Is Grass Always Greener?

As a career educator and librarian, I’ve been curious about the impact of marijuana’s legalization on classrooms and schools in the affected areas.  Do these new tolerance laws impact the classroom, and if so, what are schools doing about it?

The research I found was pretty disturbing.

In 2012-13, over 700 students in Colorado high schools were expelled, and over 30% of those students were removed due to marijuana abuse at school.  The National Institute on Drug Abuse says while there’s a decrease in the use of drugs and alcohol by young people overall, there’s a significant increase in marijuana use. 

1% of 8^th graders self-report using marijuana daily; 4% of 10^th graders; 7% of 12^th graders.  23% of America’s teenagers report using marijuana regularly. 

School resource officers in Colorado say they’ve seen a huge increase in marijuana-related incidents, and a sharp rise in drug-related disciplinary actions.  School reports indicate increased absences and drop-out rates.  In Greeley, Colorado, kids  in fourth grade were expelled for selling a dime bag to other fourth graders.  Some teens recognize the date 4/20 but can't identify the meaning of 11/11. 

Some doobie brothers would probably say, “Awesome.”

I think, “Not so much.”

I don’t like a drug and alcohol culture. I’ve seen what these uppers, downers, and in-betweeners do to people I love over the long haul, and I don’t embrace recreational medicine. In the case of marijuana, we know that it’s got THC, and THC alters the brain’s hippocampus, affecting learning and memory.  Potheads will tell you that’s not true.  But could it be that they can’t remember what they forgot?  

Marijuana slows reaction times, and may lead to depression or anxiety.  Red eyes are a side effect that many movies and TV shows use for comic fodder, but it’s a reflection of an increased or rapid heartbeat, not a healthy sidebar.

In adolescents, marijuana use leads to a lower IQ as well as cognitive and mental deficiencies.  There’s even a higher risk of stroke, depending upon what additives are in the weed.  “Spice” or synthetic marijuana, is laced with chemicals similar to THC.  Kids are using many alternative drugs and there’s a dramatic rise in edibles, a proliferation of food products made with marijuana.  These ‘green’ brownies, cookies, and cakes can easily make their way into kids’ hands, lunchboxes, and classrooms.

Teenage pregnancy is difficult enough;  but the infant of a teenage mother who regularly uses marijuana may demonstrate moderate to severe developmental delays or behavioral issues.  The teenage body is not well-developed, and research tells us marijuana is not physiologically healthy for teens or children.   

Second hand smoke from marijuana is not innocuous.  Researchers state it may be 4-30 times higher in carcinogens than regular cigarette smoke, at the rate of 2 cigarettes per hour.  Inhaling second hand smoke may result in difficulties passing a drug screen, depending upon the level of exposure.  Research is in progress about the affect of second-hand smoke from marijuana on younger children.

Ironically, Colorado has a huge youth drug abuse prevention campaign. But “Do as we say, not as we do,” is the message kids are hearing loud and clear, and it’s not working. Proponents of legalization will say their courtrooms have cleared out;  they’re no longer spending a ton of money on “frivolous” charges for recreational drug use.  I say they’re going to pay a pretty penny over time.   School psychologists report that when the perception of risk goes down, marijuana use goes up, and this seems to be the prevalent truth.

From a spiritual perspective, I see huge warning signs in our country as marijuana use is legalized in more areas of our nation.  It spells spiritual trouble.  What is the real hunger?  What is the child of the marijuana user seeing when his parent smokes weed to relax, unwind, recreate?  What does it say to our children when we legislate recreational drug use?  Is the term ‘recreational drug’, in itself, not an oxymoron?  Talk to the parent of the heroin user;  he’ll tell you it started with weed.  Talk to the spouse of an alcoholic;  she’ll tell you that like alcohol abuse, the chronic use of weed is just one more way to mask the pain of daily life.

God’s word says, “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.”  Not all things build up.  I’m not in favor of drug, alcohol, or marijuana use.  We have this one life to live.  I want to be clear-headed, sober-minded, and focused on what He asks me to do, what He asks me to give, where He wants me to go.  I want that for my children and grandchildren as well. 

