What do you do with an "OOPS?"

What do you do with an "OOPS" when it involves another person? We just received an email from someone our son mentioned in his journal which is on our website as "John's Legacy." We thought we were being so careful to change every name he mentioned - or at least most of the names and there was one name we forgot to change that just so happened to be critical that we do so. Yikes! How did we let that one slip by? I guess that just highlights the importance of a really good editor!

All we can do now is send a sincere apology and change it as quickly as possible! And hope we don't make the same or a similar mistake again.

Maybe you have an "OOPS" you'd like to share. If so, please feel free!

35 Years Ago

Today is the anniversary of the day we went to Brazil exactly 35 years ago. Anticipation and excitement along with a healthy dose of fear joined us on that first trip. We were young - yes, we really were quite a long time ago. We naively believed we were going to Brazil, never to return to the USA to live. So we packed up all of our earthly possessions and shipped them all in big metal drums and packing crates. If we had realized there was no house there waiting for us we might not have been so enthusiastic. Most of those possessions remained stored in the barrels for many, many years before we had a place to call home and to unpack them all.

Our son John was one of the main reasons we finally purchased a home. Moving into any and every available home and packing up everything each time we traveled into one of the Indian villages was definitely getting old. And John seemed to be the one who felt it the most. When we finally purchased a home and moved into it, we could see an almost immediate impact on him in a positive way.

The house was small, but the backyard was surrounded on three sides by virgin jungle. It was wonderful. We were frequently visited by monkeys and exotic birds. The strip of jungle around all the houses became the boys' paradise. John and his buddies built tree houses high up in the canopy. (Fortunately we parents never saw them and didn't even know about them until much, much later.)

Brazil became our home and even though John was actually born in the USA, he claimed Brazil as his home...until God called him to his forever home. Read about it in Aloha is Forever.

Never Stop Learning

My son John had a passion for learning. I'll never forget the summer he decided to do a catch up home school course in math so he wouldn't be behind the rest of his class when he went to boarding school that fall. How I admired his self-discipline and his ability to stick with it and get it finished before the summer was over. He could have done so many other things that were fun - and he did, but never instead of doing his studies. He was the ideal home school parent's dream child.

I thought about that today as my daughter and I have taken on the challenge of attending a child rearing class together since we are jointly rearing and training my grandson. I read through the first lesson this morning in preparation for the class, DVD presentation and discussion on Friday evening.

What are you doing to "never stop learning?"

The Value of One Life

This evening I was listening to comments on "For Faith and Family" by Dr. Richard Land as I drove home. Dr. Land was our Sunday School teacher here in Dallas a long time ago. I was impressed with his lessons and his wisdom then; even more so now. Among other things he was discussing the health plan provisions that were slipped into the economic stimulus bill unbeknownst to almost everyone. As he talked, I began to ponder the value of a life.

How do we place value on a life? How are we to say that one person's life is more valuable than that of another? Apparently one of the objectives of the new health plan provisions calls for evaluating medical procedures based on the age of the patient. If those procedures are not economically advantageous depending on the age and perceived potential contribution of the patient to society, they would be denied. The next step could be euthanasia. Why not? We have as a society already approved taking the lives of the unborn.

But that's not the point. The point is that any life is valuable. The Bible says in Genesis 1:27,

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

The reason it is valuable is that each and every individual is stamped with God's image. Granted, that image has been perverted and distorted by sin. In fact in Genesis 5:1-3, we read this:

"When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them 'man.' When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image, and he named him Seth."

By the time Seth came on the scene, he had lost the perfect image of God and was born in Adam's likeness - complete with a sin nature. Without going into a long and involved treatise on the fall of man, and his subsequent redemption, I hasten to say that even man full of sin nature inherited from Adam is valuable in God's eyes. So valuable in fact, that God chose to give his only son to pay the penalty for each and every man's sin through his death on the cross.

When our son John Reece disappeared in Hawaii in 1999 we spared no expense to try to find him. Even though we had no funds to get to Hawaii, God opened the doors and through the generosity of acquaintances, we were able to fly to Hawaii and spend almost all of December there helping with the searches. Our total expenses were nothing short of astronomical (close to $20,000) but by the time we left Hawaii every single bill had been paid in full.

Many people have noted that never before had so many resources been mobilized and such an intense search made for someone who was lost in Hawaii. (People getting lost is not an uncommon occurrence there.) We would have given much more to find our son - he was our son and infinitely valuable to us.

In much the same way, God values each and every one of us. He is our Father and He seeks for us diligently, spares no expense, gives His all. Each one of us is infinitely valuable for we are his beloved sons and daughters.

Blessed with Identity

My little grandson looked up into my eyes yesterday and asked, "Grandma, do you know who I am?" I, of course, wondered what was coming next! Maybe a lion or a dog or a kitty or a horse...? What came out of his mouth next absolutely floored me. He said, "I'm your grandson."

Wow! Talk about knowing who you are!

That gave me the idea for where to go next in writing about blessing. Remember from my recent post that I defined blessing as "empowering to prosper." Prosperity in this sense of the word doesn't mean financial prosperity in the way we often think although it could include that. When someone is prospering, it is tied to an understanding of who they are - their identity. They are at peace with who they are, not wishing they were prettier, shorter, taller, thinner, a girl instead of a boy or a boy instead of a girl. They are at peace with their parents, themselves and their neighbor.

They are not continually striving to measure up to some perceived standard they hope someday to achieve.

So how do we as parents and grandparents accomplish this seeming miraculous state of being in our children or grandchildren? I certainly don't have all the answers, but I would like to suggest that it is crucial that we separate identity from behavior as we teach and discipline our children. Somehow through our words and actions we must affirm who they are (identity) while we place consequences on behavior that we wish to discourage. This is sometimes difficult to do. Well, maybe it's always difficult to do. Nevertheless it must be done in order to teach our children and grandchildren that they are valued, important, OK, etc.

This whole process begins with an understanding of how God views us and how He views our children. A classic passage in Psalm 139 verses 13 & 14 says,

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

This theme is reiterated by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:10,

"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

When we can look at both ourselves and our children through God's eyes, we have come a long way toward being able to bless our children and empower them to prosper in the knowledge of their identity as precious beings formed by God in just the way He wanted them to be.

Do you know who you are?