The Victor File

This week has been a pretty busy week and I really haven’t had the opportunity to settle down and write out any further thoughts on the church, though there is more to come.

I was recently asked how things are going in the process of our adopting Victor, so I thought I’d give an update on that front.

We told DHS last July that we were interested in adopting him and we heard nothing back for months.  In fact, we didn’t hear anything until somewhere around the end of November.  Since he has been with us throughout that time we didn’t see any pressing need to badger them.  We’re fairly confident that a court date in November is what got the ball rolling.  I imagine the judge asked where the process was and when they had to answer "nowhere" he probably gave them a few motivational words in that regard.  At least that’s how I picture it in my mind, and it’s kind-of a fun little picture, so it’s the one I’m going with.

Since that time, however, DHS has been all over us doing home studies, sending us for physicals and finger prints.  All the stuff we’d already done to become certified as foster parents we have gotten to do all over again because our certification is not directly through DHS.  Fun stuff.  (At least my doctor told me that it is not customary to do anal probes until you’ve hit 50.  I thought it was 40 and scenes from Fletch kept going through my head - "Hey, you using the whole fist, there, Doc?"  I apologize for any emotional scarring you have now received as a result of reading this.  Welcome to my world.)

Well, they were wanting the finger prints right away.  We tried to get them to accept the one’s we’d already done, but they wouldn’t.  Sapulpa isn’t fully equipped right now for the electronic kind - at least not such that DHS can get them from them - so we’re going to have to go to Tulsa for that.

But the long and short of it is that the process is now under way.  It will likely take around 6-8 weeks for them to get the finger print info processed from the Tulsa police department and past that I’m not sure what else they are going to need.  If there isn’t anything beyond that then it looks like things might be finalized around the end of April.  Once that happens we’ll probably throw a big party and you’ll all be invited.

GH III Anonymous

Hello.  My name is Paul and I’m a Guitar Hero III-aholic.

It all started at Thanksgiving.  While visiting my parents I was invited to play Guitar Hero on my niece’s PS2.  I knew it was sinking it’s tentacles into me when I got this urge to toss my other niece off of the game, confiscate her guitar and play until the cows came home.

I was rocking like a hurricane.

So I convinced my wife that we needed to get GH III "for the family" for Christmas.  She bought it several weeks before Christmas and, like the addict that I was becoming, I tried with subtle and not-so-subtle hints to get her to let us open it early.  She must have smelled it on my breath.  Seen it in my bloodshot eyes.  She wasn’t giving in.

Our family opened our gifts a couple of days early on Saturday because we would be going out of town for Christmas Eve and Day and didn’t want to wait until we got back.  But Vera wanted to save GH III until Monday morning.  But I went back to where we’d stashed it and brought it to the living room.  I figured it was easier to get forgiveness than permission.

I opened it up and there it was - the jet-black wireless guitar controller and the game disc.  It was a thing of beauty.  I gently installed the neck and batteries, carefully placed the disc into the PS2 and proceeded to crank out Slow Ride.

I’ve created several bands.  I had one with my son Wesley that we called P Dub Roc, but the band was lost to a corrupted file.  I’m progressing in my own career under the name P-Dogg and I’m in a band with my wife.  We’re the Mamas and Papas.  We rock hard and we’ll make your ears bleed.

But I am now at the point where I must confess that I am powerless over my addiction and my life has become unmanageable.  I will play a round or two when I go home for lunch today.  I also confess that only God can restore me to sanity.

God help me.  And God will need to help you if you think you can beat me!

My Lunch With A Sports Legend

My wife and I have had season tickets to OU football since the John Blake days when tickets were exceptionally easy to get.  We suffered through games where four different quarterbacks were used - in one series!  But that all paid off when Bob Stoops became coach of the Sooners.

That was BC - Before Children.  These days games are difficult to make.  Most fall weekends we have up to three soccer and/or basketball games the kids are in and as much as I love OU football, I love my kids more.

But when Bedlam comes to Norman I do everything in my power to make it.  I like OSU.  They’re sort of like that stray puppy hanging out in your neighborhood.  Little.  Cute.  But sometimes nasty.  And I love it when OU beats OSU not because I hate their little Pokified hearts, but because it bothers them so much.  They could go 1-10 every season and if that one win was against OU their season would be complete.  No matter their record, if they win they’ll print up T-shirts to celebrate.  God bless those little buckaroos.

