McMahon Life

Fall has officially arrived, announcing itself not only be incredible color but by torrents or rain that will last for a while before tapering off into standard Seattle winter drizzle.  Five months and counting.  That’s how long we’ve been at the Bluffs.  We moved in May 19th.  Crazy.  So much has happened that it could easily feel way longer.

A few weeks ago a homegroup from our church came up and put on a carnival for the kids in our neighborhood.  It was pooring rain (the one day that week it rained of course), but there were still almost 60 kids out having fun!  After the carnival about 30 of them came back to our house to watch a short cartoon and eat some popcorn.  We kept getting asked by amazed faces did you guys do this?! We told them our friends did, and they kept saying, you guys are so cool! And we didn’t even do anything.  Thank you to all who came up and put it on – you did all the work and you made us look so good without doing anything!  Perhaps the greatest outcome of the carnival was a mom we had never met (though 2 of her 3 boys are at our house all the time) came into our house to watch the movie with us.  In any other context there is little chance she would have come into our home, but this was a safe context, and it allowed us to make a connection and begin a relationship with her!  So cool.

The novelty of the Michelle and Brian have long since worn off and life has taken a much more methodical style. Mondays: date day; Tuesdays: homework club; Wednesdays: The Young @ Mill Creek Foursquare; Saturdays: family night; Sundays: @ Mill Creek Foursquare.
Tuesdays we’re at homework club after school from which the kids all follow us home and hang out until we kick them out for dinner. They always come back after if we let them.  One of the boundaries we’ve established is a protection around our dinner time as a family – no phone calls, no text messages, and no kids that don’t belong to us (my brother who is now living with us gets to stay:]).  I’m still learning to abide by these boundaries!

Last Tuesday Emilio came into homework club and handed me a set of childrens’ books.  I looked at him and asked him, “you want me to hold onto these for you?” He answered, “No, those are for you.” I was so confused and asked him what he meant.  He explained to us that he had told his teacher about us, how he comes to our house to do his homework and read some of the books we have, and she wanted to help our “library”, so she gave us a set of books!  How cool is that!?!? We’ve never met this teacher, yet she has blessed us incredibly.  And what an honor to be such a part of a child’s life that he tells his teacher at school about us!  Wow.  God is so good.

Speaking of God being good, so are his people!  We had an opportunity to share about what we are doing at church a couple weeks ago, and have been blessed by the response of our community.  The Goertz family donated about 60 books and 30 matchbox cars.  The cars have now replaced the LEGOs as the favorite toy, and the books allowed us to officially open our “library”!  It was a beautiul thing.  Eight students followed us back from homework club and their eyes expanded upon seeing all the new books!  an we read them!? They all wanted to know.  I told them better than that, they can even borrow them!  Like a library? one of them asked me.  Absolutely.  The spent the next twenty minutes going through all the books and finding ones they could read – I had to use the “five-finger-rule” with a few of them to get an appropriate book (if there are more than 5 words on a page they can’t read it’s probably too hard for fun reading).  We have a little notebook in which they write down their name, the name ofthe book, and the date they borrowed it.  They can get a second book after we’ve checked off the return of their first book.  Two sixth grade boys asked me with excited faces, “Can we be library helpers?  Can we organize the books for you?“  Absolutely, are you kidding me! So now,almost daily, we have students returning a book and getting another.

Sometimes now that life has become more methodical I begin to think that we are doing less, that our impact is lessening, that we should be doing more.  Then something happens like Emilio bringing us books from his teacher that remind us that we are living intentionally present, that we are caring about the kids and they know it, and we are having an impact.  Maybe we could do more.  Maybe we could be more intentional about getting to know more adults.  Maybe.  Life is hard when it’s busy – and it’s hard to make more time for community, eh?  We too struggle with this.  The most common feeling we have is that Michelle and I do not have enough time for each other.  So sometimes we kick the kids out, close the blinds, and play games or talk – just the two of us.  Living in community is not about burning out.  But it is about making a difference, no matter how big.

