The twelfth and final story of my Twelve Days of Stories is actually the beginning of a story.

It is a draft of the first chapter of the book I have been writing. I hope that one day these words will take shape in print form that you can hold in your hands.

Thank you so much for reading along with me this holiday season and allowing me to share my stories with you.

A Story about A Pop Up Camper

Some people thought we were crazy when we announced that we had decided to spend Taido’s summer study sabbatical in tents instead of renting somewhere to stay in Vancouver, British Columbia.

We love camping, so we were sure that three months in the woods would be a dream come true for our family. Of course, we anticipated that there might be some challenges, but we felt we were up for the opportunity to rise to the occasion of whatever would come.

During the early planning days of our big summer trip, a couple from our church called and told us we could borrow their pop up camper.

Taido and I were both blown away by their generosity and we quickly adjusted to the idea of being inside a camper instead of a tent.

When we picked up the camper, we took it to our school parking lot to practice setting it up. The kids were so excited when they saw how it unfolded.

We had some friends come and see the pop up and we all sat inside and imagined what our life was going to be like out on the open road. Taido made everyone take off their shoes to get in, a tradition we kept up all summer. The kids climbed all over the camper, staking out their beds for the summer.

It was just like the little Fisher Price camper I had played with as a child. The flat structure opened up into this cozy little room with wings. The sides slid out to make two beds, and in the middle was a third bed that could also be converted to a table and benches. A small refrigerator and stove top made up the kitchen.

The camper was full of all sorts of cubbies and hidey holes that we promptly filled with games, puzzles, books, playing cards, bug spray and sunscreen.

A large awning rolled out on one side of the camper over the door, under which our camp chairs would be sitting all summer long. We had no idea on that sunny day in Arkansas how much time we would spend in our chairs under that awning, hiding from the rain. A flat two burner stove attached to the outside of the camper underneath the awning that was hooked up to the propane tank on the back of the camper. The pop up had hardly ever been used, and the biggest bed was practically king sized.  After thirty years of tent camping, I thought that camper was the lap of luxury.

I remembered a few times that I went camping with loads of other families as a child. My family was always in tents and I was envious of the fact that some of the other families had campers. Generally, the kids were all shooed outside so I never got to go into people’s campers. I just imagined that when I went back to my tent at night, the other kids had magical wonderlands of comfort on the other sides of those camper doors. Back at our campsite, we sat around the fire while my dad played his guitar and sang to us. I did not realize then that the real magic was around the campfire. In addition to Bob Dylan lyrics, Daddy filled my head with the idea that if you were inside a camper, you weren’t really camping. In fact, the most authentic way to camp was without anything but a sleeping bag, because it is best to leave no barrier at all between you and the starry sky. My dad still believes this with all his heart, and though he’s in his sixties, he sleeps many nights out in the open. I used to get so mad at him because he would set up our tent, but leave the rain fly lying on the ground on the side, until it actually started raining. I could not figure out why we did not put the rain fly on, just in case. It seemed like a decent precautionary measure to me, because HELLO, who wants to get up in the middle of the night and put on a rain fly, in the rain and the dark? But he thought he was doing me a favor. Who would want a rain fly covering up the top of the tent blocking the view of the stars? I’ll tell you who. Me.

So you can understand why at first I felt a little bit like we were cheating by staying in a camper for the summer. However, it was not long at all before I let myself off the hook for having a tiny bit more shelter from the rain and a place in which I could actually stand all the way up. I would never again say that it is not really camping to stay in a camper, and I certainly did not feel in anyway like we missed out on being outside under the stars. (Anyway, in the Pacific Northwest, the night sky is usually cloudy.)

In addition to the camper, our “rig” included a 15 passenger van that we bought for a song when our church retired it from youth ministry with over 100,000 miles on it. We removed the two back benches of the van, and that area served as a sort of storage unit. It was filled with several plastic tubs stacked on top of each other that held food, kitchen items, camping equipment, a few toys and really important things like an ice ax. (Don’t even ask.) The task of sorting through the back of the van to find a specific item for dinner was a special form of torture. Though I got better at looking through the tubs and created a loose organization to the madness, I never quite mastered the art of the back-of-the-van storage and as soon as I had a system down, someone else would rearrange everything. Also, the back of the van would not open from the inside, so if I accidentally let the door close behind me while inside of the van, I would have to crawl over the seats to the front in order to get back out. One of those times of crawling through the van with a handful of onions from a tub and popping out of the front, I glared at my husband and he said to me, “We’re living the dream, honey!” This catch phrase came to describe all less than ideal parts of being on the road for three months. If I couldn’t find something in the tubs, if the rain was incessant, if the kids were fighting, we would look at each other and one of us, usually Taido, would say it again. “This is IT! We’re living the dream, honey!” Sometimes it would make me laugh and other times I would just roll my eyes and throw my hands up in the air.

But when we rolled out of North Little Rock, Arkansas on the last Friday in May, I did not yet know I would soon be complaining about how hard it was to find the toilet paper in the van underneath the trekking poles and climbing ropes. We were all geared up for a summer full of adventure, a dream come true, barreling down the road in our jam packed rig, a van and a pop up camper.

The post A Story about A Pop Up Camper appeared first on Alison Chino.

Three babies in five years is what it took to throw me over the edge.

Mixing lack of sleep at night with defiant toddlers by day was a recipe for fraying nerves already, but then Taido often would have to leave town for work. I was exhausted at the sound of my own voice, constantly warning,

“Don’t hit your sister.”

“Stay in bed. If you get up one more time…”

“Who colored on the wall?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed to use the potty?”

In the dark winter of 2002, I was wearing especially thin. My usual irritability was quickly escalating to outbursts and one weekend while Taido was gone I thought I might actually be in danger of hurting someone. I called Taido and left him a tear-filled voicemail saying that I would be leaving as soon as he got home the next day. I just needed a minute. I needed to go one day without hearing myself give orders or yell at someone. And I needed a full night’s sleep.

When I was five years old, I beat up the older bossy girl in our cul de sac. I do not recall the inciting remarks that caused me to fly in a rage at this poor girl. I just remember the weight of my hate for her. If my little hands had been strong enough, I could have killed her that day.

Later in my room, where I had been sent to calm down and await my consequences, I was frightened by the depth of my emotions, but I was holding on tight to my fury.

When Mother came to talk to me, she told me a story.

“Once upon a time there was a man who owed a lot of money to the king of the land. Back then if you could not pay your debts you had to go to jail, so he was about to go to prison because he could not pay the money back. He fell to his knees and begged the king for mercy.

And do you know what?

The king had pity on him and told him he would wipe his slate clean. He forgave the whole debt and set him free without making him pay back any of the money he owed.

The man left the king’s house, but he was afraid the king would change his mind. He did not really believe he had been forgiven.

So he went and found a man who owed him just a little bit of money and demanded that he pay it back. This man was very poor and he could not pay even the small amount of money he owed. The poor man begged for mercy but the man showed him none. He had him thrown in jail because he could not pay.”

My clenched fists relaxed a bit as I asked, “But why, Mama? Why would he not forgive when he had been forgiven?”

“Why indeed? That’s what the king asked when he found out. How do you think the king responded when he heard what had happened?”

“I bet he was mad.”

“Alison, that man is us. The one who had been forgiven much by the king but then would not forgive a little for someone else.”

I was truly broken by this story and by the darkness of my little five year old heart.

I wanted to forgive and to be forgiven. To be love and mercy and goodness.

Mother prayed with me that afternoon and we both count that day as the moment I gave my heart to Jesus.

But anger is a willing companion, one I found difficult to give up. As I grew, angry blows turned to angry words.
Feelings of rage inside came and went with increasing familiarity.

When I gave birth to my own precious children, I never dreamed I could become as angry with them as I had with the girl in my neighborhood. I pictured myself the calm and composed mother of many little ducklings, but in my perfect picture of motherhood, the little darlings did exactly as they were told and did not get out of line.

Reality was harsh, or rather reality was making a harsh mother out of me. And I did not like her one bit.

When Taido got home the next day, I met him at the door. I had a bag in the car and a reservation on the Olympic Peninsula at an old monastery. I kissed my family goodbye and headed for the ferry.

On the drive over I listened to my father’s New Year’s Day message, one that has become familiar to me. It’s all about choosing a positive attitude and fighting to be grateful in life instead of complaining about your circumstances.

It was dark by the time I was settled in a room. I had a sack dinner, my notebook and my Bible. I got down on my knees and begged God to take away my anger. To unclench my fists. To forgive again this life long propensity to be so very angry.

I fell into bed and slept better than I had in five years.

The next day I continued my conversation with God while I walked along the shoreline of the Puget Sound. I sat by the sea and wrote in my journal. One verse that God gave me during my time away that has stuck with me since that day on the beach was Isaiah 30:15:

“This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.'”

Repentance
Rest
Quietness
Trust

I took those words up like precious stones in my hands. I longed for them to be words that described my life. And more than that I longed for their result.

“Cease your striving, Alison.”

“Let go.”

When my father is speaking he often says the words, “Draw a line in the sand.”

