Happy Birthday Happy!

Thomson is 11 months old! He is asleep in my closet while the electrician is banging away on my living room wall. Technically in a few weeks, he will be a Toddler, and even though he is not doing much toddling, I am trying to convince myself that he is not my baby anymore.

He is a lot of fun! He is still always happy and smiling, laughing or talking all of the time. Or focused intently on some small object. He copies or tries to copy a lot of things that we say. Yesterday I said "uh-oh thomson" and he started repeating "uh-oh". So funny. He also says ma-ma and da-da and I think he is trying to say dog. He loves dogs and thinks they are so so funny. He is standing up on furniture but not taking any steps. He sits on the floor and rotates around in circles trying to get what he wants. It is a form of scooting but he spins in a pretty tight radius so he doesn't go very far. He has 4 teeth that have come through up top along with the 2 on the bottom that came in awhile back.

We just got back from St Simons on Sunday - a quick trip to celebrate Dad's birthday, 6-0. There were no fireworks but lots of laughs and a great time together. Erin put together a framed print of "60 Things We Learned from Our Dad" that we all contributed to. Some highlights were "Be careful who you give a lakehouse key to" and "How to make eggs in a cup". Also "If you give too much money to the church, Uncle Sam will question you" and "One thing I am thankful for".

Dad has lived a life of compassionate service and those of you who know him know exactly what I mean. He is deeply concerned for others and has lived his life to help other people - be it free legal advice for a young (or old) person, setting up a family in a new housing project, famously teaching Youth Sunday school for more than a decade, or staying excited about Marietta football even when they are mediocre. He is passionate about everything he gets involved with.

This verse stopped me in my tracks, it describes so many of Dad's gifts that he has been given by God's grace:

"We have different gifts, according to the grace given us . . . If a man's gift is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully." Romans 12:6-8

There are countless examples of how Dad's life has demonstrated these gifts and how he has allowed God to use him in these ways: serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing to the needs of others, leadership, and showing mercy.

How lucky am I that I have had this example shown to me daily for 30 years.

Happy Birthday Dad - I love you very very much!