My Beloved As Seen Through Scripture

Taken from the Song of Solomon

Listen! My beloved! Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look!

Who is this coming up from the wilderness like a column of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and incense made from all the spices of the merchant? (Sometimes he smells like the great outdoors from his hours of fishing or yard work, haha!)

Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade. Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love.

My beloved is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand. His head is purest gold; his hair is wavy and black as a raven. His eyes are like doves by the water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels. His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh. His arms are rods of gold set with topaz. His body is like polished ivory decorated with lapis lazuli.  His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of pure gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as its cedars. His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, this is my friend.

My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh. My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for his love is more delightful than wine.

King Solomon made for himself a carriage; he made it of wood from Lebanon. (My man made for himself a fishing kayak.)

How handsome you are, my beloved! Oh, how charming!

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.

Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. (The mountains or the beach will do, too!)

Come away, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the spice-laden mountains.

Take me away with you—let us hurry!

http://sherriwilsonjohnson.com/

My Take On “The Bachelor”

So I have a confession to make. I have been watching The Bachelor this season. I know! For those of you who know me well and know my views on love, this is a shock.

I’m a stay-at-home mom. Most of my friends are married. So I don’t have much experience with the modern dating world and particularly not the secular dating world. But I am a Romance novelist and need to gather material from somewhere. Being a Christian novelist, it would be nice if I encountered a Christian version of The Bachelor, but given the content and the amount of heart-breaking, nearly degrading scenarios of the one on TV, I doubt a Christian version would exist. If it did, the ratings would not be nearly as high, I’m sure, because the material would not be as scandalous or cut-throat.

I actually watched a little bit of The Bachelorette last year, which kind of made me sick to see multiple guys hitting on one woman and her reciprocating. I also watched and enjoyed a show called Love in the Wild, which was a show where they paired up former Bachelors and Bachelorettes in outdoor competitions with the hopes that they would fall in love. Many of them did. My first TV program like this to watch was Outback Jack a few years ago and it was so cool that he picked the girl I hoped he would. So I thought I’d give The Bachelor a try this season.

For those of you who have never watched The Bachelor or its counterpart, The Bachelorette, the premise of the show is to take a lonely, successful, eligible (by the world’s standards) bachelor and present him with a houseful of women from every walk of life and have him pick one of these women to propose to at the end of the season. This doesn’t mean they necessarily get married but they usually do move in together and “try it on for size” so to speak. God bless this man because from the moment there is more than one woman in that house, the claws and daggers come out. The wine flows freely, the innocents gets ripped to shreds, the evil-doers rise to the top and somehow fool The Bachelor, and the competition has only begun.

The timid fail to express their feelings for this man whom they do not really know and they are eliminated because they don’t open up. But who wants to open up to a man who spends one-on-one time with twenty something other women and potentially tells each of them how special she is to him?

In an effort to win his affections, the shy girls try to come out of their shells, the less experienced ones try to play the part of a seductress (all the while looking like a little girl in high heels), and the experience-rich women will go to any lengths to get that coveted rose at the end of the night. The Bachelor kisses them all and breaks the rules with some of them by sneaking off to private locations… and hearts get broken.

So I definitely have learned a lot about what a woman will do to win The Bachelor. For some it’s about love. For some it’s about finding themselves again after experiencing a previous terrible relationship. For others it’s about winning.

It’s hard to tell if love really has much to do with it or if it’s just the glamour of the exotic locations, candles, wine, and the ever-present cameras.

The Bachelor seems confused most of the time and if only he would listen to us as we shout at the TV, he wouldn’t make a mistake or crush these other fragile young women in his wake. Oh wait, this is all pre-recorded. Duh!

He confuses physical attraction for love and often does not think with his head or his heart when making decisions. In the interviews with him, he seems to say the same things about each of these ladies. He can see himself with them. He’s falling in love with them. Blah, blah, blah.

And the women! They want so badly to be chosen. For whatever their individual reasons, whether to find love or just to win, they want to be picked. But he can’t pick them all. That is a different show where the man has more than one wife. No, The Bachelor has the grueling task of narrowing things down to one woman.

