This morning, I got down on the floor and played with Lincoln Logs for the first time my life. We got them for our daughters for Christmas, and my youngest daughter wanted me to show her how to put them together. In no time, I got lost in the process of building the perfect log cabin with her. I think there’s something beautiful that was going on with that.
Be careful what you name yourself; and be careful what you allow others to name you. Clown. Dumb blonde.
Last weekend, I got out our trusty, old fake Christmas tree and put it together. But when I plugged it in, I discovered that half of the lights in the middle section were dead.
In March of 2001 I was hospitalized for emergency abdominal surgery, a blockage. In the course of it, I developed a serious blood clot, which also had to be treated.
Back in college, I was a high maintenance friend. As I’ve described in my article, “Facing Insecurity, Finding Friendship,” “I always needed a prompt reply to my phone call or email, an enthusiastic ‘yes’ to my invitations. I needed to be coddled and comforted and assured that I was liked. If someone neglected to call back, it couldn’t be because they forgot — no way, it had to be because they were ignoring me and my all-important need for affirmation.”
When I was growing up in Petal, Mississippi, I felt a steady sense of being out-of-place. I didn’t play sports; my dad didn’t take me hunting; I paid the reduced price for my school lunch; and we weren’t Southern Baptists like almost everyone else in town. These were a few of the clues that helped me see that I didn’t belong.
I know I’m supposed to like the whole Bible – especially anything Jesus said. But there are a few parts that get under my skin. One in particular is this passage from Luke 17:3-4: “Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”
The other day, I was backing up in a parking lot and saw a woman walking in the direction of my car. I kept going, figuring she would stop, but she didn’t. In fact, she gave me the stinky face in my rearview mirror as I put on my brakes and waited for her to pass.
I once knew this guy who regularly started conversations like this: “Have you got a minute? I need your prayers.” Except there was never any prayer involved – it was just a religious intro to gossip.
When I was a teenager, I was grateful that I had few zits on my face. I hated, however, the fact that I had them all over my back. It was a social hazard to go swimming or change my shirt around other teens. I couldn’t bear the thought of my peers seeing my acne-covered back and being grossed out by me. So I did the only thing I knew to effectively get rid of it: I baked my fair skin in the sun until it burned.
When I was single, I was terrified I would never marry. But I was equally terrified I might marry the wrong person. If I married the wrong woman, I thought, I might end up with a wife who was subject to hormonal surges, occasional mood swings, weight fluctuations, bad habits, and bouts of irritability. She might not share all my interests or always get my humor. She might not like my music or always want to have sex. She might, you know – like, be human. And quite frankly, I wasn’t looking for a human; because so many of the humans I knew could…
Last week, I was vacationing in South Carolina when I drove past a billboard with a Confederate flag in the background and the words “Never Forget” emblazoned across it. I was embarrassed then, but as I thought about it this week, another thought crossed my mind: “How must African-Americans in South Carolina feel about that billboard as they grieve the murder of nine black church members in Charleston by a white supremacist?”
Last Friday, I looked over at the TV and saw the trailer for Jurassic World, and it brought back an unexpected, bittersweet memory. It was 1993; the original Jurassic Park was showing in theaters; I was in ninth grade; and my parents had just split up.
The other day, my wife and I got into an argument over whether we needed to buy a bike. And although we recognize that this is not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, somehow it escalated to the point that we were both starting to raise our voices. But then my wife suddenly looked out the window behind me and said, “Oh my gosh.” I couldn’t help but look.
When I recently wrote an article on Boundless about healing from the trauma of sexual abuse, I expected a reaction on social media. What surprised me were the private messages from adults who, for years, had dark memories of sexual abuse locked inside.
Joshua Rogers 