He says them in reference to any kind of commitment you might make in your life. A promise you intend to keep. A destructive behavior you need to leave behind.

I’m sure he said those words in his New Year’s sermon because I found myself standing on the shore, drawing a line in the sand.

I remember stepping over that line and saying out loud, “I don’t want to be angry anymore.”

“Not at my husband Not at my children. And maybe especially, not at myself.”

I fell to my knees and cried for a long time. Just letting go and being thankful for the sound of the waves drowning out my sobs.

When I was all cried out, I got up and walked for a long time on the beach, repeating those words from Isaiah. Before I left the beach I chose five small white stones, worn smooth
by the water. I chose one for each member of my family, including myself.

When I returned home, I was happy to see my people again, and I took my little stones out and set them on the shelf above my sink. I placed them there as a reminder both of the place I’d left my anger and of how much I need time away, quietness and rest.

When I moved to Arkansas I put those same five rocks in my kitchen window and when I began to feel angry again for too many days in a row, they would remind me that I had some things to let go of or that I needed time alone. Or both.

Anger loves to find its way back into my life. He finds a door into my home through one of my children or through a stressful move, but since that day on the beach, I am quicker to let go. To fall on my knees again before a king who reminds me that I have nothing to hold over anyone.

I am still the man in the story who has been forgiven much, but no longer the man who acts as though God might change his mind and throw me in jail.

I want more days of my life to be marked by…

Repentance rather than Blaming.

Rest rather than Striving.

Quietness rather than Yelling.

Trust rather than Clenching.

The post A Story about Anger appeared first on Alison Chino.

I told these cruise stories on my blog a few years ago as How I went from being a Cruise Skeptic to a Cruise Addict. They are still some of my best life memories.

In the winter of 2011, I was strongly encouraging two of my dearest friends to follow through on a dream they had about something that is near and dear to my heart…

A trip.

So when my friends, Sarabeth and Rhonda, who were turning 40 and 50, were throwing ideas around for a birthday vacation with a group of women, they didn’t have to twist my arm too hard for me to be supportive.  In fact, since they are both just a wee bit indecisive, I began to send them friendly reminders, emails with links to beautiful destinations.  I even gave them deadlines.

I don’t want to take away from them that they did all the work to make it happen, but let’s just say that I lived the process with them.  And friends, the process of trying to get commitments from a group of women who have full lives and lots of children to take into account is not easy.  Just trying to nail down dates for the trip was hard enough, but then when we started looking for places large enough to house the group of us, a group that was varying from 4 people to 20 people on any given day, I thought our heads might explode.

Finally, with the much appreciated help of a good travel agent, and with all of the rest of us weighing in with our strong opinions, Sarabeth and Rhonda decided on a Caribbean cruise with Carnival.  The cruise was chosen chiefly because it was by far the least expensive option.  It just felt the most accessible, especially since we could drive to our port and save buying airplane tickets.

Now I should admit here that of all the options that had been considered, for me, the cruise was at the bottom of the list.  Somehow, I had the preconceived notion that a cruise out of the deep South was quite possibly one of the cheesiest vacations one could go on.  Images of large bodies rolling around like in the movie Wall-E filled my head.  I was afraid of finding myself hiding out in a cramped hole of a room trying to get away from salsa music and Casino lights.  I was concerned that my aversion to crowds would make cruising one long bout of social anxiety.

But, being the very good friend that I am, I jumped into the cruise planning with both feet.

So it’s not our own private beach in Puerto Vallarta! Well, that’s ok.  We’ll make it fun!  It’s us! 

A group of strong Southern women who have weathered multiple all night drives to Colorado, endured the breaking down of vans and Suburbans, and suffered through what others would deem an unbearable lack of privacy could certainly make a vacation away from our families fun for each other, no matter how ridiculous the surroundings.

And of course I had to keep coming back to the fact that the cruise was the best deal, and people, it’s no secret around here that I am a complete sucker for a good deal.

Almost as soon as the cruise was chosen, it began to reveal itself as the superior choice for a group of women.  First of all, the deadlines were made for us.  We had to book it and once your room (including your roommate) was booked, you couldn’t change it.  Also, you could not add anyone to your room.

Now I know how it is when you get an email saying, Hey do you want to do this?  I always think that I can think about that later.

I don’t have to decide right now.

Or I can say: YES!  That sounds fun! Maybe I’ll do that, but then I can change my mind later.

The thing about booking a cruise is that you cannot put off your response to an email that says, Hey do you want to go on a cruise?  Or if you do put off, you are not going.

The fact that I think that this is an absolutely wonderful thing about a cruise might sound kind of harsh, but I have more than once upon a time been in a situation where a condo or house was rented by a party and then the splitting of that cost was reduced to being divided by 12 to being divided by 4 or by 6 because no one really had to commit.  And by commit, I mean pony up actual money.

So emails flew back and forth for a couple of weeks and then D(ecision)-day came and the final reckoning of actual swiped credit cards with a travel agent rendered us 12 gals who would be in just a few short months, going on a cruise.  The group was in many ways a surprise.  A lovely wonderful surprise.

We booked our cruise at the end of February to cruise in June, and before we sailed, we had three planning meetings.

Rhonda called the first meeting to discuss details. Some gals were not so much in favor of cruise meetings.  Others felt that the meetings helped to heighten the anticipation of our vacation.  Meetings were not mandatory as to accommodate both personalities.  Of course, after we had so much fun at the first meeting, no one wanted to miss the others.

Mostly because of Bev.

Bev likes to live life to the full.  She is a storyteller.  She can make you laugh and cry in the same minute.  But don’t feel alone, honey.  She’s laughing and crying right along with you.    If you ask her what she wants to do on her birthday, she says, Laugh!

So, Bev started off our first meeting by announcing that she would prefer from here on out to be referred to as Stormy.  This set off a cacophony of cackling.  Soon everyone else began trying on new names for the cruise.

Then, she suggested that we all wear feather earrings on the first night at dinner on board the boat, which quickly evolved into choosing themes for every night of our cruise.

Again, choosing a cruise name or adhering to the dress themes was not mandatory, as there were to be no rules on the vacation, only freedom.  But if playing along would increase your enjoyment of the experience, by all means, wear a hat on Tuesday!

Our second meeting was at Whitney’s house.  Whitney is my dear friend and sister in law and I talked her into rooming with me on the cruise, without even realizing at the time that this would mean I had my own personal fashion consultant.  We had loads of fun shopping for and putting together our cruise outfits.  We even chose theme colors.

For the meeting, Whitney made wonderful Mexican food.  We had all been instructed to wear something that we would wear on the cruise.  I wore a dress of Whitney’s and new summer shoes.  Bev and Rhonda showed up in matching pajamas.

At this point we were still several months out from our departure date and I was already beginning to change my mind about cruises.  We were having so much fun getting ready for what we had now dubbed #cruisazy that I was more certain every day that I was going to have a marvelous time.  Also, I had quickly become mesmerized by the little red box on the Carnival website that tells you how many days it is until you cruise.  I kept going to the website and checking the number. I might be admitting to being a bit of simpleton here, but that little box never failed to excite me.  It’s brilliant, I tell you.

The day finally arrived for us to leave, and our road trip down to Mobile, Alabama was as much fun as our cruise meetings. I think I laughed all the way there.

We all crammed into two hotel rooms in Mobile, giggling into the wee hours and giddy with excitement.

Then the next morning, we got on our boat.

There is really no way to describe that first glimpse of your cruise ship.

I mean, I’ve been amazed by boats before.  I remember when my uncle bought a brand new ski boat after we had spent years of weekends on the lake with boats that only sometimes started up.

I was so excited for him to take us all out on its maiden ride on the Arkansas River.  As we filled up the seats and rode up and down the river, I imagined myself laid out with my sister in the front of that boat all summer long.

My daddy schemed every minute he could for us to get away to beautiful Lake Ouachita during my junior high and high school days.

It’s a full moon tomorrow night.  Can you skip school?

Those were common words at the Loibner household.

I can’t decide if Daddy was just anxious to take me away from my current sketchy scene as much as possible or if he was just glad I was finally old enough to drive the boat so he could ski.  Either way we both loved to sneak away and I always felt my heart skip a beat at the first sight of the boat.  And the water.

However, none of my stolen weeknights away on Lake Ouachita prepared me for the sight of a cruise ship.

When we stepped outside the hotel in Mobile last summer after breakfast, we could see it.

The Elation.

It was GI-NORMOUS!  Still, I am astounded at just how big cruise ships are!  I had read how many people were going to be on this boat and I had wondered how in the world they were all going to fit.  Then I saw the boat, and it was just way, way bigger than I had ever imagined.  I still feel a little dumbfounded by it.

8 of the 12 of us had never before been on a cruise ship.  The anticipation and enthusiasm just kept building as we headed over to the cruise terminal and got in line.  We all wore our swimsuits under coverups and carried on bags with our beach towels.  Our travel agent had warned us that we might not get our rooms and luggage until late afternoon, but not to let that stop us from getting on the boat and getting the party started early.

