Lisa Wink, a friend from church, was 33-years-old and still wasn’t married in 2007, despite years of waiting for a husband. I probably would have asked her out if I were single, but I was already happily engaged to my 26-year-old fiance. “Josh, I’m serious. I’m at the end of my rope,” she said, standing outside church after a Christmas service. “It’s getting harder to believe I’ll ever get married.”
My wife owns the workout video series P90X, which features a hyper-fit, 50-year-old guy named Tony Horton. Tony has the face of a heavily Botoxed 39-year-old, the body of a 23-year-old, unnaturally black hair, and an annoying habit of referring to his adult audience as “boys and girls.” Go Tony.
Once in a blue moon, I end up in regular, close proximity to someone with a unique combination of characteristics which painfully grate on my nerves. Sometimes, these are people with whom I do my best to keep a distance; but other times, these are friends or family whom I welcome into my life with open arms, but clenched fists.
Recently, I complimented two different men in separate conversations, encouraging them to consider mentoring younger guys. They both had the same response: “You wouldn’t say that if you really knew me.” It mildly startled me to hear this fearful, knee-jerk response from both of these two, respectable men. Of course, I wondered, “So, if don’t really know you, then what are you really like?” I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that either of these men are privately peddling child pornography or cheating on their wives or embezzling money from their workplaces.
I remember the first moment I knew I loved my wife. We had been dating about a month and a half and, one day, we went to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery to spend some time together.
As I mentioned in my previous article, “I Kissed Churchianity Goodbye,” there came a point in my life where I walked away from the traditional church setting, and as far as I was concerned at the time, it was for good. I had legitimate frustrations with Churchianity, and although I was initially questioning things in a healthy way, it wasn’t long before my questions turned into accusations, and my tone became quite haughty – even mean-spirited.
Being raised by churchgoing parents, by the time I had finished law school, I had attended a fairly wide variety of churches. I had been a part of everything from the large, conservative, Southern Baptist church in my hometown to a lively, charismatic church, which my neighbors viewed with suspicion, assuming it was somehow affiliated with the Jehovah’s Witnesses (it wasn’t).
In my early days of working out my faith, I was fully convinced that God had a big, long list of losers, a list He glared at daily. If these losers actually got into heaven, I figured, they would only have Him to thank, because it sure wouldn’t have anything to do with any their good deeds. I was relieved to know that I was not one of those losers.
One time, I told my friend Steve that I was going to ask God to humble me. Steve said, “I wouldn’t do that. Scripture says to humble yourself. You don’t want God to have to do it.” Along that vein, about a year ago, I embarked on a self-imposed, humbling journey in self-discovery in which I did interviews with five different people, asking questions that elicited mostly-negative responses about ways I could improve my impact on others.
My wife and I welcomed a new baby into our lives about five weeks ago. We’re taking a lot of our parenting cues from a book called On Becoming Babywise, though we’ve thumbed through some other books like The Happiest Baby on the Block and another book called The Well-Rested Child: What Your Child’s Sleep Problems Say About Your Poor Parenting Skills. Okay, so there’s not actually a book with that last title, but there really is a book called The Happiest Baby on the Block. The title of that one alone probably made us more likely to trust the…
I’ve made some seriously stupid mistakes, and I know I’m not alone. Remember that stupid thing you did that time? I’m not talking about your most embarrassing moment that makes for a cute story at a dinner party. I’m talking about that big kahuna mistake, the one that could take you down if you ever ran for public office.
Last night, my two-week-old daughter didn’t feel like sleeping. Instead, she was in high-maintenance mode and had basically taken me hostage. Hostage negotiations went something like this: “Dad, I know mommy needs to sleep right now, but that’s not my concern. I’m feeling the need to be pacified really badly. So you have a choice: you either hold me until I go into a baby coma, or you lay me down and I’ll scream so loud that mommy will hear me no matter where I am in the house. So what will it be, Dad?”
My daughter is only two weeks old, and the vast majority of the time she looks pretty angelic, but there are times when she is not happy about something and totally loses it. These times are usually when I’m doing something she needs – like waking her up because she hasn’t eaten in a while or giving her a bath or taking off an outfit she’s been wearing for a couple of days.
Six days ago, my wife quite valiantly delivered our baby girl into the world. I was there cheering her on, like I knew what I was doing. But in reality, I felt like a helpless spectator on the edge of my seat, watching every cliff-hanger of every good TV show ever, times one thousand. I sat there on my metal stool, with my hands outstretched, ready to catch our baby, wide-eyed and trying to hold myself together.
Joshua Rogers 