Curse of the Should Be's, pt. 1

The words should be have been on my mind a lot of late.   They are a potent pair of words.  You can have a could or a would to express possibility, but the word should has consequences.   If the word should is in play, then there is a right answer and a wrong answer.  If what should happen doesn't happen, then there needs to be a reason why.   For example, if my table is messy after breakfast, I should wipe it off.  Why? Because if  the table stays sticky, I can't use it as my writing surface, and that would be a tragedy.  So if I don't wipe off my table, I should really have a good reason.  For instance, being about to miss the bus. 

But not all should be's are natural should be's.  And not all consequences are natural consequences, and some have no consequences at all.  A moral imperative, or at least what feels like a moral imperative attached to a should be, can come from a lot of different places: upbringing, education, media habits, personal preconceptions, a mood swing, or a random headline that you saw at the cash register last Saturday.  It's my personal opinion that we attach should be  feelings to could be facts and circumstances, and it ends up making us unhappy. 

For example, a couple of weeks ago, the temperature here in Michigan dropped into single digits for the first time this winter, and I still had to take Boogaloo to school.   I was cold when I was all bundled up -- thermal underwear, blue jeans, snow pants, parka, two pairs of socks, the whole kit and kaboodle.  The car didn't get warm.  There was snow falling when the radio said it was too cold to snow.  I had to drive on ice.  And I was cold when I got home.  In spite of the fact that I had a sweater, a cup of tea, and a thermostat set at 72, I was still cold.  I had a snit fit that day because that's just not the way it should have been.

 I can hear some of you now . . . "Woohoo, single digits.  We've been in the negatives for over a month now." 

Well, I hadn't.  For the last eleven years, I'd been in Western Washington and Oregon where the rain and the damp creep in at your bones, but the temperature never falls below 16 degrees, and three inches of snow earns you an automatic snow day because there are only two snowplows in the county.  And that's kind of the point.  The source of my indignation, my disappointment, was that I had not adjusted to my new environs.  I didn't have a reasonable set of expectations for the place that I now live.   I actually made myself unhappy because I couldn't figure out something that was completely natural.  I sat at my table with my tea cup and pouted a bit, let myself think nostalgically of Oregon winters, and wondered what on earth I was doing here.  Because I was chilly, the radio weatherman was a little off, and I had to drive my daughter to school on the snow.

Now this is an extreme example.  Tiny stimulus; big response.  But it's also a basic human predisposition, and a dangerous one.  What was the source of my should be?  Limited personal experience and a predisposition to be dogmatic about it.  In this case, a lack of a sense of adventure.   What are the sources of our should be's, and what are their consequences? 
 
Let me throw out some examples that have been bouncing around my own consciousness in the last few months.  I do so in the complete confidence that all of you will identify with at least one of them.

• I should be able to come home from work to a clean house.  
• Moreover, I should be able to relax after dinner , and everything that needs to get done should be done.  
• I should be able to find salmon more cheaply at the grocery store. 
• I should be recognized for what I do for this family.
• I should be warmer. 
• I should be outside more.
• I should be done with acne.  
• I should be over the effects of that accident.
• I should be more attentive.
• I should be more active. 
• It should be easier to be active.  
• My house should be cleaner.  
• Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera

Now there are, of course, various responses to these kind of shoulds.  They range from sympathy to "Quit whining" to "Get up and do something about it."  But should be's exist in all kinds of places and affect our ability to be happy in all sorts of ways.  Establishing should be's about other individuals, groups of people, and states of the nation can affect our closest relationships, our racial tendencies, our politics, and our global understandings.   And closer to home our notions of should be  relating to our own lives can have a serious effect on our ability to be content.

Over the next couple of months, while it's cold and snowy outside, I'm going to use my blog to consider the different kinds of should be's, how we respond to them, and how we should respond to them.  There are legitimate should be's as well as illegitmate, and some should be's are stronger than others.  I anticipate at least four more posts on the subject.  Next up: personal should be's, where they come from, and how we should respond. 

