Admittedly, we are a little nervous about this week's newsletter. It may not look much different to you. In fact we hope it doesn't if you've been getting a legible copy. Behind the scenes, we've gone through an enormous change, which accounts for the fact that last week's newsletter was so late. For the last six years, we've depended on someone else to get the newsletter to you. First it was Vic Phares and then it was Tom Dolan at Abilene Christian University. We've been kicked out of the nest and told to fly on our own wings. This is the first newsletter to be sent out entirely through our own equipment and software. Ann has been working almost day and night to get our addresses placed in the correct mailing format. We're just praying that it works.

I'm reminded of a story about a fellow who was given a watch upon his retirement from many years of service to his company. Someone said, "I suppose you've seen a lot of changes in your long tenure with the company." He answered, "I sure have and I've been opposed to every one of them." It seems like we give up old things kicking and screaming. That's the way it is with the newsletter. We were comfortable doing it the old way, but before long we'll probably wonder why we resisted it.

Be sure to read Mikal's article on happiness. As I read it I thought about a bit of dialogue from an old movie. A son tells his mother that he is going to divorce his wife and marry someone else so he can be happy. The mother replies, "Please don't try to be happy. It will only make your miserable."

Norman and Ann

What's on your walls? Don't make a survey trip through your house just yet. Try to mentally recall the walls of your house. We're not really talking about paint, wallpaper and curtains. We're thinking more about pictures, wall plaques, slogans, etc. The walls say a lot about you, your values and your families. As a matter of fact, your walls may even serve as teachers.

In 2 Timothy 1:5, Paul wrote to his young friend Timothy, "I have been reminded of your sincere faith which first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother, Eunice, and I am persuaded now lives in your also." How did Lois and Eunice pass spiritual values along to young Timothy? The Bible doesn't tell us, but you can rest assured that instruction wasn't confined to those times when they sat him on their laps and recited Bible stories. Everything about them - their demeanor, their priorities, their attitudes, the way of handling conflict, their interaction with people outside the home made an impact on the mind of Timothy. So it is in our homes. What does that have to do with our walls? Plenty.

Our walls say a lot about what's important to us. In our home, we display a sign, which reads, "Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day." That's probably not one of the ways we communicate Biblical truths, but it does say something about us. First, it says we have a weird sense of humor. Second, it says we expect to survive just about any kind of misfortune. It also reminds us that life's problems are manageable.

If you take a tour of the walls in our house, you will see pictures. You won't see a picture of us going to the bank to deposit our paycheck. Our appliance warranties aren't posted on the wall. We don't plan to frame the car title and display it on the wall either.

We do display pictures of great significance to us. Some are from the distant past. Some are from the recent past. You'll see pictures of graduations, weddings, anniversaries, growing children and grandchildren. We've exhibited pictures of parents, grandparents and even some great grandparents. All these people played an important part in our heritage and we choose to keep their memory alive.

We also have paintings in our home. Every picture we own was either given to us or painted by a friend. There's a Grant Wood print in our home given to us when we left the church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa after fifteen years of serving the church there. Then there's a special print originally painted by the celebrated artist, G. Harvey. It was a Christmas gift from our oldest son and his family. There's a Texas bluebonnet scene painted by a friend of ours. We think our paintings are nice to look at, but we cherish the people who provided them even more.

Our refrigerator is the family bulletin board. The person who invented the refrigerator magnet was a genius. We've attached pictures of friends, personal greetings, and even our upcoming medical appointments. Our medical appointments remind us of our mortality, so they serve a purpose too.

As I was typing these words, I looked at the wall above my computer and I saw three things: (1) A special straw mat that was given to me by a church in American Samoa in appreciation for a preaching mission I conducted there many years ago, (2) a plaque given to me in honor of my service to a Christian youth camp and (3) a laminated poster given to us two years ago by our granddaughter, Audrey. It's packed full of love. The walls contain our trophies. Indeed they tell quite a story about our lives. Okay, you can go look at your walls now. What do you see? What do they say about you to your family and your guests?

I asked her, "What did the other counselor say you needed to do?" The response was, "She said I needed to do what I needed to do to make myself happy." And what did this young lady think she needed to do to make herself happy? She needed to abandon her husband and very young children and go with another man who made her feel "happy." Many of us gasped when we heard Timothy McVey say about the dead children in Oklahoma City, "They were collateral damage." I talk to people everyday who are willing to make their own flesh and blood, their own children, "collateral damage" in order to find "happy." (Something just does not fit in this picture.)

A young man I know is struggling with a very similar dilemma. He is making some very poor choices as he destroys innocent lives (making them collateral damage) to find "happy." I told him recently, "Why don't you just go to the Bahamas and buy a case of beer every day and hire five women if happy is what you want?" I continued to tell him that he would be very lonely one day with this pursuit, but he would get "happy" for the moment.

A counselor named Connie Podeste came to Minden several years ago and spoke to our Chamber of Commerce Banquet. She said one of the most wonderful phrases concerning happiness I have ever heard. I tell it to every client who talks about wanting to be "happy." One day I am going to have it on a sign and hang it in my office. She said, "Happy is what you are when you are 10 years old and there is a bicycle under your Christmas tree." Do you get her point? How often does that happen?

Author and Bible professor, J.J. Turner, also said it well. His remarks about happy are, "If you have to take one step from where you are to be happy, you are looking in the wrong direction."

In a world where I could get a call at any minute that would tell me that any or all of my precious family has been wiped off the face of this earth, how can I run around looking for this thing called "happy" at the expense of the people closest to me? I am writing this article fairly late at night, but I, with all of my training and certification, could be lifeless myself before midnight tonight. Where can I go on this fallen sphere to find "happy?" What can I cling to, to make myself "happy?"

Satan's finest tool has always been to make us unhappy where we are and to make it look like "happy" can be found in a sinful decision. He did this to Eve. He pulls this same trick everyday on husbands and wives. I explored with this young lady the patterns in her marriage and in the history of this young man she thinks she now loves. It was a given I would find the patterns, but I traced them down with her. Both men in her life, the one she is married to and the one she now thinks she loves, have been seriously attracted more than once to "women who leave." This young woman is, along with the other women we have identified in the lives of these men, "a woman who WILL leave." But for right now Satan has convinced her that "happy" is with this other man who has no history of stability. She thinks she can be "happy" with man number 2. But hopefully and prayerfully I can convince her it is nothing but a pattern of dysfunction that feels very familiar and for that reason, promising. If I can convince her, she can stop the pattern for her children.

Solomon said it best. There he was with hundreds of women, the finest wines and so much wealth that the half of it could not be told, and he said, "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity... Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." (Ecclesiastes 12) Now, several thousand years later, the path to peace and joy remains in this same admonition.

Jeremiah said, "Oh Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." (Jer. 10:23) Daily I see lives that have been completely ravaged because someone thought they could direct their own steps and find "happy."

There is absolutely no guarantee of "happy," but there is of peace and joy. Allowing God to direct all of your steps, especially concerning your family, is your best assurance of finding peace and joy. I genuinely solicit the prayers of each of you readers, that the hearts of these two people can be touched, and another handful of broken hearts be mended.