Author: Jason Zerbey

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Listening

I hear the Holy Spirit speak to me outside. A breeze across my arm can send my thoughts Heavenward. A blue sky can carry me lightyears away. Birds and beasts distract me from earthly concerns. They take me out of my mind and into the moment.
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This moment was one year ago. The quietest birthday I had in a long time. One year as a widower and I had lost friends, family, even a lover.
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I was learning to love myself. Baby steps as I started to discover how much self love I was lacking. It was easy to get away with while married. Mary and I loved each other more than enough to cover up each other’s missing pieces.
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This year has seen stark contrast of fear and joy. Discontent, followed by peace, then more discontent, perhaps less biting, then peace, deeper and broader.
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Today I’m going to watch a friend be put to rest. My tears are prodigious, but not desperate, not for myself. I’ll see more storms, this one isn’t mine. It’s the storm of a mother and three beautiful children. Another widowed parent in our black club.
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So, off we go. The branch won’t hold us for long and the sky beckons. What’s out there in the infinite sky? Danger, adventure, sustenance, fear, love, all the things.
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I’ll continue to listen for the Holy Spirit to guide my way through all of it.
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God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Delaware Fun-A-Day 19: Retro Razorback

I had a lot of fun with this one. I let go of trying to be clever or creative and grabbed a pile of the old elements from the space sets of my youth.

I aimed to jam as many grey wings and rockets together within the daily 16×22-stud project area.

And jam I did. Several of the wings are pressed sideways between studs (a non-standard method not used in Lego manuals) and the bottom pair are placed upside down (Studs Not On Top, or SNOT).

I highlighted with modern purple and blue pieces. Excessive rockets and vintage blue/yellow arrows finished things off.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Delaware Fun-A-Day 18: Peace Between Animals

Compassion. Evolution. Creativity.

Westen, 10-going-on-teen, started this scene with a hunter looking for prey. In real life, we got the opportunity to purchase this white wolf and it seemed like the perfect challenge for his minifigure.

Westen cleverly staged the scene, awaiting the meet-up with the wolf’s former owner.

We got the wolf and I wasn’t paying attention as the scene was finished.

I saw the hunter lying beside the build and asked, “Westen, are you going to finish your scene?” He had built a small platform for the minifigure that blended with the surroundings and allowed for a variety of positions, I was eager to see these considerations incorporated.

“It’s ready, Dad.”

“But what about the hunter?”

“The wolf looked too peaceful, so he’s just hanging with his bunny buddy.”

It instantly became a spirit journey scene for me. I wonder if he’s the bunny riding through a peaceful wood on his mama’s back. I wonder how much good happens when we gather around the Lego table and build side-by-side.

Mary overlooks our work. We made this figure for the bowsprit of a fantastical boat we built together in the weeks after losing her.

She loved building with her boys and she was the queen of sorting. She had an organized mind, I could never keep up with her.

She might be aghast at sacrificing our largest room exclusively to Lego, but I think she’d allow some leeway under the circumstances.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Delaware Fun-A-Days 14 and 15: Tomb Raider and Space Heist Shootout

I realized my dream of including other home educating families in our one-piece-of-art-every-day-in-February journey.

These boys went for action and adventure. I love getting in on the process and sometimes being completely ignorant of it.

The Tomb Raider creator is 13 and his ideas were pouring out. I could hardly keep up with writing them down.

He wanted to build a pyramid with a cutaway cross section to reveal the ancient contents. Once constructed, the scene evolved to include a ludacrisly large bandit brandishing Wonder Woman’s golden lasso and riding an impractical beast in the desert.

This young man built quietly and mysteriously. Every time I saw him duck his head out of a drawer of bricks he was wearing the biggest smile in the room (maybe next to my own).

With over-the-top alien criminals and a familiar pallette, I love this Star Wars-inspired scene.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Rare Disease Day at A.I. duPont Hospital for Children

Home educators are hyper diverse. Each family has its own reasons for choosing to take full ownership of their child(ren)’s education. Within multi-child homes, there are varieties of reasons for choosing the lifestyle, or not choosing it as some siblings attend brick-and-mortar schools. Temporally, the reasons may change as children and family dynamics grow.

