Offspring

An experiment never meant for the meek nor faint of heart:

Ask your father a question. Ask him to think back, to consider you as the child you were. Then ask him what he would choose if given the opportunity to change but one something about you--the person you were, the way you treated others, what you thought or believed, how you acted or refused to act. Let him think. Then, listen.

When he tells you his greatest wish is that you would have treated your sister better, consider why. Consider how his love for her--every bit his own joy as you are--mirrors your own. Then lift that same listening heart and soul heavenward.

Never come to that eternal place of reckoning, that destination of accountability, with pent-up praise of always knowing God and loving God and wanting nothing more than to make God happy at any cost only to hear those same devastating words:

I know, I just wish you would have shown love to my children.