Atsma Christmas Letter 2017

Every year, I get out the Christmas cards, the stamps, and the envelopes and end up leaving them on a corner of the dining room table until the thought of mailing out those seasonal greetings is just a little ridiculous.  How much time do we have until Christmas?  A week and a half?  At this point, you might all get our cards at Epiphany.   However, we do think of you all, miss you, and read your Facebook updates and Christmas cards eagerly.  

We are all snugly battened down here in Grand Rapids.  The last week has thrown seven different types of snow at us: lake effect snow, light snow, "a break from the snow" in which snow is nevertheless falling, winter storm snow, pellet snow, snow misting, and that lovely snow I like to call snow-globe snow.  In spite of all the dire warnings about winter driving, we seem to be handling it all well as we look forward to Christmas.  I am discovering why we in North America insist on portraying Christmas with snow and icicles, even in places like California.  A frosty, snow-covered view really does create a sense of expectation and wonder.  

This month marks the end of our first semester here at Calvin Theological Seminary.   In July we sold our house, drove across the western half of the country, bought a house here and settled in to work and school.  We weren't quite sure what awaited us, but most of what we've discovered has been good.  We live in a delightful little neighborhood near our church and near several little shopping neighborhoods. The leaves are golden and crunchy in the autumn, something that hardly ever happened in Oregon.  

Seth is wrapping up his last week of a hectic semester.  He had to take five courses, including Introduction to Hebrew this semester, but he enjoyed his studies.  He kept saying that his biggest regret was that he didn't have the time to give all of his subjects the attention they deserved. He did his internship at Wedgwood Christian Services, a residential center for kids who have been through severe trauma.  That was a stretching experience for him because most of those kids not only lacked Christian upbringing, they also lacked those basic formative experiences that we use to explain God's love for us.   But he was encouraged by how eagerly the kids he worked with sought God.

I now have my Michigan teaching license, and I am living off the general shortage of substitute teachers in the area.  I've gotten to work at three or four different schools pretty consistently, and even run into an old school mate of mine.   Outside of work, I am still working on getting our house settled and adjusting to the various differences that Michigan throws at us.  I got to hearken back to my childhood by installing plastic over the windows this fall, and I'm still hunting for enough secondhand bookcases to justify unpacking all of our books.  I run the powerpoint at church once a month and volunteer with Boogaloo's GEMS group.

Boogaloo is halfway through her fourth grade year at Legacy Christian School.  We have her in another mixed grade classroom, and she is enjoying it immensely.  When people ask her how school is going, she answers, "Great" with enthusiasm.  She is also attending G.E.M.S.  for the first time and enjoying it very much.   She has her own desk now to make up for having a smaller room, and she is definitely enjoying the snow.  She is developing a real sense of drama and purpose which is at once entertaining and a little confusing. She is the one who keeps track of our sugar intake in this household.  Housekeeping and cooking are also beginning to catch her interest, which doesn't bother me a bit.

Max the mutt is still with us.  Once he gets his daily aspirin, he is almost as spry as he used to be, and  with or without his aspirin, he is just as hungry as he always was.  He enjoys the fact that we no longer have a fenced in yard, so we have to take him for several walks a day.  He also likes stealing the bread that the neighbor two doors down leaves out for the squirrels.  He sneaks over, sniffs out a piece of bread, surreptitiously bounces his way back to our yard with his tail wagging, buries the bread and then scoots back for more.  The neighbor says he could watch Max for hours.  We have held off on getting Boogaloo her promised pet because we aren't sure how Max would handle it, but one thing we look forward to next year is another, smaller dog or cat
.  

Our daily reality is a little surreal. Not that we're living through anything particularly exciting or abnormal,  but I have a sense of being here temporarily that I didn't have before God shook us out of Oregon.  I think Boogaloo feels the same way.  The other day, she was talking about when we go back to Oregon, remembering our big backyard and our fruit trees.  She wished we were there instead of here.  I had to tell her that we don't know when we'll be going back or where we'll end up, but that it would be someplace different than we were.  We won't be going back to that house specifically.  She took it pretty well.  However, it just highlights that we are now in the business of looking forward with all the adventure that that entails.    

So here's to the New Year.  May God keep you in his will even as you go forward into his love.