My personal journey evolved from not knowing the words “unschooling” or “deschooling” to being a cheerleader of these approaches.

Illness can be one of the saddest reasons a family chooses to home educate. Not only do these families bear the burden of a child with compromised health, but they often take on the responsibility of educating that child. It was a world I hardly knew about before joining the home ed community.

Rare diseases are an extra burden as families have to navigate uncharted territories, at home and in health care.

Today will be a learning experience for us. We will learn humility. We will learn about pain. We will learn about how blessed we are for the health we have. We will learn hope. We will learn about the strength of children and families and the human soul.

The most important learning is uncomfortable. It must kill old beliefs and renew them like the Phoenix from the ashes.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Delaware Fun-A-Day 25: In Space No One Can Hear You Spring

Tried to build a spaceship and got a space flower.

I grew up on #Lego space sets. Grey, white, and blue were my primary colors. The introduction of a line of black ships with yellow highlights was a thrill, but my tastes were already changing. I had completely shifted to comic books by the time the first green space suit showed up.

Now that I’m building again with my sons, I’m continually drawn to these “new” colors. I’ve never been talented with color choice and coordination. I love pushing into that arena, trying out combinations and playing with the craziest colors. The colors inspire new shapes and designs, testing my building skills.

My mind is still out there. Star Trek, Farscape, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, Enemy Mine, and Alien permeate my creativity. It’s the landscape in which I explore my own mind.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Delaware Fun-A-Day “Break”

We’ve been building like crazy, almost too fast to update the blog!

Today we visited the Route 9 Library and Innovation Center and spent a little time in their Lego Room.

We tried speed building in a space theme. We each knocked out four fun sculptures.

I got into my comfort zone, creating various spaceships. I also forgot to take individual pictures of two of the builds.

Isaac, 8, chose tan for varied builds from an alien dog to a moon bunker.

Westen, 10, was the most eclectic of us in color and design with a space flight training facility, space taxi, transport ship, and deep space probe.

Libraries are where we started our Lego journey years ago. There’s a special satisfaction in building and walking away, wondering who might play with or modify your creation.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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No Losing, Just Learning

Someone tried to step on this child’s dreams this weekend.

It nearly broke my heart.

This morning I watched this match from Sunday. Westen’s opponent is bigger and stronger. He has an advantage position early on that leveraged his weight against Westen’s.

Westen’s skill and speed are significant in his game, but he’s got deeper qualities that make him unstoppable through wins and losses.

He doesn’t give up, he doesn’t stop believing in the win, he doesn’t stop working. After physically and mentally crushing losses he’s asked, “When’s the next tournament?” He doesn’t know how to lose, he only knows how to learn. And damn if he doesn’t learn quickly.

I’m sure he was listening to the other coach (I was standing behind him, his voice is clear on the video). We’ve noticed that kids will follow coach instructions literally and immediately, giving Westen an easy way to predict the next opening.

But it’s not tactics that give Westen this win. It’s the opponent’s coach. “Not that, don’t do that, oh, don’t do that,” with laughter from the sideline. This kid’s lifeline, the one thing he trusted to get him the win, laughing and giving up. Westen’s a shark hungry for hesitation and indecisiveness. He uses his speed to take a stronger position (one he says he’s never tried), then slows down to work the breath out of his opponent. He takes his little frame and presses every ounce of it deep into the earth, planting his foe beneath him. By the time he losses his balance and the kid gets up, Westen is watching the him turn blue and silently praying he’ll tap.

It’s a brutal exercise, to play a game that is more real than any other I know. I can’t help but think that his body was acting out against the person who tried to muscle his dreams away. He may not have the tools to verbally justify a dream that would be impossible for an earlier generation, but he has the heart, potential, and work ethic to overcome seemingly insurmountable opposition.

To the point on coaching: Kevin from Elevated Studios has coached both boys in competition and his style is so right for them. He’s soft spoken, minimalist in direction, only talks about the next move, and trusts. They know it and trust him back. His tone is even and he never betrays a lack of confidence in the chance for a win.

I needed this video. I forget that my sons don’t need me barking out every move or deriding their mistakes. They need my trust and love. They are powerful on their own. If I’m a quiet, trusting coach, no one can crush them. They can’t lose, they can only learn.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason