A great line: “Tottering around the kitchen, smashing meringues.” Good stuff!

Thank you for your thoughts; I’m seconding Mike’s nomination that you blog a bit more…is internetnun taken yet. Like you, I find myself every week looking at the bit of bread in my hands and marveling that he would die for sinners like me. I break the bread in my hand, reminding myself that I broke that beautiful, sacred body, as I crush the body between my teeth. But it is with joy that I wash that broken body down with the juice of Christ’s blood, knowing that it was his blood that has made me clean.

And then I go out and act the jerk again…thankfully we celebrate communion every week, I need the reminder that often.

On another note, why is it that Satan pushes our buttons right before we’re going to church? My wife and I have had some of our best fights on the drive to church!

Thanks for your message of humility and honesty, and thanks to both of you for being such good examples of those willing to care for their elderly parents. My wife and I are facing the prospect of taking in her widowed and unhealthy mother…of 54. Could be a long time of adjustment, but I’m glad to see people taking the responsibility for the elderly and needy that we all should.

AMMMen, and AMMMen.

For us it was a very difficult time; my grandmother became quite paranoid and had numerous psychotic episodes…bitterness had been her closest friend for so many years. The memory I most cherish took place the night of a reception for my first photography exhibit last February. Things had come together in my life after a long period of struggle. My grandmother was able to attend and after a quick tour of the exhibit sat in a chair in the middle of the gallery while I met and conversed with visitors. At one point as I moved back and forth she waved to me “Kent, Kent…” I bent down to listen to her “…I’m so proud of you.”

Two Saturdays later I received the call informing me that she’d passed away. The rush of the ensuing funeral services transitioned to the rush of a busy year and it wasn’t until I wrote our yearly Christmas letter that I reconnected with this memory.

It’s a very good and hard thing to care for our elders.

Wow, having a Christmas meal and church on the same night seems really challenging. If we were you, having to deal with services and music and so-forth, we’d be eating sandwiches. Tonight we had baked chicken and frozen veggies, for instance. Put Mike to work. Make him grill something.

One of my most cherished recent memories is a visit to the home of the parents of some good friends. We met these folks when we were all in our 30’s and this was only the second time we’d met their parents, who are in their 70’s. Anyway, “we kids” were staying up late playing Scattergories, and yakking about the current political situation and whatnot. The mom was making a phone call, and the dad admonished us to “Hush now, when momma is on the phone”. I could not believe that I, a 40-year old man, had just been told to pipe down like a teenager. It made me think of Dave Ramsey’s “powdered butt” syndrome: Once somebody has powdered your butt, they don’t want to take your advice about anything.

My parents both died before I was 30, and I’ve often wondered what it must be like to interact with parents as an adult child. To share the concerns of marriage, parenting, switching careers, etc. Please cherish it, or at least continue to bear it in the thankful fashion that you do.