Betty and I have four grown children. Looking back on it now, I think I was more like a referee than a coach. A referee is looking for errors. A coach is the one who is trying to encourage success.

Suppose you went into an artist's studio and saw a picture at which he had been working for months, yet unfinished; would you, not being an artist, take up his brush and begin to put touches here and there on the canvas? Each life of husband or wife, child, brother or sister, in your home is a picture which God is painting, and which is yet unfinished. Beware that you mar not His work! So let us be patient with one another at home. We all have our faults, we all make mistakes - but we can help each other more by loving patience, than by scathing criticism. I didn’t scathingly criticize our children, but if I had it to do all over again, I think I would have encouraged them more.