Did you really ask me that?

God's Boys will be good boys!

What, my son? What, son of my womb? What, son of my vows?

Fewer questions and more determinations. Late teen's are a season of, "I'm not going to do it that way." It looks like to me. How do you stay respectful to your parents when your mind is taking their deeds apart and weighing them as to their validity in your life, long-term. It is hard! I love you mom, but what you are saying is not valid to this point...Sometimes that is the case.

Sometimes mom is talking to her little fellow, on the knee and you are a man. Sometimes mom is just gabbing to her rambunctious jumping bean and you are a settled man. I didn't ask you that, mother? I know you didn't. Just humor my answering the questions that are unasked, son. It is a habit and I love you and sometimes it is just mother talk. Keep weighing our validity and make your determinations and become a better man for it.

Happy New Year!

How Grateful I am for you, in my life!!!

I played the saddest song when you came down the steps, this morning. I couldn't see outside of grief, when I chose that song for my baby's funeral, but I was taught to praise God in suffering. I was taught to hold my tongue from questioning God's providence. So I did. I still loved God, but so many questions remain in my soul to this day.
God restores. God gave me you! God blessed my prayers. God is still in the healing process of my wounds. I am sure that I will see the full fruition of my condition, when I get to heaven, but right now, still in a mummilike state I walk around taking off some of the grave clothes of a heavy soul, who lost her first son to the grave. God is still speaking His comforts to me and personally tearing my wrappings off of my soul. In the meantime, I have you and your brothers and sisters, on earth to comfort me. I love you!

Where are you Christmas?

Does maturity mean that Christmas, no longer brings that twinkle to your eyes? I don't think so.

Santa is for babies, you said.

We have to find a way to get you excited about giving and not just getting. Aunt Sharon found Ezra's sweet spot on that order and we must use that giving seed for him. We must find yours. God give us grace. Amen.

Thanksgiving at the Leaders'

Hey Man, You are part of my greatest gratitude.

I am grateful for you, today. You are a young man full of questions and desires. What a great experience to take your own money and purchase your own supplies? Didn't you enjoy that? I enjoyed your showing me the pastels and the paper and the thoughts of what you plan to do with these items.

Your gifts and growth is awesome to me. I still think of you as a little guy, sometimes. That is wrong. You are breaking the barriers of younger and elder child conditions in our family and I love how you do that. I hear your challenges to your siblings on their realities. Is that right? is your common question. It may be right, but you intend to make it righter, if there is such a thing. That is the blessing that you are. That is the man that I hope that you remain from right to righter to rightest. God is purifying all of us. He is just and the justifier of those who come to Him. We come to Him, not to tell Him, but to ask Him. Wisdom and Grace and Redemption are from Him. Keep seeking Him and Keep growing, young man! I love you, Mommy.

Nurturing Brotherly Love? I told you my brothers' sad story for a purpose.

Why did you tell me that sad story? It seems like yesterday that my boy brothers were wrestling on the ground. Now they are separated by eternity, it seems. They will see each other again, I hope. I celebrated their births and nurtured their relationship some, in my early Christian pilgrimage. I was cast off from them, before they were fully ripe.

14 years old there was coal in the stocking of an angry young man and I reproved my father and mother deeply for this horrid vindication of their parental rightness. I don't think we should use Christmas for teaching such lessons. They were hurt and I couldn't know how much they were hurt. I still think you have other ways of disciplining a wayward son. He was very sad at the loss of elder sisters to College and Husbands and life. He was acting out. I would give him whatever money could buy to show the mercy of God to a son of mine. Poverty has kept me from pouring on you in such a way. God knows that our time is more valuable than any coal or diamond gift.

don't miss the greatness of being an older brother and a younger brother at the same time

Momma

It is already a week past your concert and I am still beaming!

You always sit in the same spot. I always try to catch an expression. You are stoic. That wasn't me squeaking, is your constant report to me. I don't care if it was, I am so proud to see you up on that stage, with your little whistle, I mean clarinet.:) It is really a dream come true for me. You are playing and growing into a man. Each concert is a treat for me. Your manly face is losing the childish gleam. Maturity is catching up with you and I am happy to have gotten to know you through these great days. I love you!!! Keep on whistling!

Thanks for the smoochie from my handsome 16 year old son!

That was indeed a refreshment of enormous proportions. Knowing you love me is a great comfort.

This morning I saw a wonderful Brass Band at 10th Pres Church.

I was so blessed by their direction into the presence of God, playing note by note together. I was also praying that God could use my young clarinetist son to bless his mother's soul in such a way. Holy, Holy and other hymns were played to the glory of God, in the worship service.

I am grateful for the example that you are of the discipline of playing note for note, year after year after year. There are many lessons that you are learning at the discipline of your musical instructors and maestros. I hope you hang on and use your gifts to make God's praise glorious.

Deadline completed and Friday night was party time!

