Rachel

I can't begin to say how much I love my daughter. She is such a good person and her heart is in the right place. Tammy has helped to give her a very good foundation upon which to build her life...oh, I suppose I have helped some too. I'm worried though that she seems to be drifting apart from her father the past few months. When he has her for the weekend he seldom engages her and when he does it's usually in a critical way. I dunno, I think maybe he's a bit insecure and becoming more so as Rachel grows and matures. I think his heavy-handedness is some sort of control that he feels he needs to maintain.

Last week, Rachel put a tattoo on her arm of Jesus' name in the shape of a fish. She had it there several days and proudly displayed her devotion to Christ. She mentioned to me that she filled out a questionnaire in choir class and one of the questions had to do with what are you passionate about. She wrote down Jesus Christ. Wow...I'm so impressed at her openness and her faith. We've been trying to set aside one night a week where the three of us sit on the couch and do a devotion from a book of stories and talk about what it means to us. We'll also pray together and bring up the concerns we have. Rachel mentioned that she'd like to have the devotions two nights a week if we could...again...wow. She's got such a hunger for Christ right now and I don't want to get in the way. I simply want to be a facilitator and help her however I can. It didn't dawn on me until several days later that the tattoo of Jesus on her arm was really meant to advertise to other kids at school that she's a Christian and she's searching for Christian friends. I mentioned that to Tammy and thinks I may be right.

Rachel went with her church group back to Spencer Iowa this weekend. It's a 'recharge' weekend and picks up where the summer bible camp left off. She was very excited to go. I talked with her on the phone from work this evening and she said she had a good time. When I got home and talked to Tammy she said it was another very positive experience for her. She mentioned how she's such a happy kid...she was singing away in the shower and she mentioned that she wished I was home tonight. I won't see her till tomorrow night and that will only be for about 15 minutes before she'll have to go to bed. As I said...I sure love that kid!

Rachel and I have this elaborate handshake we do together. It's evolved over the past 18 months and last week we added two more segments to it. It's something just she and I do together—our own little thing.

Anyway, I have to run as it's getting late.