The Meaning of Baptism for Our Family

(Note: This post is a little different for me. While I do get personal on here, I don't normally talk much about my religion or faith--and I don't anticipate that changing anytime soon. My philosophy is that everyone has their own path to follow, and this is mine. So please read this post with an open mind and heart, or don't read it at all.)

Yesterday, I mentioned that 2011 brought a few firsts in my life. I also mentioned that another first would happen today, and here's what happened: Tammy, Reese, Will, Hannah, and I were all baptised together as a family and individually as Christians.

After being members of the Duluth First United Methodist Church for around a year now, Tammy and I decided the time was right to express our faith through baptism. As one of the sacraments given to the church by Jesus Christ, baptism is an essential to salvation for Methodists, though people are not saved by baptism alone.

Growing Up Outside the Church
I grew up outside the church with a few connections on the inside. My grandparents would take us from time to time. A couple friends across the street would bring us along a couple times while we were in elementary school. I remember going to Sunday school and then sneaking off to get candy at a nearby gas station.

As I grew older, I only seemed to move even further from God. I remember having conversations in which I argued against the possibility of God in high school. In college, I seemed to only find more ammunition in my campaign against God and Christianity in particular. I remember even thinking that organized religions were the same as faceless corporations that are riddled with greed and corruption.

Then Something Changed
My first wife has grandparents who are members of the Methodist church in Southwest Ohio. I can say with certainty that Ann and Freeman James of Lindenwald United Methodist Church played an important role in my faith journey. In fact, they still do.

They encouraged me to get out to church and invited me to attend an Alpha Course program with them that lasted 3 months. I took this course in early 2003, so it took these early seeds--when my mind and heart was open--to make me question my worldviews over the next eight years.

Or maybe I should say that even with these early seeds, it took me more than eight years to get where I am today.

So What Happened After That Course?
Within two years of taking the course, my first wife and I separated (with the intention of getting divorced), I found myself in significant debt, and I had to move into my father's house. Plus, I felt like a horrible father (because of the impending divorce) and a failure in many ways.

It's times like these that you really have to dig deep into yourself, and I found myself starting to write poetry with abandon--in a way I had not since my college days. I started running and filling my spare time with work. There were days that I felt like the world was going to end, and there were days that felt like they had unlimited potential. I was all over the place.

Around three years after the separation, Tammy and I started getting involved. Much like myself, she'd grown up around but not exactly in the Baptist church. Neither of us had been baptised or attended with any regularity.

Then Things Got Serious
Actually, that's an inside joke between Tammy and I, but we did get serious enough to meet each other in Ohio (where I lived) and Georgia (where she lived)--and Tennessee (where my grandma lives). When we met in Tennessee, we went to my grandma's little Baptist church next to the lake, and we've been there a few times since.

When we decided to get married on 8/8/08, we asked my grandma's boyfriend to marry us (and last year, he married my brother David and my sister-in-law) in Tennessee. He had a talk with us before and after the ceremony about the faith element involved in marriage, and I think that meant a lot to both of us.

Will dressed for his baptism.

So over the next couple years, Tammy and I talked about checking out a church, but it's scary. Especially for me, I almost felt like it was too late for me to join a church, because I wasn't baptised. Though part of my brain knew this was wrong, another part just felt like I had to be raised in the church to be a part of the church.

Duluth First United Methodist Church
I first started going to DFUMC on Monday nights--not for church, but for Cub Scouts. Last year, Reese started Cub Scouts, and I volunteered to be the den leader for Den 2 of Pack 420. I'm on my second year now, and it's been a fun experience. But it was this initial involvement with the church building that eventually prompted Tammy and I to try attending a few services.

It didn't take long for Tammy and I to decide that we liked the atmosphere, the people, and the leaders of DFUMC. One thing I appreciate about the Methodist church in general is that it's very open and inclusive. This church in particular seemed (and still seems) even more so. So we joined the church last December.

Hannah excited for her baptism too!

Since we've been members, we've continued with Cub Scouts; we took a United Methodism 101 course that helped us learn more about the history, beliefs, and structure of the Methodist church; we enrolled Will in a Christian Beginnings preschool class (which he loves!); and this morning, we were baptised!

We've had a great year of growth as a family and as Christians, and we intend to continue our development together as a family. Baptism is only one rung in the ladder, but it's an important enough one that I felt it was worth sharing.

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Check out previous Not Bob posts:

• Confession of a Man With a Moustache.
• My New Weekend Routine.
• Every Day Matters: The Importance of Living Every Day Like It's Your Last.

My Life as a Den Leader: Year 2

Tonight was our first den meeting of year two, and only one of my boys from last year showed up--and it wasn't even Reese! But two very new and very nice boys showed up, and I knew ahead of time there was the possibility two or three from last year wouldn't make it this week. (By the way, Reese missed, because he had two of his teeth pulled earlier in the afternoon to make room for some other teeth.)

The Wolf Badge: Our main goal this year.

