I used to work in an office that had layers upon layers of dysfunctional relationships, and the only effective way to avoid the drama was to go work somewhere else. Almost everyone eventually did leave; but while they were there, they had to put up with being in a place where once-reasonable adults openly hurled insults, undermined each others work, and maliciously spread gossip. It was traumatizing for a lot of the folks who survived it.
Eight years ago this month, I was at a hat-themed party in Washington, D.C., feeling an acute level of insecurity. In a variety of areas of my life, I was dealing with a lack of integrity, self-control, and spiritual maturity. And although I’m sure my personal life could’ve been worse, it was bad enough that I knew I wouldn’t be getting married for at least another couple of years.
The other day, I let my three-year-old daughter ride her scooter on the sidewalk in front of our house, despite my irrational fear of her suddenly being kidnapped by a random psychopath. I wasn’t especially worried about it because I was landscaping just a few feet away. Occasionally, I looked down the slope from our house to make sure she wasn’t going too far down the sidewalk.
My mother did not expect to miscarry her first child. She was young and healthy and four months pregnant. She was too far along to miscarry. Yet in the early hours of a December morning, she began experiencing severe pain in her abdomen. It was happening.
I have friends who adopted a little girl from another country, and their child has some significant disabilities that require her to wear a brace on her leg. You would think that fitting braces for a child’s leg wouldn’t be a difficult thing, but it has actually been a long process that has been debilitating and painful for her.
One morning when I was in eleventh grade, I was walking through the school parking lot with Jamie Walker when all of sudden, I saw a big, black Buick Regal come around the corner. It was headed straight for me.
The other night, I thought I heard something break upstairs in the girls’ bathroom, but I decided to keep a low profile until there were further developments. I figured that one of the girls would let me know if I was needed for a cleanup. Then I heard something at the top of the stairs. It sounded two little steps.
Last night, my wife and I came home and discovered that the pipes in our kitchen were frozen. For those of you who have experience with this sort of thing, you realize this is not a small problem.
I feel kind of lame when I say this, but I do not enjoy the spiritual discipline of fasting, because it usually just leaves me feeling annoyed and inconvenienced. Even so, I’m finally coming to a place where I appreciate it a lot more than I used to.
When I was ten years old, my family and I did something that was rare for us: we went on vacation. During that weeklong trip, someone gave me a gift; and believe it or not, I’m still holding onto it today. I’ll never let it go.
The other day, my three-year-old daughter was holding her baby doll and shushing it, using the same little rhythm over and over again. I didn’t notice it at first, but then it hit me – it was the tune of “Jingle Bells.” No way, I thought.
It’s amazing how quickly unintended destruction can happen to a home. A few years ago in my hometown, a family was shooting bottle rockets in front of their house on New Year’s Eve. Someone lit a rocket and accidentally tipped the bottle over. The rocket shot out, flew through the open door, and into the Christmas tree.
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.
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).
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.
Joshua Rogers 