No Coincidences

Tag: boy meets world

  • Blessing of Sickness

    Blessing of Sickness

    I think getting sick is a great blessing.

    Before anyone gets mad at me, let me clarify. I think short-term, temporary, not too dangerous, not too terrible sickness can be a great blessing. I’m talking the colds, the stomach bugs, the flu, the non-life threatening sicknesses are the best. Being sick sucks. It’s miserable. I’m the cliché ‘whine and cry more than anyone about being sick’ person, but, I am so grateful for sickness.

    Let me elaborate with a specific example.

    Sage started throwing up like crazy at 9:30pm, soon after going to bed. I got her out of bed. She was projectile vomiting and writhing in pain. We ended up at the hospital. We brought Sage home around 1:30am.

    Sage went right to sleep in our bed with Beth. I slept on the couch. I think I finally fell asleep around 2:00am. At 4:00am I awoke to a familiar sound, but this time it wasn’t Sage. My worry had come true. Ivy was crying. I ran to her room and turned on the light to find her, her pillow, and her quilt covered in throw up.

    I knew more was coming and was too exhausted to do the whole strip the bed and cleanup routine so I’m ashamed (not really, actually) to say I just cleaned it up and told Ivy to lay back down. I wiped her mouth, got a bucket, made sure she was comfortable, got a blanket and pillow for myself, and laid down next to her.

    For the next 2.5 hours, I could have set my watch to Ivy throwing up. Every 20 minutes from 4:00am to 6:20am when we finally got up, she would throw up. Just enough time for me to start to doze off while holding her hand. I’d hear it start, I’d jump up and give her the bucket, I’d wipe up any that missed, I’d wipe her mouth. Rinse repeat (pun intended?).

    This all sounds miserable, right? Where is the blessing in this? This is horrible!

    Well, it kind of is. No doubt it is heartbreaking watching your little ones be sick. It is heartbreaking. They can’t control it. They don’t know what’s going on. It’s sad.

    At 6:20am Ivy and I got up and cuddled on the couch. We put on the cartoon Doug by Ivy’s demand. 18 minutes into a 23-minute episode she said, “This episode is too long put on something else.”

    Ivy and I proceeded to have a Boy Meets World marathon. She was Sean for the rest of the day. I was Cory. Sage was Morgan. Sometimes I was Allen. If you don’t know those characters, step up your Boy Meets World knowledge.

    Sage woke up around 8am or something. This is all a blur now as I hadn’t really slept at all. Sage ate some grapes and I immediately put her back to sleep. Ivy and I were back to our marathon.

    Beth mentioned I should go pick up our prescription of Zofran. As exhausted as I was, I decided this was the best opportunity for me to do that. Ivy was getting tired. She went into the room with Beth to lie down and I packed up to go down the street to the pharmacy.

    Oh did I mention Beth was sick the whole day too? Side note, this is how things go in our family, I’ll likely be puking my guts out 24-48 hours after the rest of the family, I always catch these things on a delay. We joke it’s my Quackenbush DNA. My girls only have 50% of the Quackenbush DNA. The virus will get me, but I’ll fight it off for a while. (I can even more gratefully say now, as I wrote this a couple weeks ago, that I never got this sickness, boo-yah).

    I came back from the pharmacy and luckily got to sleep for an hour(?) before Sage woke up. I got Sage up and fed her some food. We spent an hour bonding, cuddling, and snuggling in the living room before Ivy woke up. I put Sage back to sleep and Ivy and I continued our BMW marathon before going on a walk.

    We walked around the neighborhood, sat in the grass, played eye spy.

    You get the picture.

    Came back. Sage was up. Feed Sage. Bathe Sage.

    Long day.

    Awesome day.

    It’s so hard to slow down in this world.

    Sickness makes us slow down. This was a special day. This is a day I will treasure.

    There were so many special moments. Like on our walk when Ivy held my hand to make me feel safe. Or when Ivy asked on our walk if I knew where the dumpster was and then told me, “You’re absolutely right.” All those sad but tender moments of grabbing a bucket and holding Ivy and telling her, “I’m here, you’re OK, I’ve got you” while she retched and threw up. Sage cuddling in my lap and looking up at me and I knew she knew she was safe and going to be okay. Seeing Sage and Ivy get better before my eyes – getting back to their normal selves.

    There were so many moments that were so important with my girls that day.

    I wouldn’t have had those moments if not for their sickness.

    Being sick is miserable. But it can also be really special.

    One final memorable moment – Ivy was going potty and I was about to get in the shower. I told her, “I’m going to shower and when I get out I’ll get you some food. You can have nachos or noodles or toast or crackers or a sandwich. Think about what you want when I get out.” Ivy’s response, “Dad, I’m not going to think of all those things.”

  • “Education is not about obscure facts and little test scores” – Mr. Feeny

    “Education is not about obscure facts and little test scores” – Mr. Feeny

    “Education is not about obscure facts and little test scores. Education is about the overall effect of years of slow absorption of concepts, philosophies, approaches to problem-solving. The whole process is so grand and all-encompassing that it really can’t be threatened by the occasional late-night no-hitter. It is important that a boy spend time with his father.”

