I have a confession to make. In 2014, I did something I had never done with my blog in the five years I’ve been writing it: I purposely did not check the stats for how many people were reading each post.
The Meaning Behind My Christmas Miracle
Christmas of 2002 was rough for me. I was in law school, and unlike many other students, I had taken out the absolute minimum amount of loans to avoid years of indebtedness after graduation. I was eventually grateful for that, but in the middle of my second semester, I was literally pulling together change to pay for groceries.
God is so Much Nicer than Santa
Let’s play a game. I’ll describe someone, and you tell me who I’m talking about. 1. He’s an old man with a long, white beard. 2. He sees everything you do. 3. He keeps a list of your deeds, good and bad. 4. He lives in a far-off, magical kingdom you couldn’t find if you tried. 5. He never allows himself to be seen; and 6. All the movies about him are fairly lame.
What to do When Bad Tension Happens to a Good Marriage
The last three months have been pretty hard on my family. A lot of it had to do with me traveling too much for work and struggling to find the time to complete a challenging feature article. Plus, the girls started school, which changed our whole routine, and my poor wife has gotten pretty sick a couple of times. And as much as I hate to admit it, somewhere in the midst of all that stress, my wife and I stopped being our best selves with each other.
What I Learned About Marriage From Two Taxi Drivers
I’m the kind of guy who likes to chat with taxi drivers en route to my destination, and recently, I had two drivers who provided a little bit of perspective on marriage.
The Best Gift You Can Give a Child
Christmas in the late 1980s was a rough time for my family. I’m not going into the details here, but suffice it to say that there were a number of financial and emotional issues going on that brought a lot of stress into our lives.
A Lesson from Kids in Giving the Benefit of the Doubt
The other day, I was walking through my neighborhood with my two girls, who are three and four years old, when we passed an older, serious looking gentleman. “Hello!” they both said, waving. He looked over at them and kept walking.
What a Movie Audition Failure Taught Me About the Need for Approval
When I was a little boy, I desperately wanted to be famous. It probably had a lot to do with me idealizing the lives of the children who appeared on Family Ties and The Cosby Show, not to mention the fact that my parents were struggling financially, and I thought being famous would make us rich.
Why I Quit Sunday Services (and Then Came Back)
I vividly remember the last church service I attended before I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I was sitting with a couple thousand strangers in a megachurch when the thought crossed my mind: Why am I here? I could watch this on the internet. And after the service ended, I walked into the church’s multi-acre parking lot and drove away, never to return to church services again (or so I thought).
Three Things to Remember Next Time You Fall Into Sin
I’ve had close friendships with countless Christians in my lifetime, and if there’s one thing we’ve all got in common, it’s that we’ve all got some bad habit, some addictive sin, some hangup that we just can’t seem to overcome. People struggle with all kinds of things — rage, overeating, jealousy, passive-aggressive behavior, and porn addiction, to name a few.
What Jesus Wants With Your Brokenness
I used to spend a great deal of my time digging in my soul for spiritual brokenness. I was on a manhunt for sinful motives, ungodly habits, and character flaws – for badness, brokenness, ugliness – all the things I thought kept me from God.
Grieving Loss on Facebook
When I signed up for Facebook in 2008, I saw it as a way to connect with old friends and keep up with the self-affirming things everyone was posting about themselves. What I did not expect was that Facebook would become a place where people worked through life-and-death issues. But then Nan Taylor died.
Freedom From Being a Spiritual Hoarder
When I was 16, my mother and step-dad got married and we began packing our things to move into a new house. At one point, my step-dad came into my room and looked in my closet.
The Real Reason Your In-Laws Don’t Like You
A couple of years ago, I was talking to a young fiancee who was upset because her future in-laws didn’t like her. As she shared her experience, it was hard to believe that these adults, who were otherwise decent people, could be so socially tone deaf, so oblivious to their own unkind words and actions.
Why Can’t We Take a Compliment?
I took an etiquette class several years ago in which the instructor told us that compliments must never be specific, because they already embarrass people as it is. The embarrassment only increases with the specificity of the compliment. This is not good for me.
Joshua Rogers 