And each week, as these girls are sent home, even the mean ones and the crazy ones, there is a part of you that remembers that feeling of rejection. What it felt like to be told, “It’s you. Not me.” That is, if you got told anything. I once had a boyfriend sing Freebird to me over the phone while he was drunk and away in another state at college. And it took me two weeks and a long distance bill from his collect phone calls to realize he had been breaking up with me. By the way, I was a Christian AND a preacher’s daughter, so I knew better than to give my heart to a guy like that. Shame on him because he was a preacher’s son. Shame on my preacher daddy for not setting the bar a little higher for the type of guys I was allowed to date.

Watching the girls pull away in the limousines crying their eyes out brings tears to my eyes. And The Bachelor is devastated to have to part with yet another one of his lovelies.

Somehow miraculously though he recovers quickly and finds the strength to wine and dine and kiss and snuggle with the ladies the next week. Funny how when money is no object and when America is your audience, you can pull yourself together.

Now I am not discounting the bachelor’s feelings. I’m sure he’s really looking for love. And I think the girls are too. But I have to wonder how much of what we see is really real and how much is embellished for the camera. Would those girls act that brazenly in a real life situation?

A bigger question that pops into my head is: how many single girls out there mimic these girls when trying to catch a man? How many put themselves in bars or even church situations on a nightly basis and throw themselves at men who wouldn’t pursue them honorably if they were a bloody seal and the man was a killer whale. These men don’t have to pursue when women feign all over them.

My heart breaks for the women on The Bachelor, for The Bachelor himself, and for all the singles who want love. What they really search for is the eternal love of Jesus. For those single Christians out there who already know that love, they long for a companion who shares their same beliefs and values. But it is nearly impossible to sift through all the facades to find the genuine person deep down inside–the person who deserves love, the person who won’t hurt you, who isn’t out to get a piece of you and then dump you.

So this blog post isn’t an answer to the quandary. It’s just an observation of what I see on TV and in the world around me. I’ve enjoyed watching the show–for research purposes, of course. Hopefully, my future characters will be as complex and multi-faceted, deep and shallow, unpredictable and predictable as the “characters” on The Bachelor. And hopefully they will all eventually find true love.

www.sherriwilsonjohnson.com

Originally blogged February 29, 2012

My Husband Never Changes!

…and that’s a good thing!

When we started dating in 1986, there were a few things about my man that stuck out more than just his ability to “tear up” his electric guitar, his charm, or his good looks.

These things were things that my former beaus had never exhibited. Things that a woman needs in a husband.

They are what made me make him my husband in 1988.  And thankfully, he still exhibits these qualities today. What are they?

1. He loved and still loves the Lord more than himself and more than me
2. He was and is a gentleman
3. He was and is spiritually knowledgeable
4. He was and is fun to be with
5. He didn’t and doesn’t have disgusting habits
6. He had and still has a great work ethic
7. He was and is committed to me and loyal to me
8. He gave and still gives me his heart daily

There are many more things that I could list that will probably pop into my head as soon as I press PUBLISH.

I didn’t list things like “being a good dad” because he wasn’t one until two years after we were married.

I also didn’t mention “spends lots of money on me” because he was a poor college student when we first got together. I’ve never measured his love for me based on how much money he spends because we’ve chosen a lifestyle that doesn’t often afford luxuries. But I can say that if I needed something, my husband would gladly spend our last dollar to get it for me. He’d willingly give up something he wanted so I could have something I needed.

I guess each of us could always find something in a spouse that we would like to change but the things I’ve listed above are qualities that make a man a keeper and that outweigh anything negative.

As part of the 40-Day Respect Dare by Nina Roesner  I’m doing, I challenge you to find some positive things in your spouse that haven’t changed over the years that cancel out some of the negatives that life has heaped upon your marriage. Choose to dig deep and see your husband for the young, handsome, fit “rock star” that’s still inside of him. (Inspired by Dare #8)

Philippians 1:9-11 – And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

A Wise Woman Builds Her House

Proverbs 14:1  says the wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.