Increments

He must increase;  I must decrease.  He has to become greater while I become less.  John 3:30 has something to say to me these days.  It’s a rather exciting time.  The book is set to launch in just a few days.  Shilo and I received our first copy.  He posted a photo of himself and Lizzie as they opened the book for the first time.  My children were visiting when I received mine, and we did the same thing.  We sent each other a long distance “pinch”—asking one another, can it be true?  Is it finally a reality?  Then we heard the warehouse will start shipping books off to hither and yon on August 12^th.   And we spotted posts on both Barnes and Noble and Amazon that they’ll ship copies on September 1^st.  What a dream come true. 

And yet.  And yet.

From day one, Shilo and I have prayed that someone would be touched, changed, encouraged, inspired, or lifted up by his story.  It has been one way God has impressed both of us with the idea that telling this story is not for our good;  it is for the greater good.

It’s been good for us nevertheless.  We’ve grown so close;  ours has become a friendship I treasure very much.  He’s taught me so much about devotion, commitment, the warrior ethos.  He’s very brave.  And every time I recount the explosion, and every surgery after the explosion, I think of his sweet spirit, and his will to not only survive, but thrive, and bring others into a greater relationship with our Maker.

In the days ahead, we are praying for the “one” as well as praying that we both decrease as He comes closer and closer to each one of our readers.  We are almost giddy about the launch, wanting so much to show one and all that mercy trumps tragedy every time.  For Kat and Shilo, the book represents the culmination of one very difficult journey and the commencement of another.  And on the way, we petition our Lord...less of us, more of You.  

About fathers

I want to hug my dad today. 

I want to wrap my arms around him to tell him one more time how much I love him, treasure him, adore him.

I want him to know what he always knew, that I love him through and through.

As far as dads go, he hit and missed the mark, as all dads do, no matter what the Hallmark cards say.  He knew how to be a father, learning the practical aspects from his own dad, a North Dakota farmer and banker.

He always had his priorities straight. He put the roof over our heads, and we never.ever.worried.about.shelter.

He put food in our bellies.  And the scales today tell me what I have always known…something I have never known…lack.

He put my mother first and cherished her.  I never heard my father yell, scream, throw things, insist upon his way.  He was always willing to give up what he might have wanted very badly.  He had a knowing about him—something about being willing to lay down your life for your brothers as a soldier made you willing to lay down your will for your family.  There was no guile in my father.

I wish I could remember sitting next to him in church;  I wish I had memories of him reading his Bible.  But his faith was internal, and he kept it there.  Oh, Dad, I would tell him today, don’t you know how much Jesus loved you?  When asked, he would always say, “God doesn’t owe me anything.”  I always wanted to tell him that was precisely the point.  But he knew…he knew.  The reassurance was my need, not his.

I have my father’s transistor radio.  It still works. When he was stationed in VietNam, he kept it in his pocket, and it connected him to us through the armed forces radio station.  He knew what was happening in our world when we knew so very little about what was happening in his.  I’m so grateful he was protected from harm, though he brought home scars from battle that he would never divulge.

I have my father’s first picture book.  Inside the front cover, scrawled in his earliest penmanship, is his name, Lauren.  I run my fingers over that crayon stain, wishing, wishing, that I could hold the little boy he was.  I can picture that boy sitting next to his mother, Julia, showing her the lamb, the cow, the duck.  He was a farmer’s boy—he could have looked out the window to see the same things.

I have my father’s autograph book.  His big brother, Al, whose life journey took him to combat with Merrill’s Marauders and down the deadly trail to Bataan, wrote this to my dad in 1940: “ Dear Lauren, I will always remember you as my fattest little brother…the guy who was always in the way when we were playing games because you were too fat to keep up.  Your biggest brother, Al. “  I have a huge smile as I write this—picturing the big humor and big smile of my dad as he probably took Al to the floor in a headlock. 

From his brother Pete came these words just three months after Al’s:  “Dear Lauren, Christmas comes but once a year, but a chance to write in your autobiography comes but once in a lifetime so I’ll sign my name, Mr. Marvin Overby, better known as Pete.”  Pete didn’t sign my father’s book again, succumbing to a brain tumor when he was still but a young man. 

