I grew up with a collection of varied memories, some extraordinary.  After a little self reflection, I've concluded that whenever I call forth memories from my early years, the first ones to come out of the memory bank are often negative. I have plenty of positive memories, but the first ones to plop out are thoughts about anger, fighting, trouble I got into or the lousy treatment I got from some other kids. I've trained myself to send up a warning flare anytime this happens by asking "why am I thinking about this"?

Upon further reflection I can think of other instances of grace, memories of good things that were either unexpected or unearned. There is a good chance that I grew up not expecting to be appreciated or loved. My parents had a peculiar kind of love that was nothing like the Brady Bunch. As I watched Marcia and Greg skip along through life in cozy suburbia, I wondered when that would ever happen to me. For a while, I gave up on the expectation of receiving that kind of love or acknowledgment.

But as I go back to my memory bank, I begin to see the times when it did. When grace interrupted my lowered and faltering expectations. I was away for training in Valley Forge one time. It was a fairly elite Scouting program for young leaders and at the end of the first week, I was elected as the leader for all these leaders. I had to make a speech even as a 16 or 17 year old. And I guess I did all right. My father was there. It was the first time I remember him coming to a program for me where I did not fail him or somehow shame him.

As the next week unfolded, I became pastoral. I went from campsite to campsite of the other campers/leaders and began to hear their concerns and encourage their longings and hopes. Unknown to me, this was my first gig as a pastor. I think I was actually trying to do what I thought my father had not done with me up to that point, and that was to care about others by listening to them.

I have great respect for my father and my memories of him are often heroic, so don't think that I am disrespectful of him. My concern here as I write is a realistic assessment of what my mind does and has done with his training in my early years. Some of his training was incredibly dynamic when it came to living on my own. I was given plenty of detail on how to live my life as a loner. That has both good and bad to it of course. But for my purpose here, I was not trained to be grateful. In fact, I didn't think I had much to be grateful for.

When these moments of grace broke in, they were startling to me, like the experience at Valley Forge where I was seen by my peers as a valuable asset to their community.

Within a few moments I could list quite a few more of those experiences. I don't need to, you get the point. But why does my mind remember bad before good and then threaten me to act only on the bad and not the good? One reason is that I am still learning to love myself and appreciate myself. My wife and her love has been another well of deep grace over the years. She has continued to love, even when I wondered if I deserved it. And then there is the first group of folks who shared Christ with us. They were wells of grace as well. They were professional people who did not abuse us with religion but embraced us with Christ's love. I am still overwhelmed and grateful for those moments and those shining memories or eating with them, hiking with them, working on their ranches and talking through some of my most intimate and challenging questions about God and His thoughts. Those are superb memories.

Anyhow, with a little work, I can pull up the catalog of graceful memories and I can find reservoirs of deep gratitude for them and equally for this day as well. I've come to believe that gratitude makes life go round. Without it, the water of life dries up, tears are hot and dry, anger takes root and bitterness over the negative memories takes root and control over my heart. I suppose until I met Debbie, that was the course I was on. A victimized, angry, ungrateful course, not much promise.

I was being pulled by my puppet strings, thinking that it was others who were doing the pulling, when in reality it was myself, the masked puppeteer. Removing the mask took seeing the good and gracefilled. Seeing these things began my years of learning gratiude. An attitude of gratitude is vital to a life worth living. It has taken some incredible events in my life to shake my faith in angst and regression. I'm fortunate to have those events well memorized and easily recalled. I am fortunate to have them at all. Perhaps they started to come to me, when I started to go to them. When I became a friend, I started having friends, when I became a learner, I started having students, when I became a listener, I started having others to talk to, when I started to love, I began to feel loved.

The one thing that I might be most grateful to me father for is his persistence. He was Churchillian in his determination to learn and try new things and never give up on a good idea. He was a doer like no one I have ever known. He pursued a worthy and useful idea until it was completed, even when others saw no value in it or criticized it. I never got a chance to talk with him about this characterisitc of his, but I still have the chance to be grateful for it.