We all got through the embarkation lines at different times.  Whitney and I made it on somewhere in the middle.  We entered the boat off a long, hot ramp and into a chilled lavish lobby full of bright colors, round leather couches and tall glass elevators.  I felt like a little girl and I wanted to get in that elevator and ride up and down until I had seen it all. However, someone with an Australian accent was telling us via the loudspeaker to proceed to the Lido Deck where lunch was being served.  (Incidentally, we now all pronounce Lido Deck with an Aussie flare.)

When we found our way to the Lido Deck, we were greeted by Elle and Skeeter who were carrying fruity umbrella drinks and grinning ear to ear.   We squealed when we saw them.

We practically ran all around the deck checking everything out, oohing and ah-ing at the perfectly lined blue deck chairs.  We took a gazillion pictures, texted our families and yelled over and over again, We’re on a cruise!

The excitement was beyond contagious.  Each time another pair of us came through the doors out onto the deck the rest of us would yell,

Hey!  Look at this!  Isn’t it amazing?!?  We’re on a cruise!

This went on for approximately four hours.  I am not even kidding.  We were just so excited.

We pulled out our towels and claimed a bank of twelve chairs and then found all kinds of wonderful things for lunch.  Hey look!  You can just walk right over there and get a hamburger if you want!  Or if you don’t want, you can have a salad.  You can wait an hour and eat when you get hungry.  Whatever you want!

We jumped in the pool, slid on the water slide, drank more umbrella drinks and took more pictures.

Sometime after 4pm the Australian gal came back on and told us we were about to leave port and that the Sail Away Party was happening on the Lido Deck.  Sail Away Party is just a fancy way of saying the ship is about to leave.  I think they call it a a Sail Away Party so you will be more excited.  And you know what, it totally works!  The ship’s big horn blew and suddenly everyone was yelling,

We’re moving!  Look the boat is MOVING!!!

Like we had expected to just stay docked in Mobile forever.  We were AMAZED I tell you.

There was all kinds of fun music and silly party games happening.  Some joined in.  Some watched.  But we all laughed.

You could feel it in the air, that wonderful light-hearted anticipation!

Over the next five days, we danced, brought down the house in the karaoke bar, dressed up for dinner, played bingo, had our pictures made, went to the beach, shopped in Mexico, told stories, made scenes and danced some more.

We made wonderful memories.

And most of all, we laughed.

And y’all, it really was the MOST fun.

The post A Story about A Cruise appeared first on Alison Chino.

A Story about A Long Time Goal

When my husband sat me down and told me that he wanted to finish his masters’ thesis, quit his job and move our family abroad to get a PhD, I told him to go for it. “I’m all in for this adventure,” I said.

But in all honesty, those words were easy for me to say because I did not really believe that he would do it.

Now before you write me off as an unsupportive wife, I need you to know that Taido, my husband, had been trying to finish his masters’ thesis for over 10 years. We had these planning meetings once or twice a year where we both made goals, individually and for our family.

His goal of finishing his masters and getting a PhD always resurfaced, as did my goal of writing and publishing a book.

We revisited this goal whenever we pulled out the worn sheets of paper with our ten year old handwriting on them, and it became a source of discouragement.

Because I believed we began these planning and dreaming sessions as a life giving exercise, I suggested that we scratch the masters’ thesis from the list. “Let’s focus on new dreams,” I would say, “You know, ones that we can actually accomplish.” But Taido never would let this one fall off of the list.  He would return to it again and again with the hope that this might be the year of the thesis.

And some years he made progress. Really excellent efforts towards completing that beast. One year we even dedicated an entire summer sabbatical to the thesis.

But no matter the efforts made in some years or the lack thereof in others, January would roll around and I would watch him with his head in his hands, fighting the crushing disappointment that again, he had not done what he had set out to do.

So if I tell you that when Taido told me in September that he was going to finish his thesis and that he hoped that by the following year we would find ourselves living in the United Kingdom where he would be working on a PhD, you’ll forgive me if I was skeptical.

However, skepticism is a dream crusher. I have enough of my own unrealistic dreams to know this to be true. So instead of mentioning that maybe I had heard something similar to this before, or instead of bringing up problems with the idea of quitting a stable job and going back to school two years before our own children would start their higher educations, I simply said things like,

Make it happen, honey.

I love you. Go for it.

Because, friends, I ask you, what is the point of arguing about something that is probably not going to happen?

There was a tiny sliver of certainty in my brain that knew that my husband had it within him to do this thing. The same way I know I have a book in me.

It’s just that having it in you and actually doing it are two entirely different animals.

Since we are already in Scotland, and my husband is currently sitting in an office in Kings’ College doing research towards what will one day be a PhD, I don’t have to tell you that he did exactly what he set out to do.

Less than a year passed before he had accomplished all that he had told me that by the grace of God, he would do.

I don’t know exactly what changed, but for some reason, this was the year, and the process of watching him was both excruciating and wonderful. He has told this story himself many times, but through a combination of countless hours of work, graciousness on the part of his co-workers and family and just pure miracles, he finished the thesis in time to be considered for a PhD the following autumn. Then he was accepted to two PhD programs in Scotland. A journey of faith carried all six of us out of our (in retrospect) simple, idyllic life in Arkansas and into this new expat life abroad that we are still trying to figure out.

The timing seems strange in so many ways. We are unusual among the other families that are here in the program. Taido is older than a lot of the professors. We have older children, and in two years, it will be time for them to start joining “the real world.”

I am coming to terms with the fact that the world is changing and that what I find unusual is perhaps becoming completely normal. A year ago I did know what a digital nomad was, and now I am becoming one. Education is changing and the certainties that could be counted on when our parents graduated from college no longer exist for our children. Even now, we are watching people complete the very program that Taido is pursing who have zero prospects for their hopeful employment as professors of theology.

Still in light of the changing world, and maybe because of it, I think it is more important than ever before to look closely at the pieces of paper on which we have scribbled our dreams and to ask ourselves which ones we might finish this year. Which ones have we have begged and pleaded with God about? Which ones keep us up at night? Which ones are important regardless of whether or not they will bring in the money, security or respect we think we need?

Write them down again for this year and again next year.

I know that there are dreams we write down that we have to author for ourselves by following through or using one of the six thousand programs currently being advertized.

But sometimes a dream has to take a backseat to other parts of our lives. We have children to raise or a loved one to care for. We have debts to pay off or a new roof to buy.

But if we keep writing them down, saying them out loud and asking if this is the year, then one day, like beauty from ashes, a buried dream can rise.

This is why I will pen the words Write a Book on my dreams for 2014, just like I have for the last fifteen years.

The post A Story about A Long Time Goal appeared first on Alison Chino.

Taido and I are celebrating our 19^th wedding anniversary today, so it seems like as good a time as any to tell you our love story.

Since you already know the end to this story, it might be helpful to start in the middle, when it looked like maybe I would not end up with Taido.

Because I was engaged to be married to someone else.

A Story about Love

At the age of twenty, I was about to complete my third year of college. It was the week before exams and I was staying with my younger cousins while their parents were away on a trip. I think they were in Toronto.

I was getting my cousins off to school in the mornings, heading to my classes and then coming back to get them in the afternoons, making them dinner and putting them to bed. After they were in bed, I divided my time between studying for my upcoming finals and planning for a wedding that was to take place in July.

I was living at the same sort of frantic pace I had been keeping throughout college, but it had been speeding to a dizzying frenzy in recent months. I blame this frenzy for the fact that I was not really thinking about what my life was going to look like after the wedding. I was just focused on getting to that day.

I began to have nightmares that week. Even though I was dead tired from the long days, I started waking up all night long from dreams about a wedding day that were all too real. I kept trying to brush them off, feeling like I was just worn down from all the stress, but after three or four nights of walking down the aisle in my dreams and realizing that I did not want to be there, I called my sister in a panic. She was away at college in Illinois and was herself about to be taking finals.

I told her that I was beginning to have serious doubts about whether or not I should be getting married.

“Just wait until I get home next week,” she said. “Don’t do anything yet. I will help you figure it out when I get home.”

We both knew that telling my mother that I was considering calling off the wedding would create a firestorm for which I might need the moral support of my sister, but I could not wait.

When I told Anna that I didn’t want to get married, I was unearthing a doubt that was buried within me by speaking it out loud. Once I gave voice to it, I knew it was over. I had to set everything else aside and deal with it as soon as possible.

When my aunt and uncle returned, I called Anna and told her I was going out of town to try to sort it all out. I left a note at my parents’ house saying I was having doubts about the wedding, and then I packed a bag and headed for the only place I could think straight.

The woods.

I set up a tent and began to write. I wrote for about four days straight. I wrote my fingers to the bone.

First I wrote in my notebook, just trying to puzzle out how I had reached this place. I let myself remember the moments over the past months that should have been greater signs to me had I allowed them to be.

In particular, there was a phone conversation back in March where my fiancé was entertaining my husband-to-be. They were both in France, traveling together. Absurd but true.

I remember being on the phone with one but having the urge to speak to the other and not being quite sure how to ask. In the end, I hung up without talking to Taido and felt the loss of a simple hello a little stronger than I should have.

