A friend of mine recently wrote me and gently chided me for not putting hardly anything “personal” on this blog.  I responded that pretty much everything posted here is deeply personal.  I will admit that the content here (and on my Facebook) is removed from the common chatter about sniffles and life-frustrations and political rants.  Since I speak in front of hundreds of people every week and share some of those kinds of things (minus, perhaps, political rants) I am cured during the week of any such notion of filling up my corner of cyberspace with even more of my temporary diversions.

Posting my thoughts and interactions with God’s Word, however, is the greatest privilege.  I am not one of those detached purveyors of pithy statements; my interaction with God’s Word is confession of the “hidden places” in my life.  These thoughts are who I am and not some philosophy of the mind or some life-construct to which I adhere.  These posts are intimates of mine.

I am a real, live, person, however, and not some monochromatic apparition, so from time to time I will attempt to write entries that reflect a more transient reality.

Lately I am particularly thankful for my parents.  My wife, Michelle, is realizing her long-held dream of opening a business of her own and I am drawing upon some characteristics that mom and dad inculcated directly and indirectly in order to survive.

Mom could make something out of nothing almost effortlessly (or so it seemed).  There were periods of time when hamburger was the exclusive protein available.  I ate so much hamburger during my growing up years that I asked my new bride not to offer it as an ingredient for dinner for years.  Mom could make all sorts of things out of hamburger and a hodge-podge of other ingredients.  We may have had hamburger every day, but we didn’t have it in the same form.  The ability to plop down the meat and look in the pantry or refrigerator and figure out on-the-fly some sort of recipe using whatever was at hand never ceased to amaze me.  I am so grateful that this ability is part of my life and the life of my siblings.  To this day I don’t prefer hamburger, but I can open the fridge of my life and see what is in there and make something palatable at a moment’s notice.

Dad spent my entire growing up life doing things he had no idea of how to do, especially around the house.  We had no money to hire jobs out so Dad learned by error and trial (in that order) how to do everything there is to do to keep and improve a home.  To this very day my dad will tackle jobs he has no clue how to accomplish by virtue of his irascible will, courageous spirit and dogged determination.  There is no way dad should be able to do what he accomplishes.  I find myself in similar situations regularly.  I know how to do many things, but thanks to dad I am not afraid to try (and even fail) doing things that are out of my realm of expertise.

…a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the product of her hands, let her works praise her in the [city] gates. (Proverbs 31:30-31)

…the glory of sons is their fathers. (Proverbs 17.6)