GENDADS

So, I really don’t have time for this.  What’s new.  Just before heading out the door on today’s project, I got snagged by a friend’s FB post.  Here I am an hour later.   One thing lead to another.  Mostly pondering and typing as I toured my new micro-world in Hootsuite.

Good Morning, Lord. Where DO I head this morning?

This morning became archtypical of what’s right and wrong (but mostly right) of my mornings these days.  I commented on four posts, did a Tweet, and now this.  It’s about The Story.  Again.  I can sledom see a movie twice and never read a book twice.  But this Story I love, for it is Life itself.  Here is a mix of todays posts.  I asked a question I ask of you again here.  How does my “noble sunrise” and it’s quick disintegration look like yours?  Or not.

From a new friend’s comment about a dream of her dad.  It wasn’t a post, it was a vignette of a Story.  Life should be full of thrilling segments of His Story written for us.  Instead, well…. OK, a quick read should be enough to pass the pondering and writing baton to you:

“There’s a story here .  Two stories mingled.  After all, our life fully lived out of the heart is merely The Story God had written for us.  Best we live HIS Story in us one chapter (hey…one PAGE) at a time.  I too often write and follow my own script. More in the past than now.  Age drains the ambition, adreneline, miss-focused passions that too often  formed my own story because the Author was way too slow with His.”

Now this as I moved from pondering to practical in my morning postings,  “It don’t hardly matter…whether old or young, the first challenge of the day, recognized and spoken or not, is:  What are my priorities AND “What are the first three things I will actually DO?

Wanna know mine?  Am curious how much mine and yours are alike.

Coffee, news, update “To-Do,” wrote yet more stuff that won’t get done, settled to read today’s five Psalms and Proverbs 26,

Wait.  That’s Four things.  See, once again, my Father of fathers gets second best.  Actually, I walked the dog as number four…but at least prayed from my Walkabout list while she pranced, peed, and pooped.

Is God offended (no, not about me forcing you to imagine dog-pooping/man-praying) that He was number five?  Not likely.  He’s quite used to it.  So, maybe you, like me, will want to surprise Him.  Without fanfare (which is what I think Tweeting is all about), I’ll move Him up to the number two spot.  (Certainly He does not expect a fruitful, cogent meeting with my heart and my mind before at least one cup.  Right?)

Wanna move God up a notch or two?  Wanna “read” and walkabout from His script instead of yours?

There’s one last punchline because my priorities now include my all-out help to Deep Rivers Family Ranch, one of the most exciting God-Thing projects I’ve been connected to in years.   Like you, I have to let God govern my priorities.  I have to make the assumption that those coming from the heart, a heart given to Him, are His.  BUT, since I am prone to my ways over His, I need to constantly ask, “Father, is this wonderful project for You that I’m on, what I am to be doing NOW?”

My place-holding blog entry is waaay too old.  Good reason, though.  Interesting, but are you interested?  Maybe not, so here’s the nutshell version so’s I can get on with fortifying the bridge so I can cross back over.

I loved blogging.  I loved a whole bunch more in life, too.  Hard to balance.  So, with the major focus being the rite of passage for my olderst grandson behind me, I took the bridge across to “LayLoLand”.  Been helping soninlaw, Matt, get started in his new professional-business-as-ministry, Deep Rives Family Ranch.  MAN! is that exciting.  It’s like passing the baton from our years of ministry to the newer gen better able to handle the peculiarities and demands of current family status in our nation.  DRFR is a whole-family crisis intervention therapy ranch.  Did I get enough words in there to help you figure it out?  It’s finding wonderful response in the therapy community and in the lives of those families Matt is touching.

After a summer at their new ranch site in Colorado (in the mountains above and west of Grand Junction), Carolyn and I are back home in SoCal catching our breath AND setting out on the new stage of priorities: 1) enjoy each other and the remaining life God grants us (see next paragraph), 2) Re-start Generational Fathering (after five months idle) and start with notes for Carolyn’s and my life memior (“Our Extraor dinary Journey:  Stories of Following Jesus Up Mountain Peaks, Through Valleys, and Out of Quick Sand”) 3) continue prayer and marketing support for Deep Rivers Family Ranch, 4) increase our personal witness and serve our Chapel congregation well.

By the way, the above is in the context of my advance prostate cancer.

So, what’s the bridge analogy that require re-crossing?  Life is short (and shorter by each year I enjoy God’s grace), Life is Hard, Life is Unfair, and Its End is Uncertain.  That’s the Engineer’s label on the bridge abuttment.  The bridge has been named the “Finish Well” bridge.  I’m crossing it again with even more enthusisam than what characterizes my life to date.

