Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

Seems like when you are young, you have plenty of advice on how to live your life. So much advice, that you spend most of your time trying not to follow it. And the advice, most of it, comes from people who know what they are talking about. They have already lived through being young. I was young, but now I am old. And I think I find myself in unexplored country. I think I find myself with rare circumstances, which no one else has experienced. So I have no one to turn to and say "Am I doing this the right way?" I live in an unexplored country, bordered by pain, sleep, and drugs. How do I find my way here?

Kenneth has been doing so well in school. His last report card was straight A. His behavior has been exemplary as well. When I found out about the website sumdog, I thought I had found an end to the homework hassle. All I would have to do is turn the kids loose on an educational learning site, and my work was done. That's pretty attractive to an old guy with not a lot of energy. And there were other educational sites besides sumdog, like coolmath. Actually, coolmath bothered me a little, because it appeared to be more game than learning. So, when Alicia continued to struggle, I told her she must not go anywhere but sumdog; I let Kenneth run free. And on weekend, the laptops were just another entertainment tool. They could go to the Disney site, or pretty much wherever they found joy. No downloads, no for-pay, but still they were able to navigate and have fun. And it gave me a couple of teachable moments. TANSTAAFL. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Kenneth wanted this ...

Today is October 24, 2013. My last blog post was on June 17, 2013. I entitled this blog entry, what have THEY missed, because I haven't missed a thing. I've been through every single moment of these past nearly five months, and endured it. Might have forgotten some of it, though.  But this blog isn't really for me. It's for my grandson Heath. It's for Kenneth and Alicia. And perhaps it will also be valuable to my adult contemporaries as well. But I didn't write it down; and, if you don't write it down, it didn't happen. So, I can say: since my last post, I thought we had found the perfect pain med, a patch that managed my pain very well, and didn't goof my head. And then in September I developed an allergy to it, and had to stop it, and got to experience withdrawal again. But what I missed, by not making a daily record of my experiences. And I can also say that I was asked, once again, to serve on a Tres Dias weekend, made the last team meeting, pack...

I was listening to a teaching on Joshua this morning, called 'Rotate Your Gifting.' And I was thinking, groan. I already KNOW all this stuff. Why do I have to listen through this? Why not just skip this one, and go on to the next teaching? And I found reasons. Of course, I first had to find a reason before I even began to listen to the teaching, even before I realized I already knew what the teaching was about. That's a pretty simple reason. It's so simple, it's an embarrassment to say. I did it for the same reason I breathe: because that's what you do to keep alive. Not a whole lot of need to explain that one, is there? Except to say this: if I were to choose to hold my breath, at some point I'd either give up, or pass out, and if I passed out, my body would start breathing again whether I wanted to or not. Can't really say the same thing for my spiritual life; I suppose that if I refused to do the things I need to do to stay alive spiritually, I would ...

In Numbers, there's the story of Balaam, a sorceror-type, and his donkey. I won't go into the rest of it, but Balaam sets out on a journey the LORD doesn't want him to, and an angel stands in front of him with a sword to kill him. Balaam doesn't see thee angel, but the donkey does, and twice turns aside, then lies down in the road. Balaam beats the donkey fiercely, and then God opens the donkey's mouth. "Why are you beating me ? Haven't I always been a good donkey? Have I ever acted like this before?"  And then Balaam sees the angel, and the angel explains everything to him, and he goes about his business. Have I ever acted like this before? Pretty important question. How HAVE you acted before? Because that's pretty much going to determine the response you get today, for good or for bad. I wonder what my father said that day that I missed hearing him speak. I didn't hear him speak because it was in a Sunday School class of his age group, the 60...

Monday, April 30, 2013 Today is the last Monday of my middle age. I turn 60 next Sunday and will be officially an old person. Now, from the outside, that may seem to be a bad thing. Eww. Old. Can't do stuff. Rickety. But the outside view is wrong, wrong, wrong. (WARNING: VAST OVERSIMPLIFICATION AHEAD!) I chose to take all of the behaviorist classes I could while I was in school. What makes behaviorism different from humanist, or existential, developmental, gestalt, and the other million ways of understanding the human condition is that it focuses strictly on behavior. It's not true that behaviorists deny that there is a soul, or a mind; it's just that the behaviorist says "It's not your mind that gets you into trouble. It's your behavior." The Hollywood stereotype of the psychoanalysist has the patient lying on a couch, talking about dreams, what were the first things he remembered, etc.The behaviorist says: What problem behavior do you want to change, or ...

Tuesday, April 23, 2013 Proverbs 23: 26 Give me your heart, my son, And let your eyes delight in my ways. I don' t kno w of a scripture that has hit me as hard about parenthood as this one.  Earlier in this proverb, there are a number of admonitions to sons: don't do stupid stuff, son, you'll break yer mama's heart. Said much better than that, of course. And it's all really, really good advice. But this verse, right here, gets to the fundamental essence of being a parent.  First, Give me your heart. The promise of "I'll take good care of it" is implicit. Give me your heart. Trust me. Give me your heart. Believe in me. What an audacious statement! What parent would DARE to say to their older-than-10 child, "give me your heart?" And yet, isn't that what we are saying to them, with everything we do? Even if we don't ever, ever say those words? Isn't every act of loving and caring for a child saying , give me your heart? My grandson c...