Some things may seem insignificant at the time but have a major impact later on.  The problem is, you never know which little things are going to have the biggest impact.

I came to that realization this weekend while going through some things we had put aside for our 27-year-old son to deal with.  It was most interesting to see which things attracted his attention the most and what impact they seemed to have had.

He focused most on a Hot Wheels collection box that folded out into an auto service center.  He observed that he had spent hours playing with that.  Now, he operates an auto service center.   He pointed out how the Hot Wheels kit had an operating lift and many other features of his current business.

He pulled a Pilot fuel truck out of the Hot Wheels collection and began an extended discussion about Pilot truck stops.  What had little significance 20 years ago falls into place now.

He talked about how when he travels he always stops at a Pilot truck stop because he has found them to be consistently reliable with good prices, diesel fuel, clean restrooms and good food.

That explains his sudden interest in politics, too.  During the recent primary election, he asked me to let him know when Bill Haslam would be in town.  I thought that pretty odd since I had never known him to be interested in politics.  A few days before the primary election, Haslam stopped in Clarksville on a final whirlwind tour of the state.  Andrew and I went to his rally. I was surprised again to see a Haslam sticker show up on his truck.

It all came together.   Andrew’s attraction to Bill Haslam’s campaign is tied to his positive impressions of Haslam’s Pilot truck stops.  His interest in Pilot truck stops is tied to his association with vehicles.

How much of that is tied to a Hot Wheels collection that included a service station and a Pilot Hot Wheels model?   Who knows?  Who ever knows what is going to have an impact

Al and Tipper Gore’s announcement this week to end their 40-year marriage is being billed as part of a new rising trend of baby boomer divorces.

That is a two-ton truckload of horse crap.  It is a lie from the pit of hell.  I hope I’m not being too vague.

Thirty-five years ago, I was a communications/political science major in the Tennessee 4^th Congressional District where Al Gore had recently been elected to the congressional seat previously held by his father.

As a former reporter at The Tennessean and a rising political star, the young, bright congressman was a hot commodity in both my major departments.

It was amazing to see him constantly in the district.  He spent at least three weekends a month in the district as well as many weekdays when Congress was not in session.  He worked hard to follow his father’s footsteps while avoiding the senior statesman’s pitfalls.

The white-haired senior Gore was a legendary statesman, genuine politician and conservative Southern Democrat.  (I realize no one under the of 40 has any clue what a conservative Southern Democrat is.  Trust me – they did exist back in the day.) He was down-home folk from Smith County.  He and Little Al’s mom, Pauline, were committed to the end.

Little Al didn’t have the advantage of roots nurtured in Smith County.  He had more influence from Washington and Harvard than from the Upper Cumberland Plateau.

He doggedly pursued politics to a dead end with the same zeal he had back there in the 4th District.  What he found at the end of the road were empty dreams and an empty shell of a marriage that hadn’t been cultivated.

It is not my intent to poke into Al Gore’s personal life.  But, the issue is not a baby boomer divorce trend.  The issue is that a marriage requires cultivation.  It has nothing to do with generations.  It has everything to do with commitments and pursuits.  Are you cultivating your marriage or letting it wither while you cultivate something of lesser value?

It was 35 years ago today.  I was a young soldier.  She was a sweet little blond girl with the coolest blue eyes.

We stood in front of an Army chaplain in a Quonset hut chapel in Yongsan, Seoul, South Korea, with a few friends gathered and said our vows.

It’s a long and involved story, but love stories always are.

She actually stuck with me all these years – for richer, for poorer; in sickness, in health – and all that other stuff that happens over 35 years.  I don’t think there was ever a time when we even thought about not going the distance.  That is a tribute to her patience and perseverance.

She coped with me being gone – from that first summer away at Fort Riley, to hundreds of weekends and annual training adventures to who-knows-where, to Egypt, Panama, Brazil, Belgium, Columbia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and I have forgotten where else.

She put up with the late nights, long hours and never-quit-digging passion of a newspaper reporter.  She rocked along with the constant travel schedule of my LifeWay days.  She never waivered with the uncertainty of my venture into business ownership.

She held the family together.  She was the stabilizing influence even in times when I wasn’t really certain about how things were going to play out.

Now, in some ways, we are back as we were.  It’s just the two of us.  Our schedule is tremendously more flexible.  And, life is good.

It has been an interesting adventure.  There are things I’d probably change if I had a replay.  But, the commitment we made 35 years ago today – I wouldn’t change it for anything.  I’d do it all over again.  It may have been the smartest thing I ever did.

