#250 Celebrate Good Times

Yesterday, March 20, was Hofman Family Day™. See, back in 2020, my younger daughter, Mia, was born seven weeks early. She spent nearly six weeks in the NICU. Tess and I lived at the hospital and slept at the Ronald McDonald house for a month and a half. Due to sickness and the beginnings of COVID-19 restrictions, my older daughter Lanie, ended up spending about half this time in Wisconsin with my parents and my in-laws. I was a wreck for a lot of that time. By my standards, I cried pretty often and pretty easily. Every moment I spent away from Tess or Lanie or Mia hurt like slicing off a piece of my heart. And no matter what I did, I almost never felt like I had made the right decision. (You can read a lot of my ongoing thoughts from that time by using the archive to look up blog posts from February and March 2020.) March 20 was the first day that all four of us were finally at home together. March 20 was the day I began to feel (at least close to) whole.

So Tess and I decided that March 20 would forever be a Hofman family holiday. On March 20 we would be together. We'd eat our favorite foods and get dessert and do whatever our kids wanted to do. (Yesterday we got ice cream and went to the park, and—at Lanie's request—we had McDonald's for supper.) And we would remember. We'd remember the difficult days of separation and loneliness. We'd remember the initial (and thankfully, mercifully short) period of wondering if Mia would even survive. We'd remember the frustration of just wanting to be home. But most of all we'd remember that God brought us through. He walked beside us. He delivered us. He made Mia healthy and strong. He kept Lanie happy through all the changes. He pulled Tess and me out of all the uncertainty. God brought us home together. He enabled us to find rest. He caused us to heal bit by bit.

I've told this story before. All those pieces are probably scattered throughout different earlier posts. But I think it's important that I tell it again. In the Bible God instructed His people again and again to remember what He had done for them. He urged and even commanded them to tell the stories of His faithfulness and all His wonderful deeds, to teach those stories to their children. When Christians gather for worship, this active remembering is a key part of what we do. We retell our story with God through Bible readings and prayers and liturgical forms and testimonies. We cannot forget all that God has done for us. And we need to celebrate, too. So often life is hard and messy. But God is good, and He makes life good. He takes care of us, and He gives us hope. Celebration reminds us that God is here, that Jesus has triumphed, that we truly are blessed. Celebration helps us to enjoy what God has done for us and what God has given us. Every moment I sit with my two girls on my lap is a gift. Every time the four of us sit down to eat together is a gift. Every night we all go to bed in the same house is a gift. We longed for these things, and God gave them to us. So yesterday we remembered, and yesterday we celebrated. There is no one like our God.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#249 I Believe I Can Fly

I was born in 1991. That same year Nintendo released the video game Super Mario World in the U.S., and my dad got a copy when he bought a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. So it's more than fair to say that I grew up with Super Mario World.

At first I simply watched my dad play, holding the extra unplugged controller in my hands while pretending to play along with him. Before long I started to play myself, jumping up and down along with Mario. I played that game over and over and over again, and the minutes turned into hours, piling up over months and years of playing. Slowly I got good enough to clear a few levels, then a few a worlds. Eventually I defeated Bowser and rescued Princess Toadstool. Then I found all the secret exits and earned that special little star on the file selection screen.

As I grew up I kept on going back to Super Mario World. Some of my friends got newer home game console systems, but until my parents picked up a Wii during my high school days, I only had that old SNES plugged into a TV in our spare room. I had a few other games, especially when my uncle Sam passed his collection on to me, but I never enjoyed any of them as much as Super Mario World. Finding that cape and flying with Mario just didn't get old. And there were so many ways to play through the game. Playing a level with dinosaur pal Yoshi was a very different experience than going solo. Having a cap or firepower opened up new possibilities. I could play through levels in a nearly endless number of orders. I could use secrets to make the game easier or ignore them to challenge myself. No matter how good I got at the game, it never became boring.

When I left home for college, Super Mario World came with me. I've brought it with me through moves to seminary and two different churches. Now I fire it up once in a while to show it to my daughters. After thirty years with this game, I still can't get enough of the soundtrack, the variety of backgrounds and level designs, the sprawling world map. After a couple of half-hour sessions, my muscle memory comes returns, and I still haven't forgotten any of the secrets, so the game quickly becomes second nature once again. Playing Super Mario World makes me feel like a kid. At this point I'm sure I'll play it until that game cartridge wears out, and I'll savor every moment of it.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#248 Dad's Dilemma

On Saturday, my family had to run some errands. As we drove down the road, Mia got Tess's attention and made it known that she wanted to listen to "The Wheels on the Bus." I was driving. My music was playing. Unlike my dear two-year-old daughter, I had absolutely no interest in listening to "The Wheels on the Bus." I've heard the song approximately 4,215,877 times since I became a father. The version that Tess has downloaded on her phone features children doing that shout-sing thing that little kids do—you know the thing that's adorable when it's your own children but is pretty painful to listen to someone else's kid is doing it.

Anyway, Mia's request to listen to "The Wheels on the Bus" landed me in the midst of a dilemma I often find myself in as a dad. Do I tell my daughter no and carry on with what I'm doing or do I give in and let her get what she wants? I want my kids to learn that they can't get everything they want, and even when they do get those things, they can't always get them as soon as they want them. So that makes me inclined, at least at times, to tell them to wait or to simply say no. But I also believe that there are many times when I as a Christian father need to sacrifice my own self-interest in order to righty love and serve my children. So which is correct in this case? I'm not often sure. I know that I'm very capable of trying to justify my own selfishness under the cover of teaching my daughters some life lesson. But I also know that my kid isn't going to die if she doesn't sing "The Wheels on the Bus" for the fourth time that day. Wrestling with my own sinfulness is hard enough. Trying to do that while also not teaching even more sinfulness to my kids is even harder. I'm sure I screw this kind of decision up over and over again. So I'm trying to be a little more self-critical and aware of my own motivations. I pray that God in His grace will not only help me grow but also make me want to strive to grow day by day.

And, for what it's worth, after four or five more songs, I let Mia listen to "The Wheels on the Bus" one time before returning to my music. Hopefully that was a decent decision.

Grace and peace,

BMH