Thursday Thoughts

  • Not feeling well

    Not feeling well

    The last month has been challenging for several reasons: we brought to close a 37-year season of our lives when we packed our belongings into several PODS and drove away from Orlando. Mary Kay and I experienced many emotions as we recalled events and reminisced on relationships over the past four decades.  It was like…

  • So what name would you choose?

    So what name would you choose?

    Mary Kay and I have met with three other couples over the last several years, working through the Good and Beautiful series by James Bryan Smith (thanks, Marc Sundstrom). Smith does an excellent job at creating a process to live out some of Dallas Willard’s thoughts and writings on life transformation.  In the second to…

  • Finishing well

    Finishing well

    These past few weeks have been really frantic for Mary Kay and me.  We are packing and purging, all the while trying to bring a 37-year season of life to closure.  During this time, we have raised our kids and loved our grandkids; I had four careers, and MK also had several, hopefully loved and…

  • The Tension in Loving God

    The Tension in Loving God

    Last week, I wrote about how being in Christ enables me to maintain the tension of healthy relationships. As we are in Christ, we respond to his love for us by keeping his commands out of our love for him.  In John 15.9-10, he tells us, “As the Father has loved me, so have I…

  • Needing relationships or abandonment

    Needing relationships or abandonment

    What is the difference between needing relationships and finding our significance in relationships?  We all need relationships, especially healthy ones that are life-giving. However, at times, it is easy to mistake this need for a sense that we are only significant IF we have this need met, even if in an unhealthy manner.  It is…

  • What parenting has taught me

    What parenting has taught me

    Last week, I described the three influences that tamed me over the last 50 years: 1) spiritual transformation, 2) journaling, and 3) parenting. I briefly looked at the first two, now let’s tackle how my marriage and parenting have changed me. When I first got married 47 years ago, my life revolved around me.  As…

  • Why was I bothered?

    Why was I bothered?

    Last week, I wrote about how it bothered me that my grammar was so poor, and my writing was like vomiting words and thoughts with no appropriate restraint or reflection.  Why did this bother me? Let’s face it, that was 47 years ago!  I think part of the problem is that I don’t like to…

  • Finding old loveletters

    Finding old loveletters

    In the midst of MK’s purging, she found a bag of letters which I sent her during our second dating series.  All the way back to the first letter dated 7/12/76. Beginning with this letter and then reading the next few months of letters, I was struck by several things.  The first was how verbal…

  • Am I creative?

    Am I creative?

    Last week, I described some of my dissonance with the term “laws.”  As I identified, some have to do with my hardware (personality) and some with my software (family/culture of origin).  But another factor influencing it has to do with my passion to be creative.  I love thinking of innovative solutions to challenges we face. …

Got any book recommendations?