Our family has been through many opportunities for growth during the last couple of years—car accidents, unemployment, financial struggles and attempts to recover, health issues, death, relocation, and changing churches. The cycle has repeated itself more times than I care to admit. It’s like we’ve been on some kind of nightmare merry-go-round. As a friend of mine recently said, “Stick a fork in me. I’m done!” Yep, that’s about how I feel some days.

Dissatisfaction and complaining have knocked at our door on a regular basis and as a woman, it’s been all too easy to jump on the complaint train and take a long trip, dragging my friends and family with me. As the years have passed and we’ve become a bit older and wiser, we’ve learned to focus on God’s blessings and not on the things we don’t have. But it hasn’t been easy. We’ve had to constantly resist the urge to complain and had to remember that God always provides. We’ve had to continually remind ourselves that life is all about faith in God and not faith in an employer or the job he provides or the money that job supplies. Our faith is placed in God and not in any man or woman in our lives. He’s the only one that will not let us down.

But when you’re struggling through tough times, it’s extremely easy to make an enemy out of your spouse and to lose sight of the bigger picture. It’s hard to remember that you’re a team and you have to stick together. We’re in a battle against strong forces that would love nothing more than to see our homes destroyed. We have to stay on our toes. When we cast aside complaining and all kinds of strife, everyone seems to feel better—even if the circumstances don’t change. And that puts us one step closer to winning the war!

I’ve realized that as a wife and mother, no matter what situation or trial or hardship we find ourselves in at the moment (because there will always be one), one thing remains the same. Walking through these struggles is an opportunity for us to build up our homes instead of tearing them down.

What does that mean? You know, take the lemons and turn them into lemonade! And it starts with our relationships with our husbands.

Because I am a very open person, I am prone to telling more details about my life and what happens behind our closed doors than I should sometimes. My husband doesn’t like to talk about our private lives. And he really doesn’t like to whine and complain in public and he prefers that I don’t either. He would rather we talk about the blessings God has given us than the things we are doing without or the things in our past that have hurt us. After all, no matter what we’re doing without, we’re still far wealthier than the majority of this world. No matter how uncomfortable our mattress may be, as my husband recently reminded me, some people don’t even have a mattress. No matter what our troubles, there is always someone with tougher struggles. I feel wealthy beyond measure…in so many ways…when I look at things from this perspective.

By constantly complaining about (and even just talking about) not having the things we want or need—like food and clothing and paid bills—I am tearing down my home. When I whine and complain I cause my husband to want to stay home and avoid any interaction with people because he can’t trust that I am going to “behave myself” and bless others instead of dragging everybody down with our woes. I send a message to him that I think (and that everyone else thinks) he does not make enough money to pay for things. I send a message that we’re not happy with our marriage or with the different aspects of our lives.

By constantly complaining, I inadvertently tear my home down and convey to my husband that no matter what he does, it will never be enough. For shame, for shame!

This is not at all what the desire of my heart is and these messages I may be sending are not at all the truth. I love that he’s private and doesn’t go around blabbing about all my mistakes. I love that he cherishes our private moments and doesn’t boast to his friends. I truly appreciate his efforts to be the breadwinner and I love the fact that he knows it is God who provides, not himself. I watch him head off to work every morning with his sack lunch and his coffee, shoulders held back, ready to face whatever he has to face. He shares with his co-workers about our tight budget and always brags about my cooking when they ask what he brought for lunch that day. I love him for facing the wolves every day so I can stay home, manage the home, work my part-time job, do ministry, and write books.

Building up our homes must start (after committing it to the Lord) with watching our words and actions and making sure that they glorify the Lord and honor our husbands. To build up our homes, we must look for opportunities to serve those in need, therefore, pointing those in our homes (and those whom we serve) directly to the Great Provider. God wants to prosper us when we seek Him and when we leave the details up to Him. God’s ways are immeasurable. We make things easier on Him when we do our part to build up our homes instead of tearing them down.

