I have come to embrace, appreciate, and even love the thing I once hated most about my personal journey. Uncertainty. It is an uncomfortable word and a difficult way to live. It is easy to look at the well-ordered, seeming predictable path others travel with envy. Those people who seem to know exactly who they…
Category: Personal Observation
Trigger warnings, safe spaces, and middle-age orneriness
Dear College/University Student, Please forgive me if I don’t understand your need for Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces. Forgive me not understanding how vital it is to your mental health and wellbeing to be sheltered from all adversity and opposing ideas. Let me explain where I am coming from and maybe, if in your safe…
Leadership 101: Make no place for foolish pride
As you read the following, keep in mind: Effective leadership requires a certain vulnerability. They say confession is good for the soul. So, here goes: It is a sad fact of my flawed nature that, too often, the less certain I am on a matter, the more vociferous and vehement my argument. In other words,…
The Dance of the Insane – or – The Direction of the Informed?
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~Friedrich Nietzsche I was in the house alone, except for my English Setters, Huck and Finn. I was lustily singing a Willie Nelson song to the plaintiff guitar strumming in my head. The dogs couldn’t hear…
The Seven “Ships” of Leadership
On this Memorial Day, it is good to remember the vital contribution to leadership thought contributed by those charged with guiding, leading, and commanding others in the most trying circumstances. Leadership indicates one who is out in front, navigating choppy and uncertain waters, charting the course for those under their charge. These fine military mindsgive…
Accidental Progress: A Farewell to 2015
Talk about accidental progress! Only, I don’t believe in accidents. I believe in a sovereign God.
of words and wordsmiths, a warning
In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise. ~Proverbs 10:19(NKJV) From childhood, I wanted to be a preacher. The strongest influences on my life were pastors and evangelists. I had not entered double digits in age when I began to understand the power of a well-spoken…
Marriage Doesn’t Work! Thirty-Five things I’ve learned in 35 years of marriage
Well, we made it. So far, so good. My beautiful wife Donya and I have been married 35 years today.Thirty-five years!We are one year shy of having been married twice as long as we had been living when we said, “I do.” (Sorry. I will be right back. I need to take a break and…
2015: A brand new start… Again #HappyNewYear
“God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night.’ And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.” Genesis 1:5 (NLT) God gave us time to keep us sane. Imagine if we did not have times designated for new beginnings, for releasing the old and embracing the new. How dreadfully painful, how utterly hopeless,…
Hey, Kids. History matters!
A football genius took me to taskthe other day for being a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, who, as mytormentor pointed out, “Suck, man.” I gently reminded the pigskin peanut brainthat the Cowboys have made eight Super Bowl appearances and have won five Lombardi trophies. The predictably tired and irretrievably ignorant retort was (of course),…