Stuff I Learned Yesterday

Fatherhood is awesome. Sure, there are moments where it can be difficult and frustrating and scary, but those times are far eclipsed by the moments of joy, fun, enthusiasm, and bonding. One of my favorite things to do is spend time with my kids one-on-one. During these one-on-one times they get my full attention, and I get theirs.

Sometimes I’ll take a Saturday morning and take one of my kids to breakfast or lunch. My son, Colby, likes to go to a local restaurant called Colby’s grill. Not only does it share his name, it has great food. My daughter likes to go to a local spot called Around the Corner Restaurant. It’s exactly what you think of when you imagine a small town diner. It’s homey and delicious.

Recently, Colby and I have been taking walks together in the evenings. It’s the perfect time of day for a walk as we’ve just finished eating dinner, Bernard is out in the flowerbeds gathering pollen, and the air is cooling more each moment as the sun is dipping lower into the horizon.

We step out the front door, spend a few minutes watching Bernard, and then one of us will choose which way we’re going to go. Our neighborhood has a walking trail a couple of blocks away, so we usually meander around one of three routes we can take to get to the trail.

Along the way we talk about life. As you can imagine, life is pretty hectic for a 9 year old on summer break. He tells me about his latest adventures on Minecraft or a new skin that he has made for his character. Sometimes he tells me about his progress on a game called Portal. Sometimes he asks me how my day has gone. Read More...

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Today’s podcast is all about keeping it real. I’m going to keep it real, and I hope you do to. Okay, let’s start with a test. When I said that today’s episode title was called “The Flowers and the Birds” and then told you about Bernard the bumblebee, did you think that this would be another episode about my flowers? C’mon, be honest. Well, it’s not. Instead, it’s about stress.

Stress comes packaged in a lot of different varieties. For example, it comes by being unhappy with a job or relationship. It comes at the loss of income or sudden unexpected expense. It comes with unwanted health news. It even comes with good things like a new job, planning a wedding, the arrival of a baby, or planning a family vacation. The truth is, we can pretty much point a finger at anything and there’s probably a way that it could bring stress into our lives.

I wise woman once told me not to worry about the things we can control because we can control them and therefore need not worry about them. That person also told me not to worry about things we can’t control because they are out of our control and worrying about them will accomplish nothing. Having nothing left to worry about, then we can rest. Good advice, huh?

For the most part, I don’t consider myself a worryer or a stresser. But there are times when I get overwhelmed and start to stress out. I know that I should just let it go, but it’s hard. I want to know the end result. I want to be in control. I want to have security. And sometimes those things just aren’t made known to us. The truth is, even when I think I’m in control or know the future or have security, those are just false realities. They can be gone in a moment. Read More...

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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, the first time I saw Forrest Gump I hated it so much I almost walked out of the theater, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’m pleased to bring you another installment of the Friday Forum.

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Friday Forum

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When I was 9 my parents divorced. A few months later we moved to a small town of about 800 or so people. About a year after that we moved to a house on 5 acres about 2 miles outside of town. Our house was just off of historic Route 66 on the top of a hill. In the winter time we’d occasionally get enough snow to go sledding. There were plenty of kids nearby and we would sled down the snow covered dirt road behind our house.

After a couple of years, some of the other kids moved away and new folks moved in. A husband and wife named Mark and Donna moved into one of the houses. The house was nestled at an angle from the dirt road in front of it. The back of the house came right up to a thick grove but the rest of the property was wide open. The property was guarded by a white wooden rail fence with two open spaces to accommodate the circle drive. It had a large front yard with two aged elm trees in the middle of the drive. On the east side of the house was small barn that had been used as a horse pen by the previous owners and the horse pen opened up to a large field that the horses had called home.

Mark and Donna didn’t have horses, but they did have some large animals. They had two saint bernards, BeBe and CeCe.

Mark and Donna were a young couple, probably in their early 30’s. They had no kids. They were younger than my parents, and obviously older than me and my brothers. Mark was an active and athletic guy and they had a basketball goal. We had one too, but we spent a lot of time shooting hoops with Mark at his house.

Mark had a cool style about him. He was very encouraging and seemed to always be on the lookout to impart some wisdom. For example, one day while we were playing basketball, my brother lost control of the ball and it damaged his garage door. Mark said it was okay. Afterall, it was an accident, and just part of playing the game. A few weeks later my brother was horsing around and damaged Mark’s gutter. Mark got mad. He pointed out that damaging his stuff was fine when it wasn’t intentional or negligent, but damaging things out of foolishness was not acceptable. It was a good lesson for all of us to learn. Read More...

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At the ripe old age of 35 I think I know enough about life to know that I’m not fully in control. I am supposedly in control of my thoughts, actions, re-actions, and decisions. But the big question then becomes, why, when I look at my own life, could I not have accurately predicted any of it? Read more and listen to this episode...

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