Meet Mack Jeffries

Tonight we'll be having a party at our house. Last night, Alisha decorated our front window with some cutouts that she made from black poster board. She based the silhouettes on a decorated piece of paper we had from last year. We backlit the window with a vintage 4-light setup (which we are actually selling):

I dressed up for work. My character was originally going to be a workout guy well past his prime in the 80's, but then I remembered that I had a playground ball in the garage. The new character is named "Mack Jeffries" and he's brimming with confidence left over from his glory days at the top of the semi-pro dodgeball circuit:

Bills of Sin

It took a while for all of the bills for Roscoe's medical care to roll in, but I think that by now we've finally received most of them. Thankfully, it looks like none of them will need to be paid. To my memory, we haven't even been asked to pay our deductible. We're still missing the bill from Kaiser for April - June 2014, but ignoring that we had a total of a little over $2 million for his care through mid-April 2014 (as you can see here).

Since then we've received many bills from UCSF for his care for June - July 2014. In this stack of UCSF bills, here are some of the larger amounts:

Almost a million:

Another million:

A fancy house:

A moderate house:

And then his midnight helicopter ride ...

These bills from June and July 2014 at UCSF totalled to another $2,697,477. Though we don't have the Kaiser bill for Roscoe's NICU stay from mid-April to June 2014, we can safely assume it would have exceeded $300,000 (since previously his February to mid-April stay was over $600,000). This means his total hospital bills would have exceeded $5 million.

What astounds me is how much debt we'd have incurred, with nothing to show for it except our memories. I can't describe how strongly this relates to forgiveness in my mind. As I thumbed through the pages of bills, I'd see amounts of a few hundred dollars, followed by a few thousand. Those amounts were insignificant compared to the hundreds of thousands on the bills shown above, yet they still would have taken sizable chunks out of our savings.

A bill is a record of something that occurred, along with the price you need to pay for that occurrence. This is true whether it's phone service, auto repair, or medical care. As I flipped past each bill, I thought to myself that this is how my sins must look. I have some big ones and also some that are less significant by comparison. It made me wonder if, once I reach heaven, I will be asked to thumb through the pages and volumes of sin "bills" that I've accumulated. How would something like that feel?

I recognized several doctors' names on Roscoe's bills, which means I could correlate the amount being billed with the day when it occurred. In the same way, I imagine that when looking at the bills of my sin, I would be able to remember the exact time and place where it occurred. I'd remember what situation I got myself into, how I responded in a way that I shouldn't, and perhaps what I did to cover it up. Despite the fact that it would be a distant memory, the bill would still remain. What would it feel like to hold a record of that debt in my hands?

This reminds me of the parable of the two debtors, recorded in Luke 7:41-43:

"Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

The total of your sin is always increasing. Each time we sin, it adds another bill to our pile with no savings from which to repay that debt. The only option we have is forgiveness. The only way we can be forgiven is by joining ourselves to Christ (Romans 6:3-7). While we remain in Christ, we remain free and forgiven.

If you are like me, this thought makes you hold tighter to Jesus and the forgiveness he carries. My experience with my own son has taught me to appreciate the Son of God: the man who died with no debt to pay the debt that we incurred.

The Golden Rule

Recently, I attended a church meeting where the speaker talked about the golden rule. He pointed out how some people live by the iron rule ("might makes right") or the silver rule ("do no wrong"), but fail to live by the golden rule. It re-ignited my passion for this simple, yet profound scripture:

"So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets"

- Matthew 7:12

There is great wisdom wrapped up in these 23 words. A while ago I saw a presentation given by a man who was an expert student on this concept. He highlighted several details I would not have otherwise noticed. It's by looking at the details of this passage that the true beauty of its design stands out, like seeing the beauty of a flower by examining its individual petals.

1. Act First
   Verb tense matters. The verse says that we should act first ("do", present tense) in regard to righteousness. Our action should precede that of someone else ("as you would have them do", future tense). If we are responding to someone else's action, then we are not following the golden rule. We need to be the first one to act in righteousness.
2. Act Regardless
   There is a notable absence of outcome mentioned. The verse doesn't say "do to others as you would have them do to you, and then stop if they don't do likewise". In fact, the verse mentions nothing of the other person's response. It only says that today we should act towards others as we want them to act toward us tomorrow. Tomorrow, we act toward them as we want them to act towards us the day after. Each day we act in kindness towards others, regardless of how they have responded in the past.
3. Put Yourself in Their Shoes
   This is an unstated concept that could be easily overlooked. The verse literally says we should do to others what we want them to do to us, but that's not precisely what it means. The verse is asking us to put ourselves in someone else's situation and act toward them how we'd want to be treated if we were in that situation. For instance, consider this story:
   

