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 sharpie marker and drawing a compass (like, the kind you would see in the corner of a map) on a 4x6 index card. And I would carry this around whenever my mom or dad would take us somewhere by car. It would be so much ...
I have been thinking a lot about our microwave society – and how we want everything RIGHT NOW. And every new technological development reinforces that tendency in us. Some of us remember connecting to the Internet on dialup. That was painfully slow and often problematic (like when your mom or dad picked up another receiver in the house and kicked you offline) – but we didn’t know any better; we ...
As the pages of the calendar keep turning, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I spend my time recently. Actually, this is something I regularly have tried to do – the periodic evaluation and recalibration of what I do during my waking hours. I think we all can agree that time (not money) is our most precious resource, and we’re specifically encouraged to make the very most of our ...
I’m not getting a lot of sleep recently due to our eleven-month old waking up randomly to scream her lungs out. We struggled a lot during the first five months, but then turned a corner and enjoyed four months of baby Maya sleeping through the night (I felt like a brand new human, it was glorious!). But now everything has changed for the last two months, and I’m up multiple ...
I was thinking yesterday about the occurrence of crappy things in our lives. Like, how sometimes it feels so random and arbitrary when they come along. Everything is going along pretty swimmingly, your heart and relationships and walk with God feel like it’s in a good place, and then BAM! Something awful happens. And it throws you for a loop not just because it was unexpected, but also because it ...
On Tuesday , we were due to have our first baby. People say that with your first child, it’ll probably come late and so don’t get your hopes up for an early or even on-time delivery. But you all know me – I definitely expected ours to not make us wait. She’s been so active every single day for a couple of months now, and it made me believe she ...
Driving on the backroads of Ireland is very stressful and downright scary sometimes. This is no exaggeration. Americans like me are already at a bit of a disadvantage because the steering wheel is on the right side of the car, and the Irish drive on the left side of the road. Secondly, Irish roads are notoriously curvy and hilly – and the signs say you can go a lot faster ...
By now, I’m going to assume you’ve seen the viral video of a political expert being interviewed via Skype by the BBC, and the comedy that ensues when his two daughters boldly and innocently enter into his home office before being corralled and yanked out of there by their completely embarrassed mom. I saw the video early on Friday morning, and immediately showed Rachel (who loved it because that could ...
There was this one time where I really loved this girl, and she loved me back, but things got jacked up because life is broken and people are broken and mistakes are made. In this relationship, most days were really, really great. But there was one day when something happened and my heart was shattered into a million pieces. I can’t get into the details, but I feel like most ...
Rachel adores The Sound of Music. Personally, I knew all of the songs from as far back as I can remember (I am pretty sure my parents had me watch it when I was seven), but I really didn’t remember the storyline. I mean, I remembered a nun, a bunch of cute kids, some Nazis, and a LOT of singing. But that’s really it. Well, on our recent trip backpacking ...