Thankful for ...

Thanksgiving is not the only time of year I am grateful for my many, many blessings. I recognize just how blessed I am in ways big and small. Today I am thinking about some "small" blessings in my life for which I am extremely grateful.

• Hot running water. Each day when I shower I say a little prayer of thanks for hot running water. As a boy when I visited my grandparents' farm we took baths in a number two metal tub. We thought this was unique and exciting, but that was because it was a novelty rather than the routine. When we went back home I enjoyed bathing in a "real" tub, never appreciating how fortunate I was. Today I am grateful for hot showers whenever I want one.
  
  
  
  
  
• Indoor plumbing. Can you even imagine using a chamber pot? We used an outhouse when visiting my Allen grandparents, with a Sears catalog for toilet paper. My Grandmother Oviatt had an inside bathroom, but we used this only in cold weather and only for our "number one" business. Otherwise, we used her outhouse. My mother tells how as a child she and her sisters used to wait until their father would go to the outhouse first on cold winter mornings. Once he was finished and the seat was defrosted, there was a mad rush to be next.

• Electric appliances and lights. My gas and electric appliances offer great convenience in preparing meals, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping food cold and fresh. My grandparents cooked on coal stoves very similar to the one pictured here. Note the metal tool to lift the lids from the top of the stove without getting burned. The looped metal handle would be warm to the touch, but would not get hot enough to burn. And I am so grateful that I did not depend on candles or fuel lamps for light.

Sometime the small blessings are the greatest!

Some of life's important lessons

When I entered the mission field, I had only the vaguest of ideas about how to serve as a missionary. I received a small missionary handbook with instructions I tried to follow faithfully, but really "learned by doing" until near the end of my service I finally felt I knew how to do the work I was finishing.

As a young social worker, I worked with troubled youth and taught parenting classes. My "book learning" did not make up for my lack of practical experience and, looking back, I clearly understand why my clients were skeptical of principles and techniques I offered them. Now that my own children are grown and gone with children of their own, I finally have a better idea of how to parent.

After three decades of marriage, I am getting the hang of being a good husband. Much wisdom has come with learning what not to do. With a little luck, Brenda will enjoy the benefits of what I have learned for a few more years before we are both gone.

I've heard it said that intelligence is learning from your own experiences while wisdom is learning from the experiences of others. I wonder how many are wise in this regard.

At any rate, here are some of life's important lessons I have learned.

1. It is easier to loosen the reins than to tighten them. I was a strict father, not because I wanted control over my children, but because I wanted them to be safe. Perhaps I did not get it right in determining how loose or tight to maintain the reins. But I did learn that trying to tighten loose reins was a real challenge.
   
   
2. Offense cannot be given, it can only be taken. No one can offend you without your assistance. We are offended not so much by what others say or do to us, but by what we tell ourselves about what they are doing and why they are doing it. Every instance of offense rests upon our own strongly held "should" or "should not." In a very real sense, we offend ourselves using the other person as the reason we do so. Others have no power over us to cause offense ... unless we cooperate with them. Does this mean I think that others never do insensitive, mean or cruel things? Of course not. But ours is the choice as to whether we are offended by such behavior. When we say to ourselves, "S/he makes me so mad," we are being neither accurate nor truthful.
   
   
3. When you try to change another person the only result that is guaranteed is that you will make two people unhappy - yourself and the other person. Why did it take me so long to learn this lesson? There is a very important difference between not putting up with unacceptable behavior and attempting to change another person. We do not have to put up with unacceptable behavior. But this does not require that we attempt to change others. Frankly, I don't think one person can change another. But I think one person can cause great unhappiness trying to change another, both for him/herself and for the the person s/he is trying to change.
   
   

Someone once told me of a great German saying, "Too soon old, and too late smart!" (It sounds better if you try to affect a strong German accent.) This is certainly true for me.

Love to Read

Reading has always been my favorite hobby and my greatest source of learning and enjoyment. I really don't remember learning to read. I do remember in first grade my teacher, kindly white-haired Mrs. Carter, having us sit on the floor in a group around her while she held up flash cards with words printed on them in bold letters. As a class, we would call out together the words on the cards. I was surprised once when I was the only voice to be heard when she held up a card. Apparently it was a word she had not introduced to us previously, but I must have learned it in reading.

How I enjoyed going to the library as a boy. I can remember the sense of responsibility I felt when I got my first library card. The librarian impressed upon my mind the value of the books loaned to me, the care I must take not to damage them, and how responsible I must be to be sure the books were returned in good condition so others could enjoy them. She also made sure I understood the care I must take not to lose my library card.

When I discovered how books in the library were organized by topics, using the Dewey Decimal System, I was very impressed. What a wonderful way to organize knowledge! This really appealed to my orderly mind. So did the card catalog, which contained 3x5 cards listing information on every single book in the library. Obviously, this was long before the days of computers and online listings.

During school, periodically we were able to submit a book order. It seems that a portion of my allowance frequently went to purchase a precious book of my own. Recently in thrift stores I came across two of the titles I purchased in elementary school. One was a biography of Harry Houdini and the other, titled "Yellow Eyes," was the story of a cougar. I enjoyed re-reading both and was magically transported back to an earlier time. I kept these books and hope some day to share them with my grandchildren.

In the summer when school was out, I made regular trips to the library. My bicycle had a basket attached to the handlebars. The number of books that could be checked out at any one time was limited to ten. So every two weeks I would go to the library and find ten new books to bring home to read. This would usually fill the basket on my bicycle and, if the books were big and heavy, make it a bit of a challenge to steer. Rarely did I return in two weeks without having read all ten books.

Even as a youth I came across some favorite series. As one example, I was thrilled to discover the Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum. (These were the Harry Potter books of their day.) I read every single title in the series ... and actually wept when I learned that the author was no longer living and realized there would be no more books in the series for me to read.

Even as a boy I went through phases in my reading interests: sports, dinosaurs, science fiction, mysteries. And I also had favorite authors: Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and many others.

I was fortunate not to get car sick while reading. Whenever we would go to visit my grandparents (a drive of two hours), I would make sure always to take something to read.

As a father, when we moved our family to Kansas and to Des Moines I made sure one of the first places we visited was the library. When my children were old enough, each got his or her own library card. I remain convinced that reading is a critically important skill for learning and developing the brain. And I believe that a love of reading is a very important attribute for all children to develop. I fear in today's electronic world a love of reading often falls by the wayside, which is unfortunate.

As a missionary and wanting to make productive use of my time, I would combine reading with brushing my teeth. Doing so allowed me to read two lengthy tomes by James E. Talmadge - "Jesus the Christ" and "The Articles of Faith" - a couple of pages at a time. Oh, and upon returning from serving my mission my dentist commented on the very good shape of my teeth.

I find that I get a little anxious if I find myself in a place with no reading material. While I love the heft and feel of an actual book, I suppose that some day I will succumb and ask Santa for an e-reader as a Christmas gift. While it won't be the same as actually holding a book and turning the pages, it certainly will make it easy to carry an assortment of books with me wherever I happen to be.

Good reading to all!