January 3, 2010
I have been on vacation since December 18th. It hasn’t been all rest and relaxation, as I’d hoped, but instead lots of activity, including a holiday party and a visit from family, who came from Michigan to our house in Illinois.
Christmas has come and gone. The presents that were so carefully wrapped and placed under the tree are now a part of everyday life. The last of the eggnog and fruitcake are polished off and the mistletoe is back in the box of Christmas ornaments. December seems filled with Christmas plays by fresh faced youngsters trying to fool us with their angel wings and halos. Special holiday television programs, some of them many years old, are broadcast again and we watch them faithfully with a sense of comfort that this part of our tradition remains the same. I listened to all 800 Christmas songs I put on my IPod and finally was glad when it was time to change the music to something else.
Our snow season started early in December and has kept pace to be one of the top ten snow producers in Chicago area’s history. Show shovels and snow blowers have been selling briskly this year as they have the last two or three seasons.
I was blessed in so many ways in 2009, in spite of the fact that for the 65th consecutive year I did not receive what I deserved, thank God. 2009 brought a few valleys, more than a few peaks and the richness of life that is difficult to describe and taken for granted more than not except in moments of rare reflection, like this one.
2009 continued to confirm for me that personal accountability gains ground as a measure of self worth. After at least two generations of people who struggled to be parents, employees, bosses and marriage partners, we see a shift from “going with the flow” to a determined effort by many to learn what it takes to be valuable to our children. You see it is not the quality of time it is the quantity of time we spend with our children that shows them how we live. What kind of father, husband and friend we are and what is important to us will be absorbed by them and they will see our successes and our failures.
Never think for a moment that children and your spouse can not tell what is really important to you by how you spend your time and money and whom you spend it with. The priorities in your life should be God, Family, work and pleasure. What we put aside today to honor those priorities will be returned to us in abundance later. Just being a good guy and being around isn’t enough. You have to have a plan. Check out Men’s Fraternity for more information about a plan that works. http://www.mensfraternity.com/
Here we are at the start of a new decade. Pray with me that people continue to look for the answers to life’s questions within the book that answers all questions and has done so for centuries. The Bible.
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