An entire episode focused on the life of a man known as Bulldog– told through the eyes of his brother, Chris Wheeler. It is a journey of Chris beginning to see a person who was there all along.

You can learn more about Chris & Lindsey Wheeler as well as learn more about Lindsey’s book Sacred Tears at bottleoftears.com.

Produced by Matthew Lyle Mooney
Music provided by Musicbed & Blue Dot Sessions.
Sound effects provided by creators Freesound.org

In addition, Jamie shares a story of when celebrating someone with a disability is actually demeaning. Listen along as we contrast these two stories and are challenged to treat persons with disability as individuals instead of as a monolithic group.

You can find out more more about joining or starting a bEfriend in your community at 99balloons.org.

Music:: freesound.org, Blue Dot Sessions & MusicBed.
Mixing & friendship:: Joe Kane with Aud Folk Productions.

Madeleine describes her journey throughout life and why the changes she desires have nothing to do with her autism. You can find out more about Madeleine and her newly released first novel- A Room Called Earth– at www.madelieneryan.com.

Music by:: freesound.org, Blue Dot Sessions & Musicbed

In the first part of a two-part series discussing healing & the church, Matthew Lyle Mooney along with his wife, Ginny Mooney, set out to discuss the awkward relationship the current Christian culture has with disability.

Along the way, they talk with author KJ Ramsey & friend, Emeka NNaka, who help challenge the cultural norms that exist around disability.

Music & sound provided by Musicbed, Blue Dot Sessions & Freesound.org

Script available at www.theatypicallife.com

But we’re older now and one of us helps Lena in the pool while the other gets to be social or sip on something poolside.  We’ve made the annual Mooney summer list which currently includes the following (in no particular order):  skating rink, zoo, water park, mom dates and Crystal Bridges.  Also, today is the last day of Lego Camp for Anders and Clay Camp for Hazel.  I have no idea if those are real names for what they’re attending, but that has been what we’ve called it all week long, so humor me.  When the kids are not fighting or falling apart, this really is a great stage because they think everything we come up with is fun.  That is unless you break the rule and tell them what we’re doing beforehand; because if you tell them what we’re doing beforehand, then whatever it is will never- no matter what- live up to whatever they devised in their still-forming brains.

Nope.  Everything is a live streaming surprise in our house.  You find out when we do it.  No discussion of what’s next.  Ginny and I learned this early with cabins full of kids at Kanakuk.  This is not the weather and we’re not forecasting.

So tonight, we’re headed to Tulsa to some living social deal I happened upon and bought.  They have no idea.  There’s a “water park” in the hotel.  They have no idea.  We’re going to go to the zoo on Saturday.  They’ll realize this somewhere between the turnstiles and the alligators.

I like to say we Mooneys are “living in the moment” because that has such a better ring to it they “their totally satisfied if they never had time to imagine something better”.

I have been writing, but more book-ish and less blog-ish.  Am I writing another book?  Really not up to me.  I’m always writing and always for another book in the wonderful world known as my head, but publishers & agents seem to sometimes disagree.  They’re loss I tell ’em but they don’t seem convinced.

Swimming, biking, living in the moment and writing….. summer is here.

(though 6 year old Hazel would be quick to correct me that the first official day of summer is June 21st)

flagging folks down for lemonade

I am kind of prone to enter a weekend as an opportunity to fix everything that the week has scattered in pieces across the floor.

 Ginny is tired and I will try to enter in and help her more over the weekend with what she shoulders all week.  Most likely this will backfire and she’ll kindly do it all anyway because that’s most efficient and we don’t have time for me to figure it all out. Hopefully we’ll pull off a conversation whereby we’re both awake and there are no interruptions.  But setting a goal that high most likely leads to unrealized dreams.  But I will try and she will fall asleep as we talk.

 Hazel will start sweeping the deck off at some point and I will remind myself that I need to be sure to tell her that she needs to be a kid; because I know that siblings in families with disability are over-achievers and constantly trying to relieve the stress they see on mom and dad.  I’ll talk to her about how it’s hard sometimes but we’re fine and she doesn’t have to worry and she doesn’t have to do anything to make it better.  And when I finish, she will ask if she can have a piece of gum.

 Anders will fall at some point and bleed.  And I will go to him and scoop him up and he will tell me that I did not come fast enough.  He will tell me how my reaction is his confirmation of what he thought all along- I must not love him.  And I will talk for 10 minutes of how I love him bigger than the house, bigger than the world and more than he can understand.  He will interrupt me to ask if he can have a piece of gum because Hazel got a piece.  I will say yes because if I don’t, he will close the case on my lacking love.

 And I will laugh deep with joy I never knew as I love on my favorite people on the face of the earth.  But I will fear for them because I love them so much and I know the world is waiting on them and the world will not be like their father to them.

So Monday mornings are now for me.  To sit and push back on the kind fear that is not helpful and to give these over to another much larger and more loving than myself.  I will remind myself that I cannot fix it.

But I will spend next weekend trying to all over again.

