“But He said to them, ‘Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?’ Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” Matthew 8:26 NKJV
On Monday of this past week, I was carrying a puppy down my deck stairs outside. On the final step, I tripped forward, landing on concrete. I am blessed to have survived the fall without a serious injury, only some “road rash” and bruising on my right knee and leg and a little on the back side of my right hand (though this was sufficiently painful.) I fell in such a way as to protect that puppy, without putting a hand out to break my fall.
I later contemplated how the puppy handled the fall. She seemed to be unscathed, not just physically but emotionally. She never yelped or showed any fear or concern. A friend joked that puppies are made out of rubber and just bounce. That might be … metaphorically speaking, at least. I think it might also be that she felt held and safe and had complete trust in me as her caretaker that everything would be fine.
Have you ever done a trust fall, one of those exercises where you fall backwards, perhaps even blindfolded, into the arms of several others, trusting them to catch you? Do you remember your father playing with you as in the photo above tossing you into the air? Did you ever fear that Dad would drop you? I grew up with three older brothers eight, ten and twelve years older. As a child, I remember one brother actually tossing me over to a second brother who caught me. I never worried I’d be dropped.
As believers, that’s exactly how we should feel in the arms of God our Father, even when everything is turning upside-down and topsy turvy, when life circumstances seem frightening and uncertain. While Jesus was out in the boat in the middle of the storm with His disciples, He was sleeping at first. How did He react when the disciples woke Him in alarm? “Why are you fearful oh you of little faith?” and then He stopped the storm. Our level of trust should not change with the atmosphere. We are held in the arms of the Father, and He will not let us go.
Lord, we are often of little faith. Like another father in the New Testament, we say we believe but please help us with our unbelief as well. Help us to put our perfect trust in You. Amen
And just because this demonstrates little dogs having child-like trust …
And to remind us of God the Father’s love for us …
I happened to be reminded recently of this Billy Graham quote put together with art by one of my favorite popular artists, Mary Engelbreit. I thought I would tack this to the end with a “Happy Father’s Day!” to the dads out there. I think I posted more about Father’s Day this year than about Mother’s Day, and that just happened to be the writing rhythm I found myself in rather than a belief that one role is more important than the other.
Here’s a collection of humor for the dads or for those celebrating the dads in their life.
YouTuber Penn Holderness of the Holderness Family does some fun song parodies, a few relating to fatherhood. A few Father’s Days ago, he released a parody of Michael Jackson’s “I’m Bad,” now turned to “I’m Your Dad.” Well, this year, he chose the same music but with a slightly different twist. Apparently, he is turning into his own dad … just like in the Progressive insurance commercials. Enjoy some fun music, humor and silly dance moves.
Then, I went into the Holderness Family archives and found this parody of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy,” — “I’m Your Daddy,” celebrating all the fun and funny things he does as the dad of the family.
Dad Jokes
(curated from around the Internet)
Does your dad tell you “dad jokes?” Mine does. Sometimes, it gets a giggle, and sometimes, it gets a groan. Maybe, you’re the dad passing on the dad joke tradition to the next generation. Here is a collection to add to your arsenal.
My wife asked me to sync her phone, so I threw it into the ocean. I don’t know why she’s mad at me.
Why do cows wear bells? Because their horns don’t work.
What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta.
A cheese factory exploded in France. Da brie is everywhere!
A steak pun is a rare medium done well.
Not sure if you have noticed, but I love bad puns. That’s just how eye roll.
This morning, Siri said, “Don’t call me Shirley.” I accidentally left my phone in Airplane mode.
To whoever stole my copy of Microsoft Office, I will find you. You have my Word.
Cop: “I’m arresting you for downloading the entire Wikipedia.” Man: “Wait! I can explain everything!”
“For Father’s Day, I’m giving my dad an hour of free tech support.”
Have you heard about the restaurant on the moon? Great food, no atmosphere.
I’m addicted to collecting vintage Beatles albums. I need Help.
I’m reading a horror story in braille. Something bad is going to happen, I can just feel it.
What’s the best thing about living in Switzerland? I don’t know, but the flag is a big plus.
I always knock on the fridge door before opening it, just in case there’s a salad dressing.
What is the difference between a literalist and a kleptomaniac? A comma. A literalist takes everything literally. A kleptomaniac takes everything, literally.
More Youtube Dads
This New Zealander dad shares a lot of humor about fatherhood on his Youtube channel, “How To Dad.” In this one, he shares how to go grocery shopping with a baby.
Have you noticed that dads just do things differently from moms? I remember when my niece was a baby, and my brother was “flying” her like Superbaby balanced on the palm of his hand. His Shetland sheepdog, Honey, barked at him to warn him to be careful with that baby. Here’s a video montage of dads doing things a little differently.
Here is an explanation from their page on the epulaeryu form:
“The Epulaeryu poem is all about delicious food. It consists of seven lines with thirty-three (33) syllables. The first line has seven (7) syllables, the second line five (5), the third line seven (7), the fourth line five (5), the fifth line five (5), the sixth line three (3), and the seventh line has only one (1) syllable which ends with an exclamation mark. The form is 7/5/7/5/5/3/1. Each line has one thought which is about the main course.”
I was following the syllabic form but noticed afterwards that the words seem to make a fitting ice cream cone shape.
Dare I post two ice cream poems in the same day? I think I just did. It just seems so summery. Here is the other one. It’s a bit different in nature and tells a romantic story. By the way, rocky road is my favorite ice cream flavor. What is yours?
