Back in 2006 when I was working at Hitachi and finishing up seminary on nights and weekends, I took a class with Steve Korch . I don’t remember what the class was but one day, Steve segued into a discussion about parenting. He described a tradition he started when his children were young. Every year on each of their birthdays, he would give them a letter he had written them ten years earlier. He shared how his daughters and son would eagerly anticipate the letter they would receive each year. Each birthday, it must have been like opening up a time capsule about one’s life. I was impressed. I decided it would be a practice I wanted to adopt with my own children. My oldest son, Caleb, turned fifteen yesterday. I wrote my first birthday letter to him ten years ago. On his latest birthday, I told him about my letter-writing tradition and how I started when he was in kindergarten. I sense he was surprised, in a thoughtful way. Obviously, he’s a completely different person from back t