So when Bedlam rolled around and game time was set at 2:30 I was going.  But it was cold, and Vera would rather watch them on TV than sit through the cold (it even snowed a little).  So I took my dad.  My dad is why I grew up an OU fan.  He graduated from OU with a degree in Electrical Engineering.  He also wrestled for them.  He wrestled behind some national champions.  When he decided his studies were more important he quit the team even though coaches tried to get him to stick with it.  And all that makes him a member of the "O" club - lettermen.

Last year I met Paul Burleson and his wife Mary before an OU game and we went to the "O" club tent for a burger.  Paul told me they had some great burgers.  They take a hot dog weiner, split it in two and slap it on top of the hamburger patty and you’ve got yourself one heckuva meal there.  Well…earlier this year at the Miami game I met up with Paul and Mary again, but this time we were told that the "O" club tent was closed to members only.  Word had gotten out about how good those burgers were and they had sold out - to the consternation of many an "O" club member.  Drats!

So at the Bedlam game I told dad about the good "O" club burgers and said that maybe they had opened it back up to the public.  Dad told me that he thought he was a lifetime member of the "O" club, but he couldn’t find his card.  But we thought we’d give it a try.  They had tables all set up in the Fieldhouse where my dad used to wrestle.  We approached the table and the young lady asked for a name.  Dad told her he thought his membership had probably expired so she after getting his name she handed him a form to fill out.  While he was filling it out she said, "Oh, here you are.  You’re already on the list."

Sweet.

Much to our delight we were not only going to get a good "O" club burger, we were going to get a free "O" club burger along with chips and a drink.  We went inside, got our food and found a table.  Scanning the room I could see a number of faces I’d seen on the jumbotron in games past…former football players.  I couldn’t remember their names, but it was confirmed several times as kids with their dads would approach one of them with a football or a ball cap to sign.  But there was one face I definitely recognized and could put a name with.  I’d just seen him on TV the week before doing an interview with one of the game crews.  It was ol’ silver shoes himself - College Football Hall of Famer Joe Washington.  Come to find out Joe is the Executive Director of the "O" club.

He milled around and had his picture taken with a number of people - even a few OSU fans who somehow got access to those sacred grounds (he did put an OU ball cap on one of the OSU fan’s little girls when they got their picture taken).  So we invited Little Joe over to eat with us and got to know him real well.  We exchanged cell phone numbers and now I’m on Joe Washington’s speed dial.  Can you believe it?!?!  Well….ok….maybe you shouldn’t.

But I still got to have lunch with a sports legend.  He’s my dad.  Not only was he a wrestler for the University of Oklahoma, he was my T-ball coach, my little league coach, my church basketball team’s coach.  We’ve gone to OU basketball games together and many OU football games as well.

With about eight minutes left in that Bedlam game the outcome was no longer in doubt.  Dad turned to me and said, "We can go whenever you want."  So we strolled back to the car and fought the traffic back to his house with another victory on the field and memories created off of it.

Prayer Request Update

Our family is going on vacation today, but I didn’t want to leave you hanging regarding this week’s prayer request.  Let me begin by saying how we have valued your commitment to pray for us.  It’s actually pretty amazing how things have developed just since Tuesday.

There are some things I probably can’t say about Victor’s situation and other things that would simply be unwise to say.  I certainly don’t want to undermine the generous heart of the woman who wants to adopt Victor and his siblings.  Anyone who is willing to welcome the orphan and give them a new home and love them is to be commended.  Would that more of us who claim the name of Christ would do so. 

As an aside, let me just tell you that the foster care system is in terrible shape across America.  There are far more kids who need homes than there are beds to put them in.  Those who aren’t fortunate enough to be placed with a family are either sent to a shelter, a group home or are institutionalized, usually in a psychiatric hospital.  These kids have been chewed up and spit out by their own families.  Many have been sexually abused, taught to steal, taken out drinking with relatives, neglected, cussed at their whole lives, beaten and more.  Let me challenge you to consider opening your home to these children.  They need a safe home and lots of love.  It’s amazing how resilient they are, especially when they receive these things.  This is pure religion which is undefiled.

