I spend a lot of time with teenagers. I have taught middle school and high school for almost six years, and I have experienced the teen years with my own children. And, yes, while my kids and my students do sometimes fulfill the stereotypes assigned to teens, they are more than that. They have deep…
Have you ever been to a foreign country and were truly unable to communicate? I remember trying to figure out the Paris Metro when I was there for a brief visit during college. While many people in Paris speak English, I couldn’t find an English speaker at the stop where I was. I was feeling…
“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place,” ~G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Many people spend some portion of their adult lives trying to get back home spiritually. We sense we’ve lost our…
That night, Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man…
“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17 NIV) It’s been a while since I have had the opportunity to get into really deep, personal discussion with anyone about spiritual things, my thoughts on life, ways I could grow or change to be more like Jesus. The kinds of relationships in which…
The airplane winging us back home after a dream trip in Nova Scotia had barely left Boston when our middle child casually said, “I’ve decided I don’t want to go back to school this year.” It was August. Exactly one week before school would start. Did I mention she was entering her senior year of…