June 2011

Hey Mathbaby,

I was asked what advice I can give a big brother to help guard his little sisters heart.  This is what I had.  When I wrote it I imagined that I was speaking to myself.  This is how I want you to be treated, what I want you to have from your dad, or a big brother. 

Things to do:
- Do give her truth.  Don't candy-coat it.  Don't exaggerate it.  Do give her the blunt truth.  Establish yourself as credible.  No "easter-bunny", "tooth-fairy" or "santa claus".  When she needs someone to trust then she never goes to those folks.  I know I watched.  You either have credibility for being a high-quality source of truth or you don't.  I'm not saying to crush her sense of wonder - but tell her "I will always tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and if you really want to know the answer then I will tell you."  This gives her seasons of wonder but also she knows you always always always tell the truth to her.
- Do give to her a facility at understanding.  Equip her with tools of understanding so she can make good decisions.  Get her into games that train her to figure out what her options are.  Geocaching.  D&D.  I love chess, but you have to have a very (very) particular bent there and most girls dont.  Read books like "how life imitates chess" by Kasparov, or "outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, or "the goal" by Goldratt.  No seriously - in reverse order, read those books.  "rock, paper, scissors" by Len Fisher is also good, but should be read around the time of Kasparov.  Find a way to have her read to you while you drive, or you read to her while she drives but read the material in them.  Find the stories she reads, then read them, and think through the good and bad, and challenge her with decision or options where people either did a great job of making the most of opportunity, or really missed out on something obvious.  Teach her to think so that if she needs to she can.  She is younger than you, and she is a girl.  If you can't teach her something new in how to think, then you can at least teach her how guys think.
- Do talk to her, regularly and often.  Give her a good level of detail about what guys do what and how to girls.  From tricks they play to get them in the sack, to how they fake how they are handling being dumped.  If she speaks the langauge of "guy" then she isn't going to be as easily duped, used, or exploited.  She can get past the BS and at least find what she is looking for - even if its not what you are looking for her to look for.
- Do take her to your local police department sponsored violence avoidance class.  It can give her very good material in life.  How to not be a victim - they know what it takes. Make sure every 2-3 years she gets a refresh.
- Do follow up by getting her into a habit of healty activity.  Be a jogging buddy, or work together (there are plenty of books and organizations that help) to run a marathon.  She will be amazed how she feels (and looks) after being able to run a marathon.  At the beginning she might not be able to walk a quarter mile, but without too much pain, and with some commitment on your part, after around 3 months she can be in the top 1% of physical fitness on the planet.  Its good for her emotional well being, her physical health, and her life-span.  Swimming.  Bike riding.  Rock-climbing.  Something.
-This is hard, it isn't fun, but its part of truth ... Do have a female cop or a female nurse talk her through every step of getting a rape kit.  Rapists are serial - they never have only one victim.  Rape escalates, the next one is worse than the last.  A properly done kit will put them in prison.  It happens to 1 in 4 women before they are 18 nowadays, rape does.  If she is ignorant then her very real, very human, very natural responses are going to make her throw all the evidence in the garbage - make sure he gets away with it.  If she knows what to do then he will go to jail.  If every girl properly did a rape kit when something like this happened then all the rapists would be in prison.  The rate of rapes would go down 75%.
- Do give her quality time.  Find things she hungers to do, from driving the car, to running her own business or whatever.  This isn't like going to the movies once a week and not saying anything wihle you stare at a screen.  Do make it hands on, interactive.  Garden.  Rebuild a car engine.  Learn to fly ultralights.  Go to the gun-range, bow range, paintball place and teach her how to shoot/play/compete.  Put at least 10 hours per week into her - into doing worthwhile things with her.  This will establish and maintain the relationship.  When she needs someone to talk to then she will come to you.  You will learn each other, know each other, and grow to trust each other.  This is a habit that will pay for itself in worth 1000x over the length of your lifetimes - invest in each other well.
- Do empower her - that means provide a clear vision of who she can be that is accessible and noble.  Learn good role models, visions of who she could be, and if she can be open to them then share them.  If she is really young then buy her good comic books - ones that have a values worth having in life, and characters worth aspiring to. 