   There once lived a monkey and a fish. The monkey followed the golden rule, always trying to treat others as he wanted to be treated. But he sometimes applied the golden rule foolishly. Now one day a big flood came. As the threatening waters rose, the foolish monkey climbed a tree to safety. Then he looked down and saw a fish struggling in the water. He thought, "I wanted to be lifted from the water." So he reached down and grabbed the fish from the water, lifting him to safety on a high branch. Of course that didn't work. The fish died.

   The golden rule takes effort because it requires us to empathize with the other person. Our empathy is more effective the better we know the person. Therefore, to follow the golden rule we must familiarize ourselves with that other person. They become our focus. This doesn't mean that we do whatever the other person wants, such as feeding kids ice cream for dinner or avoiding difficult conversations which are necessary. What it does mean is that we ask ourselves "What would I want to be said or done for myself, if I were in their exact situation?". Pick a person, ask yourself that question, then go treat that person according to your answer.

I challenge anyone to follow this principle which Jesus taught and not be pleased with the result you see in yourself and the response you receive from others.

Family Resemblance

Alisha's mom texted this picture to Alisha a few days ago. It is a picture of Alisha's mom (Netta) being held as a baby by Netta's father (Burt):

Maybe it's the black and white, but to me she looks quite a bit like Roscoe:

Don't Focus on Negatives

A few years ago, I was at a local swap meet called Denio's. We often go there for produce, but sometimes I will go there hunting for treasure (or junk). At the time we were interested in vintage suitcases, so we bought a rough condition suitcase for $5 (or I may have talked them down to $4) and brought it home.

Inside the suitcase we found some old photo bulbs (the kind that are single-use) and photo negatives in the tattered envelope shown below. We looked up the address and it was from a department store in San Francisco from the early 1950's. I found a picture of the place online from around the date on the envelope.

All of the negatives looked like this, some in rough condition:

We wanted to see what was on the negatives, so I scanned them with a standard desktop scanner and then we inverted the colors of the scanned image using a photo editing program (I used Microsoft Paint which comes with every Windows PC). The results were that we got to time travel and see what a vacation to Tahoe in 1952 looked like:

One interesting piece was that there was a printed photograph in the box that had water damage on the right half. We were able to see what the rest of the picture looked like by scanning the negative:

Being married to a photographer, I am obviously a fan of taking pictures. What I've recently become a fan of is the picture's ability to let you travel back into time when it was taken. If your memory and creativity allows, you can imagine what it would be like to travel up the road to Tahoe in an almost-new 1940's sedan. The smells of leaded gasoline and pine trees would mix with the simplicity and isolation of an unconnected world. After your trip, you'd return to San Francisco to get all 31 pictures you took developed and printed for $2.16 (plus 7 cents tax).

If you haven't taken pictures recently, take some. You'll record a bit of your own history, and it may last longer than you think. Doing so will freeze a point in time to which you can return later with fondness.

Birthday Celebration

In the last post, I said that Alisha and I were going up to Apple Hill to celebrate Roscoe's birthday. We started the day at Apple Hill where we watched some white ducks in a pond as 11:49am (the time Roscoe was born) ticked by. They had what looked like feather afros on their heads.

We took a picture of Roscoe around with us all day, so we could take pictures of "him" in the places we went:

We drove to Lake Tahoe for lunch, which we ate on the shore. After we finished, we wrote a letter to Roscoe and attached it to a helium-filled birthday balloon. This was an idea that we got from Sandy (a friend of Roscoe's favorite artist), who lost her own son at age 12. She sent us a helium tank and balloons so that we could send Roscoe a letter every year. She calls it "Letters to Heaven" and as you can see on the facebook page several others have done the same. We thought it was a great idea! Here was the letter we wrote him this year:

After writing the letter in our car, we walked out onto the pier where we got married and after taking some pictures we let go and the balloon lifted into the air. The sky was cloudless, so we watched the yellow balloon until it was a tiny speck that we lost when we looked away. Alisha made this video which gives a good idea of what it was like to be there when we sent him his note. I love my wife.

We traveled back down toward our home, stopping by Apple Hill to get some apple cider and apple juice for the Kaiser NICU nurses.

