It is 10 pm and I am sitting in a motel in Portland with my beautiful wife, Patty. We are getting on an airplane in the morning, 6 am for Missouri where I am going to teach on how to have a great marriage and how to raise champions for Jesus. I am hoping that I sleep well on the airplane because I am feeling especially weary tonight. Not sure why. I enjoy these special assignments from God to go to other places and talk and teach about something that I am so passionate about in my own life. While we were raising our 8 kids I read every book written on the subject of raising kids, some two or three times and we both went to many seminars on raising good kids and having a good marriage. We were hungry for wisdom in an area we did not want to fail at. Now we are all done with the kid raising and our marriage has entered what some writers call the “afterglow”, that time when we are very comfortable with who we are and how we relate to and treat each other. I can’t remember the last time we had a tiff even a minor one. It is nice to be able to pass on the knowledge learned from books, seminars, and our own experience. Someone asked us about the difference between now and “then” in regards to raising kids and having a super marriage. My answer is that when we started there was an understanding that there was a definite right way and wrong way to do it, and if you wanted to know the right way look around and find someone who had done well and get their counsel. We did that. We drove 90 minutes once a week into Portland in the evening to get 30 minutes of counsel from a Dad who had 12 of the best behaved kids I had ever seen. He taught us the right way. Now most are of the opinion that there is no right or wrong or best way, whatever you think is right is OK, so we are seldom asked for advice or counsel, even from those who obviously need it badly. Just be sincere and do your best and somehow it will all turn out OK. If I went to a doctor for complicated surgery I would really like him to be more than sincere, I would like him to be incredibly skilled and knowledgeable. How important is a wonderful marriage and kids that are champions?