I brushed those feelings aside.

I returned to my studies, my work and my wedding plans.

Taido had been traveling all year, so he was not around to distract me with his quiet presence.

We had dated the year before I left for my own adventure in Europe.

We had promised to write. I had broken that promise. Now we had both put it behind us.

Or had we?

In one of my recurring dreams, I walked down the aisle and ran over to Taido in tears, begging him to stop me from making a huge mistake.

It was humiliating and desperate. The stuff of movies, not real life.

I remember that it was raining at the campground. I remember the drips hitting the outside of the tent, while I sat inside with a flashlight and a notebook. All alone in that sacred space, I finally realized in my heart that the problem was not just that I did not want to get married, but that I was marrying the wrong person.

It is important somehow for me to admit this out loud, because the next steps involved the necessary separating of these two truths. Whatever my eventual future held, the next piece of the painful process was extricating myself from an engagement.

The next morning I started writing letters.

I apologized to all the people involved. To the guy. To my bridesmaids. To extended family members and my mother’s friends who were working to make my wedding beautiful. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Trying to explain myself.

Somehow I think I thought that I could write my way out of the mess I had created.

Of course, eventually, I would have to return to town and face the music.

The phone calls.

My mother’s fury.

My sister came home and helped me return dresses and gifts. She stood by me while my mother refused to speak to me and my dad made jokes. I whispered to her at night in our room that I had carelessly thrown away my relationship with the one I truly loved. Now I would never get married. Never love again. I would go to my grave with my undying love for someone who could never possibly forgive me.

It might be helpful to mention here that I had a tendency to be dramatic.

Even now, I don’t know why I did not finish my finals, wait for Anna to get home and then break everything off instead of leaving town in the middle of the school term, creating A Great Scene. Apparently when my parents found my note, they were afraid that I was going to kill myself. They called Anna frantic, telling her that I had disappeared and asking her if she knew anything. My mom drove around trying to find me. She was so relieved when I came home, but then she quickly moved from relieved to wringing her hands and exhaustion at the state of things.

So it is quite understandable that when Taido returned from his travels in Europe, Mother let me know in no uncertain terms that she expected me to keep my distance. She felt, somewhat justifiably, that I should be doing penance.

And in my own way, I was. I was nursing my private drama of walking the earth with a heart full of love for someone I had hurt too deeply to confess. I knew I had wounded a lot of people, but I felt the weight of one more than all the others. I wore black all summer.

I remember attending my first wedding after I had called mine off. I had not wanted to go, but my father was performing the wedding and my mother had poured on the guilt. I arrived late, dressed all in black (including lipstick) and sat near the back. A crazy friend of my dad’s who arrived even later than me, slipped in and sat next to me in the back. “Don’t worry,” he leaned over and whispered to me, “I’m pretty sure that lipstick will come off.”

Taido was not home for long. He soon left to spend most of the summer in Japan and China. I saw him briefly in between his trips at church.

He returned again at the end of the summer only for a few weeks. He was heading to Chicago to start seminary. Before he left, I sat him down and made a speech worthy of a Shakespeare comedy. Only I thought for certain I was in a tragedy. I confessed to him that I still loved him. I wanted him to know that even though I knew he could never forgive me, I would be here.

He told me that I could write to him.

I wrote him every day. Sometimes twice a day.

It was my last semester of school. I stacked all of my classes into two days and substitute taught on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I could not wait to be done with school. I started making plans to leave the country again as soon as I graduated in December.

In November, Taido came home from school for Thanksgiving. At the beginning of the week, he asked me not to leave the country.

He spent much of the week at our house, and it was almost like our early dating days again.

At the end of the week, he proposed.

He said he would be back at Christmas, and that he did not want to leave town again without me.

Sometimes I still cannot believe it.

I wanted to elope. I had already planned a wedding. Now I just wanted to get married.

In the end we decided to have a wedding. On New Year’s Eve, we had a beautiful celebration and all my mother’s friends turned it into a grand potluck. My dad, who does not shy away from the truth, told the whole story of our courtship and break up at the service. I am tear-stained in every picture. But gloriously happy.

Every once in a while I still have the same recurring nightmare. I dream I am walking down the aisle to get married to someone besides Taido. Or sometimes I dream that I see Taido somewhere and I have to tell him that I am married to someone else. They are the most gut-wrenching and terrible dreams and frequently I wake up from them in tears. But one thing never changes. When I wake up in the morning, I am overwhelmed with joy to roll over and see that YES, I am married to Taido.

Awash with relief, I am grateful again to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am married to the right person.

I have often wished that our love story followed a more pure progression, and that I could take back all the pain I caused to him and others in this story. It is always humbling to remember. To the people that I hurt and for the years I took off of my mother’s life, I am still so very sorry.

Parts of this story can still creep up and cause me a lot of shame and grief on a dark day, but I believe that these events have given me a gift that somehow God knew I would need. Maybe in order to stay married, I needed to have a story that would be such a strong banisher of doubts. I needed to have to fight harder. I needed to be brought to my knees in thinking I had lost everything. Some days it is helpful still to remember that I had to weep and to beg in order to be with Taido.

On this anniversary, I am more than overjoyed to be falling asleep again in the arms of the one I love.

The picture for this story is from a styled shoot that Whitney Loibner designed and shot for us a few years ago. Back in Arkansas, I had these pictures up all over our bedroom as sweet reminders of being in love. I miss them!

The post A Story about Love appeared first on Alison Chino.

Here are the words I spoke to my parents upon receiving the only “F” of my university career: “I think one ‘F’ on a transcript shows character.”

A Story about A Very Bad Grade

I started college by majoring in psychology, but I was not one term in before I switched my major to English. The professors and students in the literature program drew me in, and every class was a confirmation that I had found my people.

I started out at a small university and I would eat lunch on Sunday afternoons at my favorite English professor’s home.

I loved everything about being in college, and it was in the lecture halls and library of this small haven that I discovered something I had completely missed in high school.

I actually liked learning.

I loved how in college, the professors treated you like an adult and classes were full of discussions and the exchange of ideas rather than calling attendance and tests over quickly memorized (and then quickly forgotten) facts and dates.

Since my memory works only slightly better than that of Dory in Finding Nemo, I had a great appreciation for a final exam in essay form rather than multiple choice. For the most part, my grades in college reflected my attitude towards learning. I still struggled through the required core math and science classes, but I managed to eek out average grades in those as well.

For practical reasons, I switched to a larger university after my term abroad, and though none of my professors invited students to lunch, I enjoyed a greater selection of courses and a much larger library, into which I almost completely disappeared during my junior year. I was still loving my literature classes and even found my obligatory grammar sections to be strangely satisfying.

But one term I landed a class with a smug professor that took me back to being fifteen years old in about ten minutes. The professor opened the first class of the semester with a speech informing us that we were all sure to fail his class, that there was no way we would be up for the reading and writing load of this course.

The class was 18th Century British Novel and I was expecting to enjoy it. Though I was duly intimidated by his opening speech, I thought that his words were probably just a stronger than necessary warning for the frat boys in my class.

I was mistaken.

In the next several months, this professor worked hard to make sure his prediction of our failure came true. His favorite form of torture was a pop quiz over the reading material. He said he gave the quizzes to see if we were keeping up with the reading, but it did not matter how much time one spent pouring over Tristram Shandy, rarely could you answer his questions. In retrospect, it probably was not even that hard for our professor to find obscure details in 800 page novels to use as impossible quiz questions. Due to my countless hours in the library, I was not ever behind on the reading, but I still failed every quiz.

After a few weeks I formed a study group with four other students in the class and we would try to get inside the professor’s head as we asked each other questions about the reading material.

Our grades improved a little, and near the end of the term I had managed to drag my grade up to a B, making up for failing the detailed pop quizzes on the essay tests and papers.

But my attitude towards the teacher got worse with every class. He scribbled ugly remarks all over my papers and I could not get over how he seemed to enjoy giving bad grades more than teaching the material.

It’s baffling to me how people are capable of turning a small amount of authority into a crazy power trip. This year I had the unfortunate opportunity to watch a man who gives driving tests at the Arkansas State Police Department who was exacting some kind of vengeance with the world onto nervous teenagers. I imagine it to be such a miserable existence, trying to make everyone else pay for your disappointment with life.

My English professor was on just this kind of power trip, and even more than I wanted to prove him wrong and make a good grade, I wanted to be done with his class. He was making me hate my new found love for learning and even my own major, and I was frustrated with myself for letting him have that much control over me.

I wanted to be released from his presence.

My dad was planning an early December family trip to Colorado to take advantage of the early snowfall at pre-season ski rates. A favorite resort was offering a “Ski Free” week in order to motivate folks to come out early.

It worked. Because he was motivated. And so was I.

I just had one little problem. I had seven exams the week they were going.

I talked to all my professors and arranged to take my exams early so I could go. They all agreed, except for one.

Dr. 18th Century British Novel.