And I remember daily two motto’s.  One took me into college with faith the my future was in His hands, “‘Tis one life, ’twill so be passed, only what’s done for Christ will last.”  Then the motto on the cornerstone of Wheaton College that sent me out from that wonderful, life-framing institution, “For Christ and His Kingdom”.

Sorry I can’t fancy this up with the normal photo’s and graphics.  I’ve been too long away to remember how. For now, I just want my GenDads pals to know I’ll be back on the keyboards.  Soon grandson #2 will be entering his year of passage.  You’ll get some of those pieces and a bit of my Finish Well Journey.

My personal blog, Wild Gray Goose, has some personal refelction of life, cancer, and serving The One upon Whom all is centered.

For those being intruded on by hackers, I apologize.  I am hiring a smart blogger to fix the problem.  Please be patient.

FIRST, IT WAS THE LORD’S “STILL, SMALL VOICE”(See comment below).

THEN IT WAS THE DEVIL’S TURN…Or was it?  You probably noticed.  I got hacked.  Messed up my rigid plans for the day.  BUT it got me back into this blog.  I’ve been planning that for over a week.   Or is that spelled, “weak?”  I ‘spect I’m being prodded by the Lord to re-enter the blog world as part of the mission to pick up my book writing.  Been away all summer helping son-in-law start his business. It’s actually a ministry of reaching out to families in chaos by way of equine assisted therapy on Deep Rivers Family Ranch.

At the beginning of the summer I wrote:  SUDDENLY, THE LORD WHISPERED LOUDLY…”Take a break, son.”  He was refering to my time on my blog and social media.  He reminded me He wrote His Book, and now I should write mine.

SO FOR MY VISITORS OVER THE FIRST HALF OF OCTOBER:  This is a perfect place for a static page.  It introduces the book and a bit of our life touched, incredibly, by grace uncommon.  Feel free, however, to leave a comment (tap “comments,” above).]

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Per the blog header, the focus  of GenDads is pretty clear.  It’s about “generational fathering,” the concept of promoting multiple generations participation in the fathering challenge.  If the goal is “good and godly” children as lights of hope and righteousness in a darkening future, then the father and the father’s father would be a better set of tools to hammer out that sort of legacy.

One thing is obvious.  Like other “obvious” truths, we need reminding: it’s not the quantity (as in two complementing generations) but the quality of both that will assure the quality of the newest and very challenging generation being molded.

See the cute, happy couple? If the photo is 46 years old, does “happy” continue (even if “cute” is long gone)?  It’s a serious question.  The handsome Navy flyboy has wrinkles, white hair, and a protruding belly now.  But it  is the quality of his life–and his  “Happy Couple” marraige–that determines the quality of imprint “Popi” will have on his grandchidren.

This weekend Sunday service forces this issue.  You see, Carolyn (the still “cute” and obviously better half) and I were asked to share our testimony and given the entire message slot.  We would never have guessed (and still are a bit dazed) the overwhelming event that would become.  It was not the 46 years of walking with God together done in 40 minutes, but the entire week it took for us to forge Our Story from memory and pictures.  Tears, smiles, awed silence and shaking our heads in wonder as we reviewed each segment of the journey.

Reviewing our life under the Utterly Gracious Hand of a Loving God has changed us.  Our life forward will be different.  The “Finishing Well” phase of life  (like a race, a poem, a painting, a landscaping project…heck, like anything of worth) depends what’s been invested, hammered, built, tested, sacrificed (etc., etc.,) in early stages.  We were overwhelmed (I mean that; really, we were swept up in the wonder of it) at the amazing and unearned grace of God to have favored us so.  I type through tears even now.

This could be a very long post.  Or it could stop here.  Or maybe I should hit the “pause” tab for now.  I think over the next couple of days, with writing Generational Fathering highest on my priority list, I’ll take time on GenDads to share the highlights of that journey.  WHY?  Back to the “quality” thing in leaving a legacy imprint on my generations to follow. The quality of God’s grace is never in question.  How we appropriated it–that alone a mystery of unmetited grace–is the essence of how my life (amplified by my still-cute better half) will imprint these six grandchildren I so dearly love.

AND YOU?  HOW WILL THE WORK OF GOD IN YOUR LIFE UP ‘TIL NOW IMPACT YOUR LIFE ONWARD..AND THOSE HE GIVES YOU TO LEAD, INCLUDING THE GENERATIONS TO FOLLOW FORWARD?

