"Families: Choice Points"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
September 26, 2004

Reading :
One Saturday my wife and a neighbor planned a day long shopping tour. I agreed to sit with a pair of two-year-olds, our daughter Pam and our neighbor’s son Oscar. Oscar, like a lot of other kids in that half-square block, was a fellow who met life more than halfway. His brain was as fast as light and as sharp as a needle; his body was a tough as leather and as active as a tiger cub. He entered a room like a whirlwind. Two minutes after entering he handled, asked questions about and tested the strength of every object and every person within his reach. We loved him and knew him well. That morning only unbreakable objects were within his reach. His mother, as she and my wife were leaving turning in the doorway and said, “He didn’t eat any breakfast at all. Try to get him to eat some lunch.”

I didn’t know it then but that remark set into action a chain of choice points. I didn’t recognize most of them at the time, but looking back I have never forgotten any of them. Let me tell you how it went.

Being a graduate student in psychology, I felt I knew a thing or two about children. 

Lunchtime came. I called them sprightly, “Who would like some lunch?”

Quick as a flash, Oscar snapped back, “Not me!”

I had missed a choice point and made a mistake. I shifted my approach. “All right,” I said “I’ll have some lunch. If you two want to join me you can.” Pam watched the whole thing with fascination.

I knew they both liked bean soup, and soon I had a pot of bean and bacon bubbling away. Then I remembered my textbook. The thing to do was to give Oscar some positive choices; no questions which could be answered yes or no. With that thought, I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The pot of soup and the sandwiches were ready, and I asked, “Who wants soup and who wants sandwiches?”

“I don’t want any lunch!” Oscar was quiet and firm.

“OK,” I returned with phony indifference.

I sat done and began to eat. Pam joined me. Perhaps she knew how desperately I needed support. Perhaps she was just hungry. Oscar played with a toy truck.

I had passed another choice point. By now I was aware how much I was on the spot. I knew my choices had consequence. In some way I didn’t understand I knew also that the consequences went beyond food. Courage and cowardice, freedom and slavery, support and indifference – in some small way all of them were involved. 

After a time I turned to Oscar. “Don’t you like bean soup?”

“Sure. But not for lunch.”

“What would you like for lunch?”

Oscar’s eyes sparkled with lights of mischief.

“I’d like a worm!” Oscar shouted.

“A worm?” I was shocked. He was tickled.

“A worm!” This time he shouted louder.

I was well aware by now that I was in a special kind of fight. For Oscar it was independence day. For me it was examination day; my resourcefulness as an adult was being challenged. For Pam it was loyalty day. She was supporting me, and she knew well how much I needed her.

“OK” I replied, “a worm.” Outside we went. I rammed a spade into the ground with rare vigor, my excitement mounting. Soon I extracted a nice, long earthworm. Back into the house, a quick wash job, and the worm was on a plate before a surprised but unruffled Oscar.

“You didn’t cook it”

I moved quickly. Out of the plate, into a fry pan with a little butter and in no time the worm was earthworm sauté. Back to the plate and again in front of Oscar. He looked up at me and in unbelievable innocence, said, “Cut it up.”

I moved even more quickly. I cut the worm into two pieces. I nearly growled.

“Eat.”

“You eat with me.”

At a time like that, a choice point, even knowing my own foolishness I could not go down in defeat. In my anger and tension, I felt sure I had only one alternative – deceit.

I picked up half the worm, pretended to eat it, and palmed it into my pocket. I did the trick pretty well. Oscar’s eyes were on my mouth, pretending to chew. He never looked at my pocket. As I finished my chewing, Oscar’s face clouded over, his mouth turned down and he began to cry. In between sobs he struck his last blow.

“You ate my half.”

Sermon: “Families- Choice Points”

”We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” - Charles Swindoll

Choices are what make us human. Each choice answers one of the challenges we face and presents more, thus taking us from change to change, challenge to challenge. I wrote that in a sermon for our eighth graders who were entering high school.

What most of you don’t know is at the same time I wrote that sermon, in my immediate family we were facing our own changes -- and challenges -- as we made decisions about my son’s kindergarten. It was one of those situations where we were moving through the choices and finding new challenges along the way.

For those of you who know my son – the description in the reading about sums him up, “His brain is as fast as light and as sharp as a needle; his body is as tough as leather and as active as a tiger cub. He enters a room like a whirlwind.” We love him and know him well. However, delightful these characteristics are to us they don’t necessarily make for a successful Kindergarten experience. So when faced with the question of his schooling, there were many choices we could make and each added a certain challenge to our lives.

You may wonder why I am preaching on this. First I think we learn from each other, our stories educate each other. I know I learn and gain from all of you and hopefully you will gain as I think through this out loud. Second, as I have said before, changes in any of our families affects us all, so changes in my family do affect you. And third, both the Committee responsible for the ministry of the church and I felt it was important to let you all know what is happening in terms of my time with you.

So let me tell you a bit about what has crossed my mind. With the help of the book, Choice Points, I realize that there are commonalities in many of the challenges we face. When making choices, whether we are aware or not, in addition to the facts of the situation, we are often considering three concepts: dependence, independence and dependability When making decisions, especially those that involve our relationships with others, we think of whether and how dependent or independent we want to be and we are thinking about our own dependability. Nearly every choice in our lives affects our sense of being able to care for ourselves, and our responsibility to others. 