Back to Victor.  He simply does not want to be adopted by the lady who wants to adopt he and his siblings.  He’s told his case worker this multiple times.  He’s told the adoption specialist.  He’s told his attorney.  He’s told all of his friends.  There are a combination of reasons, some of which have nothing specifically to do with the potential adoptive mother and a lot to do with the stability that has come to his life over the last fifteen months.  He feels safe with us.  He likes his school.  He loves his church.  He has many friends and makes friends easily.  He could probably have much of that were he to move, but he cannot see that.  He also loves our family and we have certainly grown to love him.

On July 23rd Victor and his siblings were to go to his adoptive mother’s for a week-long stay.  The plan was to place the kids in the home, probably the next week or so.  But on Wednesday he found out that the adoptive mother said that if he didn’t want to be there she didn’t want him.  Who could blame her.  It looked to be a situation that was getting off to a very bad start with no reason to believe it would get better any time soon.

Before we had learned that on Wednesday we told the adoption specialist that we were interested in adopting Victor.  It was really amazing to watch how things unfolded throughout the day.  There is no guarantee that we will, in fact, adopt him, though things look very positive at this point.  We must still qualify.  The courts must grant him a separation from his siblings (they have wanted to keep them together).  We suspect that his case worker may be in court this coming Monday to ask for the sibling separation.  It will take a while for the process to run its course for our approval.  But so far things are looking positive.

We would ask you to continue to pray for this situation, but we would ask for a new direction in your prayers.  We feel a peace that we should pursue adoption.  Now we ask you to pray that the potential obstacles that still exist might be resolved so that the adoption might take place.  They are certainly not insurmountable obstacles as everyone we have talked to so far has been very positive.  But we must still get a recommendation from the adoption specialist and approval from the courts.  We must also qualify.

We feel a little like fish out of water because we don’t know what all is involved and we have made no financial preparations for the expense that will be involved.  We know someone who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and we will ask him for a few of those cows knowing that he is generous and believing that he will provide.  He has always done so in the past and we have no reason to believe he will not do so now as well.  We also know that children who are in state custody are often eligible for assistance and we will pursue whatever is available.

Thanks again for your prayers.  It has been amazing to see how God has worked thus far and we look forward to his continued work in the days ahead.

Sorry.  No picture today.  No time.

A Prayer Request

In April 2006 our family welcomed our first foster child into our home.  Victor was a rambunctious ten-year-old with a hot temper.  Within the first month he was almost kicked out of school for throwing a rock at another student.  He was a year behind already, mainly because attendance at school had never been a priority for either him or his caregiver - whoever that happened to be at the time.  He was a slow reader and horrible at math.  His favorite subject was recess.  Yet he’s very smart.  Give him a task and work with him on it and he’ll get it down.  He can memorize the lyrics to any song he likes and he’s already beaten every Dragonball-Z game on the Playstation 2.

When we told him something he didn’t like he would storm away in anger or frustration.  He didn’t sleep well.  He’d lie awake late at night and wake up early in the morning.  He’s still pretty jumpy.  If he’s in a back room and you’re going to go call him for dinner you’d better make some noise as you go down the hall, otherwise when you call his name he might jump out of his skin.  Feeling safe has always been an issue, but he’s made some amazing progress.

When he first went to Sunday School at church his class would have a Bible drill between the boys and girls. The boys always lose.  Always.  The first month he’d nearly storm out of class every week mad at all the other boys, or mad at himself because they’d lost all their points as a penalty for acting up.  In the early part of summer ‘06 he asked a recent OBU grad in our church what it meant to be saved.  He trusted Christ that night.  He hasn’t been baptized because his parents wouldn’t allow it.  They no longer have custody rights to their children and we hope to baptize him within the next two weeks.

Today he’s the cool mediator calming the other boys down.  His reading level has improved dramatically.  He now knows his multiplication tables from 0 to 12 and can fire them off with ease.  Everyone talks about what a change they’ve seen in him.  In our church’s children’s awards program he got the Exceptional Achievement award for learning everything every other kid his age had taken six years in church to learn.

Now Victor is up for adoption.  That’s actually been a possibility since this past Spring when his parents lost their parental rights.  DHS has been wanting he and five of his siblings to be adopted together.  About a month ago they found a potential adoptive parent.  If he were to be adopted he would move to a tiny town over two hours away and would almost surely never be taken to church.  He would have no father figure and his adoptive mother would be 77 when his youngest sister graduates from high school.  He’s asked to stay with us.

