Sunday is Dad's birthday, so I thought it would be appropriate to honor him by reviewing some of the lessons he taught us.  Needless to say, when someone is both your dad and your minister, the lessons that you learn are many.

I've already shared many of my favorite lessons in previous posts which are summarized below:  

• Here is a post about my favorite sermon: My Favorite Sermon.
• Here is another post on parenting that captures the essence of how we were raised by dad and mom: On Parenting. 
• This post is about the way God works through others - a central lesson is many of Dad's sermons: In God's Hands. 
• This post is about how Dad viewed his role as a minister: In the Presence of God. 
• In this post, I reflected on the family as the best social network: The Best Social Network.

As I reflect on our lives and on his, a summary of what we learned from him would be as follows:  

Life will not always follow a straight line and it will not always be easy. Whether you are on a path that you choose or a path is thrust upon you, approach what is ahead of you with faith in God, faith in yourself, trust and reliance in others, and a sense of humor. 

I think the posts referred to above capture the essence those lessons, but none of them capture his sense of humor which, to the chagrin of my kids, I inherited.  Growing up, I remember how much I enjoyed it when some of his minister friends would visit, and they would sit and talk about some of the more interesting aspects of being a minister. My favorite stories include:

• The [apparently] grieving widow who, as she put the last shovel full of dirt on her deceased husband's grave, said, "There, God damn it, now I know where you are!" 
• The young minister at the annual Pastor's School who, in a practice preaching session before experienced pastors, announced the title of his sermon: "Could You be a Peter for the Lord?"
• The day I played golf with Dad and two of his friends.  One of them, who spoke with a thick Scottish accent, and, upon hearing a man on a nearby green berating his wife because her score was better than his, turned to us and said, "I bet that guy drinks beer in his underwear on Sunday afternoons!" [It's much funnier if you read it with a thick Scottish accent!]
• That same day, the other friend, needing to relieve himself, ventured off into the brush saying,"I have to go shake hands with an old friend of my wife's!"

His humor is also a way of relieving stress.  We still giggle at his comments when facing difficult medical challenges.  The first one is to mom when they are confronting the possibility of something going wrong during a long ambulance trip from Elmira to the Cleveland Clinic.  He told mom that, in the event of that he didn't survive the trip, he wanted to be cremated. This, of course, set mom to tears and he consoled her by saying, "Just be sure to check the wind before you spread my ashes so they don't blow back into your face!"  The second one was also at the Cleveland Clinic and he was just coming out from under anesthesia and still very, very groggy.  Mom was patting him on the leg and saying, "You did good! You did really good!"  Through the fog, Dad says, "Of course, I did good. I'm a splendid fellow!"  Tim, Kathy, Mom and I still chuckle at how he relieved our stress and assured us he was going to be fine with his "splendid fellow" comment.  I had a sweatshirt made that read "Splendid Fellow" on the front of it which he wore home from the hospital.

You can see that we all learned so much from Dad - as our minister and our dad.  I suspect that we would have learned them even if he wasn't our minister because faith in God, faith in yourself, trust and reliance on others and a sense of humor are central to his being - not to his profession.

Happy Birthday, Dad! Thank you for the lessons and the laughter. We all learned a lot from you and mom and are grateful to be able to share all of that with our children.