07
01
It great to realize it’s not a competition, especially when you would’ve lost
Written by Nathan on July 1, 2009 at 12:07 pm from A Month of Serving.
Written by Nathan on July 1, 2009 at 12:07 pm from A Month of Serving.
If there was a single overriding realization I made over this month of serving, it would be that my wife is much better at serving than I am. While it’s great that I have just a great teacher and model in my wife, it’s got to at least a little frustrating for her. So much of my service is for her, and so much of her service is for me, I spent the month worried she was getting a bad deal. There were many times I found myself feeling like I was losing, and strove for some sort of numerical parity.
Fortunately this wasn’t a competition, and serving isn’t about quantity. My wife serves me so often because I ask for help all the time. And she takes care of me because I need it. But most of all, she loves me and that drives her to action all the time. Whether I ask for help 20 times in a day or not, I’ve realized she’s so good at this because she’s oriented toward me all the time.
That’s been the crux of this month; checking my orientation to see if it matched the destination I wanted. I wanted to serve Jenn, but was I oriented toward her? I think it’s a basic general principle all over the place… Want to be a musician? Start studying & making music. Want to be a writer? Start writing, critically reading and get peer reviews.
For this month I learned that to really serve Jenn I needed to be all about her, honed in and ready. That obviously applied when she was around but I found it also applied when she wasn’t. When she was away, I was constantly ready to step up and often when others needed help. Those other acts of service better prepared me for the times when she was present, and generally just being attentive to her meant that over the month I had to ask less if I could help, and more often how I could help.
I never really set any metrics to measure if this was successful, but Jenn found out last week was I had been doing and she didn’t laugh at the notion I’d been serving her this month. So perhaps I fared alright. Regardless, I know that I pay better attention to her and I’m quicker to set aside distractions when there’s an opportunity to take action.
On second thought, perhaps I’ll close out this month’s project by asking her how I did. If this really has been all about her, then asking that questions is probably more important than whatever answer she gives.
06
24
The sound of silence
Written by Nathan on June 24, 2009 at 10:58 am from A Month of Serving.
Written by Nathan on June 24, 2009 at 10:58 am from A Month of Serving.
With the summer in full swing, my wife is privileged to spend all day with our kids. It’s awesome, but the (often substantial) challenge is how she can deal with kids who are always “on”. My son can be especially demanding, because he can string together words and sentences for a seemingly never-ending block of time. It’s adorable and tiring. Jenn gets very little break from the start of the day until its end, which would wear even on the best of us. Given Jenn is among the best of us, she’s still frequently worn by the nonstop noise.
I’ve been trying to help by taking the kids, and frequently praying with her that she’d find silence. Last night she picked me up to drive to Disney with our family and the kids were asleep. It seemed like a brief answer to that prayer. I got in the car, happy about it, and was about to launch into conversation until I realized I was about to perpetuate the problem.
Granted our conversation is different (and hopefully better) than what she gets with our kids, but she needed silence still and I had a unique chance to be the answer to my own prayers. So I joined in the silence with my sleeping children. For an hour we drove, quietly, and she found rest.
Now and again we briefly talked, but I kept my mouth mostly shut for the duration. More importantly, I managed to do something truly helpful to Jenn just by doing nothing.
06
16
Pursuing value
Written by Nathan on June 16, 2009 at 8:22 am from A Month of Serving.
Written by Nathan on June 16, 2009 at 8:22 am from A Month of Serving.
Halfway through this month the only major question I have is whether serving is the action or the attitude. There have been occasions this month where I did acts that didn’t seem like much, but where entirely focused on my wife and thus I think they offered profound help. There have also been occasions where I realized some acts would have huge impact, but my mind was entirely elsewhere.
So which is really service? When I take my kids off my wife’s hands but let my mind wander isn’t that still serving her (and perhaps being a mediocre parent…)? And if there’s an hour where I keep my focus entirely on Jenn, waiting for the opportunity to act even if nothing comes up didn’t I spend the hour in service?
I don’t have a great answer, and there’s a part of me wondering if I’m wrestling with a question that’s not even legitimate. The answer could be both, or maybe even “who cares?” Fortunately I don’t need a fully developed philosophy of service to take care of my wife in the present. I’ll just keep plodding along, thinking on Albert Einstein’s words:
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
06
08
Sometimes it really is about the destination
Written by Nathan on June 8, 2009 at 9:38 pm from A Month of Serving.
The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.
- GK Chesteron
Written by Nathan on June 8, 2009 at 9:38 pm from A Month of Serving.
The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.
- GK Chesteron
My sophomore year of college I took a job as a residence adviser. Before they’d let me loose in the dorm, offering guidance and boundaries to dozens of incoming freshmen, they ran me through a one-week crash course in advising. The instructor was a outgoing, fast-talking middle aged woman who seemed to find her greatest happiness in reducing complex challenges and concepts into pithy bumper stickers.