We didn’t get into foster parenting with the intention of adopting kids.  Our best hope was to give kids a safe and loving home until they could be reunited with their parents.  Sometimes that simply doesn’t happen.  We know that we cannot adopt every child that comes into our home.  If Victor told us that he would be happy being adopted with his siblings we would bless that in a heartbeat, though we’d obviously want him to go to church to continue to learn and grow in his faith.

Please pray with us as we seek the Lord’s direction for our family and how Victor fits into God’s plan for our family.  Pray for Victor as this is a huge decision and a heavy burden for an eleven-year-old.  We must make a decision very soon, likely before the week is out but no later than the end of the next week.  We will be vacationing next week which means we really need to have a decision this week.  We have talked to his case worker and it sounds like the decision will pretty much be up to us at this point.  We will know more tomorrow evening.  Thank you for your prayers.

Snowball - A Parable

When I was a kid, somewhere in grade school, we acquired a little white puppy that we named Snowball.  I don’t recall how we got Snowball.  I remember our neighborhood being an occasional roaming spot for strays.  The most notorious/glorious stray to ever countenance 17th Street was a scrawny gray cat.  We fed the cat for a couple of days, but we weren’t a cat family.  We were a dog family.  Cats are not pets.  Cats, at least to us boys, existed for various forms of experimentation.  As in, "how far do you think I can knock that cat with a three wood?"  But the gray cat was rescued by our next-door neighbors and within a year that scrawny little cat had grown to a behemoth of gross proportions and had been decorated by the neighbor with a gem-studded collar.  Talk about rags to riches!

So Snowball may have been a stray.  I don’t know.  But we liked Snowball enough to take in as a new member of the family.  We already had one dog, Sandy.  Sandy was some kind of Heinz 57 mutt with some Collie-like features, but not nearly as big or sleek as a Collie, and not nearly as small as a Sheltie.  There was definitely some other genetic presence as well.  Sandy could be mean.  He was protective of the family, but woe to you who were not family.  He lived in the backyard - never inside, but his thick coat kept him warm throughout the winter.  As Sandy got older he seemed to get meaner.  There was only one thing a stranger could do to get on his good side and that was food.  Preferably something of the yummy dog-loving sort like red meat.  I remember times when I’d go into the backyard and rub his tummy.  As soon as it looked like I’d quit he’d show me his teeth and growl at me.  I thought I might be there rubbing his tummy for the rest of my life.

Well, Snowball wasn’t going to be an inside dog either.  We tossed the little fella out back with Sandy, and they seemed to get along just fine.  They played and rough-housed constantly.  But they were also biting each other’s ears.  A lot.  Drawing blood.  It was kind of gross looking at those scabby ears.  And they just wouldn’t stop.

Even in dog world rank has its privileges.  Things were getting out of hand and one of the dogs was going to have to go.

To this day I can remember my mom loading me and my brothers in our ‘65 Ford station wagon and driving us out into the middle of who-knows-where and just dropping Snowball off on that country dirt road.  We were all bawling our eyes out.  We trusted that some home out there would take in this stray that we could no longer keep for his own well-being and for the harmony of the family - which, of course, included Sandy.

Whether we did the right thing dropping him off in the middle of who-knows-where, whether he found a good home, who knows?  I’m sure that today we would take him to shelter or maybe the dog pound.  I know the reason we didn’t do that then was out of the fear that he would simply be put down.  Fending for himself in the country was better than that, we figured.  Were we right?  We simply had to trust that we were.

Sometimes dramatic, heart-wrenching changes are necessary in a family for the good of all involved.  You bawl your eyes out and wonder if you’re doing the right thing.  Often you just have to trust that you are and let God take care of the rest.

This may seem like a pointless little story to many of you.  Others will know with more clarity what this little parable is about (it really did happen, by the way).  If you think you do, don’t read too much into the details.  Remember, there’s one overall point to parables and even Augustine showed us that the details could be stretched beyond recognition.  In the end, I wrote it for me because I just had to get it out.  Someone has said that blogs are narcissistic and this post may be evidence of that.  Sometimes they’re also a little therapeutic.

Goodbye, Snowball.  We pray you’ll find a good family to love you and care for you.

Picture This

This is Jay, one of our kids who runs track for Sapulpa High School.  The girl she is leading went to state last year.  Today she’s in Norman running in thunderstorms.  This was at a meet at the University of Tulsa.  It was overcast, so the lighting was flat.

