Because our ranch home contains 10,000 square feet, we have to make sure it gets cleaned on a regular basis.  Chickens, cows and horses are one thing – “dust bunnies” are quite another.

However, deep cleaning is not very high on the list of “things I like to do” for boys…or men for that matter.  Take for instance the fact most guys must learn how to put their underwear in a basket once they get married.  And many of us have stories of college dorm filth that would make your skin crawl.  I had a buddy who grew a plastic swimming pool full of instant potatoes for an entire semester…on a bet or whim.  I don’t know which is worse.

Growing up in a family of eight required frequent and spontaneous “clean machine,” as my father called it.  When mom left the house for an hour or two, he would rally the troops and urge us onward, with brooms, brushes, vacuum cleaners and black plastic bags.  “We’re gonna make this place shine like the top of the Chrysler building!” he’d should like Carol Burnett in the musical Annie.  We obeyed, but rarely with quite enough determination to please his drill-sergeant persona.

Life is a messy proposition.  Things get dirty.  We can’t go around with plastic on all of our furniture.  We can’t invite people into our homes without getting dirt on our floors.   And so we must make time to clean up the mess.  It’s part of the deal.

This is one of the many things we hope to instill at Whetstone Boys Ranch:

Clean up your mess.  We all make one.  But it’s our choice as to whether we live in it for the rest of our life.

Boy number two arrived at Whetstone Boys Ranch on Monday, January 23, 2012.

Of course, we don’t call him “boy number two.”  He’s not a number.  In fact, one thing that makes Whetstone Boys Ranch stand out is our low staff-to-boy ratio.  We stand committed to having one staff member for every 3 boys.  This is what allows us to provide the kind of Christian male mentoring that so many of today’s boys lack.

I would even be so bold as to say that this will always distinguish us.  We will not sacrifice the quality of care for the size of numbers.

We’re just not in the numbers game.

“So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”  I Corinthians 3:7

Pray that Whetstone will continue to grow as God wills.  And more important, pray that our boys will do the same.

Can I level with you? 

Can I shoot straight, get right to the point, and keep it real?  Can I have a no-nonsense, no-holds barred, come-to-Jesus moment with you? 

OK.

Here it is. 

Wait for it…

Buffering…buffering…buffering…

God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good.

There it is. 

I don’t care if it’s cliché.  In fact:

Clichés will often Speak to us

when Everything Else fails  –

In Language uncircuitous,

like Firmly driven nails.

                                                                (Axel Liimatta, 2012)

God is good.

No need to beat around the bush.

How many New Year’s resolutions have already gone up in smoke…or down in donut grease?

I spoke of goal-setting last week, but we all know that the hard part is carrying through.   It’s not how you start the race, but how you finish that counts – a lesson we try to teach everyday at Whetstone Boys Ranch…with words if necessary.

So let’s just say your goal is to be less rushed, to heal what John Ortberg calls, your “hurry-sickness.”   (Mind you, I’m just picking a random goal…not one that has been on my list of New Year’s resolutions since I was five.)

Now, what are you going to do about it?

For the last 15 years, I have had my students submit their goals for a class grade.  I find this to be a useful exercise for them, and an entertaining one for me.

I’ve had some memorable ones over the years:

• Become a benevolent dictator of a small island country
• Live to cash my first Social Security Check
• Become a master snow-boarder (in Lexington, KY!)
• Successfully complete a New York Times Crossword on a Saturday
• Overcome my fear of rolley-slidey things
• Get into fewer stupid fights with my dear mother
• Start collecting vinyl records
• Don’t sweat the small stuff
• Break my addiction to over-the-counter nasal decongestant
• Visit every country in the world

What I like about most of these goals is that they are unique and specific.  Most of them are measurable to some extent.  Instead of “travel more,” it’s visit every country in the world.  And while this may be impractical, expensive and extremely dangerous, you know if you have achieved it or not.  (Note:  A better goal might be “Visit a country on every continent by the time I am 40.”  Video games don’t count.)

In any case, making a goal that goes beyond the generic “get healthier” or “get richer” or “get smarter” is more likely to become a reality.

And to be specific, Whetstone is in the reality business.

We all need goals in life.  Physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, social…pick a category.  Pick’em all.  There is no lack of areas where we can improve.  Our imperfection knows no bounds.

