Family. In late 2016 he and his wife were diagnosed with grave medical conditions. In the midst of his wifes battle with cancer he was rushed to the hospital, potentially fatal influx of blood clots and leaving permanent scarring. Facing this dual health scare and contemplating his mortality he published an unusual piece to his website which gets more than 2. 8 Million Viewers a month. Erick erickson fsa written in the form of a letter to his children was like anything he had ever published before. It was not about washing intrigue or the days news which he wrote about values and enduring lessons he would want his children to live by even if he were no longer with. The piece went viral with overwhelming response that stretched beyond Erick Erickson a fan breaks. His as it was contrasted with the values of donald trump writing Erick Erickson and his wife are both living lives of love, faith, devotion and service. Both have ultimate confidence in the goodness of creation and their grace filled place in it. You may share that faith or not but Erick Erickson is living and attached life emotionally, spiritually, morally and communally. Welcome Erick Erickson. [applause] if i am going to read i probably need a copy. I forgot to bring one. Thank you all for having me. Thanks to those of you watching live. My name is Erick Erickson. I am from a rural part of louisiana. When i was 5 years old my dads company gave him a choice, moved to dubai or find a new job. When i was little we moved to the middle east and lived there for ten years. The cool part about growing up there is every three months we had to leave the country to get a visa and my Dads Committee would tell us to go somewhere. I have been to more countries than states. I have been to montana to perform a wedding. So far no divorces and i have seen montana but never seen wyoming or idaho, never been into the Rocky Mountains before or the west coast. The experience traveling abroad, my kids never have that experience. In the middle east in the 1980s during the iran iraq war multiple times having people try to blow our school up having bomb threats called in for various organizations and sandwiches open to look for explosives as we walk to school in the morning. We lived in an open neighborhood and to move home where overseas we had a lot of camel racing and politics became a connection to me. And i became a political junkie, and survived the david duke race where my parents had to vote for the crook and it is important. Going to college in georgia i met my wife and made a home with the law School Practice for five years and one day one of the partners of my law firm asked do you know what deficit of a dumbass is . I said no. He said you. So i did. Friend of mine started the website red state and put me in charge of it and things exploded. In 2009 cnn called and asked if i wanted a job, i had a friend who had to put up with me for three years at cnn and after the 2012 election moved over to fox where i have been since and my life has revolved around politics day in and day out. My wife is not political at all. We were in college together and i got to drive in jack kemps motorcade while he and bob dole were running and called my wife and a friend and told her what was happening and she said that is great but who is jack kemp . He is running for Vice President. She was silent for a minute and said you have to campaign to be Vice President of the university . Not a political creature at all. We dont discuss politics at home. I have in the past several years become more committed to my favorite. Started going to seminary largely because i talk about faith and culture on my Radio Program in atlanta and started getting a lot of smaller churches. They would say pastor is going to be gone could you fill in . I would say no because i had never been to seminary. Getting so many requests i figured it was time to go to seminary. They found out i was going to reform seminary and none of them have called since. But i stayed going to seminary. I love it. I take a class a semester. When i first went the president of the seminary took me to lunch and said you have to make me a promise before you go to seminary. I said okay, what . Makes a promise and i will tell you what you are promising. So i made the promise. He said dont go to seminary. I said how is this going to work . I already paid tuition. He said you can take classes but if you go to seminary you will start sounding like that on the radio. Come take classes but dont get in the mindset of being a seminarian or you will sell like on the radio and the ratings will take. I go to class, i take classes, theological classes and working through the books eventually i will have a degree but i have enjoyed it. In the process i realized more and more realized my politics and my faith were budding heads and i needed to do a better job reconciling my politics to my faith instead of my faith to politics and this past year i saw many friends choose the opposite way of trying to conform their faith to politics instead of the other way around. Lost a number of friends along the way. We had people show up on our front porch to threaten us because i wrote a piece as a committed christian and conservative i just cant support donald trump for president. I was an elected president and wasnt going to vote for him. We had people show up at our doorstep, armed guards at our house for three months lose my kids were yelled at the Grocery Store by a man who wanted them to know their father was destroying their lives and destroying the country and they needed to do something. They would come home from school in tears because kids would ask that id been shot or was i going to be shot . Their parents hated me and they needed to know it. It was hard on the family. When this went on i was having a harder time breathing, decided to get back in shape. I couldnt keep up and hit 40, i am getting old and i thought it was allergies and then i didnt know what it was. Finally in mid april 2016 with the stress of all this deciding it was just stress making it harder to breathe i was out of breath, laying my head on the pillow and it left me out of breath rolling over, waking up, gasping and maybe go to the doctor. She had my laptop, took away my microphone and made me go to the doctor. Next thing i knew i was being wheeled into a hospital, as they were pushing me into the machine to scan my lungs, my wife got a call on her cell phone and the waiting room from doctors in the mayo clinic who thought she needed to have her lungs checked. As i got out of the ct scan the technicians are not supposed to tell you anything. This young man comes in and doesnt want to make eye contact with me, should i strap him down . I just laughed, he literally put his hand on my chest, please dont move, you should be dead and they