In August of 1941, his brother George wrote:  “Dearest Brother, well boy, we better get this cake down and nectar too and go to bed.  We got the work to do and we’re just the guys to do it. And if any guys want to make anything of it, well let them do it.  We’re too tired.  Your brother pal, George.”   George sat beside my mother when we laid my father to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in 2004.

On April 8, 1941, my father’s mother wrote: “Dearest son Lauren, There is another album, filled with leaves of spotless white, where no name is ever tarnished, but forever pure and bright.  In the book of life-God’s album-may your name be penned with care, and may all who have written here write their names forever there.  Lovingly, Mother”

Happy Father’s Day, dad.

I miss you. Every.single.day.

Doc Gunn

Horses graze in the bottom pasture, nudging tufts of grass with the spongy tips of their noses.  All whiskers, teeth, and chewing, they pull the verdant prairie grass from dark moist earth and chew methodically, grazing across a warm sunny acre through a day.

Do they know that atop the hill, the one who kept watch over them has left the loam behind?  While they rose from green earth at dawn, the spirit of their keeper departed in silence. In the dark of night he took his last breath and with that final inhalation left a life on an earth he’d loved so much; breathless to enter heaven in perfect form.

He was a boy in the great depression when food was scarce and family was stretched thin.

He was a man too young to go to war and too schooled to stay behind.

He was a husband and father who tried to find his way through heartache to happiness. 

We met him long after the ebb and flow that left deep wrinkles in his skin, kid-like wonder in his eyes, legs useless, adrift from his spine.  We could not say we knew him when or then…there was only now. 

Now was quite remarkable.  

Full of story and vim, he saw humor in chaos and laughter in the anarchy of a body unwilling to cooperate with aging. 

Tinkerer, fixer, mender, listener, never paralyzed. 

Never one to say look at me, look after me, or leave me be.   

He left earth in sleep,  taking nothing with him but goodbye.  

And what is to cease breathing

But to free the breath from its restless tides,

That it may rise and expand

And seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence

Shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top,

Then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs,

Then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

Gratitude

Falling leaves…

When I consider all the proof

I have that God exists in the world

I only have to think of your little goat hands

Or your laugh that makes tears trickle down your legs

Or your big feet that need big shoes

Or your crazy generosity on a piggy bank budget

Or your parachute laughter

And then I know that when I thought

The world caved in,

It was His way of showing me that

We would always dwell in the shelter of the most High King.

Cedars of Lebanon

Ps. 92:12-15

The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree, He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God.  They will still yield fruit in old age; they shall stay fresh and very green, proclaiming, "The Lord is upright; He is my rock,and there is no unrighteousness in Him.  

Lucky.  Blessed.  Call it what you want.

Once a week, I get to meet with a small group of seasoned Christians...men and women who've known our Lord longer than I've been alive, or at least alive in Him.  They are showing me, by their example, as well as within the confines of their words, what it means to love Him for a lifetime.
They have become for me the cedars of Lebanon.  Strong. True. Evergreen.

Right now we're working our way through Romans.  It's slow-going, only because they have so much to say, hear, and learn.  There is a lot to know, and no waning of interest at 60, 70, 80, or pushing 90.

Their strength is revealed in tender ways.  They cannot refer to Jesus' death on the cross without tears in their eyes.  My prayer is that when I reach their ripe old age, I will still be broken and vulnerable when I consider the gift I've been given.

Their knowledge is real and relevant. I don't know if Habakuk comes before or after Malachi, but they do.  There's no pride in their tone;  it's simply a matter of knowing the path and stopping points along the way.  And the knowledge isn't about ordinal position;  it's about the message and where it falls in the grand scheme of things. Context matters, and they are showing me just how much.



