The last month has passed in a whirlwind of excitement. Emma had a move-up ceremony in June at her new high school. Parents and grandparents gathered in the gym to watch as our kids marched in, sat down, and walked forward to receive a certificate that they had moved up and into high school. Emma…
I’m big on hope. I care about helping people foster and nurture the possibility of hope. Hope isn’t a feeling we can force. After living forty years on this little blue planet, I’ve realized we go through seasons when we have heaps of hope, when everything around the corner is overwhelming positive. But we also…
In July of 1998, I was living on board an international ship, sailing around the western hemisphere. My cabin mate was from Scotland, and most of my friends were from various European or Latin countries. I knew, theoretically, that Brazil was famous for soccer because some teacher had explained it to me in a world…
I am a writer and a Practicing Christian. From time to time I write on things in the news headlines that bother me. You can read a couple articles here, and here. Sometimes, I stay silent, suspending judgement because I’m not sure what I think. The past several weeks our nation has been in uproar due…
I’m going to Fuller seminary right now, one class at a time, and this summer, I’m taking NT 500. One of my assignments this week was to read the Gospel of Mark in one sitting. Mark is the shortest of the four gospels, the biographies or historical books about the life of Jesus. Most think…
I quit drinking. Just up and decided I needed to be finished with alcohol for a good long while. I woke up one Saturday morning and knew in my deepest parts, I was finally ready to quit. I had the internal focus, and the self-awareness to say, “I’m finished.” From an outside perspective, it might…
It was during my junior high years that I noticed my living conditions were different from most of my friends. Most of my friends lived in these big sprawling houses that had more rooms than I could count. Some of them even had those refrigerators with water and ice that came out of the front…
Back at the end of December, after months of hemming and hawing about alcohol, I decided to do something different. I decided to stop drinking alcohol for 100 days. I wrote about the decision right here, and here, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time on Instagram writing about it. Here’s what happened: I turned…
It’s a quiet weekend over here on Lake Joy. This morning, I woke with a call from my dad, ready to meet me in Duvall so Emma could go out to the barn and ride. We made it out the door within a half hour. Then I edited a class paper, and worked through the…
Hi there, Lent is coming around the corner. Ash Wednesday is just a few days away. Lent hits at the tail end of winter and right at the cusp of spring, when we remember the forty days Jesus wandered in the wilderness and was tempted by Satan. Usually, people choose to give up something as…
