I admit that I am somewhat old school. I still balance our checkbooks each month, I still keep a clean garage and I usually get my work done before I play. These are all things that I learned as a young boy watching my Mom and Dad – and how they ran our household. Dad was fastidious about making sure everything was in its place and Mom was fastidious as well, especially about her kitchen, the place that was her sanctuary.
Dad also taught me about finance, balancing my checkbooks each month and how to manage money. I remember when he helped me open a stock account when I was about twelve years old. Mom and Dad weren’t very well to do but Dad wanted me to know how to do the things that he really wasn’t able to afford to do. I even remember buying Teledyne stock and a small position in a packaging company named Tower Products. We have carried on that tradition with our children and four grandsons.
There are many other examples of learning life lessons early on. When I was born, Mom and Dad took out a small insurance policy for me. It had a face value of $1000, which changed to $5000 on my 21st birthday. I still have that life insurance policy today! I don’t have to pay the premiums any more – that ended a number of years ago. But Janet and I paid the $50 per year premium for years. I just can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It’s now 72 years old and still growing in value. But maybe it’s still a link to Mom and Dad. As I said, I am old school and those kinds of things are important to me. Being rooted in the history of the family is high on my list of priorities – not only for Janet and me, but for our children and grandchildren as well.
Of course, we were taught to make our beds and keep our rooms clean. Additionally, my parents entertained periodically and, usually, it was Janet’s parents they spent time with. Mom was a wonderful cook, professionally trained, and she ran a tight ship in the kitchen. Everything had a place and no matter how late it was, she never went to bed until the dishes were done and put away. She expected the same standard from Dad and me.
Well, that was years ago. But something that happened this week reminded me of my childhood. We have a small second kitchen that I use to prepare various meals on my smoker. The family loves snack sticks and beef jerky so I have been busy the past several weeks stocking up as the grandchildren go back to college. I also have been trying out some new recipes to change things up a bit! Anyway, Tuesday, I purchased meat and prepared two batches of snack sticks. I was already exhausted but decided to push through and complete the prep. I finally got done and was too tired to finish the clean-up. Janet extended grace and encouraged me to leave the dishes until Wednesday. I was grateful for the reprieve.
That is, until I let our dog out late Tuesday evening. When Eva came back in, I was headed upstairs and just couldn’t go to bed without entering the kitchen. As tired as I was, I just couldn’t leave those dishes. I kept thinking that I wouldn’t be able to sleep, knowing my mother would be so disappointed that I left a full sink of dirty dishes… My goodness, it took forty minutes to clean up all the mess and I finally went to bed nearly an hour later. Of course, Janet guessed what I had done and she reminded me that she and I have never left a dirty dish in the sink during our 52 years of marriage, either. That led to a discussion of our shared childhood experiences (our parents were best friends). It ended up being a great talk into the wee hours of the morning.
Wednesday, I was so glad that I had stayed up and finished my chores downstairs. There was no way that I could have left the dishes until morning. But it surprised me to think about how I was still so bound by those lessons that I had learned from Mom more than 65 years ago. I can’t help but be reminded of the verse that I have chosen for tonight.
Kind Solomon, the author of several books of the Bible, tells us in his book of Proverbs, in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” My encouragement this evening is that the training that we receive from our families has lasting impact. And the Bible certainly encourages us to honor our fathers and our mothers. One way to do that is to carry on the traditions of our youth. My prayer is that we will be fully dedicated to passing along the standards and character that we wish for our younger generations. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…