The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;  Yes, the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
Ps. 29:5

Experience is a master teacher.  The men and women in this weekly study group know about studying every day in light of what life brings.  They know about fruits of the spirit because they've been a part of that growth from seedling to sapling to cedar.  They will tell you that the Lord sometimes must break us open, empty us, in order to fill us once again.  He will set us on fire, only to teach us how to persevere.  With a word, with His voice, the Lord spoke us into existence;  they know His voice intimately whether it comes in a gentle whisper or a grievous roar.  They trust the voice that will one day call each of us home, unto Him.

Prayer is a conversation;  reverent dialogue that is deeply personal.  I feel deeply blessed to hear them talk to God.  They tell me what prayer has done, not to change the heart of God, but to change their hearts as well as to lift up the lives of the mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, grandchildren and even grandchildren in their lives. It makes me understand how much I need Him now, and how much I'll need Him then.

Week by week, I bring my wants and needs to our group, and they bring their own as well.  We share a meal, a story, a lesson.  In confidence, we pour out our hearts before each other and before the Lord.  I treasure these cedars...they have shown me the bedrock divinity of God's word in their lives.

Let us resolve...

                  Forgiveness is the fragrance of an iris upon the heel that crushed it.                

                                                                                                 
                                                                                                Mark Twain

The countdown to a new year has begun, and it offers an opportunity to reflect on the year that is soon a part of our past.  It was a year of celebrations for me, for the most part.  I decided to use four questions for reflection, and perhaps these will be useful to you as well.

         Have I submitted?

         I started the year with an ongoing struggle to find a church home.  It has not been an easy journey.  For years I found worship to be meaningful and relevant in the Protestant community, but life got in the way, and I wandered to the Catholic church.  There were many things I learned in that setting, but at the end of the day, there were too many conflicts within myself that I could not reconcile, and I returned to a nondenominational church in my neighborhood.  I have found a church home that gives me just enough "uncomfortability" to know and understand that God can continue to mold me and shape me into the believer He wants me to be, yet a firm foundation in beliefs that are assuredly in agreement with who He is.  It has required me to submit to His authority, rather than using my own GPS, but this waystation of the cross is where I belong.

       Have I emptied myself?

       Learning to live in my own skin has not been easy for me.  I squirm and balk at being told what to do, how to do it, when, and why.  Yet I think God's encouragement to me has been to trust Him, and I have not had to try so hard to do that.  I think that's what happens when you learn that He is who He says He is.  I seek His will often, not always, and must empty my own longings and urges in order to be filled with His longings and plans for me.  He has filled my life to overflowing, and I am grateful.

      Have I prayed?

      An attitude of gratitude is hard to sustain when life gets in the way, when sin gets in the way, when I get in the way, but with each day, I have a brand new chance to get it right.  Praying puts me in the right posture, the right frame of mind, to see and seek His face.  Spending time in His word does that as well. Sometimes my prayers are pretty sloppy one-word tomes, but I know that He listens and cares nonetheless.  I love to listen to my grandchildren pray, and they have taught me a lot in their simple conversations with our Saviour.  They have an unshakeable understanding that when they pray, they are actually talking to God, and I get humbled every time they say, "Amen."  Oh that my faith would stay simple, child-like, unspoiled, unfettered.

     Have I served?

     I seek those opportunities...not wanting to be useless, irrelevant, archaic.  I know that I miss and dismiss many moments when I could point someone to who He is instead of who I am...I am working on that.

    So 2014 is nearly upon us...and so is the opportunity to forgive.  What I love about Mark Twain's quote is the fact that it makes clear that forgiveness frees us from unspeakable burdens.  The scent of the iris, when stepped on, remains on the heel of the one who misstepped.  It gives me hope...that those whom I have hurt can forgive me, and that forgiveness will free us from carrying that grief into a new year. My prayer for each of you whom I love...

   Dear Father,  We look to you and thank you with full hearts, for You are the one who rules, sovereign and supreme.  May we look to you for light and find a clear path.  May we look to you for shelter, and find protection in your word.  May we look to you for provision, confident that our every need will be met according to your will.  May we look to you for wisdom, as the world is so full of shadows and your truth is obscured.  May we pray for and with each other, and on behalf of those who are helpless and forlorn.  May we keep our minds, hearts, and every sense focused on you,  mindful of your extravagant grace.  Amen.