Men don’t belong in church. As I sit in the cove of my back porch, watching the white pines sway and toss before me, gusts showering small, dart-like missiles in surging waves across my lawn, I huddle into my chair a little deeper. Wind howls through the trees as a siren begins to wail in […]

  If he says that one more time, I’m going over there. It was my junior year of high school. I was lounging in the back of Spanish I, while a sub covered for our teacher who was sick. Or had found something better to do than give 25 kids a verb conjugation quiz. The […]

It was the week before the fourth football game of my brother Rob’s senior year. “We’re not leaving this field until the offense gains five yards!” Rob perked up. In that moment, he decided, We’re not going home. A transfer from a local school, he was lauded as an elite wrestler, but joined the football […]

When I first saw it in a gallery in L.A., I knew I had to have it. The painting, now my favorite, is titled, “Gargoyles,” by Michael Parkes. It depicts a young girl, likely coming of age as a woman, who stands atop a stone ledge facing out at blue sky that surrounds her. Beside […]

My wife can charm anything. I think it’s a superhuman power, actually. Wonder Woman had bracelets and a lasso. My wife has a sweet, disarming, infinitely less tacky, Crocodile Dundee-like power over animals. She pads up to cats and dogs, any animal, domestic or wild, and puts them in a trance. At a local mini-golf […]

I suck in shallow breaths as I tighten my grip around the stroller handles and force one foot in front of the other. It’s been a long time since I worked out, and my body barely remembers. My heels hit the pavement with impacts just strong enough to settle all my joints into position to […]

The other day, an epiphany occurred to my mom. We were discussing the difference between the world and the church. She remarked, “You know, we often talk about our witness and how different we are supposed to look from the culture. I think possibly the greatest witness is when strong men in the church can […]

This is the point at which we have found ourselves. The church is waiting, like the dunes of northern Michigan along the great lake, where legend tells of a bear who fell asleep beside the waters and was covered with sand that blew over it. It never awoke, thus beginning the Sleeping Bear Dunes. People […]

A great date, I thought. Both of us had been pretty quiet. The idea to take the family out for ice cream on date night now seemed like not such a good idea. It isn’t like nothing had happened, though. Angela had hovered with eagle-eye precision over Luke’s stroller at every whimper. And I…I had […]