For instance my family considered these issues when making choices concerning my grandparents this summer. My grandparents really wanted to maintain their independence and stay in their home, but our ability as a family to be dependable to the extent they needed was lacking. They are becoming more and more dependent as they strive to stay independent. We finally had to say we couldn’t be that dependable and asked for professional help placing my grandmother in a nursing home. We all want to create and provide the resources our families need. We want to be independent and considered a dependable person all the while we are aware of others dependence on us and ours on them.

Our son is dependent on my husband Alex and me to make good choices for him. We want to provide all we can to help him grow up capable and happy. And in this decision we also had to weigh the value of being financial independent and continuing to make sound decisions for our future. In other words, we needed to continue to save for our retirement, keep up the college funds we started, and be prepared to help with the capital campaigns in each of our respective churches while perhaps paying for private school tuition.

You know the drill. You have all made similar decisions. We checked out all our options. The public school kindergarten would be half day, only available in the afternoon, and there would be 24 kids in his class. The teachers were experienced, but the rooms were busy and felt cluttered and chaotic to Alex and me. To others I am sure the rooms felt exciting and stimulating. Our son would be very dependent on us to help with the transition if we chose that. Afternoon is not his best time of day, and large groups can overwhelm him. There was a certain risk that the progress he had made over the previous year would be lost. The private school he is in has small class sizes -- 6 to 10 kids -- and low stimulation in the rooms. The program at the private school centers on foreign language, something for which Preston seems to have an affinity. Other private schools were just as expensive, far away or too much of an unknown quantity. We tallied all the choices and resources and knew we just couldn’t stay financially responsible to our future goals and make the best decision for Preston the way things stood.

We all have responsibilities to our selves and the people we love. Alex and I firmly believe in not putting a burden on others – we value our independence. But we are also acutely aware that to a large degree independence is an illusion. We are all at some level dependent. This dependence means that we must be dependable. People are dependent on us and we need to honor that and we are also dependent on others and we must honor that. So much of our culture today is about being strong and independent. While this is a good value it only goes so far. To be independent to the point of not acknowledging the help we need or receive is not useful. We knew that any choice we made could make us more dependent, as we could have less time or less money.

Alex and I knew we were weighing many issues: Our son’s dependence, our independence and ultimately the dependence we have on each other and our churches. These were truly our choices and we accept the responsibility for them. We are also aware that our choices, like the opening words this morning suggested, are choices for others as well. Although not earth shaking, the choice of his school would affect our jobs and our families.

We decided to see if we could work out something that preserved our independence and our dependability. I offered to teach a few classes at the school. I thought a few days a week I could do some “anti-bias” education for the students and teachers in exchange for tuition.

The headmaster was not interested. But he was interested in my teaching degree and he needed a primary grade teacher. It turned out he needed a half time first grade English teacher.

Alex and I thought long and hard about this. What is best? How do we make this choice? We found the extra time pretty easily. Alex would take over all I was doing in the house -- cooking, cleaning and transporting our son. Adding that to what he already did makes him the primary house person. Our son is in school a full day so that gives us more hours each day and Alex would work on his dissertation less often, hopefully finishing it over the summers. That was the easy part. The shift in our dependence and independence we knew would be a challenge, but we decided to try it. It truly could be a chance to stretch and learn new things.

So now I teach first grade every afternoon and it’s great fun. I still love being your minister – but teaching is fun too. It’s almost a vacation in each day. When I am with those 11 little ones there is no way I can think about church. And when I am here I am so involved with all of you and our current journey that I don’t think about those little ones.  Is this a permanent solution? Probably not, but it is a choice we made for now. And as we knew they would be, dependence, dependability and independence continue to be the issues for our family. 

I am now much more dependent on Alex. He has dinner ready when I come home and makes sure we all have clean clothes. Our schedule is tight and though not overwhelming it is essential that we communicate every move. I must be dependable. And I must learn to let go. In my more pronounced dependence on Alex I must also give him his independence. Alex doesn’t run the house the way I did. He makes different choices about when and how often to grocery shop. He makes different choices about what, how and when to clean. He makes different choices about so many of the pieces of the picture, but that’s what happens. I had my independence and he was quite dependent and dependable. Now it’s my turn.

We are adjusting and refining our choices each day while staying dependable. We are flexible. 

I quoted Kierkegaard last year in my sermon on choices. Kierkegaard speaks of life being lived forward, but understood backward. This is true for all of us each moment. Do we fight or flee? Do we become more dependent or do we need to hang on to our independence? Do we offer love, accept love offered or do we make other choices? We often make those choices without all the information we would like. We don’t have a crystal ball and it is sometimes many years down the road when all the consequences are fully understood. Will this be the best choice for our young son? We may never know. We do know that it will provide opportunities to stretch in ways unknown to us now. It is a challenging situation that has been exciting and energizing.

This dance of my family affects this church as well. Many of you have kindly asked how it is going. I answer truthfully: it is going well. I want to be dependable to you. I want you to know that you can still find me when you need me and that I am as available to you as always. That is true. In fact, in many ways, because Alex has our son, I am more available than last year.

But here is where the dependence comes in. I need you to tell me how it’s working, if it’s working. We are in fact all dependent on one another. That’s what makes us a community. If you need us -- this community or me -- we will be there with food, hugs and support. We are dependable. But in order for the dependable part to work, we must also be dependent. 

So this is our great opportunity disguised as a challenging situation. We are living and working together to create the best world for our families, our community and ultimately for ourselves. The questions of dependence, dependability and independence face us daily. What is the best mix of these changes from minute to minute? For me, it helps to remember we are all dependent and the goal is to be as dependable as we can be. These are the choice points that make us human. Namaste.