You know it has been a bad year for blogging when...

...there are only three posts separating last year's Christmas card and this year's.

Here's to a better blogging year in 2013.

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

My first flash mob appearance

Good times were had by all at our opening meeting for ZPS teachers on Wednesday. 

Definitely the most exciting opening meeting in my 17 years at ZPS.

Also one of the most nerve-racking up until the moment the music began...

"What now?"

A while back, a friend shared this comic with me.

Emotion by xkcd

Substitute a few of the pre-cancer "causes" and shift the arrival of cancer a year forward and it could be my emotions.

As my daughter's chemo treatments wrapped up early in 2012 the white area with the ?? began to grow.  Life pre-cancer was just life, it wasn't perfect, but it was. Life post-cancer is different, time feels more precious. (She's doing great, by the way.)

The white space has been filled with a fuzzy attempt to discern where my energies should be spent, what should be my focus, what is worthy of my time now that it feels more precious.  

But it's been too much thinking, not enough living.  I believe that something new, something amazing, something creative will come out of our family's experience.  Yet I'm having a difficult time waiting to see what that something is...

Random stories have appeared out of nowhere to encourage me to just move on, to live, to do.

I recently learned an adventure photographer whose work I've admired for years experienced cancer at a young age and was touched by the way his view of community changed.

A colleague shared how his career path changed following a family tragedy.

Yesterday it was Rob Bell's Drops Like Stars that jumped off the bookstore shelf and resonated in my soul as I read:

Others with far more wisdom and experience than me have tackled the "why" questions of suffering.

Here, in these pages, I'm more interested in another question...

Not "why this?"
But "what now?"

He goes on to write: "[Suffering] compels us to eliminate the unnecessary, the trivial, the superficial."

I can see that in our family's life, in the way that we've reordered our priorities and the new ways we use our resources of time, energy, and money.

Rob continues with this observation:

Sometimes what happens to us when we suffer is that we become open to the mercy and grace and gratitude and gift and appreciation and joy that are always around us all the time...

While I wait to see "what now?" I'd be content if I could be open to what is, and always has been, all around me.

Goals for 2012, or the lack thereof

Over the past decade, a friend and I have traditionally written personal goals for the new year and shared them with each other.  This year, for a variety of reasons, I'm opting to live without goals.

However, if I were to write goals for the new year, they might go something like this...

Thanks to my beautiful wife for passing this along to me, even though I thought she was poking fun at my need to set goals. :>)

Christmas Blessings

Prayer & Inspiration

"How are you guys doing it?"

I can't tell you how many times my wife and I have been asked that question in the months since Chloe's diagnosis.  The answer is simple.  You get up, you get going, you get the family going, and just live the day.  You don't have a choice.

Actually, I've found there are two things that are making days manageable.  Prayer and inspiration.

Prayer is the obvious one.  However, I've found there are so many days when it is difficult to quiet my mind and heart and allow the Spirit to enter the moment.  Yet it is on those days that others tell me, from seemingly out of nowhere, that they are praying for Chloe and our family.  Today is was a colleague during my plan time, over the weekend a parent of one of my students told me that my student prayed for Chloe during Sunday School. Wow.

The inspiration piece is something that evolved as I was trying to expand my circle again.  In an effort to get back into my PLN, I began to give myself five minutes a day to explore Flipboard containing my Twitter and Google Reader feeds.  Not only did I begin to feel inspired again, I began to want to share that inspiration either through a tweet, an email, or a conversation.  A daily ritual had begun.  Now each day, without planning or forethought, I carve out a few minutes to be inspired or inspire someone else.

And that, possibly poorly written, is how I do it each day.

An expanding and shrinking circle

Circle inversion by fdecomite on Flickr

[I have a few posts that don't really fit here, but they don't fit on the family-turned-Chloe-update blog.  As work, family, and life are closely integrated right now I'm going to post them here.  I'm feeling the need to write.  Thanks for understanding.]

When Chloe was first admitted to the hospital this summer, my world, or my circle, shrunk to five people - our  family.  Many days it was a circle of three as Henri and Martha were cared for by grandparents, aunt and uncles, or family friends.

In the weeks following, it was challenging to expand that circle.  It went slowly, sometimes trying to include a few friends from church or colleagues from work.  Often times I found myself needing to retreat to my circle of five afterwards to regroup and recharge.

It took at least a month and a half before I was able to expand my circle great enough to include my PLNs via Twitter and Google Reader again.  Even then, most of the time it is still as a "lurker" rather than as a participator.

Last week, Chloe had a tough week.  A heavy dose of chemo on Monday made her feel cranky, tired, and generally out of sorts for the week.  That determined our week as well.  Couple that with a lot of assessments within the walls of my classroom and I have found my circle shrinking again.  

I wonder if this expanding and shrinking circle phenomenon is just a product of cancer in our family or if it has happened before without my awareness.  One more detail that I just need to accept and roll with...

Prayers for Chloe

Chloe, my four year old daughter, was admitted to DeVos Children's Hospital yesterday and had surgery this afternoon to remove a her left kidney containing a large mass.

Details can be found at our family blog: http://blog.hollandanderson.net

Prayers are appreciated!

DIY TED Talk

Here's something I'll be pondering this summer, courtesy of Seth Godin in Poke the Box.

If you had a chance to do a TED talk, what would it be about? What have you discovered, what do you know, what can you teach? You should do one. Even if you don't do one, you should be prepared to do one.