I long to make Proverbs 14:1 a verse that I live by – a verse that provides a blueprint for a well-built home. Won’t you join me?

I’m reading the 40-Day Respect Dare by Nina Roesner and it’s inspiring me to make my home a better place to be.

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/3613

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/797924

Darkness Is Beautiful When You Want To Sleep

I don’t know about you but I sleep best when it’s dark or mostly dark in my bedroom. I keep a nightlight in the bathroom so I don’t trip on anything if I have to get up in the middle of the night. But other than that, it’s mostly dark.

In the mornings when my husband is getting ready for work he slips into the bathroom usually undetected. He picks his clothes out the night before so he doesn’t have to fumble around in the dark looking for something to wear. If he happens to need something out of his closet, he quietly digs around in the darkened bedroom with only the light from the bathroom guiding his way.

I have to say that I am not always as thoughtful as my husband when it comes to a dark, quiet, sleep-inducing bedroom. I love to read at night before I go to bed. It doesn’t matter how sleepy I am in the living room, how hard it is to drag my body into the bedroom, I have to read. Even if it’s just for fifteen minutes. I also like to go to bed with the TV on, sound turned almost completely down, the flickering lights lulling me to sleep. I set it on the timer and it shuts off about twenty minutes after I roll over on my right side and I’m off to lullaby land. If my husband wakes up while I’m still reading or perhaps giggling at America’s Funniest Videos, I scratch his back and lull him back to sleep.

Darkness is beautiful when you want to sleep. Darkness is not beautiful when you use it to hide things in your marriage that need to be revealed. Our marriages are too important to ignore things that need to be exposed to the light. Good marriages are rare and since half of all marriages end in divorce, it’s vital that we open the doors and windows on our issues and let the light of God show us what it is we need to do to make our marriages even better.

One thing that is important to know is that men and women are extremely different—in case you didn’t know. Women want love and men want respect. Ephesians 5:33 tells us: “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

When my husband fumbles around in the dark in the mornings instead of blinding me with the overhead light, he’s showing me respect. He does it because he cares about me and loves me but also because it’s just the right thing to do. He was raised to be considerate of others and especially of women, and this is one way he shows it. His actions show respect, which is what he needs, yet I interpret it as love.

I love him. But he needs more than that. He needs to know first and foremost that I respect him. I highly respect him for his work ethic, for always providing for our family even when unemployment has hit. I revere him for staying faithful to me for almost twenty-five years of marriage and the dating years before that. These are ways he has shown me love. I would rather have these jewels than all the earthly treasures combined. So he loves me by respecting me therefore I should respect him and love him. So how do I show him respect?

It recently occurred to me after starting the 40-Day Respect Dare by Nina Roesner that by keeping the TV on for two hours after my husband goes to bed and for reading until 1:00 a.m. with my “runway light” glaring at him and burning holes into his retinas, I am not showing him respect. I am not allowing him to get the seven or eight hours of sleep that he needs in order to have a successful day at work. So although there are many ways I can practice the art of respecting my husband, one the best ways has been so obviously staring me in the eye and I’ve overlooked it until recently.

So I am daring myself to be as polite as my husband when it comes to the darkness that’s required in order to get a good night’s sleep. He allows me quiet and darkness in the mornings so I can catch a few extra zzzz’s so I will be practicing the art of creating a peaceful slumbering environment for him. I doubt I will be able to sleep without reading before bedtime because it’s something I have done for years. But I will attempt to keep my reading time short and turn off the nightstand lamp in a timely manner and extinguish the TV’s bright beacon sooner each evening.

Darkness is beautiful when you want to sleep but it is not beautiful when it hides your flaws and the things that are needed to find peace in your marriage. I dare you to search for ways to respect your husband.

I is for Integrity! Three tips for maintaining sexual integrity.

Today we’re going to talk about integrity—sexual integrity. This is a tough subject to talk about sometimes. It seems like just when you think you’ve got it, you slip up and lose it. Possibly, you might not even know exactly what it means to have sexual integrity.

