Under His Wings

This post I've been pondering for a few weeks.   It's been a very emotional few weeks for our family.  As mentioned in this post, my family and I our former longtime pastor died on 1/22 due to a longtime illness.  Last week my mom's cousin Alan died somewhat unexpectedly a week ago.  My son lost a friend in a tragic fire about a week ago.   It's been hard to put into words what I've been thinking, but I did want to honor my dear friends who had such a big influence on my life.  My prayers go out to their families. Also, please be in prayer for Sheli's dad, Don, who has been very ill the past few months.  Four years ago to day I got a phone call from my mom that I never thought I would get.  My dear childhood friend,  Sheli, had died.  It was of a pulminary embolism due to recent surgery.   Honestly thoughts of regret went through my mind.  Just a few months earlier I was standing talking to Shel...

As I referenced to last night, one of my fondest Christmas time memories (other than Christmas day itself)  is participating in church Christmas programs.   My absolutely, positively favorite production that we did was Two Nights before Christmas by Lynne and Phil Brower in 1984.   I was nearly 15 years old. It was directed by our Assistant Pastor, Allen Carpenter and his wife Emily (who later died of cancer)*. It was their last Christmas with our church.  A few months later, they moved  a few towns away.  In 1990, they arrived at a church in Cortland NY, where I went to college.  I was able to attend the church.  I participated in a Christmas cantata there called An Old Fashioned Christmas .  That's another of my favorite musical memories. Two Nights Before Christmas is a story of toys who come to life to share the Christmas story with the toy store owner, Mr. Mc Duff. ...

I came across a folder with some old writing in it.  As I mentioned in my last post, I have always loved to write. One particular writing treasure I found was an article that I wrote for one of my "Student Press Corps" articles for the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin. I wrote for the newspaper from early 1985 until I graduated from high school in 1988.   My principal, Donald Benza, and vice principal, Paula Nickerson,  were very supportive of my journalism endeavor. Mr. Benza was gracious enough to let me interview him many times about different things going on at school.  I won 2 awards in the 3 years that I wrote for the paper. In my search today, I came across one of my favorite articles that I wrote. Nationally known PBS kids show host "Commander" Mark Kistler was visiting my school as part of an arts festival.    I remember Mark being a kind and helpful interviewee.   It was ex...

House Family Dad, Mom, Jeremy, me, Jason 8/14/11 taken by my son Nate  About 2 months ago, I came up with the idea of asking my brothers to make plans to join me to celebrate my Mom's 65th birthday and parents 45th anniversary, which is on Saturday, August 20.   Given the seriousness of my mother in law's illness, I wasn't sure if I could join in the celebration. I asked some friends to pray that I would be able to join my family in this special celebration.  Those prayers were answered.   We didn't have a big party or anything like that.  It was just a quiet afternoon of visiting and reminising with my parents and brothers about our childhood.  I'll share those memories in the next blog entry. We started the day attending the morning service at Central Baptist Church in Binghamton NY.  I got to thinking how many Sundays are in 20+ years?  It would probably take pages to recall all the special memories made in my countl...