May all your troubles be little ones.

Frank Features – Little Vignettes

In my father’s USNA 20th class reunion yearbook Dad wrote how his best man gave this wedding toast , “May all your troubles be little ones.” Dad’s end cap to that toast 20 years and 12 kids later was all my troubles were little ones(kids)! This toast has come to be part of our tradition at our family weddings!

Faith

My father kept a home office in our basement. When I was young I remember a paper thumbtacked to the door. In my father’s writing, the title on the paper read, “Why I believe in God“. The #1 Reason was God bringing my mother into his life after he had lost his first wife and had five young children to care for. I would often stop at the door to read those reasons over and over again.

Later in his life, Dad would ask Gary and I questions about Bible passages he was reading. He would often talk about his favorite Bible passage from Matt 22 – the greatest commandment relative to how to live that out in real life. He really wanted to know how to love God and how to love his neighbor.

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Learning and Logic

Dad was a life long learner. In the 2000s USNA class websites were in operation. There he was in his 80’s leading and operating his class of 42 website.

Down in his basement, he had a stationary bike for exercise that he rode into his late 80s. Posted on the wall in front were revolving posters of Spanish vocabulary and conjugated verbs as he continued to work on his Spanish for the trips he took to support work going on in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Placed throughout our basement walls near our heating systems are his handwritten logs of maintenance and repair as well as hand-drawn diagrams of the systems so Dad could troubleshoot issues.

Tomorrow will be Dad’s 99th Birthday. I can’t even convey how many more of these little pieces of his life have impacted mine. This I do know, He sure loved God, his wife, and his kids and that has given great advantage not only to my siblings and me but also to the second and third generation.

So I guess after all the wedding toast continues to pass. May all your troubles be little ones. Thanks Dad.