I went home and did some calculations. Then I went back to him and told him that if he would give me a zero on the final, I would still earn a C in the class. I asked him if he would be willing to give me a zero?

Oh no. He reserved the right to flunk me in the class if I did not show up for the final exam, and of course, he would be exercising that right. He felt certain that I did not want to throw away my whole semester’s work just to go skiing.

I left his office without telling him what I would do, but of course, I went skiing.

I think I halfway hoped he wouldn’t flunk me, but inside, I knew he would. And he did. After Christmas, I received my grades in the mail and there was the “F,” a super ugly glare on the page.

Now I had a decision. I still needed a course to fulfill that credit. I could take the same class again, which would replace my “F” with a new grade. Or I could keep my “F” and take a different course.

I could not bear to sit another semester with Dr. Smug and have him lording it over me that I was having to repeat his class. A whole term of wasted class time stung more to my heart than the “F.”

I took 19th Century British Novel with a different professor to fulfill the credit, which turned out to be one of favorite classes of my university career.

It may simply be an elaborate game of mind gymnastics mind that helped me finally decide that I ended with the upper hand over Dr. 18th Century British Novel, but whatever the case, I felt that I had won by choosing not to retake his class.

Even though I left university with the black “F” on my transcript, I did not lose my love for learning or even for British novels.

I discovered Fanny Burney in 18th Century British Novel and went on to read and love the rest of her works. To this day Evelina is one of my favorite novels of all time, regardless of all the quizzes I failed while reading it.

I got a whole extra class full of learning as a result of being flunked that December.

Plus I had a great week in the mountains.

I can still feel the wind in my face skiing down a favorite run with my brother, and my triumph at imagining the professor’s surprise at my empty seat on exam day.

The post A Story about A Very Bad Grade appeared first on Alison Chino.

In 2010, my husband and son, Taido and Cole, had a trip planned to go hiking in Switzerland for Cole’s 13th birthday. The night before the trip, there was a small problem.

This was first published on my blog that same autumn.

A Story about A Passport

We were all leaving town on Friday morning, Taido and Cole for Switzerland and the rest of us (along with my mom) for my sister’s house in Wheaton, Illinois.  By Thursday afternoon, I still hadn’t packed a thing, which was bothering Mary Polly a lot.

WHEN are we going to PACK?

She was on me all week.  Taido started packing a little on Wednesday, having Cole try on coats and sweaters, even a button up shirt for a possible dressy night out.  We were all laughing at Cole, walking around dressed in one of Taido’s shirts and yelling,

Am I really going mountain climbing in THIS?

The spirit of anticipation grew all day on Thursday, but we still had soccer and other after school activities to get through.  I sat at Simon’s soccer game Thursday evening with my parents.  Mom and I planned our departure the next morning for 6am.  I told her as we walked off the field that I would call her if I woke up earlier and wanted her to be ready sooner.  She laughed.

I drove home from soccer, threw Simon in the tub and started packing.  I think it was about 8pm when I walked into my room and saw Taido’s face of total dismay.  He was holding his passport.  He looked up at me, panic on his face,

Alison, my passport has expired.

I said nothing.  I’m sure I just stood there with a look of horror.

Then he said,

Yours is too!

I still said nothing, unsure of how my passport’s status was relevant.

What do I do??

The shower in our bathroom was running.  Cole was showering so he wouldn’t have to the next morning, because the next morning he was getting on a plane.

Taido ran downstairs and closed himself in the office, immediately getting on the internet and his phone in what I was certain would be a dead-end road to find a solution to an unsolvable problem.

I gathered Mary Polly, Ben and Simon into a room.  We closed the door and got down on our knees.  I said through tears,

Guys, we have a big problem.

A problem only God can solve.

Daddy has just discovered that his passport is expired.

He cannot leave the country tomorrow.

I’m afraid he’s going to have to cancel his trip.  He’s going to be very sad.

And embarrassed.

This is going to be very hard.

We just need to pray.

We all prayed.  We begged God, saying we knew He could do anything.

Even the impossible.

We prayed that if they couldn’t go now, that they could still get to go one day.

We prayed that somehow the week could be salvaged, that we could enjoy being together as a family.

I cried and cried as Mary Polly prayed, her heart so full of longing for Cole and Taido.  She knows that in two years her turn is coming.  She is already planning it.  I think she could feel what it would be like to plan it and then not get to go.

Ben prayed with tears.

We all felt devastated, and we hadn’t even told Cole yet.

Pretty soon, he was out of the shower and curious where everyone was.  He found us shuttered into Mary Polly’s room, stuck his head in and said,

I know this is a strange time, but I’m all packed and I’m wondering if I can play media?

Ummm, honey, I said,

Come sit down.  We have to tell you something.

We filled Cole in.  His attitude was honestly pretty good.  I was amazed.

He wanted to know if they would still get to go someday.  He was worried about how much money we had lost.

We said another prayer for a miracle, before I went downstairs to check on Taido.  I asked Mary Polly to read Simon his stories.

Taido was telling someone something with a lot of desperation.  I peeked in at him.  He paused long enough to tell me to get packed.  NOW.

I went upstairs and called Mother.

Mama, we have a hiccup.  I don’t even know how to tell you this, but

Taido’s passport is expired.

Gasps on her end.

I think that we are going to drive to Chicago tonight.  I’m sure it is a fool’s errand, but I can just tell from Taido’s face that he isn’t willing to give up yet.

I think I just have to be willing to do this for him.  Even if it is all for nothing.  I’m sorry.  I think we’re leaving soon.  I’d still love for you to go.  But I understand if you don’t want to.

She packed her bag and Daddy brought her over.

Taido was on and off of the phone.  He hadn’t really explained anything to us.  I just knew we were going.  I threw stuff in bags as quickly as I could.  I was trying to be calm.  Mary Polly and Ben packed their stuff, as well as Simon’s, who was now asleep.  Then they started loading the car.

Taido finally got off the phone and called us together for a family meeting that went a little something like this:

Taido: Cole, you’re going to stay here with Grandpapa and get on the plane in the morning.  The rest of us are going to drive all night to a Federal Building in Chicago, where I have an appointment at 10am to get my passport renewed.  Then I’ll meet Cole at the airport in Chicago and we’ll get on our next plane together.  We need to get packed and loaded as quickly as possible.

Cole: I would rather just come with you guys.  The airport in Chicago is huge, Dad.  I don’t know how I’ll find you.

Taido: Cole, when you get off that plane in Chicago, I will be standing there waiting for you.

Me: (inside) Don’t say that!  How can you be saying that!!??

Cole:  What if you’re not?

Taido: I will.

Me: Umm, it’s a valid question.

Taido: If I’m not there, call us.  We’ll tell you what to do?  Okay, let’s get moving.

What followed was a mad flurry of packing and picking up the house.  Mother threw mine and Taido’s uneaten dinner down the drain, Cole and Daddy loaded the car top carrier with all of our bags, and Ben and Mary Polly packed the car with pillows, books, blankets and water bottles.

We were ready in a matter of minutes.  I kissed Cole goodbye and pleaded with my dad to do everything in his power to help him feel good about getting on that plane the next day.

As Daddy got in the car, he yelled out to Mother,

Hey Julie!  If it was me riding in that car, I’d be making some jokes!

Leave it to Daddy to break the tension a little as he’s driving away.

We moved a sleeping Simon into his car seat and drove off into the night.

I tried to breathe deeply as we pulled out of town.  My thoughts settled into a repetition of two main themes.

1. We need prayer.

2. We are stupid.

We need prayer because it is going to take a miracle for this to all work out, but how can I ask people to pray when we have done something so incredibly foolish.  I am losing my mind that we have not looked at our passports before now?  Why did we not even pull them out a week ago?  Just a little earlier.  Even earlier today, because now we are driving with just barely enough time to get there.

A constant stream of thoughts like these were swirling around for a while, but finally We need prayer won out over We are stupid, and I pecked out a sad little broken message to a few people, begging them to drop to their knees for us.

The response was swift.  Messages came back breathing comfort into my soul.  Instead of clenching my teeth and dreading the long night ahead, I was able to sink into my seat and sleep.

We each took three hour shifts, easily staying awake when it was our turn.  I couldn’t believe how I was able to sleep when I wasn’t driving and how I was able to focus when I drove.  I listened to my standard driving music when it was my turn to drive.  As I sang along, my hope for the possibility of everything working out grew with each mile we drove.

I felt like it was all going to be okay.  I prayed,

Whatever happens, Lord.

Trust.

Peace.

Still frantically trying to get to the office by the time it opened, but peace that no matter what happened, we would all be okay.

It was dark and rainy as we pulled into the city at 8am.  We dropped Taido at a pharmacy a couple of blocks from the federal building to get his passport photos taken.  Then we parked and went into a Corner Bakery to have breakfast and wait.  He got his photos quickly and made his way over to wait.  He was the first one inside when they opened at 9.  He was at a desk getting his paperwork processed at 9:10.