Monday morning looks a little rough after a 12-hour drive to get home from a wedding.  In the past few years, I’ve been to my share of weddings.  I’ve driven or flown to Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Kansas and Alabama for weddings.  That doesn’t count all the weddings in and around Clarksville and elsewhere in Tennessee.  Somehow I missed the wedding of friends in St. Thomas.  That was bad planning.

It’s not that I’m all excited about getting suited up on a Saturday and going to a wedding.  It is that marriage is important enough to be commemorated.  Most of the weddings have been of guys I’ve mentored or connected with or girls Ms. Natalie has discipled, or both.

Marriage is God ordained and God planned.  Consequently, marriage is worth celebrating.  Weddings are our way of doing that.  Through the years, we have come up with these traditions and formats for how we do weddings.  I find it interesting that there is almost no biblical instruction for conducting a wedding.  The closest we get is Jesus at the wedding feast.  That says to me that Jesus was all about celebrating marriage and going all out for it.

From Genesis forward, God laid out plans for marriage.   Biblical marriage is a covenant with God.  It is not a legal arrangement with the state.  We threw that in later and, consequently, have allowed the state to generate a debate about who can and can’t enter into marriage.  It’s a rather interesting debate since God spelled it out pretty clearly in Genesis.

God laid out the plan for marriage early on.  He’s never changed it.  That makes it worth celebrating.  I look forward to more road trips to celebrate more marriages.

She was disillusioned with college after just a few semesters and found a job back home as a bank teller.  That was in 1969.

She settled into our hometown presumably without looking back at the decision to leave college behind.

With the exception of a few breaks for the births of her two sons, she has spent the last 41 years aggressively pursuing a banking career that started out as a temporary job while she decided what she wanted to do.

Last week, as the bank honored her with a retirement reception, my middle sister Sarah commented that she felt like she was the guest of honor at her own funeral.

As a local mortgage vice president for a regional bank, she went a long way from that first job as a teller.

In the past few years, it always startled me when visiting my hometown to see her smiling at me from a billboard.  She was definitely a key figure in the banking industry and one her bank wanted to showcase.

In the 41 years, she stayed with it.  She struggled through a battle with breast cancer and won.  She suffered through her share of life’s traumas and crises.  But, she persevered and succeeded.  She never gave up.

Now, she and my oldest sister are planning their garden for the spring.  Both will have more time for that now.  And, after 41 years of counting someone else’s money and shuffling piles of paperwork, I think that shoveling compost is going to be a great option.

The retirement reception perhaps was awkward for one who never sought the spotlight.  But, we need to find opportunities like that to pay compliments while the honoree is still around to hear them.

And, I’m sure Sarah’s garden will grow just fine.  The deer and rabbits will be her biggest adversaries now.

Much to my wife’s dismay, I have long said that when I can’t limp from the parking lot into Wal-Mart that my son will take me out and shoot me.

For years I have chided those with knee injuries and joint problems, insisting that they just suck it up and move on.  That probably was never a good position to take considering that my wife has had multiple foot and knee surgeries.

I have prided myself in my ability to keep running and backpacking along with guys fully a third my age.  But, it may be time to take me out and shoot me.

Today, I go to the orthopedic dude to see how bad it is.  It started innocently enough.  My knee started aching a bit while getting back into spring running.  I laid off for a week getting ready for a backpacking trip.  On Wednesday before planning to leave Thursday morning for a 27-mile hike, my knee started killing me.  I limped around the office to the point where I reluctantly called off my backpacking plans.  You don’t know how damaging that was to my pride.

No matter how much pain relief drugs I threw at it, I just had Kodachrome dreams but no pain relief.  I finally had to admit that it was a problem and schedule the visit to the orthopedic guy.

Perhaps it is not as bad as I am prepared for, but this can only signal the beginning of the end.  Maybe I can still backpack.  Running may have to be reevaluated.  My love for food is definitely going to have to be moderated.  Dang, getting old is a pain.  Admitting it is just plain humiliating.

Last week, I marveled at the tenderness expressed by a battalion command sergeant major as he memorialized a young fallen solder from his unit.

This week, an aviation company first sergeant who identifies himself on Facebook as a “barrel-chested, steely eyed freedom fighter” showed another streak of tenderness.

1SGT James Halchishick posted a note on Facebook saying, “I struggle with duality. My hands have been trained to crush the life out of evil men.  These same hands, wet with the drops of tears, now tremble as they embrace my children.”

I know both of these men, CSM Tim Johnson and 1SG James Halchishick.  I know them as gentle, tender, soft-spoken men.  But, I also know they are trained for destruction and to lead men to do the same.

