About Hal and Melanie Young

And God gave Heman fourteen sons to empty his refrigerator.

By on February 4, 2012 in Uncategorized

Not! God gave Heman fourteen sons to exalt him! That’s right, to exalt him. It’s pretty encouraging to think about, really. While we are considering that thought, though, our sons are probably in the kitchen eating the leftovers we were saving for lunch tomorrow. Oops, there goes my son. He was sitting beside me working on school, but when I started typing, he started feeling a little “rumbly in the tumbly.”

How do you keep those bottomless pits fed? It is challenging, especially when you go through so much milk that things like this happen:

Hal, dressed in a shirt left over from his days in engineering at the power company puts his seven gallons of milk up on the conveyor belt at the grocery store.

The cashiers’ eyes are as big as saucers, “Do you know something we don’t?” she says with alarm.

“Nooooooo…” Hal mumbles, all-puzzled, only realizing when he got to the car what she was alluding to: a power company employee buying lots of milk must mean a snow storm was on the way! She really would have been surprised if she’d known that was just a normal weekly supply, wouldn’t she?

So, how do you keep those guys fed?

Always balance carbs, protein and fat if you want to avoid constant noshing. Those growing boys will plow through a box of cereal and an hour later be starving again. That can get expensive! Keep them full through the morning by serving carbs (quick energy) with protein (slower energy) and a little fat (very slow energy and brain growth). How to do that? Oatmeal with milk (the fiber slows down the rise in blood sugar, making it last longer). Grits with cheese (guys really like them with garlic or Tony Chachere’s). Breakfast burritos with scrambled eggs and salsa in them or cowboy eggs with onions, peppers and cheese and biscuits on the side. Even something as simple as cheese toast will give them a lot more staying power than the cereal with skim milk that is the typical American breakfast. Similarly, for snacks think celery with peanut butter or apples and cheese instead of chips, cookies or popcorn.

Cook from scratch. It’s a whole lot cheaper and a lot healthier for you, too. Get a good basic cookbook like the Joy of Cooking (this 1985 edition is better than more recent ones) or Mennonite Country-Style Recipes for starters.

Buy in bulk. When you see it cheap, buy a lot. You can often buy a whole sirloin tip or whole ribeye for less than half the per pound cost of a roast or steak or two. The butcher will slice it for free (or a tiny charge per pound) and you can freeze what you don’t use right now. When you see chili beans on sale for a song, buy a case or two. They won’t go bad and your overall food cost will drop significantly in a few months of buying like that. Only bulk buy things you really like, though. Three cases of hominy that you don’t know what to do with won’t help.

Cook in bulk. Save time and money by cooking a lot at a time. Remember those cases of chili beans? Next time hamburger is on sale, buy enough for 5, or better yet 10 batches. It only takes about twice the time as one and you’ve got a bunch of meals stored in the freezer for rough days. Afraid they’ll get bored? Chili can be served in bowls with sour cream and cheese, on noodles with cheese (Cincinnati style), on baked potatoes (as they do in Pennsylvania), on mashed potatoes (as Amish friends do), over open face hamburgers (patty melts) and over cornbread. They won’t even know it’s the same meal!

If you’re strategic about these things, it really doesn’t cost all that much more (or even as much) to feed a family full of hungry boys as it does to feed other families. When we’ve compared with other families, to their shock, we are usually spending less than they are! And no one is going hungry around here…

For more encouragement and help saving time and money in feeding boys check out our workshop, Sanity’s in the Freezer.

Hal & Melanie Young

Hal and Melanie Young are the authors of Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys, Christian Small Publishers 2011 Book of the Year.  Join them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and check out their home blog at Raising Real Men.

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When the Red Light District is in the Living Room

By on January 6, 2012 in growing godly men, Manly Virtues, Raising Older Boys, Uncategorized

When we were young, a boy had to led astray by an unruly friend or find an ungodly uncle’s stash to be tempted by pornography. Not so, now. Now, it’s lurking in the sidebars when he checks the football stats and is emailed to him by spammers. Boys don’t even have to go looking for it; it comes delivered straight to them. A guy can hardly avoid being tempted by it…every day!

