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Since I’ve shared my story of being pushed out of the nest of a comfortable life, and into the free fall of trying to make a living doing things I love, others have shared similar narratives.

A friend of mine used to be a highly successful mortgage broker. You can probably guess at the transition he encountered during 2008.  But he has always been a highly talented musician, and the decision to close down his brokerage led to him pursuing some music gigs.  Today he maintains the same standard of living as a musician that he did when he was running the business and keeping his passions on the back burner.

Another friend of mine has decided that, since his insurance and other renewable items run out at the end of the month, he’s going to close down his construction business. Not due to lack of work – he just sees it as the right time to pursue things more in line with his life’s passions.

I know of two guys who have been putting off starting their own non-profit, mostly because the non-profit they were working for provided them with a decent income.  Now it’s going under, and they’ve decided to do what they’ve been putting off for years – start their own non-profit.

In nearly every story about someone chasing their passion, whether it’s starting a business or becoming self-employed or going after that dream job, there’s a force that has pushed them out of their comfort zone.  It almost seems necessary.

So what do you think? Should we wait until that force kicks us out of the nest before we start chasing our dream life? Should we be preparing ourselves for that moment all the time? Should we just jump on our own, without being chased out?

Maybe you’ve already jumped or been pushed out?  I’d love to hear your story, too.

As individuals we have become so isolated from our ancestors. Many of us don’t live close to any family anymore.  Many of us, due to divorce or whatever, have too many parents and grandparents to keep up with.  In most cases we’re all too busy to spend time with the older generations.

On Tuesday this week I drove down to Maryland to visit with my grandmother’s brother: my great-uncle Amos and his wife Hannah.  He is 71 and a real family historian.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into his living room was a framed piece of canvas with the names of a family embroidered on it – beside each name was the person’s year of birth: the first was 1860, then 1861, 1865 and so on for each of the children.  My great-great-great grandmother’s name was on that piece of canvas, stitched almost 125 years ago.

Amos told me all kinds of wonderful stories, and as he told each one it was like a puzzle was being put together in my mind. So many of the character traits of my ancestors are in me! I felt a sense of connection, this idea that even though they have come and gone, a part of them lives on in me, and my children.  It’s a comforting feeling.

My great-great grandfather Amos was a writer – he took time out of his extremely busy days as a farmer to write on the walls of his barn.  We have a journal of his from 1893 – 1896 (a portion of which looks like it may have been written on the banks of the Panama Canal as the canal was being completed and the first ships moved through the locks).  He hated the heat and loved the snow.  He had bushy eyebrows and loved telling stories to his kids.

I feel like I know him, because he is me.

Amos’s son-in-law, my great-grandfather, was a kind man, let his wife do most of the disciplining (so that’s where it comes from Maile!), and was willing to stand up for the things he felt were important. He even spent a night in prison when the government tried to force the Amish to send their kids to public school, in some small way leading to the rights of US citizens to create private schools, or home school.

I’m beginning to think there’s something to be found in the lives of our ancestors that we cannot find anywhere else. I get a feeling inside of me that I’ve never experienced before, as I discover more about these men and women.

Sometimes I wonder, if 150 years from now, my great-great-great grandson tries to find out more about me…what would he discover?  What kind of heritage will I have left behind?

I’m working on a book about these things that I’m going to self-publish for the family: both the process of searching through the lives of my Amish ancestors, and their lives themselves.  Some of the stories are just fascinating.  Perhaps I’ll start posting some of them, as I get into it.

Have you learned any lessons or heard fascinating stories about your relatives who are no longer here?

I’m excited to make this announcement: Gwyn McVay will be reading poetry at the Fireside Writer’s Conference!  Click on the link if you’d like to find out more about the conference or register to attend.

From Ordinary Beans by Gwyn McVay:

The Demoness

She liked me to say poems,
other people’s at first,
then my own. That was scary,

not her skull necklace—I liked that;
but saying for her the plain words

that had to be right, or she’d hiss
like a tigress, whistle around her tusks,

and stomp on tortured souls. So I chased peacocks,
I cooked masalas that burned through the kettle,
I climbed trees with snakes. Love sonnets
she could take or leave. Her taste

changed daily under my tongue,
imported fish eggs, the next day
ordinary beans.
At the ghats
where bodies are burned, where she lay down
and wrapped her human-skin robe around her,

she said to me, All this time
it was my death song. Don’t worry—
I’m going with the Buddhists next time round.
You did all right, for a kid.