This is big - you MUST learn to listen.  If you are thinking of an answer - you aren't listening.  Listen as if what she was saying mattered as much to you as it does to her.  Listen, remember.  Ask good questions.  You can tell her slow down, or wait a minute.  You can say - give me a bit to think about that.  As guys we have a narrow pipe for communication and are easily overwhelmed there while girls have amazing communication bandwidth.  If she loves you she will give you some room - just keep engaging her.  THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST AND MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU CAN DO FOR HER.

Do not do these:
- You can not force her to wait until the guys brains have (to some extent) migrated from the penis to the head - do not try.  Children in our instant-gratification/consumerist culture have no capacity for patience.  She is your younger sis, therefore a child, therefore incapable of demonstrating that level of self control. 
- Do not intimidate any/all potential boyfriends.  This will make her go behind your back.  When that super-sleaze finally gets her alone, you are not going to be able to warn her and she will get raped, and then not tell you about it.
- Do not believe for an instant that she is innocent.  Her relationship to you doesn't trump her human nature.  She wants a number of things.  She will lie.  She will be manipulative.  She will use a guy just like a guy will use a girl.  If you can't be real with yourself about who she is, and what her motives can be then you can't give her truth that will help her.
- DO NOT introduce her to bad things.  You start her drinking she will go the next step.  Younger sibs do that.  You do not want to look in the mirror after she did something amazingly bad and want to kill yourself for having introduce her to it.  Be excellent.  Teach her excellence.  Keep her away from things that kill the soul and degrade the person.

In life there are no "silver bullets", no miracle cures for everything.  There are some things that work sometimes and others that don't.  There is no single thing that a father/brother/friend can do for her that will help (see the event based solution vs. process based solution) but his doing these things is kind-of a silver bullet.  These will not guarantee that she doesn't get hurt, but will go a long way to protecting her, and if she does get hurt these will go a long way to helping her heal.

Mathbaby - I want this for you.  I hope to be around to be it, but life doesn't guarantee that I will be.  If I can't be there, then I want you (and anyone else around you) to know what I want for you.

I just read (most of) "rock, paper, scissors" and it seems very sad how terribly poor human beings are at working together.  If we could team up in groups of .. more than 35% of mating pairs .. and work as coalitions for just a few years, then much more truly successful living could be accomplished.  General human quality of life on the planet could be improved by 300% if only we could work together well, committedly, and sincerely in teams like this.  They say it takes a village to raise a child - but it seems we no longer have any villages.  Maybe we never had villages.  That is sad thought.  I hope you have a village.  I hope you are a village too.

June 2011 - Shoes

You are such a wonderful mathbaby!

I do not know if you intend to be deep, or subtle but I find depth and subtlety in what you do. For instance - I discovered the following had been done to my shoes.You put your shoes (and socks) inside my shoes. I hear from this that you don't want to walk in my footsteps but you want to walk your shoes in mine. I have walked some rough roads, but your shoes are not in my shoes of yesterday. They are in today's shoes. So in a way the road I walk today is shared by you and me. What an interesting statement.

You also left your sparkley, pink, ribbon-enhanced crown-thing near the shoes. Not sure if it has a huge meaning, but it definately says "mathbaby was here".

May 2011

Hey there mathbaby,

You are no longer a baby. You are moving out of toddler to big girl. Still coming to terms with that. I'm writing this for you, speaking to where you are now and not to where you are going to be in 10 or 20 years. Here is hoping that you get through both well. Excellently. I want to be there for you, but the future is not something that comes with a guarantee - or at least not many.

All success in life requires having a team. The family is the first team. Mom, dad, sibs .. assuming you get all of those - they can be a good team or a bad one. You don't get to pick the team you are on except that you get to pick what kind of team-member you are. Later in life you get to pick your team, your goals, .. some. Not all but better than no selection. Read "Outliers" by Gladwell for some examples of team successes, and failures. I wish someone would have told me that - its good to know as an adult.

