This is my birthday month!   I was blessed to have loving parents and many, many happy birthdays growing up.  We could always choose what we wanted for our birthday meal, and since I was born in the hot, dog-days of August, my favorite place to go to celebrate was to Musquash Lake for a cook-out.  It was just two or three miles from our humble little home in Codyville, ME, and getting to swim and splash in the cool lake was ‘the cherry on the (birthday) cake’.  ????

As I write this post from Romania, I have to tell you that there is something a little strange about not being in my own country on the Fourth of July.  I experienced this back in 2000 when I worked with Gujarati Indians in Loughborough, England.  It just felt odd.  And it does this time around, too. 

The Bible is full of examples of fathers.  Good ones, not so good ones, ones filled with wisdom, ones who ‘struggled’ with wisdom, and plenty of other types.  No matter who our father is (was) Ephesians 6.2 tells us to honor our father (and mother) – and it was also the first commandment with a promise.  It was easy to honor my father.  I was one who was blessed to have a ‘good one’ – and one who was filled with wisdom.

Everyone thinks that their dog is the ‘best’. But I, truly, had the best dog – for about 11 years. He was a beautiful smooth-haired Chow-Chow, and his name was Johann Sebastian Bachie. My boys were quite taken a-back by his name, but since they couldn’t seem to come up with anything else, Bachie, it was.

In Deuteronomy 22, it says several times to not ignore your neighbors’ needs.  In the NASB, it uses the words, ‘pay no attention to them’.  And in the Message it says, ‘don’t look the other way’.  Oh, how many times we been tempted to make believe we didn’t see a need perhaps because we didn’t have the time to tend to it, or the money, or frankly, just didn’t care – and we looked the other way.

My face still gets red when I think as a 7 year-old child, I signed all my Valentine cards ‘form’ Dawn.  Everyone had a good laugh, but I did not see the humor.  Nonetheless, it did not spoil Valentine’s Day for me in ensuing years.  And at each age period, the day took on different meanings for me.

I am not one much for making New Year’s Resolutions.  Many years ago, I learned that I could not follow through with them, so why bother.    And then I learned the reason I couldn’t follow through with them was because I was always trying to do them under my own ‘steam’ – of my own initiative.

When my very precocious and oldest son, Geoff was not quite 3 years-old, I decided that he could understand the ‘true meaning of Christmas’.  I began by telling him ‘what if at his third birthday party everyone brought gifts with great hoopla for each other, but no one brought him a gift?’  Scowling deeply, he said, “I wouldn’t like that!”