Since we're in year two, the boys will be actively working toward their Wolf patches this year after earning their Bobcat and Tiger Cub patches last year. I'm really excited to see how they change over the next year, because they definitely developed last year.

I'm bummed that Reese wasn't able to make it out tonight, because one of my two new scouts is actually in Reese's second grade class. But I learned last year that the first few weeks of the year tend to be pretty chaotic, and everyone will be in a pretty good rhythm by the middle of September.

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In other news, Will had his first ever dentist appointment this morning, and he actually thought it was great. Of course, it probably helped that Tammy took him to Chick-Fil-A afterward and let him run loose on the indoor playground there.

Later in the day, Reese had those two teeth pulled and two fillings. He, of course, didn't think it was great, and he couldn't have Chick-Fil-A afterward. But he'll at least have a visit from the tooth fairy tonight.

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One of the cool things about scouting is that there are plenty of cool projects in the scouting handbooks. Here are a few other resources with fun projects:

• The Dangerous Book for Boys, by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden
• The Daring Book for Girls, by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz
• The Double-Daring Book for Girls, by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz
• The Big Book of Boy Stuff, by Bart King

Lessons Learned as a Tiger Cub Den Leader

It's been a while since I've posted about being a den leader. Over this past weekend, we finished off the first year with our banquet dinner. It was your typical scouting function in which the catering service never showed, but the kids still had fun while the adults grew cranky, tired, and hungry. But truth be told, (at least some of) the adults had fun too.

Four of my five scouts at our year-end banquet.

Earlier tonight, I did the math, and it appears that my spur of the moment commitment to be Reese's den leader (for what I was thinking might be one year) may actually turn into a 10-year marathon of leadership. You see, Reese should be in Cub Scouts for five years (Tiger, Bear, Wolf, Web I, and Web II). The very next year after Reese graduates though, Will should be starting first grade--and his Tiger Cub year in Cub Scouts. Soooo...it'll be here we go again. But really, I'm not complaining, because I've had a great year for the most part, and I think it will only get better the more I get used to how everything works.

Today, I updated my LinkedIn profile to include my position as a Cub Scouts Den Leader. My hope is that I've helped the boys engage with the world a little more while having fun. I know that I've learned a lot about myself and others by leading these first graders through activities and field trips.

Here are some things I've learned:

1. Volunteer organizations are well-meaning chaotic environments. The plan is always changing, things are always falling through the cracks, and balls are constantly being dropped. But it's not through lack of caring or effort. I've met a lot of truly caring individuals in my first year of scouting and though things can be frustrating at times, I know they put a lot of effort, time and energy into making things a little less chaotic than it could be.
2. Leaders need lots of patience and adaptability. As mentioned above, things often don't go according to plan. So you can either get mad about it--and I'll admit I have lost my temper a few times--or you can focus on how to make the new reality work for you. The latter option is always preferable to the former.
3. Leaders need to communicate effectively. Sometimes this means projecting my voice over a bunch of distracted 7-year-olds; other times, this means sending out e-mail newsletters to the parents of my scouts. I also had some ups and downs in communicating with the pack leaders, but see numbers 1 and 2 above.
4. Leaders should ask for help. There were times over this past year when I tried to do things on my own, and there were times when I asked for help. Most of the time things turned out better when I asked for help. There's only so much one person can accomplish on his own. If you have resources that may be able to help, try and use them.

I'm really looking forward to my second year as a den leader. Reese and I are already going through his Wolf handbook and completing requirements toward his Wolf badge. And yes, I've already sent out a Den newsletter to the parents that lets them know things they could be doing with their scouts over the summer. And yes, I'm already trying to think of ways to improve for the second year. One year down, four (or nine) more to go.

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Of course, the above is what I've learned about leading scouts. If you're interested in more advanced talk on leadership, check these out:

• Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times, by Donald T. Phillips
• The Leadership Challenge, by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
• Monday Morning Leadership: 8 Mentoring Sessions You Can't Afford to Miss, by David Cottrell, Alice Adams and Juli Baldwin
• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You, by John C. Maxwell

My Life as a Den Leader: Supertrip 2011

Way back in August, I somehow ended up volunteering to be the den leader of Reese's Tiger Cub den. I'll admit that during the first few months I alternated between feeling overwhelmed and half-way competent (though never totally on top of my game). Lately, I've been feeling half-way competent more and more often.

Basically, I've come to the realization that Tiger Cub parents are supposed to learn as much as the Tiger Cubs themselves during this first year of scouting.




Reese and I in the hangar on the Yorktown


Patriots Point, South Carolina
Pack 420 went on our annual "supertrip" this past weekend to Patriots Point, which is located right across the river from Charleston's French Quarter. It was a great opportunity for Reese and I to spend a weekend together with a bunch of other scouts and scout-parents sleeping on the USS Yorktown.

On the way down, Reese was excited to be going to South Carolina. Then, he was excited to see and touch some Spanish moss. Then, he was excited to see and touch actual palm trees. And when we got into the marshy areas, he was on a vigilant lookout for alligators. For the most part, he kept this excitement up throughout the whole trip.

