What I’ve Learned in Six Years of Marriage
Hooray! Happy Anniversary to me! To Rachel! To us! That also means it’s time to share what I have been learning in marriage! Yep, the lessons keep coming. I think they will never stop, even twenty or thirty years into this thing (God willing!). I’ve written out what I’ve learned at our six month, one year, two year, three year, four year, and five year anniversaries, and hope you find my reflections helpful in ...
What I’ve Learned in Six Years of Marriage
Hooray! Happy Anniversary to me! To Rachel! To us! That also means it’s time to share what I have been learning in marriage! Yep, the lessons keep coming. I think they will never stop, even twenty or thirty years into this thing (God willing!). I’ve written out what I’ve learned at our six month, one year, two year, three year, four year, and five year anniversaries, and hope you find my reflections helpful in ...
What I’ve Learned in Six Years of Marriage
Hooray! Happy Anniversary to me! To Rachel! To us! That also means it’s time to share what I have been learning in marriage! Yep, the lessons keep coming. I think they will never stop, even twenty or thirty years into this thing (God willing!). I’ve written out what I’ve learned at our six month, one year, two year, three year, four year, and five year anniversaries, and hope you find my reflections helpful in ...
Keeping First Things First
With the new year upon us, I've been thinking a lot about keeping first things first. It's so hard when the tyranny of the urgent ...
If You Can’t Measure It, It Doesn’t Matter
I am re-reading a book I love by Sara Hagerty, and the author brought up a point that I wanted to try to think through. ...
Obsessing Over the Stock Market
I am not sure if you’ve followed the stock market this year, but it has been a wild ride. In January and early February, we were approaching record highs in the major indexes. Then COVID-19 ...
The Desire To Be Loved
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is…weird. Everything builds up to a zenith on December 25th – which is a great day – but then it ends. And we find ourselves suspended in mid-air ...
Working Yourself To Death
I was reading a paper recently entitled “Spending in Retirement: Determining the Consumption Gap” that talked about how retirees are dying with more money than they had when they actually retired. Specifically, the researchers studied ...
The Most Beautiful Sight You’ve Seen
We’re up in Southwest Virginia for the holidays, and God gave us snow on the night of Christmas Eve! The miraculous part of it was that it had barely snowed here in many years. But ...
Why I Love Christmas
Merry Christmas everyone! This special day allows me to reflect on Jesus, his celebrated birth, and all that He means to me and my family. ...
Childhood Moments I Miss the Most
When I was in elementary school, I used to entertain myself in the oddest of ways. I remember taking a a ruler and a fine ...
Want a Mentor? Be a Mentor
You may know that I’ve been hoping and praying for a older, wiser mentor in my life for decades. Someone who has walked the road I am on, who sees something unique in me and ...
Wishing My Life Away
As you know, I have been thinking about how I’ll never be satisfied. And that all of the beautiful things I've gone after – romantic love, success, pleasure, adventure, money, clout – won’t ever fully ...
Do I Fully Trust My Partner?
With Christmas fast approaching, I was thinking about the relationship between the parents of Jesus. We don’t know much at all about Joseph from historical texts, but English translations convey that he was a carpenter ...
Are You Preparing for the Future?
Every fall, it’s hurricane season down here in Southeast Florida - which serves as an annual reminder that disaster could be headed my way. I’ve had to deal with four major hurricanes while I’ve lived ...
The Bad Stuff I Model To My Kid
You might not know this about me, but I get frustrated frequently. Not with my job, or marriage, or even other people, but with small stuff. Like when one-year-old Ravi throws his food on the ...
Never Trust a Leader Without a Limp
Have you heard this quote, or one of its variations? Originally made by John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard church movement which has spread across 95 countries and involves over 2,000 congregations, it is ...
The Best Days of Our Lives
I have been doing a lot of walking down memory lane recently. Every night while trying to fall asleep, I take these voyages in my mind back to various stages of my life. And I ...
When God Honors Our Time Spent
Last night, Rachel and I were discussing the notion that how a person spends their time really says a lot about that person. Take me for instance: for over a decade, I have spent my ...
Fresh Eyes and Little Things
Before my little girl Maya was born, I remember praying so very hard for her to have perfect health. Not just every time we went to the OB/GYN for another sonogram, and not just on ...
Sacrifices That Are No Sacrifice
I have always been extremely sensitive to those less fortunate than me. I think this started when my family took me to see our relatives in India when I was ten. On this trip, my ...
I Will Never Be Satisfied
Do you know that song “Satisfied” in the musical Hamilton that occurs about halfway through the first act? It’s sung by Angelica Schuyler, who is captivated by Alexander at the same time that her sister ...
Comparing Myself to Other Men
I am not going to lie – I definitely do it. I compare myself to other men. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently and just wanted to get to the bottom of my ...
When You Need Help To Get Over the Hump
To this day, baseball is my favorite sport. And I’m thankful for the opportunity to play organized baseball when I was young – even though I wasn’t very good at all. For 4-7 year-old kids, ...
When You’re Being Tempted
Probably like every other kid in the entire world, my girl and boy love sweets. Maya is known to say “I don’t WANT food, I want treats and snacks and sweets!!” I just shake my ...
When Life is Moving Too Fast
Everyone who hears that we have a three-year-old and a one-year-old tells us that “they grow up so quickly” and to “take time to enjoy these moments” because they will be gone before we know ...
