It is amazing that my little brothers still speak to me at all. When they were small I tormented them without mercy. That’s just the way I treated people I loved when I was a kid. At the time it was hard for them to understand the twisted psychology of that. I would tell you the details but then you probably wouldn’t like me anymore-so I’ll just keep most of them to myself and give you one representative example here.

A woman in our church had one of her worst fears play itself out on a bitter cold evening last week. She received a horrifying cell-phone call from her daughter who was four hours away in a blizzard and she was weeping hysterically and said her care was broken down. She was on an interstate highway near a major city in Ohio.

A few weeks ago I noticed that half of my son’ summer college break was over. Sitting on the floor of his room one night I said, “Let’s plan a trip this summer to hike and camp on North Manitou Island.” His eyes lit up. “Mike Oatis has done the trip a couple times and maybe he would guide us,” I said.

Saturday our oldest daughter Holly rode with the National Baby Food Festival Queen’s Court in a parade in Muskegon. It was an all-American, beautiful day. While we were waiting for the parade to start I was instructing the little guys on the proper way to behave when Old Glory passes.