Pastor Bo WagnerMy wife is the middle child of her parents, having both an older sister and a younger brother. Having gotten to know them all very well through the years, I can tell you with utter certainty that they are all very different one from another. Their temperaments are different. Their mannerisms are different. They all have their similarities, of course, but they are different.
This is to say that, Dana, in general, was the most obedient, easy-to-guide child of the three. She would be the textbook example of the compliant child Dr. James Dobson described so well in his book “Parenting Isn’t for Cowards.”
And that is what made her recent confession to me such a surprising and amusing thing.
It was Christmas, and she was 11 or 12 years old. The presents were all wrapped and under the tree weeks before Christmas day. Uncharacteristically, my future spouse, the one-day pastor’s wife of a thriving church, the eventual godly example to her own three children, opened all of her gifts to find out what they were and then carefully rewrapped them.
It was the most miserable Christmas she ever had.