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Friday, April 4, 2008

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Metal mouth! That's what they called my daughter in Junior High. Of course, there were plenty of kids you could call that. Those pre-teen and early teen years are the braces years, right? All our kids got to take their turn at braces, and we were thankful, frankly, that we had a friend who was their orthodontist. The work was important, but oh the bills were challenging! Our friend allowed us to pay in installments, but even that was hard. We still had this large unpaid balance the day our latest bill arrived. We opened it and we couldn't believe the three beautiful words that were stamped across the bill: PAID IN FULL!

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

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Every once in a while we think someone left the floodlight on in the backyard, so I look outside the window to discover the floodlight isn't on - the moonlight is! It's one of those really impressive full-moon nights. The most beautiful one, for my wife and me I think, was when we were on vacation in the mountains. Our cabin was nestled in this quiet valley next to this gentle little stream. Not long after dark, I noticed that the valley was like ablaze with light! The full moon was rising in the eastern sky and it was casting this celestial glow over everything. It was perfectly positioned in the sky to just totally illuminate the valley we were in. But then, something made me realize what I was really looking at, and I said as we stood on the porch in admiration, "You know, that moon really isn't producing any light at all. It's only reflecting the light of the sun."

Monday, March 31, 2008

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On some of my trips I can travel pretty light, but there have been a few that I felt like a mule carrying the things I had to take. One trip I had to pack for three different seasons; professional settings, youth settings, and well, you get the idea. Because I was going to be gone for quite a while, of course, I had to basically take my office with me too. I had a lot of baggage! When I arrived, someone from the area met me at the gate and they said those magic words, "Let me help you with your baggage." I did.

Monday, March 24, 2008

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Our three-year-old grandson was turning out to be quite an engineer. He loved to figure out how things work and loved to build things that do. When he was at Grandma and Granddad's house, he would play with our Lincoln Logs. One day he had built a couple of cabins in the middle of our living room and we noticed he'd stopped and he was just lying on his tummy with his head cradled in his hands, studying the pictures on the Lincoln Logs container. When his mom asked him what he was doing just staring at that container, he said, "There are some pieces missing here." And he began to point out exactly what pieces were pictured on the can but missing in front of him.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

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It was exciting that first time I landed at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. There's the skyline of Manhattan out the window, and water all around us as the plane touched down on the runway. It was only after I had landed that my host in New York told me how they built LaGuardia Airport. He said, "Oh, they built it on the garbage of New York." Landfill in the bay created a base on which an airport could be built. By the way, on which my airplane just landed.

Monday, March 17, 2008

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I'm a city boy. Where I grew up, kids were about the only things that grew. We didn't even have grass in the backyard of the apartment building where I lived - just dirt. So I've had a lot to learn from the farm girl I married, as well as my many friends who are or were farmers. I was traveling in the heartland with one of our leaders recently - a man who spent years in farming, and he taught me a pretty memorable lesson as we were driving down a country road just past a cornfield. He was explaining how a farmer harvests his corn and how the end row may get knocked down when he turns the corner from one row to another. That leaves some corn stalks knocked down, lying horizontal and broken. And they're often in the shade of a stalk that’s still standing near it. But don't count that stalk out just yet! The pollen from the overshadowing corn stalk filters down onto that broken corn. And amazingly, that plant that has everything going against it starts developing another crop and eventually you'll be able to pick corn off that old boy!

Friday, March 14, 2008

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Living in the busy suburbs of New York City, it was always nice to scoop up the family and go for a little Sunday afternoon drive in the country. Just to our north was a beautiful rural area where we often went to wander, explore, or just revisit some favorite places we found. Seldom did I offer the family a detailed advance itinerary. That was okay with two of our kids. Not our oldest son. When I said, "We're going for a mystery trip today," he didn't jump up and down with excitement. In fact, he suddenly went into interrogator mode. "Where are we going, Dad? How long will it take to get there? How long are we going to go there? How long are we going to be there? What time will we get back? Where are we going to eat? What are we going to do there?" Finally, I just turned to the back seat, looked him in the eye, and said those two bottom line words: "Trust me." And we had some great mystery trips!

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

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Since we call our outreach among Native Americans "On Eagles' Wings," it's natural that I would have learned a lot about eagles in recent years. You only need to have seen one in flight to know that there's something singular and almost regal about these magnificent birds. It's no wonder they have been the symbol of great empires. One of the many amazing facts about eagles is the way they respond to an approaching storm. Other birds sense that storm coming and they head for cover. Oh, but not the mighty eagle. No, he literally sits on the edge of his nest, waiting expectantly for the storm to come. When it does, he locks his wings in an ascending position and he uses the storm's strong winds to help him spiral round and round, rising higher and higher all the time. Ultimately, the eagle begins to see sunlight around him and the storm below him. He rides the storm until he rises above the storm.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

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Ronald Reagan led one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th Century - a life which he sadly and progressively forgot in the last years of his life. His long battle with Alzheimer's Disease acted like a cruel eraser. It removed recollections of what he had done and even who he was. After Ronald Reagan's death, we learned a lot more about what happened during his long journey into darkness. Memory of his years in Hollywood just disappeared, and then of being Governor of California, and ultimately he lost all that happened even in his years as President of the United States. But one memory stayed alive almost until the end. In the office Nancy Reagan set up for him, there was a picture on the wall; it was a picture of the Rock River in Illinois. When visitors would ask him about it, after most of his life was there no more, he would brighten and say, "Oh, that's where I was a lifeguard when I was 17. That's where I saved 77 lives!"

Monday, March 10, 2008

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While I was speaking at a conference, our hosts gave my wife and me a picturesque cabin to stay in, right on the side of this beautiful mountain. I was unusually motivated to get my exercise there, because it involved hiking up this scenic mountain all the way to the top. As I headed back down and neared our cabin, I had this notion that it would be nice to make the last stretch a romantic walk with my honey. There's a song I used to whistle to her outside her dorm window when we were in college and we were engaged - a song we later had sung at our wedding. It starts with the words, "Because you come to me." Lapsing into romantic mode, I started whistling our song. Little did I know my wife wasn't there! No one came. I walked alone.

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