We have an ordinary creek near our home. It is not very big. It is not very special, except for one thing–dragons. Yup that’s right. Dragons live there. There are all sorts of them there. Big ones, little ones, some that live in the trees, some that live in the water. And if you are…
Occasionally, in the flood of articles, information, and updates we read online, something comes along that makes a quantifiable difference in our lives. It happened for me some years ago when I read an article about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. According to the author (whose name and information I’ve…
It is a pleasant summer evening, and I lean over the rail on the deck, looking out at the backyard. The air is full of the buzz of crickets and cicadas, and a thin frosting of pink clouds covers the sky. Fireflies rise over the grass. The high branches of the maples and pines stir…
She woke up this morning, looked at me and said “pretend you’re mama puppy.” That meant she was baby puppy and barked and whimpered at me while I was mama puppy and had to bark all my answers at her. It was a bit too early in my day to be barking morning greetings to…
Last year when we registered as a family for a 5K, my children didn’t understand that I was not doing it with the goal of winning the race, but I understood their disapproval of my unimpressive goals of “Run without walking, and “To not come in last place.” My husband and I always tell the…
If you rummage about in our living room, you probably won’t notice our Great Tower. It’s shabby and brown, and it has a hole rubbed through the leather in the center cushion, courtesy of either the dog or our sons. We found it on Craigslist at a price so cheap we’d’ve been fools not to…
Our first child began sometime during her third month of life waking up every day at 5 am. We tried putting her back down, we tried letting her fuss for loooong minutes, we tried bribery, prayer, pleading… but there she was, red-faced and shaky-smiling at us, reaching out for that connection with us, no matter…
Children get excited. When my two-year-old, raised thus far in squirrel-less Taiwan, first saw one of the lavishly-tailed critters in our American backyard, he shrieked at the top of his lungs and convulsed with joy. When my kids find a gecko or toad, they concentrate their full energy on creating its very own home, playground,…
There is an old Latin proverb that says, “Experience is the best teacher.” What we really know is not the sum of our theoretical knowledge, but what we have accumulated through truth applied to our experience. Though I hold this as foundational truth, as a father of four growing children it makes me shudder. There…
I teach in a small rural school, where the building houses students from grades six through 12. This means on most trips across the building, I end up crossing paths with a nice cross-section of young people, ages 12-18. This sort of developmental juxtaposition provides some interesting food for thought. I see seniors trudging downstairs…
I became a believer at the height of Rich Mullins’ fame. His CDs and tapes were some of the first music I listened to, and his words framed this new thing called “Christianity” that I was learning about. Fast-forward 25 years, and I’m sitting at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN with my husband, young…
My family and I serve as missionaries in Mozambique. Most Sundays, we’re out in one village or another, the five of us worshipping under a thatch roof with a local church. I usually end up preaching to a few dozen people, communicating in a language that is not my native tongue. The people we’ve worked with…
