-Raising my children was far easier for me than raising me was for my parents. That is true because there was far more good information available to me than they had.

-My Dad taught me to read. We had devotions on my mom and dad’s bed every night. Each child took a turn reading a verse in the Bible until we had read the passage. I was so young that I could not read, so Dad would point at a word, I would try to read it, then he would tell me what the word was and I would repeat it. I mostly remember reading Genesis, especially the Joseph story. When I got to school, “Run Dick run was easy for me because I had wrestled with reading words like Melchizedek.

-I could not grow up healthy without other people, namely my parents. I can’t get healthy now all by myself either.

-My parents have both been dead for time measured in decades. For me, the most effective way I can make amends to my parents over the bitterness I kept in my heart toward them as an adult is to be a good man now.

-The love I had for my children did wonders for my ability to know God loved me. For example, I remember when Jill spent a year in France I missed her so much. One day I saw it. Maybe God misses me when I don’t take time for Her. I felt wonder at the thought that  God missed me when I did not spend time with Her.

-When I made a mistake in my parenting, I tried to remember to make amends to my children. I thought that doing that would help them realize that everyone makes lots of mistakes.

-By making amends to my children, I hoped that my children would have an idea of how to deal with things when they made their inevitable mistakes.

-When I was six years old, an older boy beat me up on the way home from school. When my dad saw my condition, he took off running after the boy so he could find out where he lived and talk to the boys parents. That event meant a lot to me. It contributed to my idea that I wanted to protect my children so they could grow up feeling safe.

-Growing up, there was always some friend or family member visiting with us for hours, days and sometimes months. We gave the kids a home to grow up in that always welcomed people. Now they all love hospitality. Thanks Mom and Dad.

-My Dad was forever bringing home a homeless person to feed and give a haircut. It is no wonder that my career was with the homeless.

-When I gave up the bitterness toward my parents that had been so destructive to me, I could learn from the good things they did. I also learned that experiences with my children were the most powerful teaching tools I had.

-For example I never said things like don’t litter very often. Instead, when we went camping in the mountains, we would pick a few hundred yards along a nearby stream and picked it up. We had so much fun doing that. I would have gladly settled for a reasonably clean, but the kids searched, looked under rocks in the stream until they were satisfied that there wasn’t so much as a burned paper match left. They are environmentally conscientious to this day.

- Our family saying was no longer “Do not litter. It became “Leave it cleaner”. We applied that motto to every picnic and camping trip.

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