I write this during the week of Thanksgiving, a holiday which seems set apart for counting my blessings. This year however is vastly different for me than the ones that have come before, primarily because in the month’s leading up to this Thanksgiving I’ve spent time nightly remembering the day and writing down what it...
I grew up country, in the hills of Arkansas to be exact. This is a fact most people might not notice about me at first. At some point I laid down my thick southern drawl; but I still wear the boots, get my hands greasy under the hood of a car, use duct tape to...
As a therapist working with couples, my goal is to try and give them what I did not receive (or ask for) as a young man engaged at the age of 20. Over a decade of marriage and four children later, to say that I have done the following poorly for most of the years...
Three Short Insights of How to Stay Emotionally Healthy in the Craziness of Caring for Aging Parents According to Wikipedia, The Sandwich generation is “the generation of people who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children. According to the Pew Research Center, just over 1 of every 8 Americans aged 40 to...
Marriage may be the most infuriating, brilliant, amazing, and humbling of creations. The Apostle Paul actually describes it as a “profound mystery” in Ephesians, which is probably the best description for it. There are more books, seminars, Sunday School topics, sermons, and research about marriage than almost anything else, and yet most of us are...
One of my favorite vacation destinations is the beach. I love essentially everything about it: The ocean, with it’s waves rhythmic and crashing; the sounds of the sea soothingly breathing in and out. I love getting in the water, surrendering to the tide’s calm rocking, feeling cleansed and rejuvenated. My favorite thing to do is...
How do you put the pieces of your story back together after finding out about a great betrayal? How do you reclaim a past when you find out it was seemingly built around a longstanding lie? In her article ‘Great Betrayals’, Anna Fels explores how ‘robbing someone of his or her story’ through a longstanding...
Just so you know from the outset, these words have no magic potion, no 30-day money-back guarantee, and not any earth-shaking information. In fact, this is a major “not rocket science” collection of words. This is so simple you can do it with your eyes closed. You can do it in the car. You can...
A former boss/mentor/fatherly-friend once told me ‘You can’t not lead; the fact is you’re always leading, it’s just a matter of how well or poorly you’re doing it.’ This phrase has been stuck in my head for years now, and always seems to find new areas to lay hold of. Lately, this saying has modified...
The root of discipline is disciple. The point of disciplining is to teach. As parents, we are in the business of teaching our children to lead fruitful and healthy lives. However, many times we find ourselves feeling frustrated about how we handle difficult parenting moments – Those moments when we yell, shame, or are sarcastic...
