My Problems Are Fine

Someone asked me how it was going the other day. I paused while trying to average out my blessings and curses to see what the final tally was. “Fine,” I said. Here’s what I really wanted to say but didn’t have the time to do so

Everyone always has problems in life no matter what. And if I had to pick problems to have, I’d say mine are fine. My personal level of misery is doable.

Recently everyone in our house has been sick over and over again. Pink eye, sniffles, sneezes, fevers, and things like that. It seems like ever since December it’s been an ongoing drama, much like a terrible high school play you just can’t leave. I’ve begun to suspect it’s a spiritual attack or something, kind of like a Job situation, except not as bad. I have no idea, but I do know the physical illnesses are causing spiritual angst. It’s stressful being a dad, especially without a healthy wife telling me how to do it. Luckily a local church recently held a morning men’s conference with the theme “Don’t Give Up!” I was excited to get some tips on how not to give up because it seems like it keeps happening to me. Anyway, the pamphlet promised that if we got there early we could have coffee and donuts. That sealed the deal.

The morning of the conference arrived and found me sleeping past my alarm. I frantically took a shower, got dressed, and tried to get a quiet start to the day. I sat down in the recliner, propped up my legs, and sighed happily. Right on cue Adi and Elliot marched down the steps and began demanding things, much like tornado sirens. On top of everyone being sick, we’re right in the middle of potty training Elliot. I happened to forget that we were potty training Elliot that morning (Janice wasn’t awake to remind me) and I never sat him on the potty. One minute before I was ready to leave he suddenly assumed a bow legged position in the kitchen and frantically announced he was peeing! He seemed as surprised as everyone else. The puddle grew faster than my feet could run. Now I was in a dilemma. I had to leave, there was pee on the floor, and Janice was still sleeping. I assessed my options and threw some paper towels on the pee, rinsed off Elliots pants and undies, ran upstairs, and woke up Janice. “Good morning beautiful! The children are up. There’s pee on the kitchen floor that’s half cleaned up. I have to leave now if I want to make it to this men’s conference so I can learn to be a better husband. I don’t want to miss the coffee and donuts. Bye!” The irony of the situation struck me I walked out the door. Sometimes I’m so busy being a Christian I don’t have time to be like Jesus.

The conference was good though. We had several pastors from local churches giving convincing reasons why we shouldn’t give up. The apostle Paul was a good example. He went through shipwrecks and all that without giving up. It was on a Saturday. The next morning we stayed home from church because Janice was feeling worse and Elliot and Oliver had more yellow puss coming from the corners of their inflamed, red eyes. They were grumpy. Janice was grumpy. I yelled at the kids more than I should’ve. The kids yelled at me more than they should have. Janice roamed the house with a roll of toilet paper attacking anyone who dared to sniffle too loudly. This family was a rust bucket careening down the highway with pieces falling off of it. The tailgate of sanity falls off and bounces and flips down the road, leaving a cloud of rust colored debris obscuring the highway. The bumper of calm, rational discussion falls off next. Then the side mirror of personal hygiene rips off. Who had time for it anyway? The hubcap of healthy diet falls off next. Stuff was falling off left and right, top and bottom. I was hoping I could just come back later, gather the pieces, and stick our family’s optimal life values back together again with some spit, grit, and Duck tape. I was ready to give up. “Shoot,” I thought to myself, “A day after the conference. That didn’t take long.” If you would’ve asked me if I’d rather have forty lashes minus one or deal with sick kids for another week, it would’ve taken me some time to answer. Shipwrecked on an island without my kids? Well, gimme some time to think. Still, out of all the problems out there, mine are fine.

On Wednesday I took off work to help Janice around the house. She was still feeling lousy. The kids were leaking even more yellow puss from their eyes (Elliot was leaking fluid from other places as well) and so we made an appointment with the pediatrician. Turns out they had an ear infection along with bacterial pink eye. We got a prescription for some amoxicillin. It’s a miracle how fast that stuff works and it got me thinking, I’m thankful for medical access. The pediatrician is five minutes from our house. The pharmacy is five minutes the other direction. In two days my kids are bouncing around here like nothing was wrong. In the East Sepik region of Papua New Guinea (where we’ll be serving, Lord willing), the infant mortality rate is 40%. Four out of ten children die. Sometimes parents don’t even name their children until they’re three or four years old. If I had to pick my problems, I’d pick the ones I have. My problems are fine.