Everybody else was enjoying the lightning and thunder storm outside and there you were going to a friend's party.

I hope you had a great time!

Now that you are baptized...

Many men and women sing and sing about what is the earthly benefit of the heavenly realities that we possess. What are the benefits? Why do we spend our lives committed to knowing the whats and the whys of our belief system?

"In the sight of the church, he hasn't any name?" said Whitley in Life with Father

He was a completely catechized believer of an earlier millennium. He held to his mother's secure faith in God and desired to see his father in the same secure spiritual condition as he was. Father was a free spirit, just following the protocols. Is that what men are supposed to be? Is it the reflection of real masculinity to leave the spiritual things to the more sensitive women in their lives? No way man! God wants men who will be living examples of the "bosom of Abraham" on earth. Safe and real believing men, who trust God, in front of people. Men who love people with their lives and give the glory and the praise to God.

Anything less is effeminate{at best}.

We have a real and masculine God.

Take your name{in the sight of the church} Your baptized self and be bold enough to be a real and useful Christian man. I pray that for you, in Jesus' name, AMEN.

Fun to learn how to negotiate the turns of teen years together

Last Saturday, we enjoyed watching the Walton's and seeing another large family from another era and learning that teen life pains are helped when we see that someone else has been through this also...

Blessings of growth at 16 years old.

I am sure that you could elucidate far more than I, what the benefits of being 16 and tall and all of the wonderful things that you are. I am just going to say "Thank You, Lord for such a precious and gracious and sweet son!" I can't say much more than that.

5 Days to 16, we've got the Junior...

On our Side?

It seems like yesterday that it was 10 days to 9. Today it is 5 days to sixteen. You have so much creativity and imagination that you are blooming these days that I am excited to see you learning and growing and ready to use your creativity for good. This is the countdown to a major milestone and we are rooting for you, son. Keep up the good work!

overnight study sessions...running to the tape of sophomore year...

Part of whipping our foolishness into wisdom is time and diligence. I am grateful to see your hands wandering from real work to learning the possibility of game developing. That is a good hobby and a nice distraction from your hard and difficult trek. Maybe when you have finished sophomore year, there will only be no more moronic behavior only sophish behavior left. We live and hope? Wisdom out of foolishness? A Novel thought, I think not! May God grant you wisdom and debonnaire for your efforts, as well as an education, in Jesus' Name, Amen.

Father and the Twenty-third Psalm

Frozen Sculpting on the computer, I love it!

Don't eat over my shoulder!!!!

all of a sudden a warm sensation turned into an uncomfortably hot sensation on my rear! I am sure that you said to yourself, "how do I tell my mother that I dropped melted cheese on her rear?" I guess you said to yourself somethings are better left unsaid. One day years from now I will confess that mom has no nerve endings back there and we will laugh about it. But after about a half a minute I did feel it, didn't I? Why didn't you say something as soon as you dropped it on me? I can understand it and I forgive you, but fess up a little quicker than that, would you?

Good, Good Friday!

Fried Fish, Grits, Pizza, plain and pepperoni, buttered noodles...The menu wasn't as influential as the people around the table and the preacher who was invited to direct us in our meditations for this year. Your father was the invited speaker for our family celebration of the fulfillment of our salvation in the cross of Christ. What more can you ask, these days than to have your father give you the clear Word of God for your enjoyment and growth? So many children are starving for the attention that you guys take for granted. They cry and say, I wish my father would take 5 minutes talking to me about anything, much less more than that. You are rich in the time that your father spends directing your soul. I hope you appreciate it! More than that, I hope you imitate it!

Report Card DAY?

Thank you for the many tokens of encouragement that you are giving me!

What a thoughtful son you are! A quarter here and a dime there, really go straight into my encouragement quotient. Maybe I'll get all of the dishes finished today? You are a great encourager, my dear.

What are the enemies frozen into? Thoughts on Man Of Steel {

The conflict between the tools that we use to pass the faith onto our children and the faith that we pass on to our children is sometimes a bitter one. We hold onto the tools and sometimes not onto the Lord of the tools. Are we battling for the attachment to the tools of our faith or the God of our faith? sometimes, God Himself has to chisel us out of our own devices. we are so immersed in our traditions and they will not save us. If Judaism didn’t save the inheritors then certainly our pagan tools will not save us. How long, Lord will you suffer their perspectives of supremacy over one another? God Himself is separating between our preservation of our culture or our relationship with God.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, If you cannot pray thusly for their salvation, Who were, as it were, the legitimate children of God, your faith is in vain. Whose neck is suffering because your foot is attached to it? That kind of faith and domination will not save.

Not supremacy or subjugation, but close attachment to one another. We must let go of our exalting ourselves and our deprecation and see the image of God in each other. Learning to love one another and pray diligently for the means of propagation of the faith that each tradition has blessed us with is the serious and earnest fight for our generation.

"Please, Lord, give us our time and our future for Jesus!" Amen.