A few things about the Navy
These ships are not made for 6-foot tall guys who like to walk on the balls of their feet. Even on the Yorktown, I had to constantly remind myself to walk flat-footed, or I would've left the ship with multiple concussions. But even flat-footed, I still had to duck every so often. Then, there's the USS Clamagore, a submarine at Patriots Point, that gave me a nice quad-muscle workout going through it, which Reese wanted to do multiple times.

Beyond feeling too tall on the ships, there were also the bunks, which were stacked four beds high and two across (about 3 inches or so separating me from the guy on the other side of me). The bunk on top of mine had about a foot or so between my face and the bottom of the cot. We brought our own sleeping bags and pillows to lay on the beds.

The view from my bunk (yes, those are my feet)

And the showers changed temperatures with each flush of the toilet. Our sailors have it rough, especially if they are taller than 6 feet.

Going to sleep at night
Imagine two boys keeping themselves up by giggling and grabbing at each other. Then, multiply that by another 30 or 40 pairs of boys. Then, imagine the first father who can ignore the giggling enough to get to sleep, and imagine this father has a distinctive snore. And if you can, imagine that this makes the boys all laugh each and every time the father snores. And, well...let's just say I was glad to get back home to Tammy on Sunday.

Final thoughts on Patriots Point
The trip really was excellent. There's nothing that makes a parent feel better than to watch one of his kids grow, and I witnessed Reese making new friends, braving new challenges, and even volunteering to leading a group of 200+ people in the pledge of allegiance. Together, we walked up and down more than 100 flights of stairs (not an exaggeration), saw several cool exhibits, learned new things about our history and marine biology, and even watched Tora! Tora! Tora! on the big screen.

In fact, Reese gave the ultimate compliment by claiming that he wants to move to South Carolina. Wow!

Duluth Police Department
For the time being, we're not moving anywhere (not even South Carolina), but I did line up another tour for all the Tiger Cub dens (there are two others besides my own). We went there last night, and it was a fun experience. I think several of the boys (including Reese) started the tour a little afraid they'd somehow get "locked up" while they were there, but all of them seemed to have a lot of fun.

This tour was most significant for me as a den leader, because it completed the Tiger Cub requirements for three of my five scouts. (Two of them still need to make up an earlier requirement they missed.) I couldn't be any happier or feel any more half-way competent.

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Does this post get your camping juices flowing?
Then, check out these cool camping-related products and remember that you don't have to be an expert to have fun, you just have to "Do Your Best."

• Coleman PVC Double Wash Basin - for cleaning them dishes easily
• Brunton Gentleman's Compass - for finding your way (in style)
• Coleman Camping Coffee Maker - for, well, waking up
• Columbia Bugaboo II Geo Dome Tent with Footlockers - for braving the elements

My 2011 To-Do List

Every year, I make a list of resolutions. Some things get done; others don't. That's how it's traditionally gone. This year, I'm going to see if I can get everything done. The great thing about January 1st is that about anything is still possible.

Here's my 2011 To-Do List:

• Publish a collection of poetry. A carry-over from my 2010 list, I'm currently in the process of making this happen. (Click here to learn how to pre-order a copy of the limited edition chapbook.)
• Get down to and maintain a weight of 185 pounds or less. At one point in 2010, I was down to 192 (using this diet), so I know it's possible to get down to this weight. The trick is staying disciplined enough to maintain that weight. If I do, I should be able to...
• Run a marathon. I haven't picked out a specific race yet, but some candidates include the Air Force Marathon (Dayton, OH), Chicago Marathon (run on 10/10/10), or Columbus (OH) Marathon. Training at a lower weight will help, but it'll also help if I can achieve this goal:
• Run 200 days. I've only accomplished this a few times in my life, but having a very consistent running base becomes more important the older I get if I want to avoid injury. Slow and steady finishes the race.
• Help Den 2 Tiger Cubs have a great year. I've been having a great time as a Den Leader for my Den 2 Tiger Cubs, and I want to make sure all the boys finish the year with their Tiger Cub patches and a bunch of belt loops--while having fun and gaining responsibility.
• Pay off all credit cards. Tammy and I have been collectively digging ourselves out of debt for the past few years, and this is the year we could finally pay off our credit cards. Of course, with our growing family, we'll probably off-set this financial accomplishment by taking out a loan on a minivan. So it goes.

There are other goals too, but these are the biggies that I'd really like to have crossed off when I make out my 2012 list.

Do you have any big tasks on your 2011 list? Share 'em below, and we can hold each other accountable.

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Here are some of the cool gifts I received this year during the holidays:

• Flash T-shirt. My favorite super hero on an XL T-shirt.
• Pax Zhu Zhu Pet. Yes, I got my very own Zhu Zhu pet; a rock star Zhu Zhu pet, in fact.
• Cookie Monster Pajama Pants. "C" is for "cookie," and that's good enough for me.