The Chocolate Chip Country

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That's the old testament Job, not the problem of getting a job, which is probably on more people's minds, these days.

I know that in discussion of the Bible and specifically the Old Testament, people often circle back to Job. Why would a loving, merciful God let a good man suffer so?

It's a good question and it's worth a thoughtful answer. I admit that I didn't have one for a long time. I sort of skipped over it. But nothing is included in the Bible for no reason. The book of Job has a purpose, and after reading through the Bible entirely, I wanted to go back and spend some time specifically on Job itself to try to wrestle with it. One of the resources I used was a study done on the YouTube Channel "Through the Bible with Pastor Paul" (https://www.youtube.com/@Through-t…), and I found it helpful in understanding the content of the book itself.

But it didn't answer the question of why. There are probably facets to that question. The end of Job where God speaks suggests one answer that's like the passage from CS Lewis' Observation of Grief, "I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"

That's powerful, especially to those who already believe. We know it to be true. But it will not satisfy the seeker who is still learning.

I discovered another answer while my church group was studying Luke 4:1-13 (the temptation of Christ). During our discussion, the question was asked - why did the Spirit lead Jesus out to be tempted in the first place? What purpose did that serve?

And, of course, we can't know for sure, but one answer that was suggested is that you can't know the strength of someone until they've been tested. Sure, Jesus was the powerful Son of God and the Messiah, but where was the proof? What value was there in someone who was good only because they'd never had another choice?

In my youth, one of the popular songs was by The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones called "The Impression that I Get". It was a song about how the singer hadn't been through anything really horrible yet and they were worried if they'd manage if the situation came up.

The bridge:
I'm not a coward, I've just never been tested
I'd like to think that if I was, I would pass
Look at the tested, and think "there but for the grace, go I"
Might be a coward, I'm afraid of what I might find out

And I came to the conclusion that was a reason why Job suffered. God knew Job's quality - he tells Satan. And Satan challenges it. So God lets the test commence. And what we discover is that even though God knew Job's character, Job's friends and his wife didn't. The situation tested them as much as it tested Job, and there are failures all around. Job himself probably didn't know how much he could stand and yet he still worshipped God as before. (Job 19:25-27 is a remarkable statement of faith in the midst of misery - "I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" May we all be so bold in our suffering.)

So that's why Job is so important. It's the test we all hope we never have to pass. But somebody withstood it. He is a model to all of us who suffer, and his book provides answers to those who seek God. And also rebukes to those who have too easy, foolish answers that do nothing to help.

Of course, I'm not saying this is the definitive way to read Job. But I think it's a good answer, and one that could help others.

Place: the trails of Hayes Arboretum
Who: Brian and Anna (adults), Daniel, James, Matthew, Andrew, and Isaac (youth)
Weather: cool Fall weather, partly cloudy trending to sunny. A few breezes.

We were supposed to meet up at 10 am, but some of the participants were late so it was more like 10:10. We met up at Matthew's sign (an Eagle project for the Arboretum) and went over the plans. We got moving by 10:20 am.

Cheers (the good stuff)
Andrew (our Troop's SPL) took point and set a good pace- we managed about 2 miles an hour the whole day but the slowest two (myself and James) weren't struggling to keep up (except at the very end, see below).
The weather was lovely for a long hike. We were all sweating from exertion and soaking our shirts, but none of the sweat lingered on our faces as it would in hotter, more humid summer weather.
Everybody had enough water to stay hydrated and nobody was seriously injured.
Breaks were frequent enough to stay hydrated but not so many as to bog us down. We took two long breaks- one for bathrooms and one for lunch- and kept to the rule that anybody could call one for any reason. With that and the good pace, we ended up needing fewer breaks than might be expected.
Soft caramels remain my favorite way to keep energy up when my stomach is too tight from exercise (or too full from lunch) to want real food.
The combination of ankle brace and cushioning insoles helped James out a lot.
I enjoyed having Brian as the second adult, though it wasn't the first choice (lots of our Troop's adults were busy). But he made sure to hike behind me so I didn't have to be last and helped with water so I didn't have to keep taking my pack off and putting it back on. We're used to each other and take care of each other, and that makes any challenge a little easier.