 [And I sure don’t want a girl to bag my groceries, but I let her because maybe that’s my chauvinism and all the women bloggers have been hot to trot on women being empowered and so I empower her to bag my groceries, but it feels wrong and I can see my grandfather’s skinny ghost callin’ me a foul name for letting her do it.]

 Now back to these strict societal taboos when it comes to what we can talk to others about within that window when our humanity brushes across the same in another.  I am well acquainted with the list because folks assume I do not know it when I pull a mini revolution by trying to engage folks in a real conversation.

• Make eye contact but not for too long.
• Don’t let eyes linger on strange tattoo placements (even though they made this choice and you’re the one left with the burden of acting like they did not do so.)
• Pretend to care.
• Say “um hum” and agree, no matter what they say.
• Go to weather or Razorback athletics when conversation lags.
• If it’s a woman, don’t appear in any way to flirt because Ginny has told you that you are naïve and dumb and can come across as coming on to all persons with estrogen.

However, I’m prone to forego said script and ask how one’s day is going and follow up their trite answer with another question that is probing and, to some, apparently offensive.  It seems to me that offense should be reserved for my not giving a cracker jack about a person, but flack and awkward faces follow my attempt to delve below the surface with a person.  But I will not be denied.  To onlookers it’s a train wreck.  I blame my dad.  He’d walk a mile to share the gospel with a fence post

His lack of care in what you thought of him always showed that he cared more about the person in front of him than what the person thought about him.  And I hated it so much in my tweens, teens and on.  Me- with my braces, Guess jeans and Air Jordan sneakers- beggin’ him without words to just stop embarrassing me by talking to another.  He was relentless.  He still is.

But every once in a while a stranger cannon balls straight into the invitation to go deeper.  Not often.  But I would watch as my father would wait for the ones who were hurting or needing or, for reasons unknown to them, just a little more open on a day that they ran across a man that seemed to care for no good reason.  And a conversation would come and my dad would steer it to Jesus or buy them something.

And I am like my father.  And my kids will hate it.  But I hope they see the sparks of humanity fly in the eyes of another who needed someone to care on a day they came across me.

Though I am sick of the weather.
And though I am holding out unanchored hopes that the hogs cut the nets.
I’m trying to leave my self-consciousness behind with the braces and see the vulnerable humanity of those right in front of me.

I move quickly past the place that you imagined I was seeking and find the splotchy spot just above the bend of my right leg.  It’s my biggest scar- remnants of days I spent riding my Honda 80 dirt bike for hours on end along the hill behind my house where within a 3-minute ride Arkansas turned into Oklahoma.

Often times I would lug the unstarted motorcycle to the top of a certain steep drop off in order to mount the red machine, point it downhill and coast until max speed; whereby, at just the right time, I would raise my right foot abruptly- shifting the bike into gear- though the torque required let me know it was not designed for this behavior.

When a motorcycle is thrown into gear at a screaming velocity, the engine starts.  Of course, the motorcycle would willingly start up using the provided kickstart created just for such an occasion.  But to a 10 year old boy, the velocity start was much more dramatic- especially if anyone was around to drop jaw at my show of prowess.

And just like that, around this house, fatherhood, for me, has kicked into a new gear- one I had always imagined fatherhood would be like.

But it wasn’t.
Not at birth.
Not at toddler.
Not at whatever you call them just after toddlers.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have loved every step along the way of my kid’s lives (well, except for spit-up.  I never managed to accept that….oh and not sleeping.  The anger of not sleeping…okay, I have loved most of it).

But, for us, my role as dad along these stages was mostly to problem solve, cheer lead and play dumb games I made up- often involving me taking my shirt off.  Ginny just owned this stage and I often have compared parenting alongside of her as playing basketball with Michael Jordan; there’s awe and appreciation but not a big feeling of contribution.

Looking back, I thought that upon catching them at their exit from the womb, I would be passing on life lessons and reasons not to smoke.  But, at first, I have learned you’re really just there to help with toileting.  Suddenly, it’s velocity start time around here, we’re switching from gravity to engine and now I see that I am not even ready to be doing what I‘ve been waiting on for so long.

On a recent Saturday, we suited Hazel up for her 1^st basketball game, then capped off the afternoon reading multiple chapters of The Chronicles of Narnia.  I handed out dribbling pointers and waxed eloquently for too long about how Aslan is like Jesus.  Ginny laughed at me when I hugged her and reported, “this is what I always thought parenting was like.”  I was not laughing.

But it has not taken much time in this phase to recognize a new phase of helplessness.  I want so much for my kids.  I tend to try to convey it all at once, fearing I am going to leave something out or get it wrong or leave them with the impression that God is something He is totally not.  However, in my healthier moments I see my hopes for my children as more of a long ride over the hill than a quickstart dive off the cliff.

It will not be what I say, but who I am.
Not what I demand, but how I love.
Not what I make clear with words, but what I show through my life.

See, as they age, one thing is becoming real clear.  These kids see me up close- right through my BS, and are always comparing what I say to who I am.  This simultaneously gives me great hope while inducing a bone-rattling holy fear as well.

I see the scar that my bike left upon me and hope that in the long ride with my favorite people, I leave them with nothing of the sort.