When I was a kid there was an amazing and noble friend for our family - Doc Dye. He was (and is) a good man. His greatest gift to me was to show me that it was possible to not live in the environment of economic, spiritual, and moral poverty that was around me for most of my childhood. The way out of the darkness is to choose the light - choose it with your mind, your heart, and your actions - every day. Every day. It took a while for the lessons to sink in, but that was the substance. As a grandfather he took in 12 (!) of his grandkids. He and his wife Suzy (I told you about her some) though they never had children of their own body - they were father and mother in many ways to a very large number of people. I admire him and aspire to be like him in a number of ways. As a troubled (half-crazy) 16-18 year old kid I was likely much more cost to him than benefit, but both he and his wife were very gracious. Though it is many years away, and we are all in a places in life that makes proximity impossible - they are still a team to me because they are in my heart and are defining parts of my self. As long as I exist, some part of them exists through me - not a child of the body, but a child of the consequence of their choices and actions. They are a good team to me still.

I wonder sometimes if you will ever read this. It goes back to the unknown future - I can know what I intend by the blog, by these letters, but not what I accomplish. I hope you do.

God gets me through. I'm like a blind man walking - i don't know the road either 1 foot, or 100 miles from me but he picks me up and helps me walk the line he wants me to walk. He has done me amazingly well - he brought you into my life as well as your mommy - so as scary as walking blind is I have some reasons to trust His intentions. God has been very good to me. I hope you find him good to you. He gives challenges, sometimes ones so big only he can think it possible they could be surmounted, but he gets us through them.

We are growing tomatoes (and eating them) and you like that. You pollinate flowers with mommy - crazy biologists doing what butterflies and other pollinators should do.

I am reading reports that the price of food could double in the next 20 years. That would be a big challenge. The biggest part of that is likely about big-oil. Land isn't disappearing, neither are seeds. Tractors, fertilizers, transports, processing equipment - they each get more expensive as oil prices rise, and they pay their bills using food prices. I have some very immature energy ideas, but they are going to take 5-10 years of work to get them going well. I don't think the folks here at ASU are interested in me, or the ideas. I have been fighting for as long as you have been alive and am not very far along. I wish I could do something about the upcoming challenges. In some significant ways I do not have the team required to make these things become a reality. I hope you do not know hunger. I starved at times as a kid - like my belly swelled up like the USA for Africa infomercial kids. This results in me being afraid of hunger, and being fat. It is part of a set of inputs .. letting my discipline to keep in shape go, indulging desire for rest, letting my fears define me. Don't give up on what you know is good. Do not let your fears define you. Let the excellent things that you hold on to - let them define you.

I gotta go kiddo. I hope to write you again.

Love,
mathdad.

May Already - 2011

Hello Mathbaby,

You are becoming such a big girl. You jump, and articulate your words. Almost 3 now.

We had a good evening. We have bible study at our friend Mr. Allen's house. We went there tonight. We brought first-fruits. You have these tomato plants that you and mommy care for. They are growing baby tomato's. The picture isn't our cherry tomato (we don't have picture of those) but it looks a lot like what ours look like. Mommy is learning how to grow plants, so though tomato is not a big part of our diet - its an easy start. Most home depot's have the plants already planted and growing for a few dollars, so you don't have to make seeds grow, you just have to not kill plants. It is a good plan for starting out.

It has been a time of wonder for you. For many days in a row you come up to me every day and say come see! come see! look at the baby tomato. They are magical/wonderful to you. We picked our "first fruits" the first of the plant. They are cherry tomato plants. There were only about 6 ripe, but they were all ripe. We picked them all - they were all in great shape. We brought them to the study. We showed up early.

I told Mr. Allen - this is a holy and special thing. I want your help. We love God and need to teach mathbaby that we give the first and best of all we have. In the old-testament (time of Moses) the first-fruits were brought before the priest to be dedicated to God. The priest took a part, and offered the rest. The rest was holy and dedicated to God. I told Mr. Allen that, as bible teacher and study-leader - also as authority recognized by mathbaby - I would like him to help us show her about giving to God. He did. It was a good thing. I hope we model this consistently for you.

I work nights. Twelve hour work-days. From 6pm to 6am. Wed, Thur, Fri and every other Saturday right now. I have to keep the schedule all week in order to be awake/functioning for my shift. I miss a lot of day-time interactions and events. I miss time with my family.