At Whetstone, we have a white board to keep track of certain “Feats of Strength,” like maximum weight lifted, highest free throw percentage, fastest two-mile run.   This was my brother Irving’s idea.  He’s known about Whetstone’s sharpening concept from the time we were little, and my dad offered us 50 bucks in exchange for our New Year’s Resolutions.  He required 3 long term and 3 short term goals from each of his children, recorded neatly on a 3×5 card along with a few steps that would aid us in accomplishing them.

My dad is a prolific goal setter.  Before the crack of dawn each morning (“daylight in the swamps,” he calls it) he’s up making lists – long lists in his unique curly font, that detail his goals for the day, week, and often year.  I have fond memories of finding him at his desk in the morning, felt tip pen in one hand and coffee in the other, hovered over his yellow legal pad.  When I return home for holidays, I sometimes find these lists lying around the house:

1. Dawn Donuts
2. Take truck to Dump
3. Bible Study @ Franklin Road
4. 14 Mile and Telegraph
5. Flea Market  @ Noon
6. Call my daughter
7. Empty Mom’s side the garage
8.  “Wet ducks never fly at night”
9. Taxes
10. Deposit checks

I don’t always know what these things mean, but I know my dad well enough to know he has it all worked out in his head.

When working with at-risk boys, it can be a real challenge to help them set meaningful goals that aren’t too high or too low, too short or too long.  We all need to be challenged without feeling defeated.   We all need stepping stones and stopping points.  We must aim for perfection, while being content with the fact that we’ll never reach it.

But as someone once said:  “If you aim at nothing, you’ll most likely achieve it.”

The record at Whetstone for a 2-mile run is 14:59.  It was set by a very ambitious young man, who has very high standards for himself.   Maybe too high.  Success in life is determined by our ability to know what we can and can’t do – and by remembering that only God working in us, makes anything possible.   For if he were to withdraw his breath, Job writes, we’d all perish.

Please pray that Whetstone will have the wisdom to know if 14:59 is good enough.

There’s nothing quite like having the right tool for the job.  Hours, days and even weeks can be shaved off the estimated time of completion.  Headaches, injuries, and a thousand little frustrations can be eliminated by making a quick trip to the hardware store and investing a few bucks.

One such tool is pictured above.  This is what I call a fence tightener-thingy.  It has an official name, but it would hardly be more descriptive than mine.  To sum up, one begins by securing the loose end of the barbed wire to a stationary point, like a tree or a t-post driven into the ground. One then inserts a portion of the wire in the left grip and clamps down.  The same is done to a second portion, about 2 feet to the right.  Next, one ratchets the device inwards, pulling tight the entire wire to the left and right of tool, and creating slack in the middle.  Once the wire it tight, the desired end is nailed down, and the tool can then be safely removed.

Whetstone Boys Ranch hopes to show boys the importance of acquiring the right tool, and the importance of rightly using it.  And we’re not just talking about power tools.  We’re talking about anger management, and meditation, and Bible-study, and regular exercise and eating right, and getting a good night’s sleep.  Tools that help us to be better at being ourselves – the unique type of person God designed us to be.

Ephesians 4:11-13 says that “Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

Whetstone Boys Ranch and Boarding School is in the equipping business.  We are in the business of assisting the transformation of boys from being tools of the sinful forces that seek to twist, misshape and destroy, to using tools for the betterment of their selves, their families and their future as God’s servants.  

“Will” is an important word at Whetstone.  Brandon and Laura’s 2 year old son is named Will.  We have a beautiful chestnut brown horse named Will. (Interestingly, he was given that name years before he was generously donated to us.)  Will is a helping verb that aids in forming, among other things, the future perfect tense – a concept that we will be working hard to understand on Monday morning at Whetstone Academy.

More central to my point, human will is central to any change that occurs on our ranch or in our boarding school.  We are not behaviorists.  We do not believe that our control of a boy’s environment makes him change.  We’re just not that smart.

But wait, I can hear you say, isn’t that the whole idea behind Whetstone Boys Ranch?  Create an atmosphere filled with unconditional love, positive role models, academic guidance, meaningful labor …and poof! a rebellious boy turns into a responsible man!

Not exactly.

Sure, we believe that environment matters.  We think horses and chickens and cows help boys learn gentleness and patience.  We think exposure to God’s word can encourage life change.  We are confident that our attention to detail on the outside can make difference on the inside.

But when push comes to shove, a boy’s will to change matters more.  And whatever you call us – boys ranch, boarding school, group home, residential treatment center – we will never be able to make any of our boys give their hearts to God.  Ours is a spiritual battle that must be fought with spiritual weapons.

