Hum. I love to read, I am reflective and I certainly love to write. This will be one time that Coulter Schmitt's prayer will be answered with no problem.
Except for the fact that I have become so used to being busy that I feel guilty when I sit down to do anything - much less read a book, think about it (unless you count the thinking I do when I am driving or walking) and I can't quite get my head around that I should actually spend time writing - something that gives me this much pleasure.
Am I a "workaholic"? No, but I do thrive on the idea presented in the verse that says "Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it mightily as onto the Lord" (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
January presented many opportunities as did February which is just four days from being over. However, I started reading A Good Man, by Mark Shriver. Subtitled, Rediscovering My Father, Sargent Shriver, it offers much insight into the Kennedy in-law who started the Peace Corps, Job Corps, Head Start and helped his wife, Eunice, start the Special Olympics. I finally finished the book this morning.
My parents are not celebrities. They loved God and each other - and their four children, 11 grandchildren and now 16 great grandchildren. And yet as I read Mark Shriver's accounts of growing up and being loved by parents who loved God and each other and their children, etc. etc, etc., my mind could easily slip into the way my siblings and I have felt about them.
When my dad died in 2009, his minister asked me what was the best thing that I knew about daddy and I said that I am his child. Might have sounded a bit pompous, but I appreciated what both of my parents did - because they loved God, each other, and us - to help us become who we are.
Shriver said that after his dad died, just 19 months after their mother, he kept hearing that his dad was a good man. He wanted to know why people thought that so he spent time reflecting on his life - delving into his dad's history, reading what had been written, talking to people he had known, but most of all reflecting on his years as the son of this man.
And - he not only wanted to know why his father was viewed as good - he was also searching - for a way to be the same kind of man his father had been.
Which brings me back to my siblings and me. If you ask any one of us, what part of your dad's legacy do you most appreciate I think you would get the same answer - he lived by faith!
As I read A Good Man, I kept thinking of a verse in Psalms - "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. . .", (Psalm 37: 23a ). In my mind, that verse means when we allow the Lord to order our steps (as did Sargent Shriver and Earl Huffingham), then we will be knows as "a good man" - ahem - or woman!
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