With a blanket over my head (since the bat was still zooming around), I went and got my bat gear. Janice stayed under the covers. When I came back into the room, she said she could hear him over by the big window and sure enough there he was—tucked away in the bottom left cornerContinue reading “Three boys, a bat, and a birthday (2)”
Category Archives: Personally Speaking
If Love Was a Truck
I drive a truck. Sometimes I even think about life in truck terms. I was working with 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 and trying to come up with a paraphrase of it and . . . well, you can see for yourself what happened. Hopefully, it will be useful to someone. Love has strong shock absorbersContinue reading “If Love Was a Truck”
Ten Lepers and Two Cookies
Our six-year-old grandson (Bryant) lives a few states away, but I get to talk with him and his brothers every Sunday night. Our conversations revolve around sports, bad jokes (“Why couldn’t the pirate recite the alphabet? He kept getting lost at sea”), food, and what they learned in Bible class that morning. We go otherContinue reading “Ten Lepers and Two Cookies”
A Mailbox, a Note, and a Good Neighbor
Our mailbox leads a rather solitary existence. It interacts with our mail carrier once a day, sees either Janice or me the same amount—and that’s it—except for the many vehicles that drive by. Only the vehicles don’t always drive by. One time during a rainstorm a car came off the road and ran over theContinue reading “A Mailbox, a Note, and a Good Neighbor”
A Little Debbie Christmas
It was two days before Christmas in 2020, and one of our friends was down with Covid. She is a schoolteacher, she and her husband have a little girl, and of course she had to remain isolated from both of them. It was a real bummer, but it was just one of those new realitiesContinue reading “A Little Debbie Christmas”
Papa Duster
That’s the name Janice gave to a 1975 Plymouth Duster we had for parts of three decades. I had bought it brand-new for $3,300 before we met in January of 1976. Actually, it was my father who purchased the car and set up a payment plan for me. I was a freshman in college, butContinue reading “Papa Duster”
The Power Of Faith
I wrote this post when Zig Ziglar passed away in 2012. For those of you who don’t recognize the name, he was probably the top motivational speaker of the 80’s and 90’s. Along with Dr. Robert Schuller (of Crystal Cathedral fame), Ziglar popularized the kind of thinking that Norman Vincent Peale had written about a generation earlierContinue reading “The Power Of Faith”
Sunshine Or Storms
As I write this, Isaac has been downgraded to a tropical storm and is headed toward Mississippi and Arkansas. If you pay any attention to these storms, you come to the realization (sooner or later) that unpredictability is one of their central features. For all of our tracking and technology, our models and projections, weContinue reading “Sunshine Or Storms”
Living With Open Hands
Christmas is going to be different for us this year—radically different. In the past year we lost Janice’s father and her mother is now in the memory care unit of a residential facility (she suffers from severe dementia). My mother also passed away. All of this means we won’t be making the trip to the Hendrixson’sContinue reading “Living With Open Hands”
Welcome Sam
Our first grandchild (Sam), is a week old. So far, I think I’ve done okay in my efforts to avoid being the obnoxious grandparent who acts like they are the first person ever to have a grandchild or that their little darling is somehow more special than the little darlings of others. It hasn’t been easy atContinue reading “Welcome Sam”
