This has been a really good week for me. There are many contributing factors to that equation as I sit here in the cool morning air, just getting up, waiting for the smell of that addictive drug called coffee and facing a really busy day, the Lord's Day. This week my wife and I spent nearly a week at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where we were met with heavy rains the first two days. Nothing much worse to me than being stuck in a hotel room on a beach in a heavy downpour with no laptop and seven channels on a small TV screen. But the drive to Myrtle Beach last Sunday was a capper to a really great day in so many ways and I realized in the rear view of the week that that was the beginning of a whole array of factors that has landed this early morning.
One thing that really stands out to me was looking out on the empty South Carolina beach many times during the day of June 6, the day of the Normandy Invasion in 1944. Beaches do that to me ever since I walked the landing beaches at Normandy a few memorable years ago. Remembering the still present German bunkers, machine gun and field gun emplacements, holding the sand in my hands, feeling tears well up many times, strolling the gentle quiet of the hallowed ground of the American Military Cemetery on Omaha Beach all melt into a mental place that is inescapable and a beach will always take me there. So as my wife sat on the balcony of our room, I wiped many tears that day while residing in that place cast from my time at Normandy.
Another, and probably even more moving experience for me this week, was sitting in a nice restaurant across from a young family with two small children. I become affixed on the interface of the young mother and dad as they taught and corrected and coached and laughed and scolded their two offspring. So there in that large, crowded restaurant watching this ebb and flow I was yet again moved to tears with the reality of life. Alicia, I am sure, felt I had finally crossed over into Nutdom as we ate, I quiet, with tears warmly streaming watching this family but thinking of my own family.
So many times we had sat in restaurants doing exactly the same back and forth. I found myself transfixed with the passage of time, the value and worth of parenting and the touch parents have on children that manifests when they have children and start the cycle of teaching all over again but with different DNA, a new culture but values are built by and within families. So when I start my daily readings from newspapers around the world and am hit with yet another round of the politics of same-sex marriage, I find my stomach churning at how vital it is for a male and a female together to instill the traditions, the boundaries and the values that comprise a culture of a family unit as time passes and maturity sets a pace for the next generation. The same-sex issue framed on "equality" is simply absurd to me as a Christian man for it runs against everything I believe is given us Scripturally and philosophically on what a marriage is and is supposed to be. Some will again not like my thoughts but that "some" chose to read this so that "some" will just have to know where my heart resides clearly on this topic. Children need a mother and a father; not a man and a man or a woman and a woman!
Another phenomenal experience for me this week but the drive home from South Carolina as we traversed the breathtaking beauty of West Virginia. It was like seeing it for the first time for me. The mountains and lush, rolling hills of vegetation with the blue haze wrapped around it always takes me back to the maneuvering of the Civil War combatant forces of the North and the South. I easily can envision horse cavalry slicing through those same hollows or horse drawn artillery moving to the front or the thousands of men sweating but ever pushing toward winning a cause, a cause they themselves believed in enough to die for. I wonder, today, how many causes I would choose to fight for enough to give my life for?
Which takes me to conclusion for that got answered last evening as my son and his family sat in our basement watching the NBA playoffs between Miami and Boston. To be able to sit on that sofa and hold my grandson, Noah, close to me, rubbing his belly, kissing him endlessly, running my hands through his hair, explaining parts of the game to him, watching his young mind drink in a game he loves; PRICELESS. In that nearly three hours we spent together with our son, Taylor, and his beautiful wife Joanna, Ms Gracie and her new found hunger and excitement to do math facts, Noah drinking in that game and then Ms. Hope; oh, Ms Hope! What a precious, spirit-filled, blessing she is to my family with her engaging, fun-filled nature and the energy she brings to us all, MY FAMILY.
That same family that began with a mother and a father that yielded a son and a daughter and now that same son and daughter
Yes, this has been a great week and each Joy loaded into the equation has yielded yet another span of a week to look back upon in amazement at how a million little things can mean to very much in so many ways. This will be a very busy day with singing, a wedding, a worship service but at the aggregate, I know now this will be another great day. How do I know that? I know that God has sanctioned and ordained the families of this family to nurture and to have our children and grandchildren in a church with the Bible is taught in its purity. Alicia begins teaching a class of young children today at our church and I know she will be a blessing to those young minds for generations to come.
I will close with this simple truth; right is always right and wrong is always wrong and no wrong will ever be made right by joining with another wrong. Families are the unit God created between a man and a woman to weather the storms of life. With each storm, wisdom and honor are honed and integrated and then readied to be passed onto a new, next generation.
Be blessed this day! Love YOUR family!
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