THERE ARE SOME MISSIONS IN LIFE THAT GOD SUPERINTENDS MORE CLOSELY

It’s 0400. Back in my world-changing youth, this was a frequent wakeup time. Flying off the carrier, 0600 was good launch time; hour for briefing, hour for “warming up” 18,000 pounds of thrust for a predawn mission. Later, 0400 or so, was the continuation of my world-changing compulsions in ministry or missions. Something to write, someone to call in another time zone, a document to finish…all that stuff.

Today it’s simpler. My life and the sage points I’ve acquired (most accidentally), still cares for and prays for God’s work in His world. He still uses me here and there doing the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Wanna know my focus now? Sure you do. My LEGACY.

Well, it’s actually not MY legacy. That sounds so ME-ish. Yet, it does feed my deepest desire to be significant and to leave something behind of greater value. With Prostate Cancer advancing (slowly, I’m happy to say), “finishing well” has a clearer ring; a clarion call, so to speak.

No, I honestly now feel “called” (that’s God’s quiet voice speaking) to focus my life and spend my heart on my legacy. Spelled out, that means my wife, my daughter and soninlaw, my almost six grandchildren. Is that a spent, retired, and doting grandfather? Yes and no. At the Bema (that’s where Jesus sits on the judges bench at the end of life’s race and hands out medals, ribbons, or small “Attaboy” notes), I’ll get notes and ribbons for my world-changingness. What I want, honestly–I really do want this–are just a couple of medals (bronze would be fine, gold is what I’m after). In my mind’s eye they say “Well Done Faithful Father“.

This is a good jumping off place. I have given this day to get the Introduction of GENERATIONAL FATHERING. It’s a book ten years in the living, five of those in note-taking. A “Gen Dad” is a father who knows his divine assignment is never rescinded. Fathers and grandfathers, inlaws and step included, team up to bring the value of both generations to improve the guiding of the newest generation, one that will transfer legacy, in turn, to ensuring generations. I’ll be letting you in on some of the pieces as the book moves onward. But, maybe I’ll sleep in ’til 0600.

Time to I’m halting this post here for the devasting news of Japan’s tsunami. Caught it on Tweetdeck. Flipping on Fox News. Time to pray, not write. Ten of our friends are on a cruise in Mexico. Many of my life-long friends are along the CA coast. This looks like a day more given to watching and praying, maybe not so much writing.

HOW ABOUT YOU…IS YOUR MISSION CLEAR?  You willing to get up at 0400 to execute it?

It caught me by surprise.  Shouldn’t have.  I’ve seen Paul grow personally, professional, and spiritually over the years.  He’s now considered one of the world’s premier sitar (Indian “Guitar”) performers. Talk about witness in challenging context!  Travels all over.  Picked it up as a missionary kid in India. Father is a major figure in world missions and best friend (next to soninlaw, Matt).  “Uncle” in this case is an earned title. it’s what best friends become when “uncles” have a better voice that dad’s too familiar one.

So, of all the responses from the grandson’s and the readers about INTEGRITY, Paul’s wins the year’s subscription to all three of my blogs.  Besides, if I did charge, he’d pay me in Rupees.

Am sending the following to Matt for dialog with the boys and the home church meeting this morning.  Please poke “MORE” here then (again, PULEEZ) poke “Comments,” above.  This is life changing material. More

[This letter to my two oldest grandsons, 13 and 11 is not fictional. We'll chat about them during my visits and Dad (Matt, co writer) will engage them in the meantime. This series is also for YOU, "Old Folks." It's a reminder how essential a quality INTEGRITY is to our lives. Thoughts I offer the boys can prod you into fresh thinking. A few moments of reading and a quick inventory just might refresh your soul, might adjust your behavior...today. ]

IF WE CONSTRUCT OUR LIFE WITHOUT INTENTIONALLY ADDING INTEGRITY, IT IS LIKE A RANDOM CONSTRUCTION PAPER CASTLE

Morn’, Guys. In the next couple of letters, let’s get down to the NITTY GRITTY. That’s “old speak” for the core of stuff.

Did you catch it:”nitty GRITY?” I teased you that the Latin root for INTEGRITY was “true GRIT.” See how our English language finds ways to reinforce what’s important (“inteGRITY”)? The question, now that we’ve worked out a definition: SO WHAT?!

Well, we established that personal INTEGRITY is the core of good character. Get it? “Core,” “Nitty GRITY,” “INTEGRITY”? Good character is what people will know you by. Wait, there is one more…it is what YOU come to know yourself by.

