Letter from Chris

Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Today, my youngest son Christopher Michael, with wife Jamie and cat William left my house with U-Haul trailer in tow, and headed for their new home in Nashville, Tennessee. Tear-filled hugs repeated before they turned the corner of his childhood home for the last time and began the next step in his young life 1800 miles away. Never take for granted a single second of the time you have with your children. Do everything within your power to parent your child properly with Christian values that they may grow into responsible adults. You may not know it, but your children listen to you, learn from you, and carry those teachings with them. May they be lessions of love, joy, & peace.

Deuteronomy 11:18-19 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

This morning, as I left for work, I found a letter from Chris on the dining room table. This is what it said … Dear Pop,
To me you will always be pop, always have been and always will be. Moving from California isn’t hard at all … it’s moving away from you that’s the tough part. Ever since I can remember you have done anything you could to make a great life for us. Even though you worked so hard to give us a home and put food on the table, you always had time to be a great baseball coach, mentor and leader. Teaching how to be a respectable member of society and knowing the difference between right and wrong … and choosing right! I think I will always remember you saying that. I’ll have to use it on my kids as well. Indian Guides, camping, fishing and countless other life lesson activities we learned from you and you only learn later in life how much these things really mean. I owe all of my character and determination to you and you’ve taught me how to be a man. Learning from you has helped me become a man of my own and given me the tooled needed t be the husband and father that I should be.

Thank you for keeping our family in church and learning the way of God’s teachings. Those types of things don’t get appreciated always as a young child, but now I think back on them as priceless tools now that I am older. Your complete and full support of our move to Tennessee for a better opportunity has been tremendous. I don’t think I can thank you enough for that. Without your love and support we could have never made this move possible. You opened your home back for me and my wife and I can’t thank you enough for that. Everything in the wedding was a great success; we couldn’t have done it without you, Portico church and Pastor Jason. Everyone at Portico has been so nice and loving to us. It’s been great to have met them all. We will see and hear from you lots I know. I love you so much. Just typing the words doesn’t convey how much I mean that. Without you being a strong figure in my life, I have no idea where I would be now. Your guidance has got me to this point and now it’s time for me to lead my family. I can’t thank you enough for that.
Love always, your son Chris

Matthew 19:4-6 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Isn’t this what every parent wants to hear from their child? Praise be to God! Never give up on your children. God doesn’t.
In Christ, Brian