And so this morning, when we received the fantastically generous donation of a round pen for training our horses – or I could say for training our Will – I was reminded of both the similarities and differences between training horses and training boys.

Both need limits.  Both need love.  But only one is capable of being forced into submission.

The other, in the perfect future tense, will have been transformed only when he accepts God’s grace, and understands that God’s limits to our behavior demonstrate his love.

Only then, will God’s will be our boys’ will too.

November 23^rd is a big day for me personally.  This year, it falls on Thanksgiving, my wife’s birthday, and my 15^th wedding anniversary!  Not a day I should forget.  There could be bad times in Brooklyn if I do.

Fifteen years ago, I married Christine Marie Creasy.  It was a bright and crisp autumn day in Jackson, Tennessee.  She was better than I deserved as a 22-year old student teacher with no income except from loans.  Whatever possessed her to do such a thing?

She has said on several occasions that it was my dad.  It wasn’t my dad’s wheels, which consisted at the time of a big yellow Ryder truck which he leased for his hauling business.  It wasn’t his winning smile, filled with rotten and rotting teeth – or his hair, often discolored from the dust of whatever job he’d recently returned from.  It wasn’t his house bought at rock bottom price in the late 70’s, the value of which might have actually gone done since.

My wife was convinced that she wanted to marry me during a crazy and freezing cold winter visit to Pontiac, Michigan – during which she saw a picture of the man I could be someday.  A man dedicated to his wife, to his kids, to his work and most of all, to a personal God who sustained him through the trials of running a small business and a large family.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

I haven’t written about her very much (and I’m sure she’s fine with that), but I can’t overestimate the role that Christine has played and continues to play at Whetstone Boys Ranch.  She is my helper, my friend, my confidante, and my inspiration.  I am convinced that I will never fully appreciate the degree to which she has sacrificed her comfort to provide me with this opportunity.  But I thank her, and I thank Laura, and I thank Cari from the bottom of my heart, for supporting their men-folk.

And you can be sure that if a beautiful, intelligent and righteous young woman falls in love, marries, and lives happily ever after with a boy from Whetstone, it will be more due to the Whetstone Wives than their hubbies.

We like to go on long walks at Whetstone Boys Ranch.  Long walks are good for the soul.  In addition to pondering the meaning of life and the mysteries of nature, we enjoy looking for signs of deer.  More specifically, we like looking for signs of “the big buck.”

He’s out there…teasing us.

We sometimes see this buck in the morning, during our devotional time, through the large glass windows that enclose the living room area.  Through the binoculars, it almost looks like he’s sticking out his tongue at us.  On the few mornings that Brandon has waited for him in the tree stand, this buck has artfully avoided the trap.

So on the last walk, our first young man was intent on finding another place to set up “Mr. Maxwell’s” stand.  I was amazed at his ability to effortlessly identify the small signs that had slipped my attention:  bark rubbed off a tree, hoof scrapes in the dirt, tiny little droppings no bigger than a rabbit’s, and to my astonishment, a wispy tuft of hair caught on the barbed wire fence.

I’m still a bit of a city boy, so the hunter’s sixth sense for such things is still beyond my powers of observation.  But I’m working on it, and I’m sure that in time, I’ll be able to track a deer in the dark…by mere scent.

What I’m getting at here is that second nature is exactly that.  Second.  It doesn’t come natural.  It’s learned.  Many things that a healthy person takes for granted are actually behaviors learned from parents, mentors and siblings who have guided us along the right path.  Not all boys have these role models.  And even if given the opportunity, not all boys pay attention long enough to learn from them.

I’m picking up a lot about hunting and tracking at Whetstone Boys Ranch.  Our boys will pick up more important things.  Trophy deer are nice, but treasures in heaven are better.

Good fences makes good men.

Because good men don’t let their horses run into the road.

Because good men take time to build something that lasts.

Because it takes manly strength (and a good sense of humor) to clear and tighten a barbed wire fence without the fancy tools…and when your chainsaw breaks down.

Because there are few greater pleasures in life than spending a sunny fall morning in the woods;  and men who understand this have a better chance of being good.

Good fences make good men, because good men learn from other good men how to do stuff the right way…and when things don’t go right, they learn how good men handle getting angry.

Whetstone Boys Ranch has 280 acres of opportunity to build good fences…and good men.