Challenges (difficulties)
There were a lot of fallen trees across the path that had to be clambered over, which got harder as the hike went on, naturally.
Not all of the trails were clearly marked and nobody believes in accurate maps anymore. There were fancy QR code stations to get a map of the trail on a phone, but that wasn't helpful in the back end of everything where you have three possible paths and no trail markers in sight.
Nobody quite calculated the trails properly, so we ended up hiking an extra mile and change that wasn't necessary.
Some brotherly bickering on the trail and one almost-temper tantrum.
As the hike went on, the discipline to keep a good pace and not horse around was harder to maintain, especially when we had less than a mile to go and we all wanted to be finished.
Personally, I ignored some foot soreness that I should have addressed- I discovered two blisters when I got home, one of which popped. I should have taken more care with my feet- I have time to relax and recover and treat them now, but that would have been a major issue if it'd happened on a trip.
Also, while my stamina was pretty good and I did better than I feared overall, hills still kicked my butt- I need to spend more time doing hills and stairs to train up those muscles.
Daniel's daypack needs updating- it was okay when he was small and doing small hikes, but he needs one with more water-carrying capacity and a chest and/or waist belt, too.
I'd also appreciate a chest and/or waist belt on my pack, which was otherwise good for the day.

Overall a good hike. I'd keep Hayes in mind for future 10-milers, with a better eye on the trail length. I did notice that about mile seven of the day James started to limp and that was about when I began to stumble and struggle with hills. Tylenol helped James, but I just had to keep going and tough it out. He began to struggle again and I noticed another cliff in difficulty at about mile nine. Gotta keep working on my conditioning. A 10 mile hike is a different beast from a 5 miler, and I have many more of these to do (and eventually, a 20 miler). There's a lot more walking in my future.

There was just enough architecture around Hayes for our rests - we had lunch at the Indian burial mound at the end of one of the trails, an unplanned stop but perfectly positioned. God saw to our needs; the trees were lovely and the occasional breeze was a gentle blessing. The mountain bike trails don't have benches to rest on, but then, we didn't sit down for most of our stops. Once you've done a few miles, it almost hurts worse to sit and get back up again.

I'm sore now and I'll be horrendously stiff tomorrow, but tomorrow is a day of rest. Nowhere to go but church, nothing to do but recover.

At a discipleship seminar, the leader wrapped up with a brief discussion of Calling, as a separate but important and related topic. It wasn't long, but I considered the question (as I have before), and came up with the same answer I have before.

It isn't a popular thing to say these days, but I believe my calling is to be a wife and mother. I have for a long time.

Now, people who knew me as a teenager might be surprised about that. Many teenage girls love babies. I did not. I didn't coo over them, or enjoy babysitting, and I was very reluctant to be responsible for any small child.

I could handle older children (grade school or older), because I remembered what it was like to be that age and could sympathize, but babies were weird and mysterious beings that yelled and stank and were intimidating, and I also seemed to lack the instinctive adoration of small children that came naturally to my peers.

I talked to my mother about it at one point, and she told me that it's different if it's your own. And she was right- it was different to hold my child, to put up with his screaming and his messes and try to find ways to solve them or simply endure if it couldn't be solved right away.

But having my children didn't just make me love my children. It taught me to love children, at all ages and stages as they grow. My children have their challenges, as all children do to some extent or another, and I remember dealing with a screaming child in a grocery store and somebody coming by to gently commiserate about how someone obviously needs a nap, and I was so grateful for their understanding.

And now that I've lived that and been there, I find that I am patient with things that annoyed me. The fussy child is not a sign of apocalypse, it's just a child who's having to do too much or having a hard day today. Because I loved my children when they were small, I can love small children more than before. Because grace was extended to me on a hard day, I find it easier to extend grace to others.

Being a Mother made me a better Christian. It taught me things I might never have learned otherwise. It broadened my heart and gave me gentleness in a place I hadn't had it before. I have become more patient with children of all ages as I have watched my children slowly work their way through the years. I have more to go, and I expect I will learn new lessons as they continue to grow into adults.

My children are a gift from God, and they changed me.

Happy Mother's Day

I've had a cpap machine for a few months, now, which has been generally going well for me. This morning, as I was slowly waking but still not quite up yet, one of our cats (Tybalt) came up for some morning snuggles and began making a huffing sound like he might if he was contemplating a hairball.

I sat up, turned off the machine, and took off my mask and he promptly stopped making the noise but stayed to rub against my hands and purr.

He'd been huffing to imitate the machine. I dunno if he thought I was speaking some weird new language or what, but he just wanted to be included.

Yesterday, at church, I was warming up a bit for my current role as one of our music leaders - I lead the hymns, singing melody. The notes came effortlessly. I hummed and shaped vowels as I'd been taught, everything pure and easy.

Three weeks ago, I was recovering from a cold and I was struggling to make any notes sound good- all my alto range notes were growly and my soprano notes were difficult, and I struggled.

There was a time during the winter when I was too sick to do any singing at all.

