Considering the Alternatives

Work has been especially demanding lately. Our company has received a recent influx of work from our most demanding client. I spent the first three weeks of 2009 drilling a site in eastern Long Island and did not return home two or three nights a week. The past four weeks have found me drilling a challenging site in Franklin, Sussex County, New Jersey. Our proposal provided for approximately nine weeks (45 days) of field work and three weeks of analysis/design, after which the report would be issued. Our dear client approved the proposal, but demanded that they have the report in hand after four weeks!

As such, my darling wife was in many ways without a husband for four weeks. I worked Monday through Friday and four consecutive Saturdays during the course of the project (the last Saturday was a 15 hour day on Valentine's Day). It was not uncommon for me to be away from home for 65-75 hours a week, coming home to a wife who is greater and greater with child every day.

How easy it could have been to despair or to complain. How 'justified' we could have been in grumbling about the difficulties and suffering home life that were ours for a month. Alas, I cannot report that Becca and I were free of the above during the course of the Franklin job. We needed to confront each other daily about attitudes of ingratitude that we were observing in each other.

What most helped us to stave off such spirits of sin was to consider what the Lord had brought into our lives, and--perhaps more importantly--to consider the alternative. The simplest and most convicting exercise in Considering the Alternatives for me was just to listen to the radio news station on my way to and from work. Each day brought reports of more layoffs, bankruptcies, and/or mortgage foreclosures. The reality of our nation's fragile economy was undeniable. How could I complain about "too much work" when so many in my church and family were living daily life with a sword hanging over their heads regarding their job and their house? How could I grumble about a lack of a home life, when at least the payment of my mortgage was assured?

Becca and I have found that sometimes it is difficult to "give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess 5:18) by merely trying to put on a brave face. Yet it can seem disingenuous to try to meet every difficulty with some lame alternative like "at least I have my health" or "it could be worse." It is a worthwhile exercise to regularly reflect not only on the particular lines that have fallen for you, but also the lines that have not fallen.

I have already noted that I found it humbling to consider how my company has been scrambling to complete our scope of work while so many other companies are facing dire ledger sheets marked in red. Other truths upon which Becca and I forced ourselves to reflect were the following: 1) By working so many Saturdays, I made several hundred dollars in overtime pay that I otherwise would not have. 2) It was difficult to be away from home for so many hours out of the day, but at least I was spending every night in my own bed next to my wife. 3) The pregnancy with which the Lord has blessed us has not been one to cause me to worry about leaving Becca alone while I am at work. 4) By driving to job sites so much this year, my Travel Expense checks have been so big that, combined with the overtime pay, we have been able to put the last four of Becca's paychecks directly into savings! 5) By chasing two/three drill rigs around a snow-covered hillside for a month, I lost all my winter fat (all three pounds of it), and I am in lean, sinewy mid-summer form.

In discussing the above with my brother, Joel, he pointed me to the third chapter in Habakuk. In verses 17 and 18, the prophet declares,

17 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

I am reminded that even if I could not find a "silver lining" in a situation, I am nonetheless able and compelled to praise the Lord for purchasing my soul from the depths of hell. I will perhaps find myself in circumstances for which I cannot give thanks. Yet as a redeemed child of God, my cup does not ever but run over.

This Also Is Vanity


I have been working in Long Island a lot lately. The Holland Tunnel is my Hudson River crossing of choice, and I take the Williamsburg Bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn as I drive east onto the Island. Both the trip into the city as well as the return jaunt afford me several break taking views of The City--one of the best ways to appreciate a city, in my opinion, is to view it from its bridges.


The above picture is the Manhattan skyline as viewed from the unheralded Kosciusko Bridge. It's not as well framed as I would have liked, but I captured the shot while driving. You can reference this screen shot from Google Maps in order to be able to get your bearings.

For as many years as I have been traveling to and from Long Island, the juxtaposition of the cemetery and the skyline has powerfully struck me. The view of the two on this particularly dreary day added to the aura of what I think is a poignant example of "wisdom calling out in the streets." (Proverbs 1.20)

Many are those who are proud of New York City, many are those who boast of its size, its importance, and its status among the cities of the world. Some of the greatest men in recent history are inseparably linked to New York City, and it is no exaggeration to declare that decisions of immeasurable consequence are settled behind the glass walls of the skyline towers each day and night.

Yet in the foreground of the picture, mirroring--mocking, almost?--the grandeur of the skyline, point innumerable gravestones and monuments in the cemetery. The memorials of the dead from generations past rise from the cold earth in silence and solemnity. Whose eye is caught by obelisks of marble and granite when there are majestic towers of steel, glass, and high strength concrete at which to gawk? Who has time or desire to dwell on the brevity of one's own existence when the pull to worship and praise the accomplishments of men is so strong?

The Books of Wisdom are ripe with myriad references to the mortality of Man, but never do we find gloom for gloom's sake. In each case, the reader is to gain a renewed (wiser, more godly) perspective by considering his place in relation to an eternal God. In Psalm 90, Moses prays that the Lord would "teach [him] to number [his] days aright, that [he] may get a heart of wisdom" after reflecting on the finite and fleeting number of his own days.

Moses sings, "You return man to dust and say, Return, O children of man!...You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers." (Psalm 90.2-6)


A few other examples:

Psalm 103.14-18 For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.

Ecclesiastes 1.3,4 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.


Ecclesiastes 2.4-11 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees... So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem... And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.


Ecclesiastes 2.18, 19 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.

Psalm 139

Below are our latest ultrasound photos (19 weeks 4 days). The 45 minutes spent with the tech were among the most enjoyable of my life. It was with wonder that I considered in what a privileged minority Becca and I can consider ourselves--the ability to "see" our child in the womb! How many trillions of husbands and wives through history never even dared to dream of something as now routine as an ultrasound.
The greater sense of wonder came as the words of Psalm 139 filled my mind tonight in the glow of the ultrasound monitor:

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are you works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them." -Psalm 139.13-16
What a sense of wonder and awe is a father's to peer behind the curtain at the masterpiece that God is crafting. The same God at which David marveled is the same unchanged God at which my own father marvels. I can only hope that the gracious Creator is even now instilling a sense of the fear of God in my unborn son greater than that of his fathers.

"How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!" Psalm 139.17

200,000 Miles

On my way home from work on Hallow's Eve, I reached 200,000 miles on my truck's odometer. Pictures from the milestone are below. You may remember my post from when I hit 172,777 miles in November 2007. [An update to my geographical extents: the farthest north that I have travelled in my truck is now Henrietta, NY.]

Encore Pumpkin

Our church Bible study meets on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month. Because we are such a hip, cool (emergent?) small group, we decided to meet for social get-togethers during months that have five Wednesdays. Megan and Aron hosted this past months' Fifth Wednesday.

Below is the pumpkin that Becca and I collaborated on. Guess who copped out of cutting the complex stars.

The best part of Trick-or-Treat this year was the myriad compliments that parents and kids paid Becca as she answered the door. We (read: mostly me) are striving to lock up the reputation as House With the Awesome Carved Pumpkins every year.

P.S. Harass Aron at his blog to get him to post pictures of all the small group pumpkins.