Getting The Fries To Dip Themselves

Six years ago …

Galatians 2:1-10 June 12

for generous hearts all year 10706.12

Only they would that we should remember the poor, the same which I was wont to do. 10

Psalm 50 – A Psalm of Asaph.

The mighty God, even the LORD, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.

With a tornado warning in effect around Max [just south of Minot] this afternoon, today at work was quite quiet – only two loans and some phone calls all day. Sarah's also been sleeping a little too soundly, Mathew had his first pee-wee ball game today, and Martha's getting her class ready for Father's Day.

As I write …

For my journal entry six years ago today, I also pasted in the back of a Burger King fry carton that amused me at the time, which read

THE BIG FRYDEA: Let's make it easier to eat fries on the go. Done. Let's also keep fries hot and crispy. Done and done. Next up, getting the fries to dip themselves.

Ok, it didn't READ that since as far as I know cardboard cannot read! I'm going to start today with a request for prayer for my son Jeffrey. Both he and his sister Sarah are strong-willed children (did that phrase even exist before 1978, when James Dobson's book The Strong-Willed Child was first published?) in that they tend to go for what they want and you don't want to get in their way. Oh, and happy 119th monthaversary to Martha and me! (Our tenth wedding anniversary is July 12.)

I have to commend our kids for their problem-solving skills and their imagination, but with other adults they can be especially grating. And I want Jeffrey to do what I ask him to, realize there is more to life than Mario Kart 7 on the Nintendo 3DS, and that summer – this would be his first one book-ended by school since he just finished kindergarten, his first school year – is time off but you've got to be responsible and respectful all the time.

I am so tired of saying "what do you say" to elicit "thank you" or "please" like he doesn't remember it or care. Put simply, I don't want my children to grow up to be bullies. Any more than I think Martha or I are. The way to get your way is not by striding in and taking over the room; it is not cool to talk back to adults even if you think – very often, even if you know – they're wrong. I guess it took becoming an adult myself to realize that we're not big fans of being contradicted in public. Nobody is …

But then I pray and realize I need to be the better person, the better parent.

I'm bigger than being ruined, David