An Open Letter To Fathers Of Girls

Dear Dads, especially those of you with girls,

Parenting is difficult these days.  Of course, parenting has always been difficult.  But if you have girls it can be especially challenging.  Sociologists have been telling us for decades now that girls almost universally have lower self-esteem than boys. I believe it.  You should, too.  Whenever I tell my son that he’s a good kid, a good looking kid, a talented kid, a good soccer player, a good basketball player, he comes at me with one consistent response: "I know."

When I tell my oldest daughter that she’s the prettiest nine-year-old girl in the world, that she’s incredibly smart, that she has the prettiest eyes, that I’m proud of her, that she’s a good soccer player and a good basketball player, she gives me one consistent response: she looks sheepishly at the ground with a hint of a smile as if to say, "Aw, you’re just saying that because you’re my dad."  I remember being told in college, way back when water still covered much of what is now Oklahoma and giant lizards roamed the earth, that this is how things were, and I made a commitment to myself that if I ever had girls I would do my darndest to make sure they grew up being affirmed in every way I knew how, every bit as much as any boy I might have.  I’ve tried to make good on that promise.

I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture, but there’s still a difference.  I suspect a culture where the words "nappy headed hos" can be publicly uttered has something to do with it.  Call me a wuss.  Call me Mr. Sensitive.  Join Howard Stern in telling me to "@#%$! off!"  But there’s something wrong with a culture that can regularly refer to its women as "hos."  I’m not just talking about Imus, either.  Just weeks ago I had to delete some downloaded music from my home computer that one of the older girls had downloaded.  Among them was a song about hos.  Quite a few talked about their "baby" as nothing more than a sex toy.

I’ve now had "the talk" with our two oldest girls, foster kids, one 14 and the other 17.  I don’t mean the "sex talk."  I mean the "self-respect" talk.  Why would you listen to some cretin rapping about hos?  Why would you pay him money to talk about you that way?  Why do you let boys lie to you, two-time you and treat you like a play toy?  When you find out they are playing you, why do you go back to them?  It would be better for you to join a nunnery and remain single the rest of your life than to waste your time with people who degrade you, lie to you and disrespect you.  And sadly I’m not sure they get it.  Problem is their dads never taught them any different.  May have even reinforced that garbage.

So dads.  You who have girls of your own.  Spend every day of your life telling your girls how beautiful they are.  How strong they are.  How smart they are.  Tell them to never give a boy or a man the time of day who will not be honest with her, respect her, honor her.  Teach them to be discerning.  Most of all love them like crazy so they don’t grow up looking for the male affirmation of some loser because they never got it from their fathers.

Tell Me A Story

Every night as I’m putting them to bed my two youngest say, "Tell me a story, Daddy!"

I confess that I’ve had to sharpen my storytelling skills.  I’ve told them some children’s stories, some Bible stories and some made-up stories.  Most of these stories have come from my memory bank.  Some of them they have already heard.  But when I tell them one they’ve heard before they don’t stop me.  Their eyes get big and a smile crosses their faces and they help me tell it - often interrupting with, "And THEN….!"

I don’t always like telling them stories.  Sometimes I’m worn out from a long day and I just want to go veg out.  And usually I’ve just battled them to get their teeth brushed, pj’s on and in bed.  That can be tougher than a twelve-hour work day.  But they are both persistent and persuasive.  And I always give in.  But I was thinking….I’m pretty sure I know a way to kill story time - not that I’m going to, nor that I want to.  Truth be told I kind-of enjoy it myself.  Here’s how: rather than tell them stories I’ll start sharing principles with them.  We’ll discuss theology.  "Always be honest,"  I’ll say.  "God consists of Father, Son and Holy Spirit."  "Docetism teaches that Jesus only appeared to be human, but that in reality his Divinity overshadowed his humanity."  "The very free and conversational style in which the second illustration Jesus uses in Matthew 24:45-51 is given, an illustration of the necessity of watchfulness, is remarkable."

Give ‘em three straight nights of that and story time will be a thing of the past.  That’s a better guarantee than George Zimmer can give you.

Something else that’s interesting is that, though they’re only three and five they remember the stories.  Maybe not every detail, but they remember them enough that they can help me tell them if it’s one they’ve heard before.  Stories communicate in a powerful way.  Stories shape our views about the world, ourselves, others and God. 