    Oh, the wisdom of Mr. Feeny.

    I’ve had some good teachers in my life. I consider Mr. Feeny to be one of them, even though he’s a fictional character.

    Quick recap of this classic Boy Meets World episode. Alan (Cory’s father) pulls Cory out of bed late at night to watch a no-hitter in progress in a Phillies baseball game. The next day Cory sleeps through a test. Alan goes to speak to Mr. Feeny to ask if Cory could have a makeup test. Mr. Feeny denies his request.

    It is later in the episode, during a late-night stargazing, apple juice session that Cory sits down with Mr. Feeny and Mr. Feeny gives the above quote.

    Education is not about one moment. It’s about a billion small moments.

    I often reflect back on that quote. I have read more in 2020 (the year I wrote this post) than any previous year. I don’t feel any smarter today than I did a year ago, I don’t think. But that’s not how knowledge-gaining works. It doesn’t happen over the course of a day or a week or even a year. Learning is an ongoing process. I hope to look back on the year 2020 and appreciate that it helped me learn things that would help me learn more and grow for the rest of my life.

    I look forward to learning into eternity.

    It is important that a boy (or girl) spend time with his (or her) father (or mother). What is the value of time with a father, a mother, someone who loves you? I believe it’s invaluable.

    The episode continues and both Mr. Feeny and Alan come to Cory separately and tell Cory that the other was right in their decision. Alan tells Cory Mr. Feeny was right to not let him retake the test and that Alan shouldn’t have pulled Cory out of bed. Obviously, the quote above indicates that Mr. Feeny approved of Alan’s pulling Cory out of bed to spend time with his son, despite not letting Cory re-take the test.

    Later, Cory is talking to his mom and he asks her how two people could both think the other was right, while seemingly disagreeing with one another. The lesson here is that the world is not black and white. There are many judgment calls where there is no perfect decision. There are many decisions that depend on your intent.

    Cory’s dad was not wrong for wanting to spend time with his son. His desire was good and admirable. Mr. Feeny agreed with that.

    Mr. Feeny had a standard he had long set that he would take no excuses from students as to why they failed a test. He couldn’t back down from that standard. His standard was set so he would always hold his students accountable and not let them down. Mr. Feeny had a good reason for denying Alan’s request.

    Both were right. Both agreed with the other’s reasoning.

    The conversation between Mr. Feeny and Cory’s dad was contentious. It ended with Mr. Feeny saying, “this conversation is over.” Both men ended up telling Cory the other was right. Why is that? Respect, introspection, understanding of the reasoning behind another’s viewpoint.

    We could do with much more of this in the world today.

  • Book Review: The Problem of Pain

    Book Review: The Problem of Pain

    The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

    Copyright 1940

    ________________________________

    From the front cover: “The point about reading C.S. Lewis is that he makes you sure, whatever you believe, that religion accepted or rejected means something extremely serious, demanding the entire energy of mind.”

    Before starting this book, I was in the precarious position of thinking C.S. Lewis was one of my favorite authors without having ever read one of his books.  I have many of his books on my list of to-one-day-read.  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is obviously on that list.  In the Church of Jesus Christ we often hear that C.S. Lewis is one of the most quoted, nonmember of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ever.  For good reason.  I came to the conclusion C.S. Lewis was one of my favorite authors because all his quote ARE SO GOOD.  He is brilliant.

    The Problem of Pain was the first C.S. Lewis book I ever read.

    I consider myself a semi-literate and intelligent individual.  That all went out the window while reading this book.

    This is how I felt reading this book:

    My monkey brain couldn’t wrap itself around these eloquent and long sentences.  Here’s another thing, I don’t like huge paragraphs, if you can’t tell.  When a paragraph goes 3 pages long (in the paper-back I was reading) I’m likely to get lost before even starting it.

    All that being said, my simplistic mind could still grasp that it was being stretched.  I could still sense this learning taking place in my mind, even if much of it was going over my head.  There were many quotes that made me stop and think. That was part of the problem.  To truly appreciate this book, I would have had to stop and ponder what I was reading at least 3 times per page.  That makes for a long reading of a 162-page book.

    I will read this book again, mark my words.  I may read it 10 more agains.  It is good and I do desperately want to understand it.  So, I won’t be giving up on it.  I’ll just have to mix in some simple, relaxed reading alongside it.  My mind  can only take so much.

    If you’re much smarter than me, please read it.  If you have read it and understood greater than 20% of it, let’s sit down and talk, but only if you’re prepared to be extremely patient with me.

    I will leave you with one of my favorite parts of this book so you can get a feel for the book, learn something, and see how brilliant C.S. Lewis’s writing is.  It will not be the whole paragraph because I don’t want every reader to get lost midway through like I often did.

    In speaking of hell, C.S. Lewis writes:

    “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.  I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man ‘wishes’ to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good.  They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved:  just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.”