The youngest of my three children, Ruth, graduated from Ole Miss this past week. When all the young graduates tossed their graduation caps up in the air, I threw my billfold. Hallelujah!
ChatGPT tells me the average cost of graduating a child through college is $550,000. How does everybody accomplish this? It seems impossible.
Yet by hook and crook, it gets done. My hat goes off to all the moms and dads who sacrifice so the next generation can carry on. There’s no way this could happen without a huge infusion of the Holy Spirit day in and day out. Praise the Lord!
My sweet Ruth is an angel and I say that not simply because she is my daughter, although I admit I might be slightly biased. She has been a joy to raise, not giving Ginny and me a single problem since her birth. It has been nothing but smooth sailing with Ruth. I pray every morning thanking the guardian angels and beseeching them to continue their protection.
Ruth has always just been happy to be there and always willing to do her part. She is kind, hard working, fun loving, sensitive, God fearing, smart, charismatic, easy going, friendly, compassionate. Every word that can be used to positively describe a human being can be applied to my precious Ruth.
It was humbling to be surrounded by other dads who feel the same way about their precious daughters. I met many of them at Ruth’s Kappa Kappa Gamma graduation party. We were all brothers in arms, having fought through the battle of tuition payments, sorority bills and summer plans. And now we had arrived at the golden gate of graduation. Lots of smiles from the moms and dads.
The young grads were smiling too, but there were also some tears. Ruth’s Kappa friend group is so close. They have experienced four life-changing years of their lives together, full of joy and trials, growing up and blossoming at an impressionable time when each day can be full of significance and change.
The idea of leaving it all behind is no doubt overwhelming as they go their separate ways and carve their own paths through a big, complex world out there.
We were helping move Ruth’s stuff and for just a moment I had a flashback to 46 years ago when it was me packing up my dorm to leave college for good.
It was an intense wave of deja vu, full of equal parts sadness, nostalgia, excitement, fear and anticipation.
How could I have predicted back then the infinitely convoluted path that led me back to another dorm room move, this time my daughter's? How could I have even begun to guess how these decades would evolve? I simply had no idea. And nor does Ruth.
There’s an old saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
This has never been more true than in 2025, as the world is changing at a breathtakingly fast pace. Computers can now scan all the information in the world and answer any question we ask. Robots are designed to work in factories instead of human beings. Global poverty afflicts only five percent of the world's people instead of 50 percent 40 years ago. Human progress has never been so rapid.
How do you plan for a world that reinvents itself every few years? What will jobs look like in 10 years as artificial intelligence radically alters everything we do? It’s scary.
If there is anything I have tried to do for Ruth, it’s instill her with faith and trust in God. I don’t know how anyone can get through life without faith. This has never been more true than in the ever-changing, unpredictable, tumultuous world in which we find ourselves.
I am overjoyed to say that Ruth’s faith has never wavered (at least as far as I can tell.) In fact, as I have faced the overwhelming challenges of the local news business in the age of Big Tech monopolies, Ruth has never stopped writing me notes of encouragement and inspiration, leaving them on the nightstand next to my bed. And there they sit, dozens of them, piled in a high stack, ready to be reread when I need a boost.
Lawrence, my middle child, who also recently graduated from Texas State, drove 12 hours to be with Ruth on her graduation day. I kept telling him that was really not necessary, but he insisted on being there with his sister on her big day.
When I was looking for a wife, which took me a really long time, I kept trying to figure out what qualities really mattered to me. What qualities was I looking for in a wife that could perhaps be passed on to our children?
After it was all over and done, not that I really had any choice in the matter, I ended up with a wife whose overarching quality can be summed up in one word: kindness. And of all the qualities, or lack thereof, in my children, there is one quality that each of them has at the core of their being: kindness. I wouldn’t change a thing.
As my children embark on their lives, I am reminded of a couple of Bible verses:
"What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Mark 8:36)
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)
“Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34-40)
No matter how fast the world changes, God stays the same. Kindness and love. These are the keys to Ruth’s future. They are the keys to everyone’s future.
