Day 521 of 1000
My friend Ashavini, here at Bioptigen sent me an email that describes the collaboration we are doing with a couple of grad students and a professor from the Applied Math department at NCSU. It is very cool because Christian worked here one summer and will have one of the professors teaching his class starting next week. Right now, I am sitting typing at my desktop on an old keyboard that has the delete key in an odd place, so I keep hitting “delete” when I want to hit “end”. My new docking station for my laptop and 27″ monitor are out to be delivered, so life will get really good in just a bit because I just saw a REAL keyboard over on a shelf that I can confiscate.
After my snit yesterday, I had a good and very positive talk with all the involved parties. It all worked out great. Not good, great. Even though it is cathartic to do that sort of thing now and again, it does not serve one well to get into a snit (general because one chooses to be offended) even in the short term, let alone the long term. One thing that worked well in all this is remembering that “a soft answer turneth away wrath.”
Eric
Wow, it is almost at if we were living in parallel universes this week. At work, my old Lenova (a brand I LOVE) died and they gave me a Dell. Now, I’m a “pointing stick” mouse kind of guy. While the Dell has a pointing stick, it was crazy-hard to manipulate. So, I found myself using the page up/down/arrow keys a lot. Well, they were all in the wrong place … along with the home, end, insert and delete keys. So, this creature of habit re-typed everything twice over the course of a week.
Next parellel event … I spent a vast amount of time thinking about your earlier post over which you seem to have gotten a victory. As homeschool parents we deal with similar stuff all the time, even from family and those who we meet with … all who we care deeply about. I think Jon (from Chile?) hits it on the head in his comment. It is all about the fruit … and we are confident that the fruit is good. This helps me when dealing with the “reviling” part of our chosen course. I see in our the kids, and not just the academic results. My children pray for the harvest field literally every time they pray. Not only is it an encouragement that their hearts and minds are considering more than just the narcissistic self, I feel reassured that should the feel a particular calling someday the decision will not be frivolous or ill conceived.
Yes, sports are great conditioning if all you ever plan to do is compete with others. But, the spirit of cooperation and helpfulness also has a place in our society today … and probably an even greater place in the future. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for taking the time to write this Eric. I, too, think Jon had it exactly right. I appreciate that the both of you could tell that there was some pretty deep soul searching going on as a result of these events. The funny deal is that a lot of stuff like this that happens to us is a result of people making wrong assumptions about the way we live and think, then acting on those assumptions by asking us to do things that are against our world view or cultural comfort zone. The other thing is that we (and you) take the mandate to “train a child in the way he should go” very seriously and to not delegate that mandate. It does not take a community to raise a child, but if the children are trained in the way they should go, they will contribute greatly to that community that wanted to interfere in their upbringing whether in the work, in prayer, or in other kinds of service.
We very much appreciate the way you are raising your family and are very thankful you take this all so seriously.