Now, I knew that not being able to sing was an anomaly, one that would repair itself as I recovered from my various viruses and congestion, but when I was feeling better but struggling, I had a moment or two when I felt like that was normal and I was as recovered as I was going to get. My assumption was that that was just how my voice was, and I was always going to need to work hard to make it do the things I wanted it to do.

And then yesterday, it was effortless. The music flowed as easy and free as any other time in my life when I was in good shape.

It got me to thinking- I typically discover I have been depressed either because it's so bad I can't do normal things (obviously bad) or because I've started to recover and I look back and realize I'd been having a few bad weeks. When I'm in the struggles, I often can't tell that that isn't where I'm supposed to be, that that isn't the reality I live with now. When I'm doing better, I can look back and recognize that I'd been going through a hard patch.

So it is with many things - with jobs, with relationships, with hobbies- and with God. There are times when faith is a struggle, when prayer feels forced, when the music does not lift us up and the ceremonies feel empty. But we live as creatures of time, and we and the world changes, and eventually it becomes easy again. Sometimes, it's because of a good word we heard preached or a friend who reached out. Sometimes, it's that we outlasted it, slogging through the slough of despond to find our footing again on the other side.

Someday, we'll live in God's new Heaven and new Earth and we'll be surrounded by grace and beauty forever, but in this world and this time, there will be dry patches. There will be hard times. But we need to recognize that they'll come to an end, to tell our hearts to stay firm until we get to the other side, to the moments when joy and grace come easy.

And prayer never hurts. Pray unceasingly. If you don't have joys to tell God, tell Him your woes, but keep talking. That which you thought was lost forever will be returned, because those that seek always find.

For many on the internet, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual tradition full of people tracking word counts and complaining about writer's block to their friends. Some time back, an organization took the name and founded a website to provide trophies and writing resources and forums to make the complaining easier.

They have a youth section of the forum (13-18 year olds). Now, news of predatory behavior on those forums has come to light and people are up in arms over it. Rightly so.

The harsh truth of the world is that if you have an organization that caters to youth, then people who prey on the youth (physically, sexually, or otherwise) will find that organization and try to use it for their own purposes. It likely won't be the majority of the adults involved, but abusers excel at blending in and testing the boundaries until they find out what's tolerated. And then they exploit those edges.

You can't keep them out. You have to have policies in place to make it harder for the predators to use your organization, and those policies have to be enforced. Sometimes those policies are uncomfortable in other ways- one of ScoutsBSA's policies is that no adult communicates privately to a minor- all conversations by text or email include at least two adults. Such lack of private conversations is poison in internet forum culture, but it works. The tale from the NaNoWriMo forums is one where people used an unmonitored feature to create private chat groups in order to be able to private message each other when it wasn't enabled in the main forums. Just having that ability meant people used it. Some of them used it for ill ends.

The second thing you have to have is reporting. Not just to the adults in the room (such as they are), but to the police. That's uncomfortable as well- volunteer moderators don't want to be caught up in the drama (if your moderators do enjoy drama, they will cause you different problems besides this one) and don't want to pass judgement on their fellow cool people on the internet. Some of the victims in this case took their complaints to the police, and that prompted the forum to act, but that's backward. Investigating such cases is not the job of the adult doing the reporting, but they should report it when informed.

The easiest way to solve all this is to not have forums for people who are underage, which cuts out not only many people who just wanted to have a good time, but a marketable segment of the population that could buy your neat totebags and pencils and such.

I am not surprised that an organization that started to cater to writers was unprepared for this issue. They probably started out with good, inclusive intentions (and maybe not so good intentions- the website has also promoted vanity presses in the past, which is writerly poison). They didn't think it through. Possibly they didn't even know- most people you'd interview on the street haven't thought through how to stop predators beyond thinking 'they'd know' if they saw it happening.

You won't know. Not until it happens and people are knocking on your door demanding to know what you're going to do about it. So if you're working with youth (and vulnerable adults), think about it before it gets to that point. Know that predators are going to try to get in. Find out what you need to do to make your organization less useful to them and less attractive to them, and then implement those policies and stick with it. Be willing to make reports. Do it now, before 'later' comes around. Whether you rely on volunteers or staff, those people need to be trained.

It's possible to have safe places for positive youth experiences, but it takes far more work than most people realize. Alas, NaNoWriMo found that out far too late, and now there are people who won't even use the term anymore for fear of being associated with them.

I wouldn't say that Donald Trump is the only person who could possibly lose to Joe Biden, but he doesn't have a lot of company on that list.

Likewise, I wouldn't say that Joe Biden is the only person who could possibly lose to Trump at this point, but again... short list.