_____________________________________

If you have been around me much, it does not take long to learn of certain things that come along as a part of the package- tethered to the molecules that combine to make me:

• At 37, I am still unable to grow any semblance of facial hair.  (This a current hot topic with the mirror because chin-hair in all its many facets is “in” this year and that instantaneously make me “out”.)
• I am not embarrassed easily….I worded that as a strength but, pretty sure, Ginny would say that my all-day unzipped fly should induce a bit more regret on my part.
• I can see both sides of almost anything and am apt to take the side that most people are not on- just in order to stir the pot a bit and fight the good fight against homogenization of us all- particularly we Christians.
• And, I like New Year’s.  Really like it.

It smells of starting over, moving on, reflection and intentionality; these are things I like; as I am always leery that my life is veering slowly away from the full life offered by my Savior and toward a life I despise.   And I am left unaware of how I steered myself to this harbor and equally unaware of how to leave it.

Unfortunately, in my lust for the New Year, I am prone to setup false requirements and illusionary goals that leave me self-loathing when I fall short of things I was never called to.  And so this year, I am striving for something that eludes me as well as those I watch around me.  Contentment.  This is a steady drumbeat for me, so apologies if you have heard all of this before.

I am not easily satisfied and gravitate to problems with a sledgehammer of solutions.  But I always grow tired of swinging the hammer of self-reliance.  My inclination is to fix, tweak and tinker:  I want so much for my kids, so much for the world of 99 Balloons, so much for my city.  Enough is a rare word for me to reflect on.

Is your life enough?

I have pew sat enough to know what the answer should be, but I live out a day-to-day resounding “no”.  I do not know what the correct straddle of working toward an end and simultaneously resting in knowing it is out of my hands, but I plan to pursue a better understanding.  And I feel as though it most likely will require of me to kill off some of the creeping culture around me that constantly asked me to prove myself, show my worth and busy myself with something.

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  (Philippians 4)

Ginny admittedly loves television.  She loves awards shows.  Loves reality tv.  She once made me watch the Bachelor; she seemed happy.  I put my foot down and told her I would start working on cars or building things with my hands- giving her these options to show just how desperate I was to never sit through that again.  She obliged and raised her standards.  I like to think of myself as a writer and a writer can never admit that they spent time staring at a box.  It is so un-creative.  So… Normal.

Nonetheless, writers love love and so I scooted close to her as she led us across channels and straight to the AMA’s.  And there she was……Fergie.  To be fair, I could have picked from a host of other women to write on, but Fergie it is.  And I am serious here.  I was saddened.  I rained on Ginny’s parade with my comments.

“what am I actually going to be able to let my daughter watch?”

 For all the talk of feminism, etc. these days, it seems to me that many women seem merely empowered to be

…..drumroll please……

The very thing that many men want them and beg them to be….toys.  Personifications of their online imaginations.  I know I sound prude-ish.  You’ll be surprised to know, I don’t care.

The very next night it is was me rushing to the tv, inviting Ginny to join, perusing the news shows providing windows into the chaos in the streets of Ferguson upon the announcement of no indictment.

Spoiler alert….I am not black.
I do not pretend to know what it is like to be black.
Though I do want to listen and I do want to learn.

I am white (some might say blindingly so.  I prefer eggshell to describe my shade.)  I do not pretend to know what it is like to be in the shoes of another white person who has had experiences different from mine.  I do not pretend to nor want to represent all white people.

I am not a race expert nor do I think I have much intelligent to say about what I have seen on the news, read in the papers and perused across social media and blogs.

I write to help me understand.  This is my blog.  I am going to write about it- though my mantra from day one has pretty much been that bloggy-types like me should do more shutting up and listening and less of using someone’s death for blog fodder seeking likes, shares and basic adoration.  I’ve grown weary of our reactions- my own included.

So let me preempt you on the following remarks:

• You don’t understand.
• You don’t know what you’re talking about.
• You should shut up.
• You don’t represent me.

I agree on all accounts.

I want to enter this volatile topic with humility and the understanding that a life has been lost.  A son has been killed.  I take that very seriously.  And I grieve that fact no matter which side of the story is true.

From the outset of this unfolding I have sought an answer for what my faith brings to bear on this story.  That is what matters most to me.  Over and over, I’ve learned to not trust my own instincts but to listen for another voice instead.

What does God think? 
What does God want from me? 
How does He feel about all this?

For me, there is another tantamount question lingering.

How do I talk about this with my children?

Because I have learned that how I explain it to my kids is the best summation of what I truly think.  The un-nuanced, real-deal version.  That’s what the kids get.  Since I won’t be sitting down with our 7-year old to discuss Ferguson (she has serious disabilities for those who might not know).  I am talking about an almost 5-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl (that doesn’t miss anything and has been probing me about Hanukah).

And I don’t know exactly what to tell them.

But I know this.

In what is supposed to be some of the best this world can offer up- on a Monday night award show celebration.
And in what is obviously some of the worst- brought to you live on a Tuesday.

At our best and at our worst:

We are broken.
In need of a savior.
Hurting others in our attempts at peace.
Hurting ourselves in attempts at freedom.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ (Ephesian 3:17, 18)