God has blessed us immeasurably the past five months.  The children have brought great joy (and weariness at times) to us, and our community has supported and encouraged us.  I doubt we will ever be content to live any other way.  The greatest part of constantly allowing the love of God to flow out of us is that we are constantly encountering new love of God flowing into us.  His mercies are truly new every morning.

So, there’s a little update.  Thank you all so much who have been a part of what God has done in our neighborhood – big and small!   May God’s love be present in your neighborhood through you.

Observation without relationship allows little influence and creates little change.  We live in a culture where everyone has an opinion on just about everything and most of us have no problem letting others know what we think – whether it be on sports, parenting, food, lifestyle choices, behavior, or any of the variety of conversational options available to us.  We are constantly observing one another and constantly coming to conclusions regarding what we would do if we were in that position, what they should do, and why they should listen to us (many times these thoughts are subconscious, and many times these subconscious thoughts are voiced).  Observation is healthy.  That’s not the problem.  Encouragement and advice is often good (key word: often, not always), but there is a catch.  Encouragement and advice outside of relationship and love becomes opinion and judgment.  Observation without relationship allows little influence and creates little change.

Having a house-full of people on Thursday night provided an excellent opportunity to observe relational interactions and behavior.  Especially when that houseful included twin 7-year old boys, a 9 year old with Down Syndrome (possibly my favorite kid!), random kids running in and out  between the ages of 4 and 12, three teenagers, and a few adults!  As everyone milled around my house eating the 40 or so hotdogs that I grilled up (my boys decided to have a guys night because Michelle was gone, and others just kind of joined in the fun!), I just kind of stepped back to watch, to learn about the people I was with [note: thank you SE4square for the hot dogs!].

The interaction that I observe with the most intentionality is the parenting relationship.  Michelle and I, as people who care deeply for the family yet have no children of our own yet, have such incredible respects for the difficulties and challenges in raising children.  We both have received education in child development, and have significant experience working with children of a variety of ages, and in many contexts, particularly one such as the one in which we find ourselves, that means we have received more instruction about healthy parenting than many of the parents around us – but at the same time, neither of us are parents and we fully recognize and accept that.  We are constantly observing parent-child interactions around us, and observe so many that are less than healthy – excessive discipline, using anger, threats, fear as a forms of discipline, inconsistency, lack of boundaries, etc – that we long to discuss with the parents around us.  Yet encouragement and advice outside of relationship and love becomes opinion and judgment.  Observation without relationship allows little influence and creates little change.

This is a difficult thing to remember.  It is even more difficult to practice.  How can we observe something that we know we could help to be so much better (a parent’s relationship with a child for example) and do nothing?  Isn’t being able to help and not helping a sin or something?  We’re asking the wrong question.  Instead of asking how can we fix this situation? the better question is how do we foster a community of healthy families? Do we seek to correct all “bad” behavior as soon as we see it, or do we seek to model and develop a community of love, caring, compassion, discipline and relationship? As much as we would love to sit down with many of the parents and discuss helpful parenting practices, we cannot begin there.  Maybe one day, maybe soon, we will have to opportunity for conversations like that, but encouragement and advice outside of relationship and love becomes opinion and judgment. We must start with relationship.  We must start in relationship.  We must begin by opening up our home to children, to parents.  All of the children that come through our door understand that the McMahon home is different.  We have expectations on the behavior of the kids, on how they treat our home, toys we let them play with, books, each other, and ourselves.  We must start in our home.  Every once in a while we find a parent watching how we interact with their child – how we correct, rebuke, encourage, affirm, and love.  Some day (we pray someday soon), maybe we can actually have a conversation about parenting (maybe why it would be beneficial for 6 and 7 year-olds to be in bed before 10:30pm!).  But encouragement and advice outside of relationship and love becomes opinion and judgment.  Therefore we must live our lives as lights before men and women, visibly living a different way of life, and as relationship is built, it is not opinion and judgment being shot at those around us, but encouragement and love and an invitation given to our communities to share life together with us!

Not always easy in a culture in which tension is perceived as bad and problems are to be fixed ASAP.  The way of Jesus is far more relational than easy, far more love than opinion, and far better than anything without him!