A lot of parents in Mississippi would have been disappointed to have me as their youngest son. I did not watch sports, nor was I particularly athletic. I did not hunt or fish; and although I did spend a lot of time in the woods, when I was out there, I was often pretending to be in Narnia.
If you’ve been to Washington, D.C., you know there aren’t any skyscrapers in the city (we have a building height restriction). The closest thing we’ve got is the Washington Monument, and at 555 feet, you’d imagine it’s the tallest stand-alone structure in the city. That would be incorrect – in fact, it’s not even close. That honor is held by the John Hughes Memorial Tower, a police radio tower on Georgia Avenue that bears a striking resemblance to the Eiffel Tower. And here’s the best part: it has been a great tool for explaining deep theology to my kids.
This morning, my daughters and I were talking about the birth of Jesus, and I was trying to think of a way to capture the wonder of it. I mean, it’s one thing to say “God became a man” – but I wanted them to get it, to grasp how bizarre it was that the God of the universe humbled Himself and moved into the body of a vulnerable baby boy.
One day, I was standing in the kitchen at my mom’s house, and for the first time, it occurred to me that my favorite music was the sound of tinkering high notes on a piano. So I rhetorically asked my mom, “Do you know what my absolute favorite music is?”
My wife and I live in Washington, D.C., a city that’s full of single men who aren’t ready to get married. If they’re anything like I was in my single days, their unwillingness to tie the knot has a lot to do with their unrealistic expectations. Now that I’m seven years into a happy marriage, if I could give some tips to all the single men about adjusting their hopes for life after the wedding, here’s what I would say:
A few days ago, my wife and I drove our daughters to their first day of school. I hardly noticed that my breathing was becoming shallower as we got closer. I didn’t want to notice it. “You know,” I said, “I’m not going to cry when we say goodbye to the girls today, but I understand why parents do.”
Although I hate ironing, I went on a wild ironing spree this past Sunday afternoon.
“Joshua! Caleb! Get out here quick!” Although it has been over two decades since I heard my parents yelling those words from the backyard of our rental home in rural south Mississippi, I still remember them fondly.
This morning, I spent 90 minutes playing with blocks on the floor with my daughters. My mom is a big part of the reason I did it.
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, 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.
It’s official. I’m the father of two children under five who can ride their bikes without training wheels. It is wonderful – sort of.
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 time my little girls were on a playground and the oldest decided to make an imaginary birthday cake. She was so serious about it, so thoughtful about each decoration. It was touching at first, but then things got painful when she took her prized “cake,” carried it to a ten-year-old boy, and said, “Here’s a birthday cake I made for you.”
Joshua Rogers 