Oh, I said, and she burst into flame.
This painting is made of her stare.

I was struggling to find a topic for Tuesday’s Top 10. Fortunately it was 9:12pm on Sunday night, and this one just sort of happened all around me. By the way, I’m really not a fan of parents who spend all day and night complaining about their kids, so please don’t misconstrue this as a list of grievances – I actually find most of these completely hilarious.

So here are the top 10 stalling tactics my children use:

1) “I’m hungry” – this is usually said with chin tilted forward, eyes looking up at you, as if they no longer have the strength to hold their head in an upright position and will certainly not make it through the night without one more bowl of Cheerios.  Or one last banana.  This is one of the hardest stalling tactics to thwart because what parent likes to think of their kids going to bed hungry?  But they realize this.  They have Navy SEAL type tactical skills in that 5 year old brain.  Don’t give in.

2) “I’m thirsty” – this one is difficult as well, because the amount of time it takes to fulfill the request is minimal.  But it’s the principle folks. One drink of water now will lead to a request for a 7-course meal at 10:30.  Which will inevitably lead to . . .

3) “I have to go to the bathroom” – a relatively straightforward request, the first of which is granted.  Each successive request becomes less and less believable . . . unless you’ve given into #2 already.  Which is another reason not to give into #2, because then you can’t be so sure about denying #3. The recently potty-trained child can make this tactic especially problematic.

4) “I’m scared” – once again, sometimes tough to deflect.  What if they’re really scared? What if the same shadow that scares the belittles out of you each night just went across their window? Probably not.  Chances are they saw you pause and will now press in, hoping tonight’s the night they get to sleep in bed with you, ruining any romantic bedroom plans you might have had with your wife and turning a decent night’s sleep into a long interior monologue regarding whether or not now is the time to migrate to the sofa.

5) “I’m not tired” – this is usually said while yawning or collapsing on the floor in a fit of sulkiness.  Or falling asleep standing up.

6) Singing – my daughter will sing to herself just to stay awake.  I’m not sure how this works.  If I would sing to myself in bed, at night, in the dark, I would either put myself to sleep out of sheer boredom or Maile would knock me out – either way, I wouldn’t be awake any more.

7) Poking themselves in the eye – my son Cade does this.  Yes, the one who referred to nipples as first knuckles then nupples. We can always tell he is nearly asleep because he keeps sticking his index finger in the corner of his eye and peeling back his eye lid.  Very strange.

8) Being good – this is when they go super-stealth.  You might even forget they’re still awake, because they’ve retired to one corner of the room, surrounded themselves with books and toys, and are prepared to make their last stand Ghandi-style: completely nonresistant.  You find yourself saying, “Oh, look at how nicely they are playing – what the heck, let them stay up for another half hour.” Before you know it, you’ve brushed your teeth, retired for the night, turned out the light, and suddenly realized you never put the kids to bed.

9) Making things up – this is sort of a last ditch effort.  “But dad, we NEVER get to stay up late.”  “But dad, you never read to us anymore.” “But dad, you’re just making me go to bed early because I’m being bad.”  None of which are true.  If they start with this one and somehow realize they’re making as much sense as Bryan Allain’s Cannarf rating system, they’ll usually retreat and go back to #1-#5.

10) “Ummmmm” – this is a new one for our family, introduced by Abra (pictured above), and I’ll admit: it’s got me stumped, mostly because I just don’t have the heart to simply walk out on her.  It goes something like this:

Me: Good night, Abra. (kiss)

Abra: Gaggy? (that’s how she says Daddy)

Me: Yes, honey?

Abra: Ummmmmm.

Me: Abra, what do you want sweet heart?

Abra: Ummmmmm.

Me (frustrated): Okay, good night Abra (I turn to walk out).