It’s pretty horrifying looking at your little guy and thinking about him sitting in front of the computer screen looking at garbage like that, but the research is showing that boys are being exposed to internet pornography earlier and earlier, and more and more seriously. We’ve heard of boys as young as ten getting their fathers in trouble at work by looking at porn on their dads’ laptops. How can we protect them? How can we keep them out of the red light district when it’s right there in our own living room?

Here are a few things that you can do to protect your sons as much as possible:

  • Talk about sexuality with your boys early and often, in the course of normal life, and always in the context of God’s law, marriage, and family. “Yes, son, that lady is dressed inappropriately. She’s showing parts of her body God meant for her husband alone. I wonder how he feels about that?”
  • Warn them that temptation lurks out there and they have an enemy who desires to harm them and their future wives (Porn is not a victimless crime, it harms the watcher, the watcher’s mate, the subjects, and their families). Show them how to shrink a window to hide a sidebar, remind them to think carefully what they are searching on, tell them never to guess at a url.
  • Install accountability software on every computer your family has access to. We like Covenant Eyes, we’ve used it for years. It will email you an easy to check report on each user in your family each week. Just knowing they are bound to get caught is a great deterrent.
  • Teach them how to fight temptation when it comes. Here’s an excerpt from our book that explains how we do it:

A Fist to Knock Away Temptation

 We do our best to protect our sons from temptation, but we know it is impossible to avoid it entirely – our own hearts provide temptation! Sons need to know what to do when they face the desire to sin. We tell our sons to use five important tools to fight off immoral thoughts:

1. Leave the situation. This is so important. If you are in the bathroom, get dressed and get out. If you are in bed, get up. If you are at a friend’s house, go home. Leave a situation that tempts you.

2. Pray and ask the Lord for forgiveness and help.

3. Read your Bible. The Word is a light to our feet and will guide us to do what is right.

4. Sing praises or hymns to God. Sometimes music can break through the coldness of our hearts.

5. Go to your authority and ask for help. Our sons have each done this more than once. They say, “Mom and Dad, I just keep having bad thoughts. Will you pray for me?”

We lift a finger for each of these as we remind them, then close all five into a fist and say, “Five ways that make a fist to knock away temptation.” We remind our sons of this often, because it is important that they realize that they are not helpless before temptation, but that God always gives a way of escape.

Raising Real Men, pp215-116

It’s a scary time to raise a boy. The enemy seems more determined than ever to embroil our sons in sin that will affect them all their lives. The worst thing we can do in the battle to protect our sons’ purity is to pretend there’s no battle at all. That leaves our boys unarmed and unprepared. Instead, we have got to overcome our own shyness, face the battle head on and prepare our sons to be warriors instead of victims. God hasn’t left us and He gives us all we need to follow Him. We want our boys to grow up to be truly knights in shining armor for their princesses.

For more on this topic, check out our hourlong workshop, Shining Armor: Your Son’s Battle for Purity. Use the link above or the discount code raisingrealmen to receive a free month of Covenant Eyes – and help support our ministry.

Hal & Melanie

Hal & Melanie YoungHal & Melanie Young are the authors of Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys, Christian Small Publishers’ 2011 Book of the Year. Check out their own blog, join them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter.

Copenhagen photo by Electra Stavrou

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Christmas Fun for Boys!

By on December 7, 2011 in Christmas, Uncategorized

Manly Christmas Decorations?? It’s hard to get boys interested in the homemaking things moms love so much. What color bathmat should we choose? “Who cares.” Clean up the living room? “Why? It doesn’t bother me.” And decorations? “Can’t we make cookies instead?” Cookies, you see, were made to be eaten. We’ll never forget the time we made special salt cookies for Christmas ornaments. Our boys were incredulous that we’d make cookies and not serve them to anyone. What a waste!

If you can capture their interest, though, sometimes they’ll surprise you. One thing we’ve found our boys love is to decorate with natural things. What better time to do this than Christmas? The very most elegant, beautiful, classic Christmas decorations are made from natural things. We always think about Colonial Williamsburg – lovely pyramids of fruit in the center of the table and the aroma of pine garland as you stand at the door of an old building.

You might show your children this video of Holiday Decorating at Colonial Williamsburg. Scroll down and click on Holiday Decorating on the right to inspire them with ideas. It’s really quite easy to imitate. God has done much of the work!