This was written for Linda Kruschke’s paint chip poetry challenge. The challenge this week was to write a stanza or more of a sixain, using four or five of the paint chip words below and one as a rhyming word.
The poem was partially inspired by a story my mother told me that she had read about the actress Helen Hayes and her romance. At one point in her courtship, the man who became her husband gave her a bag of peanuts (maybe at the movies or some event) and told her he wished they were emeralds. Years later, he did give her emeralds and told her he wished they were peanuts. In my poem, peanuts and emeralds became ice cream cone and polished or precious stone. All other details were also fictionalized and, of course, created, to fit in the paint chip words.
This weekend is Father’s Day weekend in the U.S., and I’m sharing this post with Weekend Coffee Share.
Today, I created a “pop”-themed gift basket for my dad for Father’s Day. I filled this little plastic shoebox with interesting soda “pops,” some gourmet lollipops, and other “pop” snacks like Popchips potato chips and Popcorners popcorn chips.
There’s a few specialty items in here that might not be available everywhere in the U.S. (or outside of the country,) but you certainly should be able to take some inspiration and do your own version of this. I will take you through my whole shopping and basket-making experience and even share a few extra pop-themed gift ideas I did not personally use, but you might be able to use.
I do not call my dad “Pop” or even Papa, but if I’m in a silly mood, I’ll call him Papa (with the emphasis on the second syllable.) My brother goes by Papa to his kids and Poppop to his granddaughter, and there must be some other Papas and Poppops out there. Even if your dad is not Pop or Papa to you, it might just be a fun idea.
First, I went to a discount store near me for my basket. This discount store, called Amazing Savings, is not national, but you should be able to find plastic shoeboxes like this in Walmart, Target and similar stores and possibly even in a dollar store.
I happened to see a few other items that fit the theme while I was shopping here. First, I saw this poppable fidget toy.
It seems this toy tries to mimic bubble wrap. I know some people are crazy over popping bubble wrap, and I think this toy would be appropriate for an adult who happens to like fidget desk toys (and bubble wrap.) I didn’t think it was the best thing for my dad in particular. If you like this idea, it does seem like you can find similar items on Amazon.
I also happened to see another non-edible and non-potable item that I decided to buy … a silicone cell phone pop stand. It has a suction cup on one end and a silicone sphere on the other, for holding up a cell phone. I think my dad might make good use of this.
Then, I was off to the Kings Supermarket for some individual bottles of specialty sodas. Yes, I use the word “soda” and not “pop” for carbonated drinks. I realize that outside of the New York/New Jersey area in the U.S., nearly everyone else in the country says “pop.” It’s soda to me, but for a fun theme, I was willing to use that other term. If you live in an English-speaking country outside of the U.S., let me know in the comments what you call a carbonated drink.
Assorted sodas and drinks at Kings Supermarket
I picked out several of these. I’ll show you my picks later on in this post.
I also went to the snack aisle for some popcorn and other snacks with “pop” in the title. Of course, bagged popcorn or boxed microwave popcorn would fit the theme, but I went with Popcorners chips. My mom and dad really like these Popcorners chips, because it’s made with popcorn but has no hulls that can get stuck between teeth.
There were a lot of popcorn options, including kettle corn and sweetened popcorn.
Even though I was beginning to wonder how everything would fit into my shoebox, I picked up a bag of these barbecue-flavored Popchips. Poppables chips would work too or maybe even Pringles. Do you remember that slogan, “Once you pop, you can’t stop?”
Then, I remembered an interesting popcorn product I’d seen earlier in the store. This Lesser Evil brand had very unusual flavors such as pink grapefruit, lemonade and watermelon hibiscus. Both parents (and I) are adventurous eaters, but for this gift, I still thought it was safer to go classic. Still, I thought I would show you these unusual flavors.
My next stop was at Staples, the office supply store, just because I happened to remember from the last time I was there that they were selling some gourmet lollipops with interesting flavors. I wonder how many customers go to Staples just for lollipops? They didn’t have as many as they did when I was last there, but I was able to get a few. I picked up two strawberry shortcake flavors, one strawberry banana and another in party punch flavor.
Pop Rocks, if you can find them, might be a fun idea for a Gen X or Boomer dad who would remember them from childhood, but maybe not the best one for my octogenarian dad. Cake pops, either store bought or home made, are another possible idea. Popsicles, of course, can’t be left out, but you could leave a note in your gift basket, directing Dad to the freezer.
After this, I headed home to assemble everything.
Here, you can see the interesting picks I had for sodas. There are Stewart’s brand root beer and orange and cream sodas, a pomegranate and blueberry Mash soda, pomegranate GUS (Grown Up Soda) soda and Olipop strawberry vanilla sparkling tonic. This last one was a prebiotic drink that needed to be refrigerated. I live with Dad, so I wrapped this one up in a plastic bag and put it way in the back of the refrigerator to hide it. I’ll move it to the basket on Sunday.
I decided to go with specialty sodas. I don’t know if you will be able to find all of these exact brands and flavors where you are, but you can also go with tried and true favorites. One other source of some unusual, even nostalgic sodas, is the store portion of Cracker Barrel restaurants.
I found this 5×8″ index card and trimmed it a little to fit the side of my shoebox. I then found some markers and wrote this message on it, “Happy Father’s Day to my ‘Pop’!” and decorated it with balloon designs. I used wide packing tape to fasten the card to the side of the box.
I used the packing tape to tape other items into place as well, taping the lollipops inside the sides where they were sticking out visibly and attaching the bottles to the bottom to keep them stable. The bags do barely fit, but they can prop themselves partially inside behind the bottles, and a little tape helped there too.