So I was watching "A bug's life". There is a scene where a housefly says "I have 24 hours to live and I am not wasting it here". I am emotionally connecting to the statement because I feel like I am putting the hours of my day into the unimportant at the expense of the most important things. We get to have play-days maybe once every two weeks to once per month now. That isn't good. I think we need to have it once per week. I think that is what the levitical idea of Sabbath is about. If you aren't working, and you are around the people you love - you can't help but interact and spend ... quantity if not quality time.

I love your amazing little smile. It looks like you have too much joy for your little face, your whole little self, to contain. I love that happiness, and enthusiasm you have to live. You remind me that I also have an enthusiasm to live, and I need to let it out a little more often.

I want to spend quality and quantity time for my family. I want to live to live, not live to work.

My youngest sister is a mess. It is tragic because she was a wonderful child, and she had so much (now destroyed) potential. The one thing, and greatest thing that I can think of that made her the sad thing that she is now ... is the lack of quality time with people who are healthy, who love her and invest in her at a young age. I want better for you. Please don't grow up to be anything like her. Please. It is a mix of choices that makes us what we are .. our own and those of people around us. I guess I am saying that I am committed to your being all you can be, and I need you to be just as committed. A lot to ask of a 2 year old.

My project in Solar Thermal Engineering this semester was Sky cooling. I was building an op-amp circuit to convert a voltage signal to an amperage signal so that my amperage based data-logger could capture the temperature induced change in resistance of a thermistor (transconductance amplifier). When I woke up and came into they study I found this (at left).

You made the first angel-borg. It seems to be plugged into the matrix. It is an angel piggy-bank thing your grandma mimi sent. You plugged it into my digital multi-meter and the circuit I was building in the 300-in-1 one kit. Those things are useful for hobby-stuff. The kit, not the angel. Maybe you have a future in robotics.

I love how when I was building my emitter with Sherwin Williams painted aluminum foil tape you would come and want to play with the tape and say "Let's build a sky refridgedator". You like stickers and tape. I'm always in the market for a new tape or a new glue. Maybe it's genetic.


We were able to get half-price tickets to the Renaissance festival this spring. For $20 we were able to go as a family. It was fun. We had a very (very very) long day. You got your face painted, and rode in butterfly carousels. We ate turkey legs and pretended it was "roast meat off the bone" or "dragons legs". You and mommy rode a giant rocking horse. We saw falconry and some very big birds.

You found hammocks and decided you like them. If I were rich I would get you one as a new big-girl bed. You have a great bed - it was a crib, but we took off one sides rails, and it is now a bed with 3 sides you can't roll off of. Maybe you would look at graph theory, topology, or knots, if you had a hammock - or perhaps I am kidding myself. I know of a young lady who learned about mobius strips and was so thrilled that she went home and played for a long time with scissors and tape - got herself a bachelors in math, and some good publications from that enthusiasm. What could you do with some wonder, hard work, discipline and a fine little mind? Something wonderful - but only if you actually do it.


I love you mathbaby.

-mathdad.

2011 - I gotta catchup

Hey there mathbaby,

You are asleep in the next room. It is 11:17 pm, and I don't get to sleep until 6am. It has been crazy/busy end of year (often is) and I have not posted. Now I'm going to working nights. Hope to pay off some debts, be able to have more time with you, be able to get some mileage in grad school. Will see how it goes. I miss you and your math-mommy already.

I read "Outliers" by Gladwell and they say look for big things. A big thing just happened. You need to know it, mathbaby. This defines the world you get to live in. If you understand it and make the most of it then you can have the opportunities of Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs.

This (link, link) shows the first computer that is better at human-only cognitive tasks than a human.

About 150 years ago we had a revolution called "the industrial revolution". It started small but the development of mechanical engineering made trains, and a very large variety of processing equipment - radically facilitating transport and production of goods, but also removing the employment of humans who had place in the former economy but not its descendant ones. Consequences of that revolution were machines that were stronger than (us) humans empowered us to go to the moon, to the bottom of the ocean, to dig deep in ...mountains, to make "fire" hotter than the sun. It transformed human ability and effort - and initially it was done wrong to high human cost. We nearly destroyed the world (think WWIII (yes that is 3), the cold war, and "75 overkill" - the multiple of number of times that current nuclear inventory could destroy the world of men), but gladly did not.

