When our family moved from the Southeast to Southern California a dozen years ago, we were loath to leave a strong network of relationships yet ready to leave behind mosquitos and humidity. We joked that someone had to move to one of the most beautiful cities in America to serve Jesus in a nearly perfect climate. Our weather may remain stable, but underneath the surface, where the naked eye...
What is the hardest thing you have ever done? Think about it. Maybe for some of you something physical comes to mind. I knew a man who built his entire house from the ground up. From digging the foundation to creating the architectural plans for his home, he literally made his own house. Perhaps some of you are thinking of something academic or mental. In college I had a friend who was studying...
Navigating sibling conflict is one of the most stressful parts of parenting. It is distressing for us as parents to see the little people we love and adore mistreat one another! It shouldn’t be so! We’re family, after all. And yet it is so. Siblings fight. Siblings fight hard and often. They fight because those little people we love and adore have, just like us, desires that battle within them...
Over the four-plus years my beloved wife Nanci faced cancer, there were many good reports and many bad ones. We rode a roller coaster of emotions throughout her three surgeries, three rounds of radiation, and three rounds of chemo. I vividly remember the day when the doctor said it was now stage 4 cancer that had spread to her lungs. That night we prayed together, and then I went downstairs, got...
I became familiar with dread as a child. I’d had a very difficult time adjusting when my family moved to Connecticut in the middle of my third-grade year. From then on, every time the calendar turned to August and the school year loomed ahead of me, a feeling grew in the pit of my stomach that I came to know as dread. It didn’t matter that I liked school or even that I made good grades. I dreaded...