That suites boys down to the ground! They just love collecting pinecones and cutting off branches and making things that employ clippers and wire and wire cutters. So, grab some branch clippers and take a walk. Look for evergreen trees, and holly, and things with pretty red berries if you don’t have a toddler, or have a spot up high you can put them. Take a big basket and collect some pine cones, both small and large, a few acorns, some magnolia leaves, and perhaps a pretty vine (avoid leaves of three, though!). Go to the Farmer’s Market or store and get some pretty winter fruit – lemons, limes, oranges or apples, too.

This is a great time to talk to your children about the Christian history of decorating with greenery (It’s true! Check out Christ-Centered Christmas for the exciting story.) and what all those things stand for – evergreens to remind of us of eternal life, white for Christ’s sinlessness, red for his blood, gold because a King has been born!

If you can’t find enough materials in your yard, or your neighbor’s (ask first, of course) or on your walks in the woods, then ask a Christmas tree seller if you can have the branches he’s trimmed off the bottom of trees. They are usually glad for you to cart them away. The ones that don’t sell handmade garlands or wreaths themselves are the most likely to share!

We love to make our own wreathes and garlands, and so do the boys! Here’s an excerpt adapted from our new book, Christ-Centered Christmas, to show you how:

Evergreen Garlands and Wreathes

Evergreen boughs

Small pruning shears (in a pinch even your dog’s nail clippers will work)

22 or 24 gauge wire, green is nice, but not necessary

Something to cut the wire, like wire cutters or a pair of cheap scissors you don’t mind ruining

(Optional) Lemons, limes, apples, or other fruit; ribbons; cheap gold or silver beads, magnolia leaves, other Christmas decorations

 

 

Cut the boughs into sprigs about 10 to 12 inches long. Pick up a few sprigs of evergreen and wind them together with wire. Don’t cut the wire! Add another handful of sprigs to the stem of the first, with the tops pointing the same way but slid down further, wiring them to the first group by just wrapping the paddle of wire around both of them a few times. Pick up another handful and do the same thing.

Continue until the garland is long enough for your purpose. Turn the last sprig the opposite direction and wire it to the next to last bunch. We put a large nail at each corner of our front porch and drape the garland across it.

Once you’ve made a garland, you can make a wreath very easily the same way. Find a sturdy, but flexible longer branch and bend it into a circle shape. If you don’t have one long enough, wire two or more, or a whole handful of thinner branches together. Choose a starting point and wrap the paddle around the wreath-form branches and around a handful of sprigs. Move over a bit and pick up another handful of sprigs. Use the top of the sprigs to cover the wire you just wrapped (Point the sprigs all the same way!) and wire them to the wreath the same way. Continue all around the wreath, making it as full as you desire. When you get back to where you started, lift the top of that very first sprig, stick the stems of the last sprig under it and wire them down. These wreaths smell wonderful!!

We like to decorate it Williamsburg style: wiring lemons and limes or apples to the wreath. Just get a straight piece of wire and holding it close to the point, aim it right at the side of the fruit. Just jab it in and smoothly push it through the fruit – it will pop out on the other side. Pull the wire halfway through, then use the two ends to wire the fruit to the wreath. We add a big red bow, too.

Christmas tree decorations (glass balls in particular) are lovely wired into the garland, as well. You can make small garlands to decorate your tables and mantles, too. Just lay the garland down the center of the table, using a curving, winding path. It’s lovely to wind gold beads around it, or ribbon, or to decorate with fruit or pinecones.

We use just the branches, too, letting them droop over the edge of pictures or pile pretty ones on the top of book cases, or arrange them behind the nativity scene.

We’ve found that our boys greatly enjoy this work. It seems like a manly way to decorate! Nice, foresty smells, no frou-frou stuff, all natural. Just the kind of stuff guys like. It’s like making the whole house his treasure shelf!

Want more fun ideas, and help to keep your Christmas stress-free and focused where it belongs? Click here to check out and download a copy of our new book, Christ-Centered Christmas: The Ultimate Guide to Celebrating a Christmas Your Family Will Never Forget.

