the myths and traditions surrounding Santa leading up to the holiday, made it clear they were legends, and then left a few gifts from "him," that Christmas could always be focused more on family and Jesus. My kids would know from the beginning that he was a part of Christmas tradition but not Christmas itself. But I married a woman with two kids who already believed and I wasn't about to stop that. I've never been logically sold on the idea of lying to my kids about a mythological man shaped by department store and Coca-Cola marketing. In our home, we've never used the jolly old elf as a bargaining chip, a behavior monitor, or threat. When there have been little questions, we've been vague. When the questions got specific like, "Are you Santa?" they have gotten the truth. So it's never been this huge dedication to the guy.

Here's a question: When we perpetuate this myth, what stops kids from reasoning that, perhaps, the other kind, gentle, loving Man they've also never seen is fiction? They both take the exercising of faith yet one turns out to be mom and dad. There's not a lot of physical evidence of God. For kids, at least Santa drank milk and ate cookies. One thing that helps is the The Spirt and, thankfully, that can be powerful.

So, is it better to not start the myth or is it good for them to practice this belief in someone they can't see so they can do it for other things? How should I have approached the Santa Let Down of 2013?

Someone shared this on Facebook and it intrigued me. Martha Brockenbrough wrote it for her daughter and it later appeared in the New York Times. Here are a few excerpts and you can read it in full here.

"I am the person who fills your stockings with presents ... the presents under the tree, the same way my mom did for me, and the same way her mom did for her. (And yes, Daddy helps, too.)

I imagine you will someday do this for your children, and I know you will love seeing them run down the Christmas magic stairs on Christmas morning. You will love seeing them sit under the tree, their small faces lit with Christmas lights.

This won’t make you Santa, though.

Santa is bigger than any person, and his work has gone on longer than any of us have lived. What he does is simple, but it is powerful. He teaches children how to have belief in something they can’t see or touch.

It’s a big job, and it’s an important one. Throughout your life, you will need this capacity to believe: in yourself, in your friends, in your talents, and in your family. You’ll also need to believe in things you can’t measure or even hold in your hand. Here, I am talking about love, that great power that will light your life from the inside out, even during its darkest, coldest moments.

Santa is a teacher, and I have been his student, and now you know the secret of how he gets down all those chimneys on Christmas Eve: he has help from all the people whose hearts he’s filled with joy.

With full hearts, people like Daddy and me take our turns helping Santa do a job that would otherwise be impossible.

So, no, I am not Santa. Santa is love and magic and hope and happiness. I’m on his team, and now you are, too."

I guess that's why I cried a little. I didn't want hope and happiness and magic to leave our home during Christmas. But it doesn't have to. It won't. It will still be in our Christ-centered activities. In how we treat people. In how we give to each other. And I bet, just maybe, there could be a little magic in our daughter's eyes when she drowsily, yet exitedly, opens that ...

My complicated relationship with babies

I searched Google for crazy babies.

I currently like babies. Let's get that out of the way. I like seeing them in the pew in front of me at church or in the line at the grocery store. I like making faces at them. I like their laughs. I like it when my friends and family make one so I get to be around one. Babies are great.

But I haven't always liked them.

When I was four or five, I saw a baby at church and I pointed at him in his stroller and he grabbed my finger and bit onto it and wouldn't let go until I slapped his face to make him cry so he'd let go.

When I was ten, my mother babysat a baby with 12 toes. He didn't bite my finger but I was still a little scared of him.

When I was 15, I found a baby on the stairs outside the orphanage where I lived and we brought it in and the nuns raised it and now he's the Mayor of Toronto.

One of those things is not true. And I only make light of it because ...

Today, when I think of babies, I get a little bit sad. Amelia and I have not been able to make them. One doctor speculates it's because I suffered an injury when I was young. (Wear a cup, kids! Even at home watching TV with your cousins!) One speculates that, even though she's had two children already, it's related to the thyroid disease Amelia was diagnosed with four years ago. Some doctors tell us we're too old and beat up to have a healthy child, even if we could.

The truth is we've never officially been tested or found out for sure why we can't. Now, some people may think that's stupid. "Well, if you want kids, you'd do everything you could to get them. Have more faith." Ok, sure. By the time we thought we were ready to try, we tried. By the time we realized there might be a real problem, Amelia was sick. Then her heart quit. Then there was the thought that God might not want us to make more together. He never gives you more than you can handle. Maybe he was trying to tell us we already had two marvelous kids in our mixed family home that we need to help to have the best lives they can.

Feeling incomplete, cheated, and left out, I've prayed a lot about the fertility issue over the years. Every question has always caused a stupor of thought. This past year, I got a peaceful feeling that we were good. That our family was complete ... for now. I don't know how to explain it but I feel whole. I really love my little family and it's good for me to learn to focus on them with all I have.

Yes, I missed the first 18 months of my daughter's life. The true "baby" years. But I've been able to spend every day since giving her my love, my advice, and my all. That's been pretty brilliant. She is pretty brilliant. And I've never even slapped her in the face.

My favorite non-PTA blog is ...

Yours!

No, I kid. It's not. I mean, it might be one of my favorites. Are you my wife or one of my 17 friends? Then, yes, your blog is one of my favorite blogs.

Also, did you know that every author here at PTA has their own personal blog (that they rarely update)? They do. You should read them.

Since I can't list all my favorite blogs, and it's impossible to narrow it down to one, I'm going to list three:

1. Amelia Merritt. This is my wife's blog. She's got a gift for telling it like it is, girlfriend. She holds nothing back. It can make people uncomfortable at times, even me, but it's mostly because truth can be awkward. Her posts about her heart failure and pacemaker surgery make me teary-eyed and I already know the story!

2. Modern Mormon Men. I don't just recommend it because I contribute to it often or because Chris and Josh used to. I recommend it because, if you're Mormon, it gives a variety of perspectives on the LDS experience that are hard to find in one place anywhere else. You'll love a lot of it, and you'll disagree with a lot of it. That makes a good blog.

3. Splitsider. The blog/site for comedy nerds and/or geeks. It's for those who enjoy reading funny stuff or thoughts on why stuff is funny (sometimes with scientific proof) or comedy history or comedy pop culture. Is that you? Yes? Then you'll love it! My favorite feature is called Saturday Night's Children: "Saturday Night Live has been home to over a hundred cast members throughout the past 37 years. In our column Saturday Night’s Children, we present the history, talent, and best sketches of one SNL cast member every other week for your viewing, learning, and laughing pleasure."

There you go. I hope this gives you minutes of online reading pleasure. What are your favorite blogs?