We are right now going over the edge of having computers (which have been faster than humans) able to consistently outperform humans and human-only intellectual tasks. It is likely that this will be the Gutenberg moment that I have been expecting since computing was born. This is a moment that redefines the way humans handle, not information, but understanding. Before Gutenberg people had to memorize books, afterward they could read them and it radically extended the productivity of all areas of human thought. Watson is an intelligence analyst right out the gate.

In 20 years, with the right kinds of economics and opportunities, it is likely that a pocket calculator will have the compute power of this "Watson" computer. Robots will have this level of performance - at least. Automated business trackers will have this level of performance. Automated accountants will have this level of performance. Automated lawyers will have (at least) this level of technical performance. Automated snipers will have this level of performance.

This means that the only area that humans are best now only at being creative. We built robots to do dirty, dull, or dangerous - but it is likely that we will have, within appropriate contexts, relegated the majority of humanity there.

Someone is going to make an automated lawyer - it is going to start as a tool to help lawyers process information, then move up like mammogram analysis to something that counts as a peer to a human. After some time it is going to start replacing the humans for the low-risk and high volume work, divorces and wills, - because after all a real lawyer is expensive, and the computer is a beneficiary of Moore's law. It will ramp up to as high as it can consistently perform - and right now it is performing at better than Ken Jennings, the best human player of the game in the history of the game.

The problem with all of this is human history. Humans always ALWAYS try to destroy each other. Look at the nations in the cradles of civilization: the nile, the tigris/euphrates, the Indus, and the Yellow river. They show the best of what can be expected of 5000 to 10000 years of human history. Someone is going to make an automated accountant and fire a lot of accountants. Someone is going to make an automated lawyer. Someone is going to make an automated sniper robot.

The places with slower adoption are going to be places of culpability - you don't want to hold a computer culpable for loss of life, or property - but a human being can be liable. Robotic nurses will come much more quickly than robotic doctors. Culpability isn't the same as innovation. Innovation has already been moved in part to automated mechanisms that perform analytical processes at a masters-student level.

The easiest to imagine scary part (thanks Hollywood) is nation versus nation. If some nation makes the right sort of robot army then that army could seriously damage the ability of humans to not be extinct. The more likely and immediate is the days that created the unions - where the rich use robots as slaves and let the poor starve.

You, oh daughter of mine, get to live in the world halfway between this one and whatever they create whether it is utopia, or armageddon (or something in between).

If you live the MTV (slacker) model then you do nothing and get a future that someone else makes for you. Other people will often choose better for themselves and worse for you - don't let them do it. They will vote you off the island. I have seen too many bright (brilliant) young people transform their golden potential like a reverse Midas into a pile of manure and flush their lives irrevocably down the toilet. They never come back. Those opportunities never come twice.

If you live a hard-work and excellence model (I call it the Colin Powell model because it is a phrase from his autobiography) then you will be the one making the future. You can make it a win-win, balancing the madness of the century to come with a heart driven to bless as many people as possible with as much as you are capable of blessing. We are around for only a moment in the grand scheme of things .. our lives are a drop of water in the ocean of time. We have only this brief moment to do such great things, and we can - if we will but stretch forth our hand and try. Please be someone who tries.

How do I encourage you to be someone who will survive, thrive, excel? I wish I knew. Going to think about, and pray about it.

October 2010

Hello there cute.

It is Friday night. Long work week. Tired.

You had fun with pumpkins today ... and baby chicks.

One of your favorite movies is Fly Away Home where the main character learns to fly, and saves two or three gaggles (when walking) of Geese by training them on routes that lead from North Carolina to Quebec .. I think.

You long to fly. I am working on designing you wings.

In this picture you look to be saying in your eyes "I could be Amy". These could be my geese. I love the fierce adventure that you have here

They are baby chicks.. but I don't think that makes much of a difference to you. I think you would walk around saying "hey hey hey" and they would .. maybe follow you. You would like it if they did follow you. I hope that when you are fully grown, the passion, intelligence, and life that I see in you now - that you inherit from your mommy so amazingly well .. I hope it you are every bit the parent you can be. I love you mini-girl. You are growing up so big and aren't the tiny little creature that I held in my hands and your feet didn't even come to my elbows. You are so very big.

So your friends Daughters of Mike L. are having a "Gateway to Godly womanhood" tea party. They asked for "written advice" but i don't know what to say. I have been asking around.