Hal & Melanie Hal & Melanie Young

Hal & Melanie Young are the authors of Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys, CSPA 2011 Book of the Year. Check out their blog, join them on Facebook, and take a look at their great character-building gifts for boys!

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The Manly Virtues: A Powerful Mercy

By on November 18, 2011 in growing godly men, leadership, Manly Virtues, Uncategorized

The Alamo, 1854

When the outnumbered defenders of the Alamo refused the Mexicans’ demand to surrender, General Santa Anna ordered his buglers to play “El Deguello” – a call meaning “no quarter”, a signal that no prisoners would be taken, and anyone surviving the assault would be put to the sword. As everyone knows, that’s precisely what happened – the entire garrison was killed in the battle or executed afterward, with the possible exception of a woman and a servant who were spared. A second and even more ruthless massacre followed at Goliad.

Fall of the Alamo

I was working on an audiobook dramatization of the story and searched in vain for a useable recording of “El Deguello.” There are plenty of American bugle calls in the public domain, but I thought it was indicative that the American military has no need of such a command. It’s been said that the Marines, for instance, are no worse enemy—and no greater friend—to those they encounter. That character of fair play and mercy are characteristic of our troops.

It is true that in the heat of conflict, sometimes passions run over. When the British troopers under Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton bayoneted the American prisoners taken at the Waxhaws during the Revolution, it came back on their comrades a few months later. As the Carolina backwoodsmen surrounded the British Maj. Patrick Ferguson’s men atop Kings Mountain, the battle climaxed with spontaneous cries of “Tarleton’s Quarter!” – meaning, the American militia didn’t intend to stop, either. To their credit, the patriot commanders rushed to restrain their men and were mostly successful. But the desire to punish brutality of Tarleton’s sort runs deep in righteous men … and that’s a far cry from the cold-blooded orders of a Santa Anna.

Checkpoint Charlie

When I briefly lived in Germany during the 1980’s, there were marches and protests against America in West Berlin, Frankfurt, and Bonn, over U.S. plans to deploy certain new weapon systems in Europe. Where I was staying, though, we were just a few miles from the border with Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia. There, even we American college students were wildly popular with the older Germans, who welcomed us into their homes and paid our bills in the local inns. See, they were thankful: many of them and their  parents had rushed into the advancing American troops rather than risk the mercies of Stalin’s Red Army approaching from the east. They recognized that occupation, or even capture and imprisonment, under the U.S. Army would be tempered with that quality – mercy.

General George Marshall

It does make you think. What other nation has spent billions in dollars and thousands of lives to grind a vicious dictatorship to dust, as we have done several times the past century, and then turned and invested still more to rebuild and restore the survivors of our former enemies? Our “nation building” activities in Iraq and Afghanistan are under criticism right now, and there is certainly room for debate, but who remembers the Marshall Plan? The Berlin Airlift? Who rebuilt post-war Japan? It was Americans, the victors, and our generals led each of those efforts. (True, George Marshall was Secretary of State by that time in 1948, but as Chief of Staff he was General Eisenhower’s superior until August of ’45).

It’s easy to forget sometimes that with the strength of a great nation, or a great army, or a great man, the call is not for revenge but restraint. There is a time to exert great and even overwhelming power to protect the weak and turn back evil – our national anthem says, “Then conquer we must, When our cause it is just” – but it must be conditioned by justice and the desire to reconcile when that becomes possible. The anthem continues, “And this be our motto: In God Is Our Trust”  That last bit makes the difference. Jesus said we are to “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36)—and that Father says of Himself, “I am merciful … I will not be angry forever.” (Jeremiah 3:12)

This Friday, Veteran’s Day, as we express our thanks to our soldiers, sailors and airmen of all ranks and ages, let’s take a minute to point out to our sons than along with their courage, discipline, self-sacrifice, and honor, there is a strong tradition of mercy—proving that it is a sign of strength and not weakness when flying in formation with all these other virtues.

Hal & Melanie

Hal & Melanie YoungHal and Melanie Young are the parents of six boys and authors of Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys. You can hear the complete stories of Kings Mountain and the Alamo in Hal’s dramatic rendering of Theodore Roosevelt’s Hero Tales from American History. Visit their website at RaisingRealMen.com!

Scripture quoted from the English Standard Version.

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