Here’s what I was thinking as our plane touched down in Edinburgh, Scotland this morning at 10:30 local time (5:30 am Indiana time!):<\/p>\n\n\n
I have truly arrived.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And that’s because it occurred to me that if anyone had told 21-year-old me back in 1989, the last time I was in Scotland, that I would return 36 years later with my beautiful and talented wife to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary …<\/p>\n\n\n
That she and I would have 4 incredible children – 2 handsome boys and 2 gorgeous girls …<\/p>\n\n\n
That my oldest son would be proudly serving as an officer in the Army …<\/p>\n\n\n
That my oldest daughter would be a successful interior designer living in Myrtle Beach …<\/p>\n\n\n
That my second son would be using his college degree in computer science to help program drones …<\/p>\n\n\n
That my youngest daughter would be getting ready to study art at Indiana University …<\/p>\n\n\n
That I would own a house in Columbus, Indiana packed full of memories …<\/p>\n\n\n
That I had made a varied “career” out of ministry, from LeMars, Iowa to Pensacola, Florida to Cap Haitien, Haiti to Accra, Ghana …\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
That I currently had two jobs that I truly loved and felt God’s calling on …<\/p>\n\n\n
And that I would be working on a doctorate degree …<\/p>\n\n\n
If you had told me all this, I would have said:<\/p>\n\n\n
1) I don’t believe you,<\/p>\n\n\n
And 2) What is a drone?<\/p>\n\n\n
And 3) If all that IS true, I am glad to hear that I will achieve success beyond my wildest dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n
(And, by the way, if you furthermore told me that I and my beautiful wife wouldn’t be anywhere near to what most Americans call financial security …\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I would have said:<\/p>\n\n\n
1) I’m not surprised<\/p>\n\n\n
And 2) Who cares?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s what I was thinking as our plane touched down in Edinburgh, Scotland this morning at 10:30 local time (5:30 am Indiana time!): I have truly arrived.\u00a0 And that’s because it occurred to me that if anyone had told 21-year-old me back in 1989, the last time I was in Scotland, that I would return […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9117,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9116\/revisions\/9117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}