For most of us Memorial Day means two wonderful words: LONG WEEKEND! For others, it’s a day to gather folks around and fire up the grill. For still others it’s your chance to torture your family by watching every war movie in the history of film. (I enjoy all three actually). At it’s core, Memorial […]
It’s amazing what you can learn if you are willing to see all that goes on around you. Recently, while having a coffee in a small bakery, I noticed a mother and daughter climb out of their car and ready themselves to come in. It was a bit of a process because the daughter was […]
Hatred is hip. Or at least it seems to be. There was a time when hatred and vitriol was limited to the major news networks. You knew what to expect when you tuned into CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc… There would be well dressed, well spoken adults talking at length about who exactly was causing […]
Last Christmas, our daughter gave Mindi and I a free night of babysitting that we used to catch a concert at one of our favorite venues. I wasn’t expecting a new insight into grief as Johnnyswim walked out onto the stage that night, but that’s what I got. The husband-wife duo talked about how they had […]
In the years after my brother died, I began to interact with a lot of people who were facing loss. As a counselor I sat across from more and more people in the gray days after someone’s death as they tried to pull the pieces of their life back together. I noticed something in them […]
I remember one afternoon a couple of months after my brother had died. Things were really busy at the time. I was serving as Interim Pastor at an amazing church in addition to my counseling job. After work, Makena and I flew to dance practice or looked over homework. I got to bed late every night […]
My brother and his family lived about an hour away from where I went to college. So, from time to time I would go up and spend the night, eat real food and have some family time. I remember one weekend, Randy and his wife Margaret where doing some spring cleaning. They determined to make […]
“So, don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:34, NLT) Those words were spoken to an audience over 2000 years ago, they are still applicable today. Losing someone you love changes everything, and change is hard. It’s hard to imagine a future without that […]
Last week marked six years since my brother died. I’ve thought about him and the intervening six years a lot over the past few weeks. My brother was possibly the best human I’ve ever known. Our family didn’t have a lot, and it had even less when he and my sister were growing up (he […]
When my daughter was in middle school and high school our daily schedule was insane. She had school during the day and I had work. When we got home, she would do homework, and I would mow, or wash the dishes, or do whatever chore that had been most neglected during the past week. After […]