For the last few months, my four-and-a-half-year-old son has made two new friends who he now calls his best friends. Their names are Skye and Timothy. Together they have celebrated Skye’s birthday, gone on field trips, and even built their own arcade. They don’t wear masks...
I have a 10-month-old daughter. Yikes! Who on earth gave me permission to be responsible for an entire human being?! When I was still pregnant, I thought about all the ways my shortcomings would cause harm to my daughter in the future. Cue the anxiety! There's a terribly cynical phrase...
"So he set a royal crown on her head and made her queen." Esther...
My small group kicked off 2020 by reading The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. It was a challenging but welcome push for our group of mostly 30-somethings to consider how our pace of life might be impacting our emotional and spiritual health. One of the chapters we were...
Well, here we are, in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic. A lot of people have had the illness, many of whom were never tested and will never know they had it. Some people are sick now. Some have died. A lot of people have lost their jobs, possibly temporarily and possibly...
Facebook reminded me that years ago, while I was a teacher on spring break, I lamented the fact that I wasn’t selected for jury duty. At that time, I was excited at the possibility of serving on a jury while I was on vacation. I didn’t mind going into court, waiting around, or...
I had a close call with Coronavirus recently, but don’t worry, I don’t have it! It was an early afternoon on a Sunday and I felt more tired than usual as I wrapped up work at the hospital. As a physician it’s not unusual to work multiple weeks in a row so I figured it...
Passing into Lent again, our thoughts of course turn to whatever it is we’re going to ‘give up’ this season. This ancient practice, which really began as a fasting exercise, now extends to include the trimming of anything in our lives we have become attached to in an...
During a Yosemite photography workshop in 2013, two fellow participants and I spent an unguided afternoon in search of new landscapes. We ended up by a slow-moving stretch of the Merced River, and my companions set up their tripods facing it. I wandered further downstream and happened...
“Jesse, you have a choice. You can use your time and energy in having a bad attitude and being upset that you have homework and you’ll still have to do the homework. Or, you can use your time and energy to get it done and when it’s done, you’ll probably be in a...