It was early one Sunday morning while we were still at home getting ready for church. First Baptist Church of Jacksonville services was on our TV, and Mac Brunson was preaching. Molly said to me as she watched Brunson preach, "Dad, what you need to do is write down everything that he says and just preach that." I guess she recognized that his preaching was better than anything she had seen me do. I was a little wounded and asked her what she thought the difference was between his preaching and mine. Her response was simple and direct. She said, "Well, he is a pro."

And with that, a family joke was born. I told the story of our conversation during my sermon later that morning at church (watch the video here) and have told it many times since. Since then, whenever someone in our family wants to acknowledge someone's achievement, they call them a pro. Likewise, whenever someone recognizes a personal shortcoming, they say, "I'm not a pro." So, by the summer of 2016, being or not being a pro was a well-established family trope.

After the death of my grandfather, our family gathered at the home place to clean out his home. The house was where my grandparents had lived and raised their family and before them, it was the home of my great-grandparents. It was an old house lacking most of the modern conveniences of technology. Originally constructed without electricity or plumbing in the 1890s, it eventually boasted these necessities, yet it always lacked the accouterments of modernity such as satellite TV, high-speed internet, or air-conditioning.