The story of the American Dream communicates something profound to people in our culture.  It tells us that you can be the poorest of the poor, but with hard work and determination you can be anything you want to be.  It says that the world may be set against you in some ways, but that no hurdle is to great to overcome.  It implies that worldly success is within every person’s grasp and is something everyone should desire.  We pass the values of that story on to our children in numerous ways - one of the most significant in the oft-repeated phrase, "I want you [my kids] to have it better than I had it."  We actually tell the story of the American Dream in a hundred different ways and in a thousand different places - at home, at the mall (yeah, especially at the mall), even in most of our churches with our million-dollar facilities, $300 suits/dresses and Madison Avenue-esque presentations.

Families have stories, too.  Some family stories say, "Kids in this family never go to college.  They move out when they turn 18 and get a job like the rest of the working world."  Other family stories say, "Kids in this family always go to college and become professionals of one sort or another."  Or, "this has been a family business for three generations and you will be expected to make it four."  Every now and then someone challenges the story.  Scrub girl Cinderella actually makes it to the ball and marries the prince.  Ariel forsakes the sea for the people of the dry land.  The little Hobbit Frodo actually saves the Shire and the rest of Middle Earth.  And these become compelling stories in and of themselves - shaping new realities.

The Christian faith is basically a faith controlled by stories.  The story of perfect Adam in perfect Eden eating some perfectly forbidden fruit.  The story of faithful Noah and his family being saved from destruction and to a new beginning because he followed after God.  The story of a hundred-year-old man and a ninety-year-old woman having a son because of God’s promise.  Of three young Hebrew boys who were rescued from a hot-as-hell furnace because they refused to become idolaters and remained faithful to their God.  Of a baby, and a feeding trough, and five loaves of bread and two fish, and walking on water and a cross and an empty tomb and the world set to rights.  Of a new heaven and a new earth where there is no more sorrow or pain, where righteousness lives and where the radiance of the King outshines the sun.

These are powerful stories.  Jesus knew the power of stories.  He told some of the world’s greatest stories.  He challenged many of the prevailing stories of his day and invited his listeners to enter into a new story about a new day and a new kingdom.

Folks over at Marty Duren’s blog have been having an ongoing discussion about "expository preaching."  In some ways I believe "expository preaching" has become a new idol for some among us.  To preach any other way is to be doing something other than preaching.  It’s just speaking to the wind.  Wasting everyone’s time.  Dishonoring the Scriptures.  I have nothing against expository preaching.  I hardly know how to do anything else.  I may not be a good expository preacher, but I’m a worse non-expository preacher.  But I know this: practically no one can recall for sure a single principle about life or faith that I preached in 2004.  But like my kids, they can’t forget the controlling stories that lie at the heart of our faith.

Last night I had an interesting discussion with a church member about the movie The Matrix.  I love those movies.  If you pay attention you’ll see a lot of "stuff" lying underneath the bullets and blue sky.  This church member watched the movie with his twelve-year-old son and they talked about some of those underlying messages and what they mean.  I believe that is a large part of the preacher’s task - to tell the stories and to get at the underlying message that is there.  This is what the apostle Paul did both in his preaching and in his writing (notice, for example, that in the book of Romans Paul writes about creation [chapters 1 and 8], Adam  [chapter 5], Abraham [chapter 4] and the temple sacrifices [chapter 12]).  Whatever style of preaching we employ, we, as Christians, should be storytellers who point out those great underlying themes, moving the story forward, inviting others to become a part of God’s ongoing story in His world.

Big In His Eyes

In a family of eight (and two dogs) our schedules are often on flex time.  It isn’t all that uncommon that I pick up at least some of the kids from school and bring them back to the church building with me for an hour or so because someone has a doctor’s appointment or some such in the afternoon requiring mom to be out of pocket when school lets out.

So, yesterday afternoon I had three with me here at the office.  My almost six year old wanted some paper so he could draw and this is his resulting masterpiece - dogs and all.  Of course, the proud, yet unsettling part, is the apparent large part that dad plays in his young mind.  It reminds me of the large part my dad has always played in my own mind.  I’m crying, and I’m not sure if it is because of the place I may hold in his young heart, or if it is because of the terrible responsibility that holds for me.  The past two years our music minister has asked me to sing on Father’s Day.  Both times I sang the same song - Philips, Craig & Dean’s I Want To Be Just Like You.  Perhaps it was more true than I knew.

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