I regret not having been active in my posts recently. I’ve got all kinds of excuses but I’ll just plead guilty and ask for your mercy.
It has indeed been busy lately for our family. We have been "majorly separated" for a while. Here is some of where we’ve been.
David, Jennifer and I have been at our church’s student camp, known as "Camp Whatever", for the last week. Incredible experiences. We have incredible student ministers, incredible volunteer workers and staff, and most of all – an absolutely incredible God who blessed us with His presence. Thank-you, Chris, David, and Mel for giving yourselves to this special ministry at this special time in your lives. They let me go along as the unofficial "Camp Counselor" and lead a seminar on "Dealing With Your Old School Parents". It was a stretch identifying with the mind of an old school parent but somehow I got by
Jen also led a seminar on "The Old School Book" (making the Bible valuable and meaningful to teens today). Tough topic for today’s student but she did great. Sunday morning after camp a student came up to me and said, "Your seminar was good and so was Pat’s – but Jen’s was amazing!" That made me beam! As a parent, she must increase and I must decrease!
Then Selma attended a seminar of her own last week. She was getting Organizational Development training from the finest minds in the world on this subject through Columbia University in New York. Her training this time came from professors from Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Southern Cal, Wharton School of Management and more. My head gets dizzy just listing those guys. Talk about an opportunity for learning – (and for being salt and light)! This was her second of three trips just north of the Big Apple this year for this kind of training. I am so proud of her.
Not to be outdone is Natalie. She got back last Saturday from six weeks in Malaga, Spain, where she had been studying Spanish at a University there. She went with a girlfriend of hers from UTK. They stayed with a Spanish family who knew only a few words of English. Her professors didn’t know much more. Talk about a cultural experience! Malaga is on the south coast, so they went to the beaches a lot, they toured castles and mountains and canyons in the area, and even caught a bullfight. It is good to have her home though I am so glad she got the experience to aid in her Spanish minor at school.
We do a lot these days as a family. And a lot of it is in different directions. That’s what makes our time together so precious. I appreciate our family times more now than ever. And I hope you do yours as well.
Let me challenge you to value the family time you have. If the kids are young, treasure those times. They won’t always be asking you to spend time with them. Appreciate even the routine things you do with those youngsters. Trust me, the routine will change when they don’t need you as much.
If they are older, don’t look back and beat yourself up. Just make the most of the time you have with them now and in the days ahead.
I really don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t know eternity was ahead. I guess I’d try to be a control freak like some people you probably know who try to hang onto the past. This life is going by quicker and quicker. Thanks be to God that there is an eternity for His children. That reunion – just a short time from now – will not be just a global reunion, but a cosmic one that will eclipse any family get-together you or I can imagine.
Won’t that be cool? Hope you know the Lord so you’ll be in that reunion – the one that will last forever.