I’ve begun teaching my children to play games. This is the most rigorous exercise in patience that you can imagine, with the possible exception of driving courteously behind a slowpoke who refuses to leave the left lane. This might make me sound like a good parent, and while I don’t want to dispel that myth, I must admit that I’m only playing games with them because the alternative requires me to prance around the living room while carrying my children on my back and braying like a donkey. This takes a lot of physical exertion and a willful abandonment of any dignity I may have. You may be asking why I would do such a thing but when you’re little two year old son looks at you with big brown eyes and asks “Daddy, why won’t you play with me?” all your reasons seem shallow and self serving. At times I can convince them they’d rather play games at the table instead. Go Fish is an easy game to learn and someone gave it to us as a gift. Easy and free is a winning combination. Adi has been getting a handle on the game while Elliot just likes yelling “Goldfish” whenever you ask him for a card. Because their hands are so small and the Go Fish cards are so big, the kids have been laying their collection of cards in front of them on the table. This worked for awhile because I made an ethical commitment to myself to not look at their cards. Although if I did, I could subtly shift the direction of the game and cause both children to win in a fair ratio. But It didn’t take Adi long to realize that if she paid attention to Elliot’s cards she too could subtly change the direction of the game and fleece Elliot like a newborn lamb. Elliot is ignorant of the scam being perpetrated on him and is actually quite impressed that Adi does so well. He celebrates with her until he finds out he lost. Suddenly he is mad at the whole world. It’s stressful playing games with my children but still, out of the all the problems out there, mine are fine. In fact, this problem I’ll call a blessing.

Adi turned five about two weeks ago and we had a birthday party for her. I was reminded how fast she’s growing into a beautiful young lady and how quickly I’m getting old. Still, it’s a fine problem to have.

The other day I was changing oil on the van. A routine surgery that usually doesn’t have any complications. That was, until I went to put the drain plug on and it never got tight, no matter how many times I turned it. Several times I stopped and recited the age old poem to myself, “Righty righty, lefty loosy, right?” Logically I know that, but sometimes I found my fingers doing things my brain didn’t give any orders to do. It’s good to double check when something doesn’t seem right. Sure enough, my oil pan threads were stripped! I ordered the odd sized metric Heli-Coil kit to put a new thread insert into my oil pan, waited two days for it to arrive, then drove around frantically an entire day trying to find a way to fit a drill with the required attachments behind my oil pan so I could drill out the old threads and put in the insert. During this time of civil unrest, the time came to take the whole family to church. I may have been able to squeeze the family into the little blue hatchback but that would’ve caused more civil unrest. The natives were a little touchy that morning and I didn’t want to stir the pot. So instead I borrowed MMS Aviation’s little Ford van. It has the MMS Aviation logo emblazoned on the side and seats six. If we use it for personal use, there’s a reasonable mileage charge taken off our monthly support check. No problem! It was better than a native uprising. No one wants that. We loaded the kids into the van and drove towards church. Naturally we were a little late and Janice began reprimanding me for not driving over the speed limit. She kept saying things like, “I don’t even hear the tires squealing yet, go faster!”

“See,” I said, “This is why I’m not letting you drive. The MMS logo is on this van and if you drove like a jerk, passing people on the shoulder and ramping over speed bumps, we’d give MMS a bad name in the community.”

“If I weren’t a Christian women, I’d punch you.” She said. The natives were still quite restless and signs of an uprising were starting to present themselves. Sometimes the best thing is to stop negotiating and just be quiet. Still, out of all the problems out there, mine are fine.

Later a guy at O’Reilly’s told me that I could buy a self tapping, oversized drain plug for my van. “All you have to do is screw it in. It taps and threads in one operation. It should work just fine.” I tried it and fixed my van in sixty seconds. Still, the perfectionist in me wants to drill out the hole, tap it, and put an insert in it. That’s doing it the right way. But then I risk upsetting the natives again. Time will tell how well the fast repair works.

Right now our dryer doesn’t work. This means that every time Janice does laundry, she drapes wet clothing over every surface in the house and garage so that it dries. “Fix the dryer,” you say, as if it’s that simple. I fixed that stupid dryer five times in the last year. I’m trying to convince myself that if I do it one more time, it’ll be fixed for real. Maybe God wants me to learn to fix Samsung dryers as well as airplanes.

My A&P tests are coming up in a little more than a week. I need to study and I’m worried I’m too stupid to pass. But I got to this point while apprenticing alongside some of the best people in the mission aviation business. I am more prepared to do what God has called us to do because of all the amazing people supporting us these last couple years. I’ve worked on many interesting projects and saw parts of planes that many mechanics will never have the pleasure or pain of seeing. So really my problems are fine.

Everyone has problems. No matter how much money you have, no matter how handsome or ugly you are, everyone has problems. All things considered, my problems are just fine.

So yea, I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking.

Josh