Abra: Gaggy!

Me: Yes?

Abra: Ummmmmm.

ad infinitum

So what’s your favorite kid’s stalling tactic?

Lyrics | Ray Lamontagne lyrics – Trouble lyrics

Trouble

Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble . . .

Trouble been doggin’ my soul, since the day I was born

Worry

Worry, worry, worry, worry . . .

Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone.

Been there?  I have. Trouble is lousy – whatever kind you can think of, I don’t like it.

Worry sucks, too. Have you ever laid awake at night, so worried about something that you couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think of anything else?  Sometimes, if I let it, worry paralyzes me until I can’t write, can’t think.

There will always be trouble in this life, but there doesn’t have to be worry.

What’s your response to trouble? Here are four options for taking the worry out of trouble:

1) Be patient – did you know that 95% of the things we worry about never even happen?  I have no idea how someone goes about creating a statistic like that – sounds suspiciously made up – but it’s roughly true in my life.  When trouble seems to loom, instead of hitting the panic button, how about taking on a “wait-and-see” attitude?

2) Meditate – for all of you who don’t have a problem with a little quiet time: palms up, palms down; release, accept; let go of your worries, accept inner peace.  Some people believe this only works in California, or at least just on the left coast – not true. I’m in the heartland of Anabaptism, surrounded by Amish and Mennonite churches,  and I still find meditation to be one of the best ways of starting my day and attaining a sense of peace and balance.

3) Be generous – if you are inundated with worries and want to rid yourself of them, nothing works quite as well as being generous, especially in the area you are worried about.  Stressed about money?  Give some away. Worried about a family member? Help someone else’s family member through a tough time.  Relationship troubles?  Spend some time helping someone else sort through their own relational mess.

4) Let it be an opportunity for joy – maybe the toughest of the four, but if you can learn to transform troubles into joy, shoot, you’ve found the golden ticket.  Sometimes the things that seem the biggest trouble end up launching us into some of the best things we could imagine – I’ve experienced that: a failing business and huge amounts of debt forced Maile and I to make a difficult choice, and now I’m living the life I always dreamed of.  This brings us back to patience – can we wait out the trouble, without worrying, long enough to experience the good on the other side?  And, believing there is good on the other side, can we suddenly let trouble be a reason for joy, since we know it will lead to something good?

Trouble is inevitable.  Worry?  Not so much.

How do you keep your troubles from turning into worry?

I have to tell you all about a friend of mine – her name is Jen Hudson. On Jen’s Facebook page she said it the way that only she could: “I live in Aylesbury, Bucks. I am married to Dave and we appear to have some small people that live with us too. Ella is nearly 9, Sidney is 7 and Jude is 3. Help!”

First – Maile and I lived in England from ’01 to ’05, and we made some amazing friends while we were there.  They were quite kind to us, considering most of England wasn’t too happy about the Americans leading them to war in Iraq.  Dave and Jen were just one family from Southcourt Baptist Church that took us in and befriended us.

The winter before we left England to move back to the States, Jen and her family received terrible news: Jen had breast cancer. Their family was immediately plunged into that life of treatments and tests and chemo and operations and radiation.  There were so many reasons that it was hard for us to leave England – but leaving then, knowing that their family was fighting so hard, made it particularly so.

Jen battled cancer in a way I have never experienced. It seemed that every other month we were receiving completely opposite reports – at one point the cancer seemed to have taken over her body and the doctors gave her a short life expectancy.  The next month we would hear that she was fighting hard, doing better. Through it all, she and I had some good battles playing Scrabulous on Facebook – she had been a librarian at one point in her life, and usually took me to task.  She liked talking trash, which made it even worse.

For those of you who know how much I love Scrabble, you’ll understand this was difficult for me to handle.

Then, just as she was receiving radiation treatment, miracle upon miracle: she found out she was pregnant. Impossible, the doctors said.  Insignificant, as the baby will probably not survive the radiation – so she put off her treatments until little Jude was born.  Then, immediately, she resumed her own personal war against cancer.

For the last year we never heard too much.  An email every once in a while.  The occasional Facebook update: