While telling young women who just graduated with a college degree that they are going to enjoy being a wife and mother more, may be poor timing – I can’t disagree with Harrison Butker.
I loved my time at Medtronic, using my undergraduate degree to bring physical healing to many. I would be honored to work there again. It is a wonderful cooperation dedicated to the health of both patients and employees alike. My husband, who I met there, is still helping people around the world through Medtronic’s medical therapies.
However, no amount of bringing physical healing to people can compare with the joy of seeing babies grow into competent, God-fearing adults who make their world better.
On the other hand, I have several Christian friends who have been called by God to not get married and not have any children of their own. But God gives them others’ children to guide and lead in both Christianity and adulting here in America. So my friends use their college degrees to support themselves while helping out others. They are almost like single moms, which is something I can’t even imagine being – I’ve experienced short spurts of that when my husband would travel for work. That was hard!!
So, while I agree with kicker Butker in his broad principles, again, it may have been poor timing for that particular line.
On the other hand, I thoroughly support him in his other comments on American culture, as evidenced by the many blogs I have written myself on those subjects.
I’m guessing Butker knew before giving this speech that he may be putting his job on the line with those words. I am proud of him for speaking the truth anyway.
I recommend that you watch the recording rather than just read the transcript. You can see his humility, which is lost if you just read the words.
Thank you, Harrison Butker, for kicking us out of complacency.
Ever since my kids were children it was a dream that they and my husband would worship God together with music. I am not as talented as the three of them, so I planned to be in the audience.
Several months ago the little ministry that we volunteer with decided to host a prayer and praise night this coming Saturday. They needed a worship team, so I asked my son if he would be interested in leading one. He said sure, so I helped him gather the team, which included his dad.
This past Monday the singer was out sick for the rehearsal. It was a bummer, but not the end of the world, since my son has a good voice. He had wanted a singer in the group because he wasn’t confident singing on his own.
He hasn’t sung much since his voice changed years ago. But he had started getting more confident during the previous rehearsal when the vocalist had asked that she not have to sing alone.
My daughter is on spring break this week, but she needed to be at her apartment on campus on Monday so that she could finish up an assignment. Our house was out of power, and therefore internet, on Monday due to some scheduled, much needed repair work. She was able to complete her assignment so wanted us to pick her up and bring her home Monday evening.
The worship team was rehearsing at a church on the edge of my daughter’s college campus, so she said that she would just meet us there. She then, graciously agreed to fill in for the ill bandmate.
I had to hold back tears as the dream I had almost two decades before filled the sanctuary.
The team vocalist is feeling well again and is thrilled that our daughter has agreed to sing with her and the team this coming Saturday.
My first-born is training to be a FedEx driver right now.
When I was pregnant with him, my husband and I decided to wait until his birth for the gender reveal. I had been leaning toward being surprised, but it was my sister’s advice that settled it for me.
My sister, who had a daughter the year before, had decided not to learn her little-one-to-be’s gender. When my mom and I showered the pregnant mom the month or so before she was due, she received cute, but generic baby supplies that could be comfortably used for either gender.
Since baby showers are usually only thrown for the first baby, getting green and yellow supplies is very helpful if you plan to have more than one child. Knowing we hoped to have several children, my sister recommended that we not find out the gender of our first baby so that we, too, would get gender-neutral necessities from well-wishing family and friends.
My family of origin has two sons and two daughters, and so does my husband’s. The likelihood of us having a mix was pretty high, thus the decision to remain in the dark on whether we were getting a miss or master.
My husband was sure our first pregnancy was a girl, so we spent hours discussing girl names. We had narrowed our musings down to two. Finally, a month or so before our baby was due, I brought up the fact that, since we didn’t know for sure we were having a girl, maybe we should come up with a boy name, just in case.
I could tell my husband was miffed with my comment. He prides himself on being an INTJ, a very rare Myers-Briggs type strong on intuition. And his intuition is usually right on. So he was quite put out that I didn’t blindly trust that we were having a girl.
Thankfully, because we were out to dinner, he tried to remain polite. He really didn’t see the point, and we didn’t get far, but I had planted a seed. A week or so later, while driving to our last adventure without kids, he was willing to seriously consider the possibility of needing a boy’s name.
By this point in my pregnancy I was gigantic. I clearly remember walking into Target and an older woman exclaiming loudly as she walked out, “Are you having twins?!” So we figured, we might be in for a big child, no matter the gender. If a boy, he would need a strong name that went well with Holbrook.
Our naming strategy was to choose names that aren’t unique, but are less common in our children’s generation. My husband has a name that, until very recently, was very unique, so people never knew how to say it or spell it. I have a name that my mom thought was unique to my generation, but definitely isn’t!
After testing out a few names, we settled on, Mark: short, simple, strong, goes well with Holbrook, not hard to read, write or pronounce, yet not common to his generation. I didn’t want half the playground to come running when I called for my children!
After Mark was born, my mom gifted him with a name plaque that said that his name means, Mighty Warrior, with a Bible verse underneath. I hung that sign in the front hall right inside the door.
As Mark grew and started eating solid food, I began to buy groceries from Schwans. My mom had raised us on Schwans so I continued the tradition. Those vegetables and fish sticks are amazing! Not to mention the ice cream treats and chicken fingers.
One afternoon when Mark was in elementary school, the Schwans delivery driver stopped by. I don’t remember exactly how we landed on the topic, but by this time the Schwan man, as we called him, knew that Mark was a talented musician and had seen the name plaque by the door. I think I was probably mentioning that I was trying to figure out how to encourage Mark to live up to his name but wasn’t sure exactly what that meant for him.
