It began in March with a phone call home. “I've got great news,” I told my wife. Then I read from the front page of the newspaper: “The gene that causes Huntington's disease has been discovered after a decade-long search, sparking hope a cure can be found for the deadly neurological disorder.” Ramona listened, her heart pounding.
As a young teen she learned that Huntington's was in her family and there was a 50-50 chance she would eventually die from it. During the next 20 years, she watched three siblings — all in their 30s — contract the disease, one making the slow and humiliating journey to a nursing home.

My grandfather Callaway was a combination of the graceful and the geezer. He loved a good laugh, but he also loved to talk about his ailments once the entire family had gathered around the dinner table and the food had been doled out. “So I remember when the doctors had to root through me and take out my spleen. Stayed awake for the whole thing. Watched 'em dig it outa there all wrinkled and green. I asked 'em to pickle it for me. Put it in a jar. I kept it for years on the counter. Looked like a big hairy cucumber. Hey, where's everybody going? Mind if I eat your carrots?”

Each year I receive lengthy Christmas letters from former friends of mine and it is a little annoying to hear just how very well their lives are proceeding. Here's one example:

Merry Christmas dear friend,

Back when our kids wanted to travel in the same car as their parents, we journeyed three days to get to a camp in Iowa where I was to speak. I've discovered that the best way for a speaker to gain credibility at family camp is to leave his children at home, but ours have always come along. And I think it's been comforting to other parents to watch our children misbehave.

My mother is in a nursing home and the doctor just gave her six months to live. But when he found out she couldn't pay her bill, he gave her another year. Last night after spending some time with her, the thought hit me, “If I stay in peak physical condition, I will be a drain on the medical system.” And so I have uncovered three ways to ensure that this does not happen.
1. Change your diet and exercise habits. I exercised for the last time today. Retired my sneakers. My light weights. My pass to the exercise room. The resolve began when an acquaintance of mine dropped dead of a heart attack. When I thought of the last time I saw him alive, how he was waddling over to the Twinkies aisle in the supermarket, it hit me like a runaway grocery cart: die eating.

Someone asked me recently what I do. I said, “I follow teenagers around the house. I shut lights off. It's a full-time job.”
We are a SITCOM family: Single Income Teenage Children Outa Money. Squinty-eyed prophets of doom programmed us to believe that when teenagers arrived I would lose my sense of humour, my dignity, my wallet, and my hair. They were right about the first two. Oh sure, we've had our moments of fear and uncertainty. We've shed some tears, bought some headache pills and lost some sleep. But five keys have kept us thriving at a time when so many are just surviving. Here they are:

On my refrigerator are pictures of friends and family and animals and one of my dad falling off a chair laughing. There are magnets too. Imitation cabbages, cauliflowers, bittermelons, and pumpkins — all fitting the decor of the kitchen. The dieter's favourite Bible verse is there: “He must increase but I must decrease.” Here are a few of my favorite fridge magnets:

My angel daughter grabs my omelet with both fists and hangs it from her little brother. Within seconds, milk is everywhere. Plates crash to the floor. Hollering ensues: the kind that peels paint from walls. I stand quickly to resolve the situation, banging my left knee hard on the underside of the table. Clutching at the wound, I accidentally smack my knuckles on the sharp table edge

I am a chronic complainer. I grumble. I gripe. I have grievances. Sometimes my whining gets on my wife's nerves. She says, “You should quit whining, Phil.” But I tell her, “I don't like your tone of voice, Sweetie, it's beginning to bother me.” These are the things I have found myself complaining about lately:

Golf is an irritating little sport that beckons us with promises of hope then dashes them in the sand or the creek. It's something my son and I have been thinking about the last few days and something we celebrate at Easter. Standing on the first hole with grand visions of the round ahead, Jeffrey pulled out his new driver, carefully placed a brand new ball on a brand new tee, took a few perfect practice swings, then smacked his first shot. Hard.