start stripping me down, and rush me into an icu and they have my skin up on the board and putting me in a room and the doctor on call, i can tell hes looking at the scan, have you taken bodies to the morgue yet . My blood oxygen level was below 90 and i had more blood clots in my lungs and they could count. I had yet to see a doctor since then who has looked at me and they all look at me and say you are supposed to be dead. I had blood clots in my lungs right now. Their old ones, not new. My wife flies out to arizona, im not allowed to travel on a plane and they diagnosed her with lung cancer. She takes a tiny pill every day and as long as the pill works she is fine. We go for scans every 3 months and our life is normal every three months, next on halloween and as long as the medicine works she is fine. Eventually the medicine will stop working and we hope they will create another medicine. The news came out the last couple weeks, every 24 months it is an amazing, this cancer that every 24 months mutates on cycle, the same mutation and they have to keep up with the development of the medicines. Protesters at the house, my life revolves around politics, we dont talk about it in the house and we find other things to talk about. And if something had really happened, what i wanted them to know about god, what i wanted them to know about me, the bad things ive done and the good things. At my kid at school theres a running joke, an example of googleing you never know what will come up. Some very true and one not and i wanted to write to my kids about the bad things i have done it good things and the regrets that i have of the bad things i have done and why they should listen to me because i have done those things and learned my lesson and Favorite Recipes and if i die before that, how would they make the cinnamon roll. And make the gumbos. Not that they eat that, full confession make it there into chicken the guts other than cinnamon rolls, and what lessons what i want them to know . How would i want them to know about the way i was raised, i start writing these down and appease on my website took on a life of its own after david brooks mentioned it in contrast to the president s values at the time of the access Hollywood Tape coming out, contrasted what he thought was the president s values with mine and the way the president surrounded him with people the way i have, and it was the easiest book i have ever written, i have written three, one of them is probably worth getting the first is not. This one was the most personable and some of the lessons particularly as a practicing christian, and going to be hostile, how to navigate a world that seems upside down from their perspective. How do they reconcile being in the world with of the world . I want them to know they need to do what is right even when it is not liked. I want them to find their selfworth with the likes they get on instagram, that is judging their selfworth based on what other people think of them. I want them to get their selfworth from being ethical people. I want them to know their neighbor which is the other reason, i have found particularly among my political friends on both sides of the aisle that we create for ourselves our own communities online and everyone in our Community Looks exactly like us, we share the same thoughts, nothing is a surprise to us. We dont know the person in the apartment next door are the house down the street, we dont Pay Attention to the homeless man on the bridge, someone else in the community, we dont have this because it is all online and when do you get sick and think youre going to die and you realize it is not our facebook friends bringing us meals but our Church Friends with a person across the street who heard about the situation as we need to know our nextdoor neighbor, we need to know about the person down the street who has problems and needs help, prayer, we need to bring into our home and have around our Kitchen Table people from our church to see other people share our values but need to bring in the people we dont know but want to know who may not share our values but show our kids we should be able to find Common Ground as people with people who disagree on politics. Lessons i learned for three years, i grew up watching in dubai, the American News network, people like james carville, they were the bad guys. They were on the other side of the aisle. I adore them. And we were rooting for the saints and we still root for them. To find Common Ground. What can we Henry Kissinger said, they are so menial, seems like so Many Political fights are so nasty because they are so meaningless, neither side changes much of anything these days but we have the power within ourselves to change our communities by getting to know the people by helping the person next door when they cant help themselves, hoping maybe but not expecting they can help us one day when we need help, showing grace to people who dont show us grace, and friends with people who dont want to be our friends. That is what i want for my kids. If nothing else i want them to be a better person that i was and that is the aspiration of everyone for their children to be better than they are. Those are the reasons i wrote this. The last chapter as i was writing the first eight chapters i make lists of all the recipes i need to include but all the things i want them to know that i wasnt sure i could work in somewhere else and the last chapter became my version of proverbs come all the pieces of advice my dad gave me growing up like dont worry about the laundry tax, no one can read them. My personal favorite device was to after a fight. A days drive from my house, two hours, and my wife is taller than me with a shotgun. Those are the reasons why so i will read you a little bit of this. I want to write a chapter what i was going through at the moment i wrote the chapter and the title of it needs to be the theology of suffering. That is what i was dwelling on and no one is going to read a chapter entitled the theology of the it is come up with a better name. The title of this chapter, summer in the south, it is going on as i am writing the chapter in real time. Here is what is happening as i write this, 7 days ago, in surgery having his tonsils removed, my 8yearold, 5 days ago my wife had surgery to reattach her retina. For the last week i have gotten up at midnight, 4 00 in the morning at 6 00 in the morning to give Pain Medicine. For the first few days kristi had to have Pain Medicine too. My inlaws stayed with us for the week. Stayed up through the night, did the laundry and helps with homework while taking care of gunner. I still had my radio show to do in the evening. I stayed up till midnight to give gunnar his first dose of medicine doing as much work as i could including writing this. Every time i