Meanwhile, we sat for as long as we could stand inside the Corner Bakery.  After our bagels and oatmeal were long gone, we decided to head towards the train station.  Taido’s cell phone was off inside the federal building, so we had no idea how long he would be.  Mom decided she could go ahead and head out to my sister’s on the commuter train with Ben, Mary Polly and Simon.  They would enjoy the train ride and that way, I’d be free to wait on Taido patiently.

It was about a mile to the station.  The kids were freezing as they were in their Arkansas clothes, with everything else locked up in the car top carrier.  We laughed as we walked quickly to the station.  Ben kept pointing at buildings and saying, Is that the Sears tower?

Well, what about that one?

Is that the Sears tower?

Me: BEN!  Just keep up!

Then he would run smack dab into a billboard in the middle of the giant sidewalk and fall down on the ground.  All on purpose.  He is a walking slapstick act.

Somehow, we finally got him and everyone else to the train station.  I told them goodbye and then ran back to our car to pay the meter that by now was about to expire.

While I was running, I ran into this giant demonstration.  They blocked my way to the car for about four blocks, so I had to stop and let them pass.  They were all dressed in red, white and blue and yelling FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM! I never figured out what they were demonstrating.  It was all so odd.  I just stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, the wind blowing and people yelling.  I pulled out my phone.  Mom had just texted that they were on the train, about to leave.  Then Taido called.

He was going to get the passport, but he didn’t know when.

The lady who processed his paperwork said to him as she finished up,

Are you going to come back and pick this up or are you going to wait?

Oh, I’m going to wait.

Well.

It will be two to eight hours.

He said,

I don’t have two hours.

She must have seen the desperation on his face or the tears filling his eyes,

because she got a little scared.

She became very brusque.  Very firm.  She said that yesterday had been a terrible day because someone went nuts on her and that was not about to happen to her again.

Two. To. Eight. Hours.

Bye, Bye.

So he had to walk out and wait.  It was now 10:10am.

The plane was leaving at 12:50pm.

And more importantly, Cole’s plane was landing at 12:10pm.

I made my way to the car, fed the meter again and sat down in the driver’s seat to pray.

At 10:31, he called me.  He had a passport.

One day, when I am in heaven, I plan to watch the film of how that passport made its way through that building so quickly.  I believe we’ll be able to do things like that.  I really do.  If God had personally handed Taido a passport down from heaven, I could not be more amazed than I am today that he had it in his hands by 10:31 yesterday morning.

He ran to the car.  We flew out to the airport, on a highway free of traffic.  He cried all the way there.  So grateful.  At this point he told me that he was probably going to have to buy a new ticket to Switzerland because when he didn’t get on the plane with Cole he forfeited his entire ticket.  At least, that’s what they told him on the phone the night before.

When he checked in, he discovered that Cole’s plane was going to be too late to make their connection, so the attendant rerouted both of them on a new plane straight to Heathrow instead of to New York.  He called me when he had their new boarding passes in hand, unsure of whether or not he had paid anything extra.

I decided not to worry about it, but in my heart I know that it would be just like God to not only hand him the passport but save him having to buy a new ticket as well.  His Grace to us is just that rich.  I don’t understand it.  I know we don’t deserve it.   I don’t know how it works, but I am overwhelmed by the truth of it.

When Cole walked off his plane, Taido was standing there.

Why did God enable Taido to keep a promise that he may or may not should have even made?

I don’t know.

But it fills my heart to bursting that He did.

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

PS. Cole and Taido went on to have a wonderful week in Switzerland!

The post A Story about A Passport appeared first on Alison Chino.

This story about my daddy was previously published as guest post on Sarabeth Jones’ beautiful storytelling site, The Dramatic.

A Story about My Daddy

Some people take trips to the beach for their family vacations.

Others go to Disneyworld.

But me. In exchange for the beach or for Disney, I got mountains.

And even though the mountains sometimes mean misery, I wouldn’t trade a whole childhood full of beach trips for even one of my mountain adventures with Daddy.

My daddy started taking me with him to the mountains before I was even old enough to appreciate them.  Not just the hills we have in Arkansas, though he took me to those too, but the big mountains.

The Colorado Rockies.

Skiing in the winter.

Camping in the summer.

He has been leading backpacking trips in the summertime in Colorado for many, many years. He took a group out to Colorado for the first time when he was in his twenties. They went as part of a guided wilderness tour.

To say that Daddy struggles with not being the one in charge is a bit of an understatement. But he would tell you that he only takes charge to fill the vacuum of idiocy around him. This was the case on this wilderness tour.

When Daddy discovered that the leader was lost, he took the map away and told him to start heading west.

“How do you know which way is west?” the leader asked.

“Well, for as long as I’ve been alive, the sun has been setting in the west.”

He has a bit of a smart mouth, my dad.

After that week, Daddy lead all his own trips to Colorado.

I vividly remember the first time he took our whole family backpacking.  I was about 9, which would have made my siblings 8 and 4. He and my mom invited another family with three kids similar in ages to us to come along.

My mom, my sister, brother and I drove out with the other family in a van.  Let’s call them the Johnsons. We were to meet up with my dad in Aspen as he was already in the area and had just finished leading a trip for students.

“Where in Aspen is he going to meet us?” Mr. Johnson wanted to know.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry, Mr. Johnson,” my sister replied, though he was not speaking to her, “Daddy will find us.”

From the outset, it was clear to me even at the age of 9 that our family was different from the Johnsons.  Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were very organized, predictable people.  For starters, when we stopped at McDonald’s on the way out, Mr. Johnson made us all tell him what we wanted to eat before we ever got out of the van.  Then he proceeded to give the blessing for the meal, again, before we ever left the van.

How this poor man ever got hooked up with my father is baffling to me.  Lord, help him, I thought as he penned my cheeseburger and fries on his pad of paper. Meanwhile my sister, Anna, who is always up for a power struggle, demanded to actually VIEW THE MENU.

We pulled into Aspen after driving all night, and we had not been out of the van for long before I heard my daddy’s whistle.  Anna and I both turned our heads to see our dad’s week-in-the-woods unshaven face coming toward us across a grassy park.  We took off running.

“How did you find us?” Mr and Mrs. Johnson wanted to know.

Daddy smirked, “You’re not exactly inconspicuous.  A group with a mess of kids this loud is hard to miss!”

We jumped back into the van, this time with Daddy at the wheel, and he drove us to base camp.

Now Anna and I had both been on shorter backpacking trips with Daddy, but this was to be our first real Colorado Rocky Mountain Trip.  We were going to carry stuff on our backs for a week, even our food!  And we were going to climb a for real mountain, a fourteener!

We went through the agonizing process of loading our packs, determining who was going to carry what.  And what was being left behind.  Each child had a pack full of our clothes, a sleeping bag and a sleeping pad, so the adults had to carry everything else.

My dad looked like a pack animal.  It was insane.  It was gear piled on top of gear, layers and layers of junk roped together.  On the very back of the huge pile of stuff was a large cooking pot he called the Mega Pot. You had to be careful on the trail next to Daddy because his pack was so deep that he could easily whack you unknowingly with the Mega Pot when he turned sideways.

The first day on the trail is always a rough one.  A combination of the long drive to Colorado and the adjustment to the altitude generally equals a lot of whining.  We all began to complain about the hike and our heavy packs.

“What!  What is that whining?  You have to hike an hour with a good attitude to get the surprise!”  called Daddy’s voice from the back of the group.  (Daddy almost always puts the slowest person in the front and brings up the rear when hiking.)

“What surprise!?!” six voices yelled in unison.

“Well, if I told ya, it wouldn’t be a surprise now, would it?”

Everything is a game to Daddy.  I remember when Anna and one of the Johnson boys both got down on their knees to drink from a creek, he said, “There’s a legend in Colorado that if a boy and a girl drink from this creek at the same time, they will fall in love and get married one day.”

Of course, I teased Anna mercilessly about that drink all week.  “Hey Anna! Your boyfriend is kinda lagging behind!  Maybe you should offer to carry some of his stuff.”

Even with treats and games and promises up his sleeves, Daddy had trouble coaxing us all up the mountain.  We finally stopped and set up camp and all the Johnsons fell into their tent and went to sleep in broad daylight.

Daddy made dinner and woke Mr. and Mrs. Johnson up to eat.  He told them they had to get their kids up to eat or they were going to get altitude sickness, but they refused.  I can hardly blame them.  No one wants to wake up sleeping children.  But then, of course, they were up later in the night, throwing up from altitude sickness.

With the Johnsons still not feeling great, it took us a while to get moving the next morning, but that did not stop Daddy from pressing us forward, “If you start hiking, you’ll warm up and feel better.”

We didn’t hike up as far as he had hoped on Day 1, which would set us back significantly, and then on Day 2, it began to rain.

Now it’s not unusual for a mountain storm to blow up out of nowhere in Colorado, especially in the afternoon.  These days my husband is quick to get us off of peaks and passes by noon because of the dangers of being exposed up high in wind and lightning.  But those storms usually roll by quickly.  They are wild and crazy, but over in a flash.

But this rain we had on Day 2 of our hike was no fast and furious mountain storm.