I honestly had no idea that the driver was a Christian, so it was strange that I had even brought that thought up to him. Without missing a beat the driver quoted a Bible verse about God using musicians to conquer evil.
It seems to be working – lately we have been giving our son jobs to do if he can’t control his mouth. Last week there was one evening where that snowballed a bit, and he ended up with quite a few jobs. After getting a few jobs for saying mean things like, “you’re stupid,” when I told him he needed to stop playing computer so that we could go pick up my husband, (his dad!) from work, he got upset about how many jobs he had, and couldn’t seem to shut his mouth off, ending up with 10 jobs. Some of them were very light, though, like, “go feed your sister’s fish.”
But lately he has been able to keep the job count a bit lower. I am so proud of him. I understand how hard it is to control one’s tongue, as I was constantly in trouble for that same thing as a child. I never dared call my mom a name, but I did get into verbal wars with my siblings, constantly. I still have a long way to go on total tongue control, which means that my poor son does not have a perfect example to follow.
Thank goodness for Jesus’ example. Jesus wasn’t always, “Minnesota Nice.” He said things that were hurtful, unpopular and got himself into trouble sometimes. But Jesus wasn’t always loud and brash, either. Sometimes he used no words at all, but let his actions do the talking.
My prayer for all of us today, and especially for those of us with Asperger’s Syndrome or Autism is that we would be able to control our tongue – to really think before we speak. I pray that we would remember to carry our gripes to God, first, so that He can help us sort through what really needs to be communicated, and what we should just let go of. Often things we find offensive are just us misunderstanding a situation, or being far too petty. I ask God’s love for us, so that we can let that love cover a multitude of sins in ourselves and others, forgiving as he has forgiven us.
So, one of the classic signs of autism is the inability to innately understand that others have different opinions on things than they do. Once an autistic person learns of this reality, they still do not think that is ok. They honestly think that the other person is wrong, or is just trying to make their life uncomfortable. They really don’t understand how others can want to think about or do something other than what they like.
With that in mind, we come to the always exciting, but contentious question (though it should not be, but is because of autism in the house), where should we go out to eat?
When my son was preschool age, we always went to a place he liked. When he was a little older, we tried other restaurants that we knew would have something that he would hopefully eat. I say, hopefully, because any mother of a child with ASD, and many mothers of little kids, in general, know that all hamburgers and pizzas are not created exactly alike. So to the child, they are not the same food. Therefore, liking McDonald’s hamburger, does not guarantee liking Perkin’s hamburger, and so on.
We still choose restaurants that we know have something he will at least try, and he has gotten quite good at eating any hamburger, and almost any pizza without fussing. I am very proud of him, as that is a big step. Unfortunately for him, because he is learning to accept tiny variations in food, we have been starting to go to restaurants that are favorites of other family members, but do not have the requisite pizza or hamburger.
For instance, my daughter loves KFC. My husband and I also enjoy it. We have been to KFC before, but we try to avoid it because it brings A LOT of complaining from our son. He loves Scwhan’s chicken fries. Those are his favorite food at home. However, KFC chicken fingers are nothing like the Schwan’s. I find both to be quite tasty.
There is a KFC near the children’s school, so a week ago we went there for dinner before the school art fair. We live 20 miles from the school, so to go home for supper would not have left time to eat. Sometimes I pack a supper to eat before school functions. But I had promised my daughter that we could go to KFC, since we had been to my son’s favorite restaurant numerous times already.
As those of you with ASD kids can well imagine, we had a rather miserable dinner at KFC. Oh, the food was great, the service was wonderful, even the booth was comfortable and the restaurant clean and inviting. But my son would not stop fussing. We did get him to eat all of his dinner (two chicken strips and corn on the cob, washed down with some pop), but the whining, complaining, mouthing off, was incessant.
In previous years my husband and I would have decided that going to KFC should not happen again. We would tell our daughter that maybe mom could bring some home for her while Mark had something else, but we would not go to KFC as a family. Well, my son has truly been growing in at least his knowledge that others don’t always like what he likes. And he is starting to feel a little less threatened by that fact, though he still doesn’t exactly embrace it. He probably never will feel totally comfortable with it. I know, as an Aspie, I still find that truth to be innately uncomfortable at times, even though my experience has taught me that it is no big deal, and can even make life more fun.
We told my son that until he can learn to go to someone else’s favorite restaurant without complaining, we are not going to take him to his favorite. Because of all of his fussing at KFC, he was banned from his favorite, Wendy’s, for a week. We would have never even dreamed of trying something like this a year ago, but since we have seen some little hints of developmental readiness, we thought we would give it a try.
Yesterday there was another function at school that required us to stay close for dinner. Again we went to KFC. My son made an initial complaint, but then settled in quite nicely. He wasn’t exactly enjoying the experience, taking some reminding to take a bite of chicken or corn in between tales of the Lego sets he wanted to save his allowance to buy. But overall, he did very well. I didn’t leave the restaurant vowing to never take him there again!
I really hadn’t thought that he would behave so nicely. I figured it would take quite a few visits to other restaurants before he would earn the privelege of going back to one that he likes. I guess he was developmentally ready to take on the challenge, and the promise of being able to go back to his favorite restaurant after he behaved at someone else’s was a big motivator.
So next Tuesday we are going to Wendy’s for supper before yet another school function. Welcome to the end of the school year!
