Our recent venture into the dungeon of blog had our adventurers traveling through the caverns of Prologue (with rapt attention, I might add!)
Today, I want to present a diorama of what my family's life looks like right now. Remember dioramas? Oh, to be 8 again, hot-gluing Play Doh figurines inside a shoebox colored with washable markers…
Since many of you knew me and my family in another time in life, this will give you a chance to see what's happening in our world today before this blog moves backwards to fill in the adventurous backstory that brought us to this moment.
Order of events is overrated.
This is what being raised on Star Wars does to your storytelling.
The Kids Are Alright
I’m now a father of a 7-year-old, in a stage I would call “middle-parenting”. Most importantly, this just means we're not scared anymore. We no longer have 10 lb. terrorists living under our own roof enacting biological warfare on our daily grind. (Elaborate poop reference.)
Middle-parenting is cool because there are some things you're finally grooving on about your family routine, and your kids can buckle themselves into a vehicle. In fact, for you younger parents, self-buckling is everything you are striving for in your parenting relationship. After that, just throw it in auto-pilot.

My wife, Mandy, is homeschooling our boys Peter (7), Luke (5), and then Miles (3) is along for the ride. The little kids learn so much just by being in the vicinity of homeschool. After two years of looking over Peter's shoulder at advanced assignments, Luke almost knew how to read when he started Kindergarten, which was where I learned the alphabet!
There is enough to brag on my wife about with homeschool teaching alone, but she also runs a mini day-care for another family's two girls, which puts Mandy at a 5:1 ratio of madness:reason on a daily basis.
Saruman would like those odds.
Mandy and I both enjoyed our 13 year stint in public school, but homeschooling resonates with some deeply seeded family values for us. By homeschooling a child K-12, you reclaim about 60,000 hours of their life back into your family! Isn't that mind-boggling? My mind is in a bottle over it.
It has been very rewarding to have our kids at home more often, to be building deep relationships within our family, and I'm very grateful that God has afforded us the opportunity to do this. Even though, while I'm writing this right now, screams invade my writer's sanctuary through two different walls.
I need to stop calling it a writer's sanctuary, don't I?
The Last Chapter
Since December 2021 I've worked for a local hospice organization in Amarillo TX as a chaplain. The first decade of my professional life was spent in church ministry, and while I've found myself in a season of closed doors with church work, this has been a ministry that puts me into a remarkably sacred moment in people's lives.
I can say, without a doubt, that what I am doing right now matters.
And that feels good. Everyone wants to matter.
Many pastors look back on decades of their ministry and see glaring defects in the crystal-clear lens of the rearview mirror. One of mine was that I didn't have much intuition about how to care for people, what many would call the "shepherding" aspect of pastoral ministry.
My pastoral years came in my 20's and early 30's, and there was a lot that I didn't fully realize about other people's suffering and need for compassionate presence. I did not grasp the pain they felt when experiencing illness and death, and I didn't feel authorized to speak into it because of my age and because of my own inexperience with these trials. I wasn't given assignments in this arena, and I lacked the confidence to assign myself to it.
Now, this kind of care is all I do.
Working for hospice, I frequently come across people who say "I couldn't do what you do" or "I wouldn't want to". What they're really saying is "no one likes to be around people who are dying".
Interestingly enough, I now find my regrets about my ministry years compelling me further in a ministry that others vocally want to avoid. I see purpose in participating in this sacred moment of people's life--the last chapter--serving them, listening to them, sitting with them, asking regular people 3-5 times a day "are you ready to die?"
It's not glamorous, it just matters.
I know everyone is not cut from the cloth to do this, and that's no fault of theirs, it's just a difference in how we are all uniquely made. But, about modern America, I can say with absolute conviction:
We have been too far from death for too long.
We hide it away in nursing homes,
Delay it indefinitely with medicine and technology,
Deny it in our thoughts and expectations of the future,
And we're horribly afraid of it.
Anyone would benefit greatly from riding along with me for a week so that they too could journey through the soul-shaping wilds where the American avoidance of death is decimated, and where a forgotten demographic of humans is accompanied in life's final journey and asked "can you tell me about your story?"
And boy…there are some stories.
True love.
Shark attacks.
Casseroles. (Listen, we have old people stereotypes for a reason!)
Chaplaincy has been good for my soul. Despite the hard days of repeated interactions with nonverbal patients, or windy West-Texas workdays with more road time than office/patient time, I've experienced many weeks where I log my 40th hour and reflect on a half-dozen interactions with people whose souls were visibly soothed by being reminded of the normalcy of death, the enduring presence of God, and the reminder that they are not alone.
There's Always More
Many of the things I've touched on here I hope to elaborate on in future blog posts. How homeschool has affected our worldview on parenting, families, economics. Whether or not I would ever return to ministry. Life stories from people I've met in hospice who have encountered the gamut of life experiences mentioned above.
I haven't said a lot about living in Amarillo for these last two years, so I'll sum it up by saying it's windy, hot, and flat! I had to give up most of my outdoor hobbies when we moved here, but we also have family nearby, and you only get one of those (not to mention only one lifetime to spend with them, and that time ticks on no matter where you are). I've been so thankful to have grandparents more involved in our kids' lives--my folks live in town here, and Mandy's are a 4 hour drive to NM. Not bad compared to our 14 hour, layover laden marathons to make it to family from Oregon where we used to live.
There are many more things to be said about this, too. Moving, time with family, the value of the land beneath your feet.
But, in the name of bite-sized-chunks, I'll say thanks for reading and stay tuned.
The next post will be a great story.
It's about a miracle.
Everyone wants to matter!! I’ve seen this with increasing frequency myself! People do matter. They need to know.
“We have been too far from death for too long.” - agree! It is a normal and huge reality of life.
Kory, So glad to hear you. I am glad you feel the need to communicate, since you do so well. I am also, extremely pleased to hear your comments about Homeschooling. Makes my heart sing. You are raising mountain movers! ;) May God continue to direct.