Let me tell you about my two-year-old. He loves life. He wakes early in the morning, eager for the adventures of the day. He is inquisitive about the way things work. He transforms long-forgotten remnants of this and that into tools, and he builds wood-block cities where the good guys decimate the bad guys on…
[I’ve decided to run this post from last year once again on Memorial Day. Thank you to every honored Veteran. God bless you all. –Sam] —–Â Â —–Â Â —– It is the business of a sinful world to turn our eyes away from Jesus – to the more pressing, familiar-seeming things around us: “a newsboy shouting…
Creative people of all kinds – from writers to inventors, gardeners to entrepreneurs – are often asked a funny sort of question: How do you get all your ideas? “They honestly didn’t know,” writes Isacc Asimov. “To them it was an impossibility to even think of one. … Could I say I don’t know? When…
Father of perfect discipline,  Give me a heart that loves mercy more than being right, that loves grace more than law and compassion more than control. Help me not to feel guilt when the discipline is right. Help me…
We’ve been wedding planning, my daughter and I. The flowers were the perfect shades of pink, the dessert carefully chosen (not too sweet, but with a hint of almond), the music  just right, and then there were the words. Beautiful, powerful words that snuck up on me and made me cry through my smile. It…
Shame seems to settle differently in different personalities. There are tender folks who agonize over the slightest fumble. Others seem able to walk away from an acute mistake feeling very little remorse at all. I process shame like a thinky type. For years, I rehash my mistake over and over, fleshing out the nuances. I…
I have a 12 year old daughter, and sometimes she’s kind of a tom-boy. She loves to be outside in the creek, and she’s not afraid to mix it up with her brothers. However, when she dresses up nice, from time to time people tell her that she is very pretty.  She never really knows…
I was jumping on the couch with scissors. The reason I remember is because I didn’t do things like that. I was the oldest kid, the responsible one. Abundance had made me sturdy, with thick, auburn hair and wit enough. I did chores, made A+’s on school papers, and watched the “little kids.” I was…
It’s been a while since I could write for the Story Warren because of our conferences. My mind is still a big puddle of gray goo because of them, so I’m going to write about something I’m watching happen right now, a little creative drama played out in my son’s life. I just want to…
I lived in Africa as a child/young man and there’s a part of me that has never gotten over the African sky and the beautiful people I knew. So, when I received a guest post submission from a missionary there, I was eager to pass it on to you. Alan Howell and his family live…
We have great hopes for our children’s lives. We want them to love well, so we create opportunities for them to serve others. We want them to be wise, so we invest hours in purposeful, thoughtful conversation. We want them to desire truth and goodness, so we offer tantalizing tastes of the eternal banquet found…
Some time ago, my oldest son did something that got him in big trouble. Â He received stern discipline, and a few days later, he did it again. I called him into my office and closed the door. Â I crouched down to look at him, and I asked him if he knew why he was in…
