Happy Birthday to My Son

11 years ago on January 24th, 2000, at 9:58 a.m. I became a dad. That’s when my son Isaac was born.  Happy Birthday Isaac.  I was almost 40 years old when he was born. An age many dad’s are soon welcoming grandkids.  Being a dad is the greatest thing for me. I love it. I have two children whom I cherish deeply and I am challenged to raise them in a fashion where they not only pursue their own personal dreams but pursue God just like I did as a child. I’ve spent at least six years teaching Isaac and his sister Anika, three important things:  1) To trust God no matter what. 2) Make wise choices, and 3) treat others the way they want to be treated.  I am relentless with this and I am seeing the fruit of their own personal applications to these truths. (Okay, maybe they still need to learn how to be nicer to each other = ) ). 

At any rate, Isaac is a great kid who is currently in the fifth grade and is unfortunately learning to love my high school enemy, the Lewiston Bengals.  We have been attending my high school’s (Clarkston Bantams) basketball games lately, and he refuses to root for anything in Scarlett and Black.  I thought I had done a better job raising him.  Funny how I taught him to dislike (actually worked on getting him to “hate” the purple and gold of the University of Washington, since I’ve been a lifelong Washington State Cougars fan, and then for us to move back here to the valley and live on the wrong side of the river when it comes to school districts. You see, the Lewiston Bengals colors are purple and gold.  He booed them when we first moved here, not knowing that if we continue to live in Lewiston, he will be wearing those colors. But since we’ve now lived here for three years, he has grown accustom to Lewiston being purple and gold but still dislikes the Huskies. Kudos to him.  It’s a dad’s dilemma to have his son rooting for the other team. 

This Friday night is the Lewiston-Clarkston Golden Throne basketball games and I will find myself sitting by myself on the Clarkston side of LCSC’s activity center, (my daughter will be busy going back-and-forth between sitting with me on one side, her mom and brotheron the other side, and being a concession stand queen), while my son, who just last year joined me in laughing when the LHS faculty couldn’t even put up a descent “L” in the stands whenever their team was at the free throw line, sits on the other side.  What’s a dad to do? 

To my son Isaac, I always say this to him every single day, “I love you. I love you a lot. I love you all the time.”  Happy 11th birthday and Go Bantams.  ( I wonder if there any good homes for sale in Clarkston?)

Getting busy living

It’s a famous line in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. “Get busy living or get busy dying.” I was flipping channels tonight and came across the ending to the movie Unforgiven, with Clint Eastwood.  Just as Gene Hackman’s character is about to die by being shot by Clint Eastwood, he yells, “See you in Hell.”  I am pretty sure he was saying he was getting busy dying.  Sure enough, the guy with no heart in this movie, Eastwood, shoots him dead. 

Most of us reading this I am pretty sure are busy living.  What we are living for is relative to each person.  Some will say they live for their families, others will say they live to get wealthy, and others will simply say they live for others. 

In my house are many ants.  I am pretty sure they must be Australian ants because the Bible say’s that the ant stores up in summer so that they will have plenty when it’s, well, not summer.  (Its currently summertime in Australia).These ants either did a terrible job this past summer finding food to store up or maybe they were just plain lazy. At any rate, they now own my basement I am getting busy helping them die. 

So, what’s your take, are you busy living or busy dying?  What gets you up and out of bed each morning and gets you through the day, and allows you to call it a day and crawl into bed at nighttime? Food? Money? Family? 

So just as Red said in the Shawshank Redemption movie, “Get busy living or get busy dying,” I say likewise.  I say, in all you do, give thanks to God above, be kind to those who are put around you, and get busy living.