For now as I try to keep this short for your school schedule and your attention span, let’s name the personal character traits that come out of INTEGRITY. I just now closed my eyes and thought of six. There are more. Visitors to the comments section–including your dad–have identified several. Check it out.

So, before you turn the page, I’d like you to think of at least six character traits built on INTEGRITY. Keep in mind what INTEGRITY is (you did read the last letter, right?). If you guys are reading this together, see what you can come up with. When we finish, the list should be pretty long. We’ll print it and we can discuss it when we have lunch at the Cowboy Cafe in my next visit. Ready? Think of at least six, then poke “MORE” . . . More

[These letters to my two oldest grandsons, 13 and 11 are not fictional. They read them, feeling special to be "blogged" about, and we will chat about them during my visits and Dad (Matt, co writer) will engage them in the meantime. This series is also for YOU (Old Folks). It's a reminder how essential a quality INTEGRITY is to our lives. Thoughts I offer the boys can prod you into fresh thinking. A few moments of reading and a quick inventory just might refresh your soul, might adjust your behavior...today.]

YOU WILL STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD IF YOU HAVE INTEGRITY (so, answer the question, below)

So, a man or woman of INTEGRITY, bases their worldview and their behavior on principles, NOT on whim, good intentions, or even on “whatever”. Key word, kids; a big one but really important: INTENTIONAL. Good character and its solid core in INTEGRITY is not by accident or good chance. It is something you set your mind and heart on to achieve deliberately. Get this started early. Like now. Many adults don’t deliberately build INTEGRITY in to their lives until too late.

Since you guys and I follow Christ as our Lord and Leader, those prinicples are found in Scripture. There’s a lot of them. Here’s one for starters: I Chronicals 29:17 “I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. We’ll explore others when we get together. We’ll see how INTEGRITY will prove to be that anchor or foundation for your life I mentioned earlier.  The new testament has a bunch, too.  Look it up.  Titus is way in the back of  the New Testament, but boy does it hit the spot.  Young men, it says, be serious about INTEGRITY so no one can say bad things about you and the Church of Christ.

So, answer the questions, OK? 1) What is INTEGRITY as you see it right now? 2) What is it based on? 3) What should it look like as seen in you by friends and family, and 4) what will it look like, how will friends and family see you, if you lack full personal INTEGRITY? 5) STOP for just a second. Try to name one person in both of these categories. Some lives stand out as models. Good and bad ones. My life-long prayer for each of you and your younger siblings is that you will be a model of godly INTEGRITY. As you see, God likes it, too. A LOT. And as you pass this on to your own grandchildren I will be smiling from my great seat in Heaven’s bleechers.

POPI

THE MAYFLOWER PASSENGERS REPRESENTED FREEDOM, ADVENTURE, COURAGE, RISK…BUT THEY ALWAYS HAD AN ANCHOR TO STEADY THEM ON THE SHORES OF THEIR GOAL

Taylor and Colton, I left you hanging. I was about to doze off when I was getting to my definition. That was partly a grandfather trick to get you to come up with your own, discuss it and then compare it to mine. Mine comes after a long life of sorting out the important things of life from the other stuff. Most of life is the “other stuff.”

INTEGRITY is the anchor (think of a storm and a rocky shore), the foundation (think of what holds the rest of the building and the life steady) of my character. It is who I REALLY AM when no one, not even Nani, is looking. It is also who I am to God because I know He is “looking,” and I care about that. It is what makes me content with myself even when I make mistakes and bad choices, because I know I will learn and move on. It is who I am to others because if I don’t have the character that comes out of INTEGRITY, I can not be to my fellow man (especially, friends, wife, children) what they need me to be.

So, trying keep this short, I’ll leave it there with, of course, a question we can take up at the Cowboy Cafe in six weeks: If INTEGRITY is a core value for your life, can you (and you, dear reader) give me examples of lives or verses in the Bible that make this point?

POPI

These letters to my two oldest grandsons, 13 and 11, are not fictional. They read them, feeling special to be “blogged” about, and we will chat about them during my visits. Dad (Matt, co writer) will engage them in the meantime. This series is also for YOU (Old Folks). It’s a reminder how essential INTEGRITY is to our lives. Thoughts I offer the boys can prod you into fresh thinking. A few moments of reading and a quick inventory just might refresh your soul, might adjust your behavior…today.

THERE IS WAY MORE TO INTEGRITY THAN MEETS THE EYE