Almost a year ago I wrote a post about my journey of burnout. After writing that post, I attended Sunday service only a handful more times. And then I essentially stopped going. Naturally, people ask a few questions in response to this information: Are you looking for a new church? Are...
We live in a time when it is difficult to keep up with all the information available to us to read, listen to, or watch. I often ask my friends, “What are you doing with all that information?” Most of them reply, “Nothing.” Our heads are stuffed with information...
Moving into our new house comes with a lot of work: organizing, purging, and cleaning. It seems as if there are hundreds of decisions to be made each day, like where to hang a picture, which picture it should be, and the best way to hang it. I feel as if I’m drowning in the...
My phone rang at 9:30 p.m. one Thursday evening. The caller was my boss, a senior director. “Mike, you have a new assignment," he said. "Beginning tomorrow morning, you are the new QA [quality assurance] lead for our next-generation product, with a staff of fourteen. The project is...
A few weeks ago, while I was attending Spirit West Coast with my family, singer-songwriter Danny Gokey provided some words of encouragement: “Even if you feel upset, it does not mean you have to get upset.” I looked over at my son and our eyes connected...
I recently celebrated the anniversary of my baptism. As I looked through the pages of my scrapbook, I found something I wrote and laughed--not because my writing was especially witty, but because of how naïve I was. I thought my faith was so strong and that I had fully submitted to...
This August marks our thirteen-year wedding anniversary. Since we’ve been married, we have lived in the Bay Area, Malawi, back to the Bay Area, Uruguay, Kansas, and now Fresno. The last few places we lived, we were only there for a short time before moving again. Suffice it to say...
A couple weeks ago, my son, Micah, celebrated the end of the school year with a group of school friends at the community pool. The sun above us emitted warm rays, while the trees surrounding the pool provided an ample amount of shade. I gathered the rambunctious kids for a...
With Father’s Day recently passing by, the story of my father’s immigration story has been on my mind. He is agnostic, but I can see the presence of God in his life, working in powerful ways for decades. My dad was born in Shanghai, China, the youngest of five with two older...
A long time ago, I had two friends, who I’ll call Jamil and Abby. Jamil identified as an atheist, while Abby often said she believed in God but would only identify as Christian if she had to choose a religion. One day, I tuned in on a conversation between the two of them at the...