wake gunnar up, he screams and fights for close to 20 minutes. He will spit out the medicine multiple times and we go through multiple shirts and he will wear down and submit. Not sure there is a better analogy to god than to know that im dad to paraphrase the scripture. What my kids do not see is maced dagan up wiping tears out of my eyes. It hurts to me my wife and kids and pain. Gunners screams are so terrible he cannot talk, holds his throat with his hands and tries to cover his ears with his elbows. I knew the doctor said his ears would hurt, had no idea how badly it would hurt. People are trying to sterilize themselves from pain like this. They want to shield themselves. I want to shield my wife from pain. Pain is part of the process. How do we appreciate joy if we had not known misery or pain. If nothing else theres a theology to pain and suffering. I have a preacher friend who tells the story about pain from an old church was three women had cancer. The first took an oral chemotherapy like my wife, had no nausea. The second woman took traditional chemotherapy, lost weight and her hair fell out. The third woman had done all of it and nothing worked, all she had was prepared to die. The first woman looked at the second and despite her pain was glad she kept her hair and figure. The second looked at the first about losing her hair was a better trade than being in pain and aching all the time. They looked at the third woman and realized that they were going through a rough patch at least their treatment was working. The third woman looked at the first and was glad to have been release of her struggle. When it was over, prepared to meet her make her. All three looked at another woman but lost her son in a bombing. They thought they had terrible struggles. They did not have to deal with the loss of losing a son. The fourth woman confided that she was solely herself and her son would never go through the struggles the other women went through or see his old mother struggle, it gave her piece. I cannot tell you how often i dwelled on this. I see my own life and familys life a change in our perspective with others suffering. Theres a couple not far from us to have a son. His older brother has the same illness and died. The nicest godly is to people. Edlund prays for them regularly and the moon is affected whether this family had good day or bad. She often wonders why god would do that to a family. We can look at our own struggles and think our children despite the pain and discomfort are with us. We can see how much more empathetic and sympathetic we are, not a post but a reality. We know from our own struggles a homecooked meal is in need, the best thing to do. Even though it is different we relate to other people suffering. I remember a preacher coming to sunday school after suffering and death. He tells of a lady in his church who was in a car wreck. People flooded her hospital room to comfort her as she was broken, bruised and crying and no one could console her. Her best friend walked in, climbed into the hospital, held the lady and cried, and many of us have not, to shield our souls for suffering and pain, losing an ability to related care for other people. Living requires suffering, steady flow of conformity takes away appreciation for the good times, takes away the good times. 16 years of marriage, 17 as of today, we had a few that we were not dealing with her health or mind. This was punctuated by one hospital and another, kristis neardeath experience, we had gunner and an easy time. We are back on hard times, prepared us for these hard times. I will leave you with the advice, in a chapter being from louisiana, and it is pronounced lagniappe, it means something extra. I won a tv show, to focus on how to get through a century hostile to the values. Sit down and break bread with them. I would call the show no one would watch it because they couldnt pronounce the name but it would be an awesome show. Gumbo made almost every day. In my chapter all the other things i want my kids to know i couldnt work into a chapter. Change your pillow every year and mattress every decade. Dont keep with people who can never admit they were wrong. They please and thank you but never expect others to reciprocate. Learn to break bread, the smell of yeast makes a house feel like home. Get married and stay married, happiness is not the goal of marriage, it is the byproduct of marriage, the goal of marriage is to be one in body and mind. And we need to do better ourselves. By a paper road atlas and learn to read it. Your kitchen is not your living room. Batman is the best superhero because he is not super, he is smart, superman is boring. Your grandfather likes to sandy gourmets orbital weasel never gets sucked into a jet engine, left but never be the weasel. Learn to use a gun, learn to flip it on, learn how to cook, then have friends over and do all the cooking, you will be amazed how few people do it these days. Directed at my son, remember to put the seat down. Learn to Foreign Language and travel to that country can always have one friend who can tell you, with yes men will destroy you. At the end of the day, pet your dog, the longest kiss to your spouse, your spouse is supposed to be with you forever and kids will move out you hope. Pumpkins are gourds, not spices, people who like Pumpkin Spice are weird and should not be trusted. Print your best photographs, the life lesson i learned, print your best photographs, delete your worst, the digital age allows us to accumulate so many memories on computers but we forget to print them out. Photographic memories are art, they capture my visit was for a fleeting moment so print out the pictures, share them, save them, dont let them collect digital dust forgot not old computer whose hard drive will go bad. Eat sweet potatoes. They are important. Understand there are beautiful things you may not like, even if you do not like, beethovens music is beautiful even if it is not your favorite. Fathers do not know everything but when our children are old they look like we know everything and are amazed by every other, during this time we shape our children for later in life. If we live able lie. If we are honest they will be honest. Wherever you are leave a place in better condition, public restroom is the major exception. Your home, school, community and planet should be improved. Leaving places better than you found them, there are those who think you are doing hartl wrong. Life is not fair, nor was it ever meant to be. Breaking the law is a sin but driving right at the speed limit is annoying, god will forgive you for speeding even if the Police Officer doesnt. Apologize have an Accountability Group who can be honest with you and you with them who can push you to be better than you are and they go on from there. My last paragraph of