I have been looking for video and picture ideas for this weekend's theme of "Why does God allow suffering?". I got out our video of "Love Comes Softly" and found a good clip from it that deals with people having trouble and yet still having faith in God. It is a good series of movies, probably wouldn't have known about it without having daughters who read those kinds of books and then found the movies. I have learned so much from them, they expose me to all kinds of things that I might have missed otherwise.

There's a great quote from the "Love Comes Softly" clip I hope to use: "In all the moments of my life, God's been right there beside me. The truth of God's love is not that He allows bad things to happen, it's His promise that He'll be there with us when they do."

There's also a neat quote from "Shadowlands," a love story between a man named C. S. Lewis (who wrote, among other books, the Chronicles of Narnia which was just out recently in movie form) and a woman named Joy who he met late in his life. They married and she died soon leaving him with her young son from a previous marriage. He says to the boy as they are grieving together: "If you want the love, you have to have the pain...Real life hasn't begun yet. All this is just shadows."

Monday night my daughter Rosie interviewed me for a speech she had to do for a Public Speaking class she is taking. She had to do a 6-10 minutes "Tribute" speech. It had to be someone she knew so she decided to talk on me. It was quite an interesting experience being interviewed by her and basically reviewing my life for her. A lot of feelings of inadequacies came up. She told me to not put myself down. After she had done the speech we were talking about that on the way home from school after I picked her up. I told her it wasn't that I didn't like my life, it was just that when it was all laid out before someone it didn't seem like I had accomplished all that I had hoped for. Her response was that most people don't live "big" lives (big wasn't her word but the feeling was something like that and it definitely wasn't a put down). I told her I knew that (but inside me I was thinking that still it felt like I haven't accomplished all that I had once hoped for). But I'm glad I got to share more of my life with her and she interspersed her own stories about me in the speech. I didn't get to hear it but she felt good about it and about me. So what more can I ask for.

A stretching experience, more for me than her...but hey, it's not every Dad that has his daughter do a tribute of him.