This rain was settled in to stay for a while. It was mud-making, bone-drenching rain.  We hiked for a while in it before everyone’s misery won out and Daddy covered us like a pile of shivering, wet puppies with a tarp while he set up the tents.  In the rain.

Then we all piled into our tents and he made us sweet skillet biscuits and hot chocolate.  In the rain.

It tasted like heaven.

We gobbled it all down while Daddy cleaned everything up. In the rain.

The next day we woke up to more rain, and while the Johnsons were saying that perhaps we had hiked quite enough, Daddy started moving parts of camp further up the trail on his own. Quietly making several trips back and forth, he would slowly move us along.  He didn’t really communicate his intentions.  We would emerge from our tent to see that the rest of camp had moved and so we would have to move with it.

I really have no idea how many days this went on before he announced to us that tomorrow was the big day.

The Peak Climb.

It was the day we would climb to the top of the mountain.  We could leave our packs at camp, so no packing up in the morning. We could just get up and hike.  He would carry lunch and all the water we would need.

He was going to have to wake us up fairly early though, because it was going to be a long hike.

I wish I could have overheard the conversation that was happening in the Johnsons’ tent that night.  I remember thinking of them as sort of lightweights, but honestly, the fact that Mr. Johnson had not taken a tent stake to my father’s head at this point shows an amazing amount of restraint.

Every morning before we hiked we would pray for the day and Mr. Johnson would try hard to smile and he would say, “Let’s pray that it won’t rain today, ok kids?”

And then Daddy, God bless him, he would say,

“Actually, why don’t we pray that the good Lord will help us to have a good attitude no matter what the weather is today.”

On the day of our Peak Climb, we got up while it was still dark and started hiking to get warm.  Daddy fed us bites of breakfast and gave us treats from his bottomless pockets.

And we tried.  We really did.  But the rain came and drenched us again. And we were all so very tired.

Never one to admit defeat, Daddy seized the opportunity to point out some Really Great Rocks. He had us all come over and sit down on the rocks.  He made a speech about how we had made it all the way to THIS ROCK!

“I’m so proud of you all!  Here are your prizes.”

More treats from his pockets.

“And I’m especially proud of what great attitudes you’ve all had today!”

And then.

“You know what, I think we can probably get all the way back to the van today if I make a couple of trips with all the stuff.  What do you think? Should we head for home?”

Relief like you’ve never seen in your life washed over the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.  My mother smiled.

On the way home, when we stopped at McDonald’s for dinner, we all just went in willy nilly and ordered our happy meals.

We never did go anywhere again with the Johnsons.  They went to Disneyworld for their next family vacation.

The post A Story about My Daddy appeared first on Alison Chino.

This story was first published in September 2008 when my oldest son, Cole, started middle school. Actually, this story was also published in a story collection. I, of course, told no one about this because that was before I could say out loud that I Am A Writer.

Tread Lightly When It Comes To Middle School

In general I have not been that mom who could not bear it when her kid moved on from a stage in life.  Not that there is anything wrong with that mom.  In fact at times I have thought that there must be something wrong with me because I am walking away from the first day of kindergarten or some other major milestone without crying.  But I have tried to just celebrate whatever stage of life we are in.  I loved my babies as babies, but I do not still wish they were babies.  I embraced having three toddlers at home when Cole, Mary Polly and Ben were all under five.  I also embraced napping on the couch and never showering. I appreciated that we didn’t have places we had to be at certain times. And that I pretty much had complete control over their choices in friends.  And for that matter, their choices about everything.

Then Cole started kindergarten, and I was excited that we were done being all at home and had entered a new era.  Elementary school.  It seemed like every year after that I had another child starting kindergarten.  And even last week when I walked Ben to second grade, I thought Oh my goodness, it will be just a minute before I am walking Simon to a classroom.

But this year there has been a little kink in my plan to always embrace the next stage of my children’s lives.  One of them finally reached a stage that I just wasn’t excited about.  Middle School.

Cole started last week, and he is actually going to the same building every day that I went to for my first year of junior high.  He’s playing the trumpet.  I played the trumpet.  It’s his first year to have a locker.  I still cry when I think about trying to remember my locker combination.

For the first few days of school, I drove Cole there and picked him up, but now he’s riding the bus.  This is a much better arrangement, because it prevents my breaking out into hives when I drive down there and am forced to remember my middle school days.

Last spring we went down to the school for orientation and I was walking the halls with Cole and I said,”Yep, Cole, right there.  There’s the spot where Mama had her very first nervous breakdown.  That’s right.  That desk there in what was then Mrs. Moore’s class.”

Cole looked at me with an expression that clearly did not mean, I feel you mom. 

Mrs. Moore did not understand the plight of an eleven year old girl who is being made fun of daily by that boy right there across from her.  Otherwise she would have used her almighty powers to move him to the other side of the room.

When I say I was being made fun of, I do not mean the kind where people say to you, “Oh he is just flirting with you.”

I know about the kind of teasing that is really just flirting.  That’s what he did to OTHER girls.  But me.  I was mocked mercilessly. As the butt of all his jokes, this boy made me look like the complete idiot that of course I already believed I was.

Because I could not EVER EVER get my locker open on the first try.  Or manage to get to class with everything I needed.  Or come up with a science project that would please the likes of Mrs. Moore.

Usually I could get all the way home before I would go inside and cry.  I would take deep breaths as I walked the slow road from the bus stop to my house, and up the stairs to my blessed bed with the Holly Hobbie bedspread.  You can make it. I would tell myself.

But one day, I couldn’t make it.  I didn’t even make it out of third period.  I actually hyperventilated I cried so hard.  Which finally made people take notice of the fact that I was being HOUNDED by a MEAN boy for all of science class.

And here’s the thing about middle school for a girl like me.  You don’t ever want anyone to take notice.  Your parents, yes.  And your close friends, maybe, if you have any.  But not the rest of the world.  To the rest of the world, I was just trying to be invisible.

The mean boy got in trouble.  It was a long time ago so he even got spanked.  Which I NEVER LIVED DOWN.  Mrs. Moore finally moved him, disdainfully.  And I spent the rest of the year trying harder and harder to disappear into the nonexistent spaces between the lockers.  Seriously.

So when Cole and I got home from his orientation, he told his dad that I was completely crazy and could his dad please take him to all of the rest of his middle school events instead of mom.  And when we filled Taido in, he said with TOTAL nonchalance, “That’s funny.  When I was in 7th grade, I got spanked for making fun of a girl until she cried.” And I have to tell you that I lost just a little bit of respect for him right then and there.  Respect he will not regain until he finds that poor girl and apologizes.  Which he cannot do, because he does not remember her name.  They never do.

The good news is that I don’t think that Cole is going to repeat my middle school experience.  And I know this not just because he is a boy.  I know it because on the first day of school I picked him up and when he got in the car he was chewing on something.  So I said, “Hey, what’s in your mouth?”

To which he replied, “My locker combination.”

And because he is the kind of boy who would actually EAT the only piece of paper he has with that sacred information on it, I had to give him a lecture right then and there about NEVER making fun of girls.

The post A Story about Middle School appeared first on Alison Chino.

Don’t worry. This story has a happy ending. I feel like I owe you that much after yesterday’s story. And if you stay tuned through all twelve days, I also promise to redeem my father from Christmas Gambler to Mountain Hero. Deal?

So like I said, a happy ending.

I, myself, really enjoy happy endings, so I am going to tell you right now that at some point in this tale of financial woe, we pay off all our debts and become awash with financial freedom! Yay!

Read on, ye weary pilgrim.

A Story about Money

The first fight of our marriage was about money.

We were not two days into our honeymoon before I discovered that my engagement ring had been bought on credit.

I felt that I had been tricked.

It was as if I had not really been given a gift of a ring, but instead I had been swindled into a partnership in which I would have to help pay for something that I did not even pick out.

I cried and cried. I asked if the jewelry store would be willing to take it back.

Back then I was even more given to the dramatic that I am now. I was really difficult to live with.

Nowadays, I think that it is much more common to discuss important little things like, How do you feel about debt? before you actually get married.

But this was almost twenty years ago. We were young and love conquers all and such. Also, we were only engaged for a month, so some of the traditional premarital discussions got skipped in the frenzy.

After the honeymoon, we packed up and moved to Chicago where Taido had already started seminary the previous term. We moved into our tiny “Married Student Housing” apartment. It was January.

That it was January is not really important for this story, but I try not to ever miss an opportunity to point out that I moved with my husband to the coldest place I have ever lived at the coldest part of the year. It is a banner of my undying love that I find the need to wave at every possible occasion.

So, it was January.

Taido went back to school and a part time job as a security guard and I quickly acquired an exciting position in a mail room. And here is where young love really is wonderful, because even though times were tough–like really tough–we were all caught up in making a life together. We had been apart and now we were together. The novelty of sleeping in the same bed and not saying goodbye on the phone at night was enough to cover all those petty little worries about money.

But they were there. Lying like icebergs under the sea were our differences about money, the fact that we did not have much of it and the accumulation of debts that made a bill for an engagement ring look like a trip to the candy shop.

