Category: Family

Family

Meet Ten of Our Kids

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That title might come as a surprise to our daughter, who for twenty-nine years has thought she was an only child. (She’s really thirty-two, but children aren’t really cognizant of much those first three years, right?)

John and Ashley

Ashley is the one whose birth certificate has our names on it, but John got here as soon as he could. The most important person in this picture, however, is the little guy on the lower left. He is known to all who know me as the WCG, the World’s Cutest Grandkid, for obvious reasons.

The Phifers are currently phollowing the Lord twelve timezones away in Cambodia.

Family

Please Release Me

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That’s the title of of an old Engelbert Humperdink hit from the 60’s (my mother was the right age, I got it second hand). I’ve been thinking a lot about that song this week for a couple of reasons.

The first reason comes from small group. We’re studying Acts right now, and this week was Acts 13–14. At the beginning of chapter 13, the Holy Spirits tells the church, while they were fasting and praying, to set apart Barnabas and Saul “for the work to which I have called them.” The church fasted and prayed some more, and then “sent them off,” or so say most translations.

Family

The Few(er), the Proud

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Few children get to celebrate their parents 50th wedding anniversary, because not many parents get to their 50th wedding anniversary. Even fewer children can say that they were present for all 50 years. I am one of the fewer.

Dad married Mother after a whirlwind three month courtship, when I was three-and-three-fourths. (Hey, when you’re three, the three-fourths counts!) It was quite a leap of faith for a 21-year-old to take on, a wife and a (I believe precocious would be the polite word) child, but he thought he was up to the task. He adopted me a few years later (my birth father had flown the coop a few months before Dad met my mom, never to be seen again, within four decimal places of “never”), and as it turns out, he was up to the task.

Family

Ten Years After

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She did not discover until she was an adult that her father had won the battle over how to spell her name; she had been spelling it wrong her entire life. (Actually, he supposedly had lost the battle, but since he was the one that filled out the birth certificate…)

Her nickname, although common today, was given to her accidentally by a grandchild who couldn’t pronounce “Grammy.”

She only ever cared for one man, whom she met at 15, married at 18 on the day they both graduated from high school, and was hopelessly in love with until he passed away the year after their 50th anniversary.

Family

Unexpected Sounds

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“Hello win column — the Texas Rangers have won the World Series!”

“And the winner for Best Actor or Actress in a Leading Role is… Megan Fox.”

“When asked about the situation, Jerry Jones only reply was, ‘No comment.’”

Unexpected sounds. Words you’re not expecting. Phrases that are out of sync with the present circumstances.

Twenty-three years ago this month, I was working as a consultant at a client site when the phone rang. The voice on the other end said someone named Sharon was on hold for me. This was odd for a couple of reasons — one, she had no idea where I was working, and two, she’d told me several months before she didn’t want to see me, “for a while.” Her voice that afternoon was completely out of the blue, as was her invitation to dinner with some friends.