5 Quick Things #411 🎓

graduations, distractions, traditions, & transitions

Hi there,

One cannot possibly describe in only one paragraph how it feels when your oldest and only daughter gets married, surrounded by family and friends on a perfect breezy spring day—so I’m not even going to try. I’ve got an essay in the works that’ll better unpack all that I experienced last week, how God gave me grace upon grace to partake of this thin-veiled moment, and what unadulterated joy her father and I both felt during the day of and in the days afterwards… We’re still floating on cloud nine! They’ll come back from their honeymoon tomorrow and I’ll ask her permission to share a few photos here soon, but truly, there’s really only one word to summarize everything about the whole experience: JOY. It’s clichéd, but it’s true. Pure JOY! Such an answer to a decades-long prayer.

…And now tomorrow we graduate our second-born from high school. He’s the kid cut from a slightly different bolt of fabric from his siblings, but is also, quite frankly, the best of all of us: he’s got a heart of gold, he’s brilliant beyond my understanding, and he’s the funniest person I know. I’m so stinking proud of him, and I trust God will sustain me this weekend, once again, as I let the waterworks flow and witness another milestone in one of our kid’s life. What grace.

All this means by this fall we’ll have ONE KID left in the house, and I can hardly believe we’re here at this stage of life already. I’m grateful for the next two years of finishing up high school with him under our roof. …I want it to go by as slowly as possible.

Waldblumen, signiert, by Carl Massmann (1896) #

---

5 Quick Things ☕️

1. Several years ago I spoke as the commencement speaker at our school’s graduation—here’s a slightly-edited transcript of what I said: “Listen to tradition. Tradition is the stuff we humans have carried with us for a long time, and while some of it we’ve needed to shed over the ages, much of it is too quickly thrown out as outdated, unnecessary, or holding us back to the past. GK Chesterton called tradition the ‘Democracy of the dead, which means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors.’ It is very trendy these days to ignore anything that’s old. Don’t be trendy. Listen to good wisdom that’s been around a long time, whether that’s from Dostoevsky or from your grandpa.”

2. I needed this short-and-sweet reminder from my old friend Darren Rowse, on how sometimes God speaks to us in our distractions, and isn’t impossibly stuck by our own human diversions: “it struck me: perhaps God is present even in the distracted, curious days like this one.”

3. How not to be an anxious parent—these are simple but true words of wisdom on what our actual roles are as parents, and what it means to love our children enough to let them live with the free will God has given them (this is a newsletter written specifically on parenting boys by Alvaro de Vicente, but the wisdom applies to girls, too): “You bring into parenting the same limitations and defects you had before your children arrived. Expecting to make many mistakes is not pessimism but realism; it is the only reasonable stance and, paradoxically, it is a source of peace.”

4. Very rarely do I share a piece from the same writer two weeks in a row, but Shawn Smucker knocks it out of the park again with yet another timely poem (particularly for me, since he and I are going through very similar life events and are roughly the same age): “Now, on a dark evening, I sit in the lamplight, our house quiet, and I wonder what my son, the one who just moved out, is doing in his new place, if he is reading any of those books we lugged up the steps, and if he remembered to lock the door.”

5. And finally, for some much needed levity (at least for me this week), matthew pierce always delivers with his insightful, timeless wisdom: “Graduates, I want you to take a moment to look at the person sitting on your right and left. In five years, one of those two people will be dead. And you will be married to the other one, so choose carefully.”

---

Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📻

My old Shmoopy playlist, thanks to our daughter’s wedding¹

---

---

Quotable 💬

“God spoke today in flowers, and I, who was waiting on words, almost missed the conversation.”

-Ingrid Goff-Maidoff²

---

What are your summer travel plans (so far)? 🚗

We’re doing a tiny bit of in-state travel in a few weeks (Kyle and I are going on a much-needed weekend getaway!), and then there’s a chance we may make it up to Oregon again to visit family later this summer. But our biggest family travel is to Scotland, which of course you can join us (and should!). I’m so excited—it’ll be a fantastic pilgrimage with delightful people, as always.

• Domestic travel: 46.3%

• Staycation: 24.2%

• In-state travel: 16.4%

• International travel: 13.1%

Find the next poll here.

---

Historic Highlands: Join Us This Summer! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

I can’t emphasize enough how formative a pilgrimage like this is in your life…. If you’re on the fence, take these words as a sign from the Lord and SIGN UP. You won’t regret it.

---

Quick Links 🔗

• 📐 Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📖 Read my books

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Join the next pilgrimage: Scotland!

---

---

Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What would your high-school self be glad to know about your current-day self?

---

Have a good weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. - Moving cars with the swipe of a hand.

1. This started as a mix CD friends of ours gave us for our honeymoon, and years ago I then transcribed it as a Spotify playlist + added a few more songs over the years. It’s delightfully hokey on purpose.

2. Thanks to Darren’s linked piece for this one.