We both knew that this season of Taido’s being in graduate school was just that, a season. We knew it would one day be over, and with the end of tuition payments would perhaps also be an end to our absurdly high cost of living in Chicago.

So we did the best we could. I got a new job in a bookstore and Taido got to leave his security job to work in a children’s home where he could get more studying done at night. We paid the bills and we put our groceries on a credit card. If I thought about it, it would keep me up at night, so I tried not to think about it.

The season did finally end. Taido graduated from seminary in June of 1997.

We had no idea where we were going next, we had accumulated a mountain of debt and I was about to stop working and have a baby.

Things looked really bleak. But we were still young and in love. And in July, we became a family.

Taido spent long hours painting houses that summer, a job he had done in college. Near the end of August, he accepted a job at a church in Seattle.

Taido drove all of our stuff in a truck from Chicago to Seattle, and I flew out to meet him with Cole. A couple of months later we did something that you can’t do in the US anymore. We bought our first house without a penny to our names.  Even then it was a miracle.

And so we began a new life in a new place. It was wonderful. Taido was not working nights and there were no more exams or papers due. I stayed home with our little one and we spent Taido’s day off going on long drives to hike the emerald green forests of the Pacific Northwest.

We knew we had a big hole to climb out of financially but we felt that life was stable now, and we would naturally begin to gain on the crushing debt.

Four years and two more babies later, we realized that we were making no real headway on our debt. And what’s more, the funky loan we had to get to buy our townhouse, was at an adjustable rate, so it kept adjusting. Also, it turned out that Seattle was not really that much less expensive than Chicago.

I should admit at this point that I was taking a bit of a “head in the sand” approach to our finances. For the first seven years of our marriage, I considered my willingness to periodically spout off opinions about our financial situation as a way of helping.

My encouraging missives ran along two themes: Debt and Giving.

We should not be in debt.

Debt is evil.

We should give away more money away this year.

I know times are tight, but we are not going hungry. We should be helping the people who are.

Sometimes I would quote Proverbs:

He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done. (19:17)

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. (22:7)

Poor Taido. He was too kind to quote it right back at me:

Better to live in a desert  than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife. (21:19)

I think I did mention that I was (am) hard to live with.

At some point after my third baby, I awoke from my cloudy, sleep-deprived haze and realized that it was unfair to leave Taido to handle our finances and then to criticize him for things not being the way I wanted.

I think the discussion that served to wake me from this slumber revolved around a mission project I was hoping we would give some money to and his telling me that we did not have the money to give. He agreed that the cause was worthy. He just didn’t feel like we could afford it.

Between my DNA and my upbringing, I have been gifted with a childlike belief that there will always be enough to share. (See A Story about A Cookie) And what’s more, that it is when you go ahead and share before you see that there is enough, that you get to cash in on the promise of the enough-ness.

I believe that it was out of a heart of love that I said to Taido, “Has our God not always been faithful? Does He not provide everything we need? How can we withhold this money from this project?”

He agreed to give the money, and the following week, I KID YOU NOT, we received a gift for the exact amount that we had given away. It is important that I tell you that crazy stuff like that happened all the time in this story. It’s important because so far I am telling you this story like it was all about Taido and me, but the story only has a happy ending because God showed up all along the way.

This particular incident served as the impetus for conversations about our finances that we should have been having all along. We were both finally ready to do something about our debt problem and our just-getting-by problem and my head-in-the-sand problem.

Over the next month, our evenings were spent digging through the piles of accumulated statements, bills, requests for money and receipts. I resolved to become more involved with the finances now that I was done having babies. (ahem, another story)

During my hiatus from paying attention to anything financial, a little invention called Online Bill Pay had become a part of our world, and I had thus far refused to learn how to work this new-fangled way of doing money. Additionally, our checkbook was now on the computer instead of in a register. It now seems so funny to me how much I resisted these changes because today if a situation requires that I actually write a paper check, I become indignant at the inconvenience.

But back then, the clicking and signing into accounts with passwords I couldn’t keep straight were threatening to undue me.  But I was more determined than ever before to figure out this puzzle.

I became obsessed.

I started reading books about money and watching that show on PBS about finance while I was nursing. I printed out all the verses in the Bible that had anything to do with money and posted them all over our family room/office.  I posed about three thousand questions to our friends who I considered to be Very Smart About Money. They did crazy things like Budget and Plan. And even Save.

Taido created Budget Worksheets in Excel that I played with constantly, trying to hit the right balance between spending, giving, saving and paying off debt.

Once a month I sat down and paid all the bills and analyzed all our data. I would take those numbers and get down on my knees and beg God to take away all our debt.

Just give us one big sweeping amount of money, God. And we’ll pay it all off and then we will be happy givers and savers forever and ever, amen!

We did not get to pay off all our debt in one blow. We set a goal of paying it off in five years. We actually paid it off in three.

How?

By being obsessed. If someone with a fraction of natural financial knowledge applied the amount of energy that I did during those years to finances, they would probably be rolling in money by the end of it. That is just true. I’ve always hated it but it’s been true all my life. I had to study so hard and fight for better than average marks in school, while my brother and sister excelled in academics without even trying. My sister can still recite all of our ACT scores and mine sits well below hers and Peter’s, though I took the test more times than the both of them put together.

But friends, I am living proof that even a small brain is capable of great obsession.

I had two goals. I wanted to pay off debt and I wanted to give more money away.

Every time we sat down with our budget, I was asking what we could change to increase those two numbers. The paying down number and the giving number. We were giving ten percent of our income away and I wanted to be giving twenty.

And I was willing to eat beans and rice to make it happen. We cut whatever we could . We drove one car. We did not have cable. We did not eat out. We did not shop. If I thought about buying something, I would ask myself if I would rather be $20 closer to paying off my debt or have this new purse. If I would keep wearing this coat instead of buying a new one, could I afford to buy a coat for someone else? Because I was obsessed, it was not often that I could be knocked off of my mantra to Pay Off Debt, Give More Away.

I was constantly moving money around and transferring our debt to multiple zero introductory rate credit cards to get ahead by a few months without paying interest. I had a calendar just for writing down payment reminders and warnings that it was time to move the money again. Anytime we received any kind of money that was unplanned, a gift or a tax refund, we would give a portion of it away and then send the rest straight to the credit cards.

I’m pretty sure that at times my obsession was even unhealthy. Even an idol.

My salvation was that I was humbled by how long we had been living on borrowed money.

Also, Taido is the steady sea to my spurting fountain. In this project, as in all things in our marriage, he would talk me down from my craziest moments. It is because of him that we were still able to actually Have Some Fun in the midst of my obsession. We still went camping and had birthday parties and other things that were in danger of being cut by my budget axe.

The years it took us to pay off our debt were not without some setbacks. Taido changed jobs. We moved back to Arkansas. We tried to rent out our townhouse in order to cover some of the loss of moving and starting over, but then our tenant set the townhouse on fire.

Still throughout the changes, the obsession was not forgotten.  And in addition to wanting to be out of debt, we were determined not to incur any new debt. Besides our house in Arkansas, we did not finance anything else. We intentionally moved within walking distance of the elementary school our kids would attend and the church where Taido would work, so we could get by with one car. Once we were moved into our new house, we pulled our Budget Worksheets back out and asked ourselves those same questions.

Where can we cut so we can pay off more debt and give more away?

When Taido got a raise, we divided it between those numbers. Even while we were paying off debt, I would fight to increase our giving, even if it was just by a half of a percent.

In the long run, our move to back to Arkansas meant a decent cut in cost of living so we were able to gain on our debt a little faster than we had originally planned.

Our friends who were Very Smart About Money turned out to be very smart about a lot of things, and they encouraged us to plan and dream beyond the point of actually paying off our debt.  Taido and I had never done anything special for our anniversary, so we decided that after we paid off our debt, we would save money in order to take a trip together.

In 2002, after our move back to Arkansas, we set a goal of going to Italy for our ten year anniversary.

In the spring of 2004, we received our usual tax refund check. After we gave some of it away, we used the rest of it to pay off the last of our debt. We had about a hundred dollars leftover which we spent on having a Debt Free Party with our kids. They were still very young, but we wanted to mark the occasion in some way.

The following December, Taido and I celebrated our ten year anniversary in Italy.

Over the next nine years, we remodeled our kitchen, discovered that we were not quite done having babies, took two more trips to Europe, bought a new car without financing it and increased our giving percentage to 20 percent of our income. Oh, and I went on my first cruise.

I feel like I want to tack on some little disclaimer saying that we are not rich people or tell you that in Arkansas we never moved from our three bedroom, 1800 square foot house because I don’t want you to get the wrong impression when I say that we achieved “financial freedom.”

But the truth is that we are rich.

Even now, both of us jobless and living in Scotland, and starting back where we began our marriage in 1994, with Taido in school. We are not young anymore, but we are still in love.

We have been so very blessed. We are still eating a lot of beans and rice, but right this minute, we are debt free. And every month, by the grace of God and because of the generosity of others, we still get to ask ourselves, “What can we save and what can we give away?”

The post A Story about Money appeared first on Alison Chino.