When Your Partner is in “Work Mode”
I met Rachel in 2013 while volunteering at a summer camp in Banner Elk, North Carolina. According to her, she started falling in love with me after seeing how I was with kids: playful, carefree, ...
What is the Point?
Do you find yourself asking this question? Maybe just to yourself, in your head? Or maybe, if you’re feeling vulnerable enough, to someone you know who won’t judge you? “What is the point?” I feel ...
It’s Okay to be the Little Spoon
So, my friend Arturo and I joke about spooning a lot. We don’t do so in a crude way, but just because it’s something that people don’t talk about, and it represents an amalgamation of ...
When You’re Counting, You’re Not Trusting
So, one of the stories in the Bible that has struck and always stayed with me is from 1 Chronicles 21:1 (and from 2 Samuel 24:1). Basically, God had ended a three-year famine, and David’s ...
Any Guy Can Get Any Girl
As I’ve mentioned a few years ago on this blog, beautiful girls are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. And growing up during my adolescence as a warm-blooded heterosexual male, I really liked looking at them. And I wanted ...
Is Your Heart Closing Off, or Opening Up?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of my heart recently. I feel like it’s in a good place. I feel close to God, I don’t feel like I have any unresolved conflict or ...
Learning Lessons the First Time Around
A handful of years ago, I realized that my brain works in this very linear and sequential fashion – which sounds good and healthy and all that, but actually is a bit dysfunctional when coupled ...
What If Your Summer Camp Mentality Was Year Round?
Every summer, I go to summer camp. And I've been doing this for years. To be honest, things are a little different now that I am an adult in that I don't go as a ...
In Your Relationship, Does Your Heart Feel Safe?
I was talking with my friend Tammy the other day and she shared an insight after reflecting on a recent romantic relationship of hers - an insight which I thought was completely profound. And I ...
How to Conquer Fear
In my last entry, I talked about how sometimes we are just unstable, and it’s not a fun place to be because it makes everything seem so vague and confusing and even arbitrary. When we ...
When You Realize You’re Emotionally Unstable
I have been thinking a lot recently about being unstable. What seems to cause me to be unstable? Well, it’s going back and forth on things in my mind. So I’m not single-minded, I’m double-minded. ...
When You Want To Live a Great Story
Alright. What did I learn from the Storyline conference, if I consider how I've been living my life thus far, and how I want to make sure it is a great story? Well, the first ...
Viewing Your Life as a Story You Are Writing
Last weekend I attended Donald Miller's Storyline conference in San Diego. It was really, really good. All of the sessions were inspiring, and appropriately fit together to champion the theme of the weekend, and to ...
When You’re Sick of Doing Things Out of Obligation
I was thinking recently about the reasons why I do what I do. I mean, my daily, weekly, monthly activities. A few years ago, I made a commitment to myself to stop doing things out ...
When You’re Always Caring What Others Think
I've been thinking a lot recently how people have dreams, and they even feel those dreams are from God...and they let other people know about their dreams, and have full faith for them, and wait ...
Believing for the Best and Preparing for the Worst
I've been thinking how well-intentioned people, in reference to having a particular outlook toward an event, or experience, or even life in general, say "Expect the best, but prepare for the worst." Expect the best. ...
My Goals and Dreams Poster
Every year, I try to make a Goals and Dreams poster just to force myself to articulate tangible things that I want and hope to work towards over the next twelve months. It seriously helps ...
Living on the Edge
I've been thinking a lot about the edge recently. And living on it. I know that sounds vague. So I'll try to explain. I've been going to yoga relatively regularly for the last few months. ...
The Beauty of Being Vulnerable in Relationships
Ive been thinking a lot about one of C.S. Lewis's most famous and most profound quotes: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. ...
Testing our Strength
I have this friend, Wil, who I have known since he was eight. He will be turning sixteen in January. I hang out with him and his siblings (they are so much fun, and such ...
How Do You Want People To Think of You?
I've been thinking about the legends of the Bible. It's interesting that if you just think of a particular person, one particular story or aspect of their life comes immediately to mind. For example, if ...
Why You Should Choose Someone Who Is Pursuing God
So, I mentioned in my last post about girls and standards that I believed a shared faith is so essential, at least to me. I mentioned that she should be headed in the same spiritual ...
What Should We Have In Common If We’re Dating?
My friend Mo recently mentioned how she wouldn't date a guy who wasn't into the same type of music as her, and so it got me thinking about our standards for the persons we want ...
How Are You Getting Through Life?
Earlier this semester. my friend Lucas recently twisted his ankle badly while we were playing ultimate frisbee at school. I was pretty close to him when it happened, and we heard a loud pop and ...
Playing Fair in Sports and Life
I went go to see Les Miserables recently...I had always loved the book and the storyline, and this was my first opportunity to see it on stage. The experience was amazing, and the portrayal of ...
Can We Connect?
Hey there! Can I update you via email when I write and post a new blog? I won’t spam you – I’m just trying to purposefully connect with those who share my heartbeat about believing for the best, living life with childlike faith, and viewing the world around us with awe and wonder.
Can We Connect?
Hey there! Can I update you via email when I write and post a new blog? I won’t spam you – I’m just trying to purposefully connect with those who share my heartbeat about believing for the best, living life with childlike faith, and viewing the world around us with awe and wonder.
Can We Connect?
Hey there! Can I update you via email when I write and post a new blog? I won’t spam you – I’m just trying to purposefully connect with those who share my heartbeat about believing for the best, living life with childlike faith, and viewing the world around us with awe and wonder.
