The soap lady.

Andrew, Joel and Caleb are preparing to participate in a pinewood derby race with their Boy Scout troop next month (a special needs Boy Scout troop, yeah, it’s ok, let your imagination run wild; I know I did). Hannah and I were walking through a crafts store today trying to kill time before picking the boys up from school and we looked at the pinewood derby display. You can’t buy a block of wood with wheels in it anymore. Every kit they offer is already precut. You buy a semi-truck racer, an indy racer, or a short track racer, but no plain-jane blocks of pine. I completely understand that not every man out there has a shop full of tools just waiting to create the fastest and prettiest pinewood derby car ever made, but what happened to the days when every garage had, at the least, a coping saw and some sandpaper. How many of you even know what a coping saw is? I know I’m not the first person to make this observation, but sometimes it just really hits home what kind of society we live in.

It makes sense that your heater would go out during the coldest season of the year since it is working the hardest right then. It only makes it more exciting when it happens at midnight. I worked from midnight to 4 AM on Monday morning trying to diagnose the problem to no avail. I slept 3 hours and started again at 7 and worked until 3 PM and finally decided that the problem was the circuit board. About halfway through, I had exhausted my knowledge and patience so I called my dad to pick his brain. He had a few ideas I hadn’t thought of and by going back and forth we figured it out. I ordered one out of Denver for $200 (knowing that there is not more than $20 in components parts on the board) and rigged my heater to work off the breaker so we don’t freeze to death. It’s currently 8 degrees outside with a wind chill of -20.

A few months ago I was trying to streamline my setup and teardown process when I lead worship. I knew that one of the most essential parts of that process would be a pedal board to hold all my effects. I knew exactly what I wanted, but when I started researching it I discovered that my only options were to spend over $1,000 on a custom designed board or to make one myself. Since I was fresh out of spare $1,000 bills, I decided to make one myself. Halfway through the process I realized that I was in need of a special signal routing pedal to accommodate the effects I use. I quickly realized again that my only option was to pay someone else to do it, or design it myself. I’m now making and selling similarly designed pedals to others.

About a year ago Hannah started looking into how much money we spent a year on cleaning supplies. It was a lot. After realizing that the human race survived thousands of years without Lysol, we decided to stop cleaning our house altogether. Not really. She did a lot of research into making our own cleaning supplies and discovered that for pennies on the dollar, we could replace all of the commercial products we used with their home-made counterparts and sacrifice nothing in effectiveness. She researched where all the materials could be bought locally and is now known in several local stores as “The soap lady.” She has even started making it for several family friends and it not only saves them money, but serves as another source of income for us.

A little over 4 years ago Andrew and Joel were diagnosed with moderate to severe autism. We were told that our options were to live with and provide care for them at their current level for the rest of their lives, or to institutionalize them. We looked into every program and method of treatment we could find and even attended a program up north, but quickly realized that none of them were well suited to our lifestyle or family dynamic, so we made up our own. We tried everything that seemed within reason and was within our reach financially (and a few that met neither criterion). We fought and we struggled and sometimes we lost, but today most people who encounter Andrew and Joel for the first time are shocked to learn they have autism (some of them think we’re liars and do a really poor job of hiding their suspicions). Those who remember what they were like 4 years ago are amazed at how far they’ve come.

In all of these areas, Hannah and I are not special and extraordinary in some way. I hold to this day that we did not receive an extra portion of parenting prowess or mechanical genius. We merely refuse to quit. We refuse to accept things at face value. We reject the status quo and try to find the truth and not just answers. By nearly all of our society’s standards we are odd at best and failures at worst. As much as it may be difficult to face from time to time, when the chips are down we are all in with our lifestyle. It may not be perfect, but we haven’t starved yet. And if we do, I know where we’re going.