It is such a blessing to have been able to ask for and get such wonderful answers. Thank you Luci for the question to ask. It gives me good hope about my daughter. I am still compiling answers, but here are some of them. The following is my current take on the matter:

My mom says about Godly womanhood:

• it is the best gift you can give the world, and the best gift you can give yourself.
• It must be done daily - isn't an event, its a process
• It must be done wholly. This is a place where there is no shades of gray - only black and white.

My sister Veronica says about Godly womanhood:

• The kind of person you are makes the world you live in. If you are a liar - you think everyone is a liar, and act from the belief that everyone is a liar. If you are honest then you look at people honestly and can evaluate them by their actions. People who look up to you - those you mentor, your siblings, when you are an adult - those that you take under your wing, your friends, your spouse, and even your children and transformed for the better or worse by it. Your perceptions drive your actions and your actions impact the world. So being a godly woman defines .. the color of glasses that you see the world through ... and because you see the world that way .. those glasses become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• The kind of person you are makes can constrain or liberate who you are able to see God as being. If you are a liar .. then everyone is a liar .. and you falsely perceive God to be a liar. If you are honest, and honestly and fairly appraise others, then you can honestly and fairly appraise God. When my daughter is scared she runs to me because she knows I am strong, and she knows that I am trustworthy - I will protect her. Because she runs to me she gives me opportunity to work for her good that I would not otherwise have. If she thought I was horrible, or untrustworthy .. she could not avail herself of my strength, of my love for her, and my fierce passionate desire to bless her. Exact same thing goes for God.
• This is true not only for lying vs. honesty ... but for every component of Godliness. If you are a miser - then God is. If you are generous by nature and live to serve others to the maximum of their ability to receive healthy blessing (some people have a max good after which your generosity becomes a curse to them) .. then God is that to you. If you ever get into game theory ... there is a whole open field of science here relating to tit-for-tat or tit-for-two-tats ... beautiful but nerdly stuff.
• Teenage boys are driven by hormonal pressures that you cannot possibly understand - and can not trust. Do not trust teenage boys, or boys who are motivated by hormones ... they will break your hearts .. and other parts of your self. (Personally I say their brains do not congeal/biochemically exit puberty until after they are 24-ish, some their person stops being as much in transition around then. If they are good you can trust them to stay good, if bad then you can trust them to stay bad.. before that .. notsomuch can you trust who they are.)

A coworker named Alia had these insights into godly womanhood.

• Character is more important than ability.
• Avoid situations where you will be tempted to do things you do not want to do. It is easier to avoid the temptation than to reject it when it is in front of you. Avoiding it is just as godly as saying no to the temptation.
• All beauty fades. Spend your energy on things that will last: character, love, friendship, and godliness.
• What the world sells as love - is not love - it is selfishness. Love is not a feeling, or passion - it is action, doing what is best for the other person. You will know that a man loves you when he treats you with respect.
• God made you to be you. Don't try to be someone else. Embrace the person that God made you.
• Yes, you can change the world - do it with God.

My friend, and one of the coolest materials engineering guys I have ever met, Lynn gave me this:

Something I told my own daughter. Eve is defined in the Eden account as being Adam’s “Yetzer Knegdo”, translated by the old English word “Helpmeet” some 500 years ago. I have no idea what helpmeet meant back then, but only one other being is called a Yetzer Knegdo – the Holy Spirit of Jehovah. It is best translated from the Hebrew as “Strong Helper”.

It is the nature of men to engage in the fight. It is the nature of women not to. Unless. Unless their own are threatened. When this happens, the fight is not a game. No quarter may be expected from the mama bear. In the fight against evil in a family, the man is the forward troops, but the woman is the reserve troops. She is to be jealously guarded, and not put in jeopardy trivially. She is to be provisioned generously, and trained meticulously. This is not because she is weak or ineffective, it is because if she is ever called on, the situation is dire, and should she fail, all will be lost.

My friend Gloria W. said this:

• I would tell her to guard her heart, eyes, mind, and tongue against anything that would rob her of her purity…and I don’t mean only virginity.
• I would tell her to meditate on Philippians 4:8-9 daily. I would encourage her to strive always to bring forth the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-26).

