Joseph Thomas and Sally Pittman Morris at their only daughters wedding 1970

                                                       Count Your Blessings 2019

                                                                  IF
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don't deal in lies or being hated don't give way to hating. And don't look to good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream and not make dreams your master; if you can think and not make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. If you bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build'em up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose and start again at your beginning and never breathe a word about your loss. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone. And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them "Hold On"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you If all men count with you but none too much, If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distant run, Your's is the Earth and everything that's in it And which is more-you'll be a Man my Son

                                              (written by Rudyard Kipling 1895)

        One cannot honor a Earthly Father without having a special relationship with his Heavenly Father.
        In the last days of my life, 89, now dying with prostate cancer, So many has said to me "what attribute your success the answer is so easy The Salvation provided me by God and the genes provided by my earthly parents.
      My mother and father enjoyed singing they didn't go to the church house to mumble but to let everyone knew what they where singing and around the farm, you could always hear singing perhaps my father's favorite "Count your Blessings" and another hymn which he loved, "Nothing Between".
When he was not doing his chores we could hear him singing and have not forgotten his testimony.
     One must have memories, So many not ever a memory of a father. Have you ever consider what it was like for young people 100 years ago to get to know one another so that the marvelous blessing of family life can take place. I can remember when it was only one telephone in the community; few cars. A boy would be attractive to a girl he saw at the church house or school house. He would go to the home and asked her father for her hand in marriage. Good family names, integrity, blood lines, have always been important one cannot read the Bible without establishing this fact.
My parents, from two North Carolina first families were raised within two miles of one another. So anyone asked me of my success it can easily be retrace. I know about my great grand parents, grand parents and parents; family honor country. We can easily look at our own children, grandchildren and see our ancestors personalities and value systems.
      On Father's Day it's a good time to relearn where you got your valves, your treatment of others, your work ethics. The greatest joy one can know on this earth is the joy of knowing that you have not disappointed them.