If you want to know more, please read the rest of this post on Choose NOW!

Nobody Wants Spolied Manna

In Exodus 16, we find the children of Israel in the wilderness. They have been freed from the Pharaoh’s grasp in Egypt and are on their way to the Promised Land. When they first set out, they think of traveling by way of the Mediterranean Sea, the quick route, which will take them about a month. Woo hoo! They will be there before you know it.

But then they discover that that’s not the route in which God wants to lead them. They have to take the long way around. Through the wilderness. No, this trip won’t be an easy one.

Have you ever set out for your favorite vacation spot an hour behind schedule, encounter a flat tire, too many needed potty breaks, speed traps, heavy rains, fluctuating speed limits that slow you down to 35mph in small towns, 18-wheelers everywhere that you have to dodge…? You know what I’m talking about, right?

Well, I guess we could compare that to the journey the Israelites had to face. Except their journey was IN THE WILDERNESS and not in the comfort of a four-wheeled automobile.

So here they are traveling along, hot, sweaty, tired, with sore feet and sore backs. And they are hungry. Starving! They are sure they will never eat again. They start griping and complaining to Moses and Aaron and they even have the audacity to say that life was better while enslaved.

I don’t know about you but when I’m hungry I turn mean. I need some protein or I can’t think straight. And when I have a bare pantry and I think my family is going to go hungry, well, then I become downright despondent.

Well, God heard their cries. He knew that in their humanness they could only take so much before their heads would explode and they tucked their tails and ran right back to Egypt. At that moment, he told Moses that he would provide exactly what they needed.

Exodus 16:4-5 says: Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”

God hears our cries, too!

God delivered their food onto the ground for them and all they had to do was go pick it up. But only enough for that day. On the sixth day they gathered enough for the seventh day, the Sabbath, because they were not supposed to work on that day.

Here’s the kicker. Manna spoils. That’s why God only gave them what they needed for that day. The day before the Sabbath, He gave them what they would need to carry them through until after the Sabbath, when they could pick up fresh manna from the ground.

I don’t know about you but I don’t like to wait for things. It’s not because I’m greedy. I think maybe it has a little to do with fear. I want to hoard all the food and money I can so I won’t be caught without it. Isn’t that what we learn in our churches these days? We must have our emergency fund and our apocalyptic shelves of food ready.

A little storing for the future isn’t bad. You see in the story of Joseph where he prepared for the upcoming famine by storing the food that his nation would need.

But here in Exodus, God wants to teach his children that he will provide for them daily. He knows that if he lets them take the short route to the Promised Land and if he lets them have all the food they want, they will stop trusting in him. They will think it is by their own power and might that they have survived.

I’m learning every day to be thankful for what God gives us and for what he makes us wait.

To not panic when we have $4.00 in the checking account.

To not freak out when the last potato has been mashed.                                         

To be okay when the email I’m looking for, which proclaims my next successful step in my writing journey, doesn’t come.

All of those things will come when God knows we are ready to handle them. He provides just the right amount of food to keep us going, yet keeps us hungering for more. And I’m perfectly fine with waiting for these things and with having a bit of a growl in my spiritual and physical stomachs because I don’t have room in my house or my heart for a bunch of spoiled manna.

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1382886

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/3496

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/187612

Uruguayan Fried Cakes with Dulce de Leche

Tonight I made these yummy treats for me and my men.

Uruguayan Fried Cakes with Dulce de Leche 

Happy 4th of July! Delish!

MY PERFECT VALENTINE!

My how time flies! And yet, I still remember what I was doing twenty-five years ago today…

In June of 1986, I reached a point in my life where I was frustrated about being alone. I wanted a husband. I wanted the man God had for me. I wanted someone to whom I could be his other half.

The problem was: my world was very small. I worked in the corporate world and the only male Christians in my office were already married or were clearly just friends. The others were non-believers—many of them were married creeps.