For the week’s training I winced my way through her constant barrage of clichés, all offered with the supposition that anyone who needed help would be well served by kitschy sayings. Amongst my least favorite was “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” On the surface I get where that’s coming from - don’t stop and smell the roses, after all. But at the same time, no matter how remarkable the journey if there’s a place I need to get and I don’t get there isn’t it possible the journey was in vain?
A few years after those training sessions I was touring in a band and finally pulled into a town after an especially grueling drive. En route to this show one band member contracted a terrible ear infection required a doctor detour and 15 hours later, our van’s bumper fall off in traffic while still attached to our trailer. It was a terrible (and fascinating) trip, but we endured in part by keeping firm focus on the show at the end of the drive. But when we showed up in the town it turned out that our booking agent fabricated this particular show to save face. There was no show. Suddenly the entire journey was radically recontextualized just because the destination changed.
My destination this month is serving my wife well. It’s really not about the journey; what I learn, habits I pick up, etc. It’s simply about finding a path to taking better care of her. I hope by to observe and engage in forms I can’t quite explain until I discover how really to serve Jenn. Along the way I’m over-thinking the process, sometimes excusing my frequently tepid progress. Though two journeys are in opposition, and offer likely different destination. But ultimately I’m realizing the need for firm orientation - a compass of sorts - so that this journey takes me where I need to go.
06
03
Day start
Written by Nathan on June 3, 2009 at 11:50 pm from A Month of Serving.
Written by Nathan on June 3, 2009 at 11:50 pm from A Month of Serving.
Sometime early this morning my wife nudged me and asked me to help with something. I dutifully took our newborn, put her on my chest and went back to sleep. Great husband, right? Unfortunately, she actually asked me to help with our other daughter who was at the time standing at the foot of our bed. Once our infant was draped over my chest, my wife was more or less obliged to be the parent who took the 2-year-old back to her bed.
I tried to make amends by leaving for work a few minutes late so that she could take a shower, get dressed and not have to worry to much about the kids. I even fixed their breakfast, presuming that pouring cereal counts as “fixed”. I’m not sure that made up for compelling her to sleep on a cheap child’s mattress for 90 minutes in the early AM, but this is about baby steps, right?
06
02
An early failure
Written by Nathan on June 2, 2009 at 10:39 pm from A Month of Serving.
Written by Nathan on June 2, 2009 at 10:39 pm from A Month of Serving.
I’m only in my second day and already I’ve elected to spend the last two hours writing about serving Jenn instead of actually serving her. I did take the kids so that she could turn in early (at 8!) because she was exhausted, but the pile of laundry is still unfolded and the dishes are still dirty.
06
02
Starting small, one lunch at a time
Written by Nathan on June 2, 2009 at 10:37 pm from A Month of Serving.
Written by Nathan on June 2, 2009 at 10:37 pm from A Month of Serving.
Most of the year my oldest two children are enrolled in school, which means that my wife gets a break from motherhood a few days of a week. She teaches at their school so it’s not a break from responsibility entirely but it is a chance for her to get some space from the demands of parenting. But there’s a part of the year when she’s with the kids all the time, and Monday was the first day of the summer, and the first day of three months of Jenn, three kids and some incredible heat.
Like all kids, ours can be demanding (just like they can be amazing). When I’m at work, there’s not much I directly do to help referee fights, occupy kids or tend to the domestic chores during the day. But I can take her out of solo-parenting, however briefly, when I have lunch with the family. So rather than wait the day for big acts at the end of the day, I asked her to bring the kids to meet me for lunch. I don’t know with certainty that the hour pause midday made any huge impact. But for those 60 minutes I got to be the listener, the child-chaser, and the attention-giver. For that little bit of the day, she got to be not just mom, but also Jenn.
Even as I tried to serve and care and help, I knew my invitation them over meant she had to corral the kids to the car, pack the lunch to bring and even at the lunch still share in parenting duty. So it’s possible I did as much damage as good. But I think that a big part of successful service is not just whatever act was done, but also letting someone know you care. Jenn doesn’t know that serving her is my goal this month and I’m hoping to keep it that way. But I think she’ll notice that I’m working as hard to take care of her as she has to work to take care of us, and I do hope that will alleviate some of the weight of her summertime homemaking.
06
02
A Month of Serving
Written by Nathan on June 2, 2009 at 10:12 pm from A Month of Serving.
Written by Nathan on June 2, 2009 at 10:12 pm from A Month of Serving.
For these 30 days of June I have what is either the simplest or hardest goal: to serve my wife.
It should be remarkably easy to find ways to take care of her. We have three children, a dog, a small house where everything that needs doing has no place to hide and a busy life. Finding places and moments where I can take care of her won’t take any effort at all.
It will be hard, though, because the size of the job is daunting. The kids run full time. The less appealing tasks of domestic life are never-ending - there’s always more laundry, more dishes, etc. And serving someone is never free - there’s always something else I could be doing instead that I’ll have to choose not to do, in order to care for her.
Easy or hard the irresistible draw is Jenn. I can’t think of another person I could love more, or a better way to spend my time than in trying to make her life better. So whatever the cost I’m ready.