I do not need to be afraid of not knowing. God knows. That is all that matters.

In the meantime, whatever else we do, don’t miss the chance to lean into the now’s now. Before it is too late, we can get to tell, show our love perhaps a bit better than before.

Children are not our possessions, but our GIFTS and GUESTS from God. Our job is not to make our children happy and it is not our children’s jobs to make us happy.

My grandfather taught me about living with a simple joy and contentment.

We are learn to walk, eat, and do life with a lot of patient repetition. Good table memories are even better than table manners

We might be intellectually smart as a whip and terrfically skilled with words, hands, and clever at getting our way - but if we have not self-awareness, well...we damage in small and large ways others, and finally fail ourselves.

Paul’s not giving up part I believe is a God graced thing. I have used my adaptation of Pastoral Care Professor Peggy Way’s quip about love so many times I need to send her a royalty check. Underneath the lofty theories and feathery rhetoric about love, love is putting-up-with-each-other even when, especially when, we are un-put-up-with-able. (What God does with us, God makes possible for us with each other.)

Here’s the deal. God’s gift of memory is not so much a reverse gear. Somehow in the transmission of time and by the engine of memory, the people, places, and points along the way come to our now’s. Remembering brings forward life layers to enrich, deepen, expand the bittersweet blessings of our lives now. Enriched by memory and encouraged by hope to be sure, THE life we really have is the one we have skin in ‘now’

Please join me in savoring the rooms, life worn furnishings, and yards of our homes. Include your home places and faces each time you sing the Doxology.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives the simple to say and hard to do advice: let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’. I have marveled over the years how Dianne’s ‘yes’ is a real ‘yes’. She has shown that you keep the ‘yes’ of marriage promises day in and out.

Along the way, the heart has been considered the center of our capacity for faith, love, and bravery. Actually, it is a pump and an electrical system. Yet full circle – and here I am grossly summarizing and simplifying – Dr. Jauhar relates how as hugely important as diet, exercise, and genes, nothing is more important to continued healthy heart ticking than emotional, relational, and spiritual health. AKA: faith, love, bravery.

The God we know through Jesus is both like and unlike earthly parents. Like in the way earthly, imperfect parents approximate the divine un-give-up-able love. Unlike in the way earthly parents often fall short. Yet with our fallible parents, we can exquisitely experience the un-stop-able love of God operating through them.

know as a person and pastor, I have come to realize most all of us are products of loving dysfunctional… far from perfect…families. With all our imperfections, this makes our love for one another an amazing grace thing.

When a demonic stroke unexpectedly took Michael at 60, it was the first time I said “suck” from the pulpit. At his service at Hazel Green UMC, it slipped out… “God is great and God is good. And in the fulness of time God’s love wins… but in the meantime, death sucks!”

+ Thank you, thank you.

+ I am sorry for what I missed...what I said/didn’t say...what I did/didn’t do.

+ How much I wish I had spent more time, just enjoying being with you...listening more; talking less.

I have been blessed with several great counselors over the years to whom to refer many beloved church people and on occasion myself. ‘Strong’ people need, as much as anyone, coaching in coping and self-care.

As I have considered some aspects of friends, it occurs to me that there is a sort of daily laying down our lives with and for people we love, ones we consider friends. It’s not exactly dying but a living our non-repeatable time together. We are here instead of there, we do this instead of that, and so we lay down/share our precious increments of life time together.

Here is a book to read and give. For sure, it is a valuable resource for those who are in the waves of Alzheimer caregiver waters. It is also good for us better to understand and support those we know going through this often drawn out experience. And, deep breath, Renee’s insights and guidance are a head-heart start for the goodly number of us who will be cast into the Alzheimer’s caregiver-receiver brink.