So I was on a mission. I refused to be left behind. I knew there was someone out there for me. I trusted God to provide him but I also believed that I needed to take a step in the right direction. I needed to be like Ruth and put myself in Boaz’s field.

Since the pond I was swimming in was pretty much dried up, I figured I was going to have to find a new one. The fishermen on its banks were not the kind whose hooks I wanted to bite. These guys didn’t seem to care what kind of fish they caught. I wanted to be “the big one” ….every fisherman’s dream. I needed a choosey fisherman.

Going to bars was not an option for me, as I did not drink alcohol and I highly doubted that my man would be there. My church (where my dad preached) was small and mainly consisted of older folks, therefore, my Mr. Right was not there. So much to my father’s disappointment, I found a new pond. I made the decision to leave his church and go to my sister’s church, where my brother-in-law was the youth pastor. My sister had a friend who wanted to introduce me to a friend of her husband. Cool!

So I donned my pale yellow linen suit where the pencil skirt came just above my knees, my black silk blouse with a bow tied at the neck, and my black high-heeled pumps. Man! I wish I had a picture of that getup. I was dressed to go fishing—wait, I was the fish, right? Oh, and I was also there to hear a word from the Lord, especially because I knew my daddy would ask me what the sermon was about when I got home.

I went to my sister’s Sunday school class and checked out the guy I was there to meet. Eh, he was okay, but not really my style. I’m sure he was a nice fellow but my toes didn’t curl. Ya know?

Then after Sunday school, I ran into an old friend. He actually grew up at my dad’s church but his family left a while before Dad took the church. We ran into each other occasionally at the annual Homecoming/Revival meetings, funerals or weddings. So it was good to see him again—Danny Johnson. We hugged and said our hellos and I noticed how great he smelled. Clearly, he had grown up since I had seen him last. He was so friendly but quickly moved on to church service.

After church ended, I stood outside with my sister in the Georgia heat. I don’t really remember, but I think we were probably saying our goodbyes when HE came walking across the parking lot. This time I got a better look at him. He was decked out in a mint-colored cotton suit (Don Johnson/Miami Vice style) with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and had white leather woven dress shoes on. He was tanned and wore a necklace and ring of gold. He had a bright, beautiful smile and sparkling brown eyes. He was the complete opposite of all the guys I had every liked. He was Ooo-wee!

So my sister yells out to him, “Hey Danny, when ya goin’ to take my sister out?” Imagine how totally embarrassed I was. I wanted to crawl under the pavement. However, he looked me square in the eye and said, “I don’t know. When do you want to go?” I don’t even remember what my response was except I am sure a giggle escaped my lips.

Long story short, we had our first date the following week! I came home that night and told my mom that he was the one I was going to marry. He was everything I was looking for and more than I even thought to ask for. Oh, and his sister is the one who had the friend to introduce me to that Sunday morning. Isn’t that funny? She’s now my sister-in-law.

On Valentine’s Day 1987, seven and a half months later, he asked me to marry him at a romantic restaurant in Atlanta. (Yes, I went to the salon on my way home from work and got a haircut and a manicure done in anticipation of the evening’s events–just in case.)

Girls, it’s worth the wait to wait for God’s best!

That night was twenty-five years ago today! We married in 1988 and have two awesome children. God has been so good to us throughout the years and I look forward to at least fifty more!

Ten Years Ago, I Lost My Last Parent

It’s hard to believe that ten years ago today, my dad passed away from melanoma that spread to his brain and all over his body. He was a Southern Baptist preacher of a small church that, in his eyes, was the grandest congregation in the world. He devoted his life to telling his people (and anyone he came in contact with) about Jesus.

He was ahead of his time, having owned one of the first home computers. We like to think that he would have an iPad, iPhone, a Mac, and would be the king of texting, tweeting, and Facebook, if he was still here. He would be so proud that I reached my goal of being published. He would be so happy that Dan and I are still together and that we’ve raised two well-rounded, God-loving kids. He’d be really into Kayla’s photography and would probably monopolize Seth’s every waking moment with computer programing and all kinds of techy things.

Dad, we sure miss you!