Serve by Design

Our youngest granddaughter, Klaire Michelle, recently completed her first volleyball camp in the nearby high school gym. She loved it! Klaire is a petite, yet athletic, nine-year-old who’s going into fourth grade. She, along with one hundred other campers, participated in a week of disciplined two-hour sessions that included instruction and hands-on (pun intended!) practice! Hey Girl, Keep Diggin'!! Both of our twin daughters played volleyball during their middle and high school years. They were short in stature, but gritty, daring, and highly competitive! They were our team’s best diggers long before the sport would designate specialists called Liberos, who excelled in backrow defense. Monique, their mother, continues to score for the Libero during high school volleyball games! What makes a backrow specialist so valuable? They are agile, have quick hands, and are balanced on their feet. Diggers must get low enough to the floor to protect against the deadly hits of fierce tall hi...

It’s not what you think! I sensed a problem with the hot side of our kitchen faucet while washing the Sunday dishes. The water is usually uncomfortably hot, but this time it was barely warm. After going downstairs to inspect the water heater, I could immediately see a puddle of water under the unit and streams leading to the sump pump nearby. Are you in hot water? Early Monday, I called our service provider about scheduling a plumber. As I described the situation to the dispatcher, she suspected that our twenty-something-year-old unit had failed! It was comforting to hear that they’d service us later that afternoon. While I was mowing outside in the morning, Monique busied herself with some bookkeeping. We only felt a little inconvenienced when we tried to clean up the noon hour dishes. It’s obvious that we are spoiled by having “running water” when 2.2 billion throughout the world live daily with the stress of unsafely managed and inaccessible drinking water! (Source: worldbank.org)...

One of our granddaughter’s friends at Pathfinder Church, serves once a month, like many of her peers, on Sunday mornings in a first-second grade Bible class as an assistant. Recently, Matt, who volunteers as a helper with attendance in Eloise’s department, saw this pre-teen rushing down a long hallway to catch up to the others before worship. She was out of breath from covering half a football field distance. Matt inquired about her hurried pace and the girl answered, “I’m running late because an older person wanted to talk to me!” And Matt surmised that she meant someone closer to his late-forties age range! We laugh because we say that age is relative, until it isn’t, and becomes personal!😉 Credit: shutterstock.com Common themes that arise all too often in my visits to seniors residing in independent and assisted living facilities are the matters of loneliness and isolation. Many middle-aged adult caregivers are stressed by their busy lives and hectic schedules. They are trying to m...

Our family has been stressed coming and going these days since grandpa (my dad) has been in hospice at his nearby community hospital. His health has been failing since his 94 th birthday back in early December. It has become serious enough that our grown kids and their families decided to come in to see, be with, and encourage dad. They were determined to sit and share their affection with him while he was still aware and conversant. Klay, Eloise, Karter, and Danny Marc said, "I had to sit a different table. Too rough of a crowd for me!" 😏 The kids came from near and far. Our Texas son drove twelve straight hours and the New Mexico family purchased airfare that same day to fly in as well. Everyone gathered around dad on two occasions, and it was special to see the outpouring of their devotion. They had accumulated so many cherished memories over the years. Even though it was an exhausting trip for them, the kids and grands just couldn’t pass up what might be their last oppo...

Last week, we received a curious incentive from a not-for-profit that we have given a donation to on occasion. Monique immediately brought this shirt pocket-sized tool to me to see if I could determine what it was and in what way it could be useful. I held the item in my hand and studied it without any success. I had never seen anything like it! Handy Dandy Pocket Tools! Since it came with a modest plastic sheath around it, I opened the protective covering to see if there was a clue inside. I found a very thin white card with a list of eleven items typed in red ink under the heading, “Multipurpose Pocket Survival Tool.”   Some of the uses for this singular tool included: can opener, knife edge, screwdriver, butterfly wrench, saw blade and a “Direction Ancillary Indicator!” I had to go to YouTube in order to decipher this feature. Because this “credit card-like tool” is magnetized, it can also function as a water compass! Why do we use such big words for something this simple?! As...

The MJK's are celebrating another wedding anniversary, June 10th!  This celebration is just shy of the big one! Next year it will be "Golden!" I don't think it occurred to me when I met Monique Jeanne during our early college days that should we ever marry, we would have the same initials! Now, I can be pretty sure that Monique was doing all kinds of calculations without my awareness because after our fourth child some years later, she would acknowledge, "I really had planned on five children!" "Uh boy!" I sighed and said, "I didn't know that!" And I meant it! Our firstborn would be another MJK and so were the other three that followed! Six MJK's in total! Therefore, we learned to be clear when signing MJK as to which specific one of us it represented! I have tried to pull rank by referring to myself as "THE MJK!" The other members of our household have not be amused! Every once and a while, I will be surprised by how ot...

After years of ongoing substituting at her favorite neighborhood school, Mimi will be sitting out this school year awaiting a much needed vaccine. T he "Number One Substitute Teacher" of our family has been sidelined due to precautions over pre-existing conditions and being in a higher risk age-group. Yet, we still have three active teachers in our family fully engaged in their academic trenches. These educators are leading their classes by remote. Remote Learning Fox Valley School District School definitely has a different look during this Covid-19 Pandemic! It has a different language describing it, too! The other evening, I opened up the note's application on my phone in order to record some of the words our teacher daughter was using as she shared about her day with her mother. I couldn't believe how strange it sounded to hear her speaking the "language of Covid."  Within a couple of minutes of conversation, these tech-specific words and phrases swiftly ...