Dear Phil,
My wife is due in a month, and I'm a little frightened. No, I'm a lot frightened. Friends of ours had their first child a year ago and they've hardly slept since. They think he's the cutest little guy on earth. I think he looks like ET. He requires more maintenance than their pickup truck, and he's already made a serious dent in their savings account. What can I do to prepare for fatherhood? Please answer — and please hurry.
— Sleepless in Saskatchewan

When I was 11 years young, my parents sent me to Loose Moose Bible Camp as a prize for memorizing Scripture verses like “Be ye kind one to another.” I was beaten up twice that week by Bruce Johnson, the meanest kid this side of Harlem. Bruce had wrists as big as my thighs and tattoos the size of Bermuda. He was so unsaved that he couldn't even sing along on “Kum Ba Yah,” or “It Only Takes A Spark To Get A Fire Going.”

“Children are a great comfort in your old age — and they help you reach it faster too.” – Lionel Kauffman

As a boy, I began looking forward to Christmas vacation in early September, about the time Mr. Kowalski started handing out those math assignments. By the time December arrived, my parents were whispering more than usual and I was wondering what magical things they had in store. There was little in the way of extra money, so one of those magical traditions was the making of colourful candles we would sell door to door, hoping to earn enough to buy gifts. Not all of the traditions were welcome. Sometimes my parents enjoyed travelling to visit relatives and friends. They had a highly sophisticated method of choosing whom we would visit, which involved the laying of a map of Canada on the floor and the tossing of relatives' pictures in the air. Whoever had their picture land closest to their hometown would receive a complementary weekend visit from the Callaways. Sometimes we'd end up in Carstairs, Alberta, and sometimes in Loon Lake, Saskatchewan. As I recall, my father never used a map, he went on faith. I always felt like the Wise Men must have felt, heading off on those trips.

Ever since he was knee-high to a Doberman, the boy was fearless. Take him to the ocean and he'd jump in looking for sharks. Take him to the mountains and he'd see how high he could climb. One day when he was five, I watched in horror as he jumped off a roof—a garbage-bag parachute duct-taped to his back. We couldn't be more opposite, my son and I. I believe God put us on dry land and said, “Lo, I am with you always.” Not Stephen. The higher he climbs, the more he believes God is with him.

My son Stephen has enrolled in Prairie Bible College, a decision that has his mother and me rejoicing and sniffling and clutching our wallets all at once. The price for Bible college has not decreased since I attended in the latter half of the last century, but I assured him it would not be a problem. We would sell his little brother into slavery to pay for the first semester.*

‘Reckless words pierce like a sword’ – Proverbs 12:18

I love reading road signs. Like the one welcoming you to Kettle Falls, Wash., the home of “1,255 friendly people and one grouch.” In Hilt, Cal., a sign advises: “Brakeless trucks, use freeway.” Along Oregon's winding coast, another warns: “Emergency stopping only. Whale watching is not an emergency. Keep driving.” I pulled into a service station once. A bold sign proclaimed, “We have Mexican food. We have gas.” But my favorite of them all is posted on an Alaska highway: “Choose your rut carefully. You'll be in it for the next 200 miles.”

Of all the bad habits I've ever acquired, golf is not the worst. But it's close. I wrote a little golf book lately and I've been surprised at the response. Millions of people golf. And they write me letters about this bad habit. For me, golf is a marvelous and maddening game that combines three favourite pastimes from my childhood: doing poorly at mathematics, taking long walks to get away from people and hitting things with a stick. Not everyone loves golf. John Wayne gave it up out of frustration, I'm told. It's amazing that a man who drew a six-shooter with lightning speed, won the battle of Iwo Jima almost single-handedly and recaptured Bataan could be defeated by a four-inch hole in the ground. But he was. One columnist wrote that golf is “the most useless game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man.” Once, after shanking five balls into a murky creek, I tended to agree with him. But mostly I've found the opposite to be true — golf is a useful game that teaches us more about life and faith than we think, if only we will listen.