Ralph Waldo Emerson a world renowned poet wrote, “People are what their mothers make them.”

Principles are the foundational standards on which we make decisions all day long.  What are the principles we are teaching our children to use as the basis for making good decisions?  John Maxwell lists the 10 most important principles from parents he asked:

1. Responsibility: Teaching our children they have responsibilities should start very early in their lives.  Responsibilities give them goals, forces them to do a job well, sets accountability and promises rewards.
   Read more... Add new comment

How many problems can you handle in a single day? Well, you tell me – “It depends on how life is treating me at the time. And it depends on if the problems are major or minor. If life in general is good, I can handle a whole bunch of small problems. Just don’t mess with the basics!”

As I walk into my home at the end of my day at work, I look forward to the laughter I know I’ll hear.  My wife is an amazing woman.  One of her gifts is laughter.  She can be on the phone and laughing, laughing with one of our children, she can even be laughing because an amusing thought flashed through her mind.  I’m almost afraid to walk into the house because I know that I’ll be an interruption.  My wife is a friend because she steps into the lives of every person she meets. My mother and grandmother were the same. Their homes were a mixture of laughter and the aroma of freshly baked breads and coffeecakes. I tend to be an outside observer wondering how I can help, heal, serve. I evaluate, judge, anticipate. My wife is pure and simply a friend. She makes others feel important.

Valor Cada mañana salgo a caminar con mi esposa. Pasamos por una casa donde hay un perro feroz que salta al otro lado de la cerca todo el tiempo que nos toma caminar por su verja. Un día me di cuenta que el perro se encontraba fuera de la casa cuando pasábamos por ella. Movía la cola rápido y lloriqueaba tratando de entrar de nuevo a su jardín. Al acercarnos, de repente se movió lentamente a un lado de la calle hasta que terminamos de pasar y luego volvió a la puerta. ¿Dónde estaba su valor?

In the late 1800’s a book appeared that was filled with parables, observations and earthy wisdom. Enjoy some of these thoughts from a chapter called “Reading” in the book, The Royal Path of Life. “One’s reading is usually a fair index of his character.”

Every morning I go for a walk with my wife. We pass a house where a small dog ferociously jumps up on the fence the entire time it takes us to walk past its yard. One day I noticed the dog outside the yard as we approached the house. Its tail was wagging anxiously as it whined to get into the yard. As we came close, it suddenly noticed us and quietly circled out into the street until we passed and then back to the gate. Where was its courage?

Several years ago I sat on a plain wooden chair at a plain wooden desk. There were ink stains that could not be removed. At that very desk – in England, C.S. Lewis penned the book read around the world, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

A wise old Chinese gentleman lived on the troubled Mongolian border. One day his favorite horse, a beautiful white mare, jumped the fence and was captured by the enemy on the other side of the border. His friends came to comfort him. “We’re so sorry about your horse,” they exclaimed! “That’s bad news!”

One of the most famous musicians of the 19th century was a self-taught Norwegian violinist named Ole Bull (1810-1880). He was a composer and artist of amazing skill and toured Europe and the world with enormous success. During his lifetime, he was the world’s most renowned violinist.

When I was a child, I used to love playing marbles. Our playing field had boundaries, all kinds of curves, bumps, across streams – depending on the imagination of whose turn it was to make a playing field. Before the game, we could call “steelies” for metal marbles, “peewees” for marbles half size marbles or “boulders” for those larger than the normal marbles. We would draw a starting line and somewhere in the playing field we’d dig a hole.

Are you passionate about the details of a project? Or are you more like me – I like to think of myself as an ideas person, a get a project started type, as soon as the first problem comes, I escape and let others solve the problem – care for the details. I move on to another project.

John Bunyan lived in England in the 1600’s. These were days of civil war. Church allegiance changed with kings and queens. Non-conformity resulted in jail time. John’s first wife, Mary, was an orphan who owned only 2 books and the cloths on her back when they were married. John, unschooled but a prolific writer, was a non-conformist in his faith and was hated by the established churches as well as the Puritans and Quakers. He was imprisoned a total of 18 years. Though his entire sad life, he battled with depression. To encourage himself in prison he made a violin out of tin and a flute out of a chair leg.

One of the ways we impact our children most is with non-verbal communication.  Our children don’t only listen to what we say, but are experts in looking behind the words to how we communicate.