Dear Parent Helpers:

I had great parents. I’m not sure they started out that way, but as the youngest of five, by the time I came along they’d had plenty of opportunities to work the kinks out of their model; and with four relatively well-adjusted older siblings, they figured if in some way they failed with me, their average was still pretty good. There were two overlapping foci in the ellipses of our upbringing. One was the family dinner table where, following the meal, my father read from the Bible and one of us would read the prayer requests from church and offer prayer. The other focus of our attention was, of course, church. My parents were heavily involved. They had met in the choir, both taught Sunday school for many years, and my father attended the weekly Saturday morning men’s study group and prayer meeting; the Kroghs were at the church pretty much every time it was unlocked.

But the strength of my mom and dad’s parenting was not cult-like installation of religious values; it was a