Before reaching home, we intended to pick up a cupcake to celebrate his birthday, but all of the cupcake places we found were closed. Luckily, the Whole Foods bakery was still open so we got Roscoe this creme and fruit-filled chocolate bowl instead. It was a delicious way to end the day.

Roscoe's Birthday

Alisha and I plan to celebrate Roscoe's birthday today by doing some happy things to remember him. We plan to visit Apple Hill, where we took Alisha's maternity pictures a little over a year ago. There will most likely be fresh apple donuts and a jug of apple cider (to take home) on the menu.

As we went to walk out the door this morning, we found this on our doorstep from our neighbors! I don't know if they even knew that we had these plans today:

Love speaks in many ways. We are excited to spend today remembering our boy!

Speak of the Dead

Since Roscoe passed, Alisha and I have run into a few situations where we found out that kids had been told not to mention Roscoe around us. After finding that out that "Roscoe" was a forbidden word, we tried to assure the kids (and the parents) that we love talking about him, even if he's gone. I don't know if I'm alone in this, but there is something revitalizing in talking about those who've passed.

On one hand, talking about the dead reminds us that they are gone. However, on the other hand it reminds us that they still live on. Jesus quoted Exodus 3:6 to prove this point. He showed that by speaking of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the present tense in reference to God, it was implied that they still existed even after death:

"But about the resurrection of the dead — have you not read what God said to you, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." 

- Matthew 22:31-32

Speaking about those who are dead should be done with joy and anticipation. We speak with joy because of the happy memories that remain, after filtering out the bad memories that we'd rather forget. We speak with anticipation because we are confident that we will see them again. Speaking of them reminds us that the current earth is not our final resting place. It reminds us that they will meet us in our true home.

Parents were probably scared their little ones would blurt out something inappropriate about Roscoe, so it's understandable why they'd tell kids not to mention him. In fact before July 23, 2014, I would often avoid mentioning the deceased out of discomfort. I'd either change the topic or just avoid a conversation with the person altogether. I don't think that I took the right approach. I love it when kids (or adults) talk to me about Roscoe.

Not everyone is like me. To some, the idea of talking about the dead might be overwhelming, saddening, or uncomfortable. However, speaking from my own perspective, I enjoy it. Once a person is gone, the memories are all we have left of them. We can't hold their hand, pick them up, or sit next to them. We are left with talking about the times when we did those things, or left to imagine how they would have done them. I don't think this is living in the past, as much as remembering a part of your life with fondness. Through memories we can relive parts of our lives which brought us great joy. That joy is tasted again when we retrace our steps through a memory.

I don't think it's a coincidence that God asks us to remember his Son each week (Luke 22:19-22, Acts 20:7). Paul reiterated that partaking in the communion each week would "proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26). By remembering Jesus, we are reminding ourselves of these two intertwined facts: that Jesus died for us and that he is alive again.

There's comfort in talking about the dead, knowing that we will see them again:

"Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.  For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.  According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.  For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.  Therefore encourage one another with these words."

- 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

I know that my son is dead, but I also know that he lives on and that I will see him again. Talking about him reminds me of the joy that is behind me and the joy that lies ahead.

Talking to Myself

What were you doing on this day last year? The past few weeks I've wondered what I could say if I could talk to myself from a year ago. Since I posted daily on Roscoe's Story, I have a record of what was happening each day in my life from a year ago. Many of you may have something similar using facebook's timeline, your email history, your credit card history, or pictures on your phone. We all have some kind of digital record of our daily life.

The digital day-by-day record we have makes me wonder what I'd say to myself in October 2013. Hopefully I am wiser now than I was then. How would I get my 2013 self to act on my 2014 wisdom? Would I warn myself of the specific dangers to come, or would I merely try to explain the character I'd need to withstand them?

Here are some of the things that I'd tell myself, if I could talk to the me from one year ago:

• "Your baby is a boy, not a girl. Doctors don't know everything."
• "Enjoy watching your baby grow. There are ups and downs that will happen, many advances and setbacks. Just enjoy the time with Roscoe and tune out the machines, nurses, and stale hospital air. Focus on your son."
• "Don't work so much. There are more important things."
• "Don't underestimate the power of prayer. Pray honestly, openly, and expecting a powerful result. Pray every day in Roscoe's room for him to come home. Never leave the house without doing that first to show God what is important to you."
• "Take lots of pictures and videos. You will appreciate them later when you have time to sit and reflect."
• "This year will be the best year of your life so far. It will be hard, but you will love it."

What would you say to yourself, if you could talk to the you from one year ago? What do you think the October 2015 self would say to you right now?