In their eagerness to punish their opponents, both parties have dwindled to this sad state- led by odious personalities and without the strength to tell them no.

Pack Up Camp, Scouts
(to the tune of “Leave Her, Johnny”)

I heard the Senior Patrol Leader say,
“Pack up camp, Scouts, pack up-
Our Scoutmaster’s gone a little more gray,
And it’s time for us to pack up.”

Chorus:
Pack up camp, Scouts, pack up,
Oh pack up camp, Scouts, pack up!
The week was fun but now it’s done,
And it’s time for us to pack up.

The latrines were bad but the food was worse-
Pack up camp, scouts, pack up-
It tasted like cardboard and liverwurst,
And it’s time for us to pack up.

Chorus

Three nights of rain and one of hail;
Pack up camp, scouts, pack up-
We thought we heard the sirens wail,
And it’s time for us to pack up.

More verses to come, as I work on it. Or feel free to suggest your own.

GK Chesterton once wrote, "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered."

It was a very adventurous few days at camp.

This was the younger cub's first time at summer camp, with the whole summer camp experience. He's been camping plenty of times, but never quite in this fashion. The differences in how you pack and what to expect stressed him out the day before and the day we left. I asked about his prescription about halfway to camp and he'd forgotten it on the counter, so we had to go back for it. Not the best start.

Still, he had fun splashing around while I attempted a swim test. I had all the necessary technique for swimming, but my stamina crapped out early and I only managed a Beginner tag. Something to work on. The rest of check in went alright. He got to find out the ins and outs of canvas platform tents, which have been upgraded with velcro since the last time I camped in one.

The rest of the packs in our site were friendly, with many experienced parents. I was soloing James for the weekend- just him and me to represent our pack- so the additional adults and kids were a God-send.

The first night was rough. Throughout the camp, the temperatures were about 10 degrees cooler than predicted. That first night, I couldn't sleep from the cold in spite of packing two summer-weight sleeping bags I could layer. The cots in the tent let the cold right into me from underneath and I just couldn't tough it out like I could when I was a teen. About halfway through the night, the stress of the first day caught up to James with some intestinal distress, too. We were up and dealing with finding clean clothes and such for a while. It got bad enough that I woke up the medical officer at the health lodge to get James something to settle his digestive tract down. Fortunately, she was friendly and had just the thing- immodium and gatorade. We got back to camp and stayed up another twenty minutes to make sure it took, and all turned out well the rest of the night. What little was left. It was about 4 in the morning when I finally got to bed, with an alarm for 7 waiting for me.

But still.

I heard owls in the night, one very close by. I saw lightning bugs flashing in the grass and undergrowth when trudging to the latrines. I spotted either a coyote or wild dog briefly- a smear of pale coat in a lean dog shape with a bushy tail- but I had my glasses off so I didn't catch much detail. Soon after, there were howls in the night as they called back and forth. A raccoon watched me walk to the latrines at one point, then ran off with some trash. James and I picked up what was scattered about when we came back from the health lodge.

The stars were bright that first night. It was truly an adventure, not merely a misery.

And Brian came to our rescue the next day, bringing up additional bedding items to keep us warm and some extra clean clothes for James. We handled the rain that came at us all that day fairly well, finally retiring to the campsite when James was tired and his feet started to hurt from the walking and the constant soaking. He took off his sodden sneakers and wore crocs around camp, getting his feet dry enough to manage a bit of the evening program, but we headed back from that early, too.

The pace of cub camp is blistering. I long for the relaxed pace of troop camp.

But we got through it, as much as we could stand. There was some whining- I had the realization that cheerfulness, that all-important Scout virtue, is as much a developmental attribute as a discipline. James is still too young to easily let go of present troubles in favor of whatever bright side or future joy may be in the offing. That insight made it easier for me to endure the complaints while he got the grumbles over disappointments out of his system. He bounced back in the end, that's what's important. By the last morning, even limping, he said he kind of didn't want to leave.

I am beat to a frappe, but I'm glad he enjoyed the weekend. I had fun, too. Some of the other parents in camp had kids with similar challenges and we got to stay up too late in the evening comparing notes and commiserating. It's always a joy to get outdoors. I bought a hot spark for myself and got to play around with it. I played cards with James and some of the other campers. I got far too little sleep, but there's time to amend that now that I'm home.

For now, it's time for laundry and catching up on correspondence, but I'm hopeful James will continue to really enjoy Scouts even as we get into the more intense experiences once he bridges over. He's passed through the fire a little stronger, and that's the best I could have hoped for.