The character of our nation rests on the fact that those we train to fight are not fighters by nature.  They are tender, compassionate men.  And, those I know, such as Tim and Jamie, are men of God and warriors of the cross.  I know they go with these verses tucked away somewhere:

Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,
The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

Psalm 91:9-13, The Soldier’s Prayer

Tim, Jeff, and Jamie who are now down range, Elijah, Brady, Pat and hundreds of others who soon will be headed down range, may God bless you and keep you.

In an eight-day span, I have attended three funerals.  I’ve attended my share of funerals in the last few years but this may be a record for me.   This grouping included an aunt, the father of a co-worker and a civic organization colleague.  The services ranged from Southern Baptist to Free Will Baptist to Catholic.

It was interested to see how, in different faiths, we deal with the inevitable reality of death.  Interestingly, in these three situations, the funeral services were celebrations of lives well lived.  Each of the individuals had lived long and full lives.  Each died suddenly and unexpectedly.

While the services were different, the focus of each was similar.  The Southern Baptist service leaned toward informal.  The Free Will Baptist service was in a small, rural country church with the burial service out back behind the church in the cold, biting February wind.  The Catholic service was filled with pageantry packed with symbolism.  Because he was aware of the percentage of non-Catholics in the service, Father Ed, who is also a colleague in the same civic organization, did an excellent job explaining the rituals to us.

Whether in the eulogy of the Southern Baptist service or the commendation of the Catholic service, each one focused on highlights of the individual’s life.

None of us are going to make it out of this world alive.  Whether you exit soon and abruptly or fade off into the sunset, somebody is going to have something to say at your service.  Are you living a life well enough to provide detail for a celebration?

In a trip to east Tennessee last week for an aunt’s funeral, I was reminded of the heritage of a praying grandmother.

Talking with my cousins and my sisters, we all noted our grandmother as a primary foundational guiding spiritual light in our lives.  She died more than 25 years ago at age 84, but all of us have clear memories of her prayers.

Grandmother was a slight, frail gentle little lady.  But, she was a giant prayer warrior.   Each of us has specific memories of her praying for us.  We remember her in church – in a pew close to the front where she could talk back to the preacher.  We remember her at her home reading her big Bible in her spare time.  We remember her doing laundry on her wringer washer.  We remember her cooking in her kitchen.  And, in all of those settings, the little cabinet radio was always broadcasting the Rev. Mull Gospel Hour.  I’m not sure how at her house, it was always time for the Rev. Mull Gospel Hours, but I’m pretty sure that or some preacher would always be on her radio or it would not be on at all.

Many of us, as we went off to college, war, or wherever back in those years, knew that no matter where we were, Grandmother was praying for us.  It was a given – she was praying daily for each of her 14 grandchildren.  Those prayers guided us in those days and they thrust us out into the world with an armor of protection.

She was a simple woman.  She did not take to advances of science or modern conveniences.  But, she was God’s blessing to each of us.

Who is your prayer warrior?  Who’s prayer warrior are you?  People may not remember much about you 25 years from now.  But, the best think they can remember about you is your prayer power.

We shy away from discussion of spiritual warfare in the United States, but Ghana is perhaps on the front line of spiritual warfare in a way we don’t want to acknowledge.

People in Ghana are torn between Christianity, spirit worship with the many African Traditional Religions and Muslim influence.  It is not uncommon for a Christian family to have some involvement in spirit worship.

It was my sister who made the very clear connection to spiritual warfare when my blog was hacked with some pretty ugly stuff while I was in Africa.  After I returned, I made a joking comment that the evil spirits had been exorcized from my blog.  The demons that possessed my blog infected my wife’s PC making it impossible for us to communicate by email.  And, the battery in my Mac crapped out due to my stupidity of leaving it on and unattended for nine days.

At about the time my blog was invaded by evil spirits at the hand of a clever hacker, I was dealing with a woman clearly on the battleground of the spiritual world.  It seemed clear to me that she was dealing with spiritual warfare.  She was a member of the church in Zaremtenga and was experiencing significant personal problems.  I asked her if spirit worship was going on in her house.  When she said it was, I offered an explanation of God’s requirement for undivided worship.  I encouraged her to remove the idols and altars from her house.

We encountered similar situations throughout the village.  It was not uncommon to enter a house and see an altar covered with fresh chicken feathers or a fresh goat skull hanging from the doorpost.

The spirit worship in the East Mamprusi region is obvious and easy to identify.  Our idol worship is not a blatant.  But, it is real.  We suffer much because of our idol worship.  Are their fresh chicken feathers on the altar at your door today?  How about a goat skull?  Probably not, but there are things that are just as repulsive.