Love is like heat. So many things in life seem wonderful — pizza, a shower, a cup of coffee, a seat by the window, an iron — until you realize they’re cold. After all, what do you call a morning when you step into the shower and find there’s no hot water? A bad way […]
Category: relationships
Taking root and bearing fruit.
People leave. They leave marriages, families, churches, communities, and companies. Leaving can be innate, as when birds leave nests. It can be natural, as in leaving town for a new job elsewhere. It can even be necessary. Dangers, deprivations, and emergencies insist. But just as often, leaving reveals brokenness. Something isn’t working, so we leave. […]
The beauty of treachery
It’s said that friends make the best enemies — especially when there are three of them. Triangulation is great for navigation but terrible in relationships. All it takes is one friend “confiding” to another about a third. A delicate stack of dishes, easily toppled! Which is where the beauty comes in. There’s nothing so human […]
A Student’s Perspective / Being Hurt and Heard
My youth group is huge. There are nearly one hundred of us. Even our “small groups” are eight to ten students each. In the freshmen class alone there are more than twenty boys. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd. One night several weeks ago, I sat by a girl who was obviously hurting. […]
Stepmoms, Part Two
Sometimes dads remarry because their wives die while the kids are young. We learned of three such situations recently, and none of the new stepmoms had prior experience being moms. The first new mom was the victim of a cheating husband in her previous marriage. She views the kids’ first mom as a competitor vying […]