My friend Nancy J. said this:

• If you think you are beautiful, then you are. If you think your spouse is wonderful, then they are. If you think life is terrible, then it is. If you think you are highly blessed, then you are.
• Guard your thoughts. God wants us to think positive thoughts, of the wonderful blessings he has provided us. Even when things aren't going so well, God wants us to think about how wonderful our life is. Do not wallow in a pity party.
• You are where you are because of you choices in your life. God does a lot of orchestrating, but he gives us the ability to chose certain paths. So choose carefully and with wisdom.

My friend Jeremy L. said this:

• I’d say that there’s a road/trap that many women fall into or travel down intentionally that looks for love/purpose in the arms of men—mainly because they have not felt godly secure love from their father, who doesn’t talk about their beauty and appreciate it. If you go that route, many men may try to use you to their advantage. When you are truly Christ-centered, seeing your beauty only in Him, then you may be in a position to share your beauty with just one man that He will bring in His time. And you may need to be prepared to wait a bit.

My friend Elizabeth N. said this:

• The only time that you need to make a decision immediately is in a life or death emergency.. these are few and far between (and hormonal issues are never life or death emergencies). Take time to think about decisions, and the consequences of those decisions before you act. Some decisions have far reaching consequences that can change your life- for the better or worse. Also.. any young man that tells you "don't think.. just feel" is not a young man who you should be trusting with your decision making.
• God is always available for conversation. He is an excellent listener- and he is comfortable listening to anything and everything. He also forgives anything and everything and will always love you.. and even though you may not think it at the time- so will your parents.
• Middle school and high school are some of the most difficult years in a young woman's life. No matter how it might seem- they do end and life gets much better. Popularity in school does not in any way predict success later in life- in fact most people who I have met who are both successful and fulfilled by their adult lives remember those years with a small cringe. Just remember that true strength is listening to your conscience and acting in a way that is true to yourself even when others make that difficult. The times in my life that I reflect on with the most shame are those in which I failed to do what I knew was right and instead did what I felt would help me be "accepted".

My friend Tema said:

• I think more of what to say to parents. I think of children just like I think of making sculpture. Each stone has something beautiful inside I take away the stone that is covering the beautiful figure. God has something beautiful in each person and our job as parents is to help bring out what gifts God has inside without damaging the rest of the person.

Neat stuff.
Stuff worth pondering. It gives me a vision now for .. staging, and how to approach things. I feel like it is very (very) valuable.

It is early October so hopefully we can get two blog posts in this month.

September 2010

It is "O" week for you. You know caps and lower case, all sounds, and sign language signs to from "A" to "O".

You don't show me your face much anymore. You don't look at me and smile like you used to. Those eyes full of trust .. no so much. Mom is the adult in your life - she wears the pants, she gets the smiles.

This is how you normally look at dad.

This is how you look when asked to smile.

These are not the same.

I'm failing at my new attempt at grad school. This is what is called a lose-lose-lose proposition. I can't pay my bills, spend time with wife and daughter, or get opportunity to do the same. I would cry if I could get away with it.

You don't like flying kites anymore. I think they are too complex. Grass was made to run on, not stand and hold a kite.

You are in these gymnastics-esque classes. Animal motions for toddlers, etc.. You love flapping your wings, jumping, and running around in them. You love hiking and taking hikes with mommy.

You have started having more play-dates with friends. That goes over well.

You are getting meaner and meaner to the cats. You kick them, or hit them. We are working on disciplining you .. associating a cost with the behavior .. but that is not the same as you having your heart set on loving or kindness. If you have a baby brother or sister - the moment you realize that they are going to take half of mommy and daddy's attention - what will your heart do? I hope you are loving....

You walked a mile several days ago. Toward the end you were tired, but you did it. You initiated it, and wanted to walk in the neighborhood. We drove the route and it was just over a mile by car. Not bad.

You have started throwing fits, and caterwauling to get your way. I don't know where you came up with that - but it has to go. Maybe this is the "terrible two's" that they talk about. *sigh*

Time to get back to my lose-lose-lose proposition and see if I can keep doing the same thing over and over - but somehow get different results. Wish me luck baby-girl. Even if I just get the same-old results ... at least you have rent paid, and food in your belly this month.