A Fish Tale

If you're from the Bayou, you're probably familiar with these guys...

My son is officially a Bayou La Batrian now. This past weekend was relatively quiet on our little plot of N. Wintzell. My eldest spent the weekend away with my in-laws at the Cheersport national competition in Atlanta. Needless to say, the absence of his favorite playmate left Joseph more than a little bummed out. To attempt to balance things out a little bit, we tried to do some things that he wanted to do over the weekend. For some time now, Joseph has been wanting to go fishing. He loves seeing the fish when his Pop and I catch them and he loves to pretend fish so, first up, we took a fishing trip.

Friday afternoon, Joseph and I headed to the Bayou with a light, our rods, and a little bit of squid en route to our first father-son fishing trip. If any of you have ever fished with an almost 3 year-old you know what an adventure this can be. (Protective eyewear should be worn at all times when fishing with an almost 3 year-old) He and I had different goals for the fishing trip. When asked what he hoped to catch, Joseph replied "like a thousand sharks". Needless to say, this was not my plan. I hoped to catch something that would require as little effort as possible and be insignificant enough not to feel bad about throwing back. So, with that in mind, we went to work with little success. By little success, I mean "not so much as a single bite". After moving locations a few times around the shipyard, I made an executive decision to set up a light and take a break until dark. We made a bug juice/Coca-Cola run to the Raceway and waited on night to fall.

By the time we made it back to the yard, it was good and dark and the light was beginning to attract some minnows to the top of the water. We were ready to try it again. Almost immediately, I felt a tug at my line and I knew that I had hooked something small. My catch? A croaker. (For any of my out of town readers, check out the picture above) I cast again and over the next few minutes Joseph and I caught 3 croakers. They were perfect. He got to help reel them in, they were biting pretty quickly, and I had no desire to keep them.

Joseph was quite excited by the catch, but after nearly 3 hours of fishing, he was about ready to call it a night. I started to gather our things to head home, when he stopped me and said "Thank you Daddy, for letting me come along with you". It hit me then that he didn't know what I was doing. He had no idea that the trip was for him. I wasn't going fishing that night for me, but I was doing it for him. I was being intentional about blessing him, but he was just happy for the chance to be with me.

How often do we miss it? Maybe they don't come everyday, but our lives are full of opportunities to give people the greatest gift we have- time. Moms and Dads, Grandmas and Grandpas, and even you kids out there. Don't miss the chance to spend some time with those that you love. It doesn't have to be anything that special. You can just go catch a few croakers down on the bayou. Just do it together.

That's the view around here, on N. Wintzell.

A Lesson Learned (Hopefully)

As a parent, it's amazing the things that I learn through watching my children. The farther I go along the more I recognize that the basic problems of humanity don't discriminate by age. Last week on N. Wintzell, I had just such an experience. My son, Joseph, is getting ready for his third birthday this month, but in the meantime, he's still stuck in the terrible twos. Because as soon as they turn three kids don't have anymore problems, right? Overall, he's a pretty easy kid. He responds well to discipline and is pretty good about following directions. Occasionally, however, his temper gets the best of him and last week he learned a hard lesson about the cost of anger.


Christmas 2011

The toy pictured above was one of my son's favorite Christmas presents. It's a VTech Mobigo and I have to say, we've come a long way from the Tiger electronic games we had when I was a kid. It's a pretty impressive setup with some quality educational games. Joseph loves this toy. I'd find him in bed underneath the covers playing it while he pretended to sleep. It included a Toy Story 3 game, and as Woody and Buzz are two of his favorite characters, the Mobigo and Joseph were a perfect match.

All of that changed last week. Joseph was having a two year-old moment. I gave him an instruction to follow. He refused. I repeated the instruction. He got angry. I repeated the instruction again, with defined consequences for his inaction. Then the fateful moment came, he spiked the Mobigo. (As a sidebar, throwing things in anger is a grand family tradition. We never throw things at anybody, we just chunk whatever is handy. There are probably thousands of dollars worth of wrenches and hammers in the bayou around Landry Boatworks. Once, I even managed to toss a Yazoo pushmower.) Oddly enough, those things weren't intended for that type of use.

The favorite toy is now broken and Joseph is dealing with the consequences of his actions. I hate life lessons. Every now and then, Joseph goes and picks up the Mobigo and wonders what it would be like if it still worked. Watching him, it breaks my heart for him. I wonder if this is how God feels when he looks down at me and watches me deal with the consequences of my own actions?

The Bible has a lot to say about anger, and very little of it is positive. While there is an appropriate type of righteous anger, I believe that it is the exception and not the rule. I'm reminded of Paul's words on the matter:

26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Ephesians 4:26-27;31

For everyone of us, we can probably look back to some person, some thing, some organization, or some relationship that we have helped to break as we have acted on our anger. Let's take care that our lives aren't dominated by anger. Otherwise, there will be lots of broken pieces to sift through. When anger controls us, ultimately, the person we destroy is our self.

Of the 7 deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

-Frederick Buechner

That's the lesson for the day, from my spot here on N. Wintzell