Feeling the sting of rejection recently and with tears in my eyes, I said to my husband, “I just want to know where I belong and I want to hang out there for a while.” With tenderness in his eyes and in his voice he reached out and brought me in close to him, saying,…
I remember an engaged fraternity brother in college telling me he planned to break the bank for his honeymoon. “You have to do something memorable,” he said. “You only get one honeymoon.” I lacked vision or inspiration to travel when I married. Thankfully, my wife doubles as a secret, unpaid travel agent with ambitions to…
We had this taxidermist friend, well, more of an acquaintance, really. Years ago Bill pastored a church that met in a crumbling old Gothic Revival building on Main Street in a small Pennsylvania town. The white Victorian next door to the church was too big to be someone’s private home—especially in our town—but too homey…
There you are again. You’ve found yourself in the same circle of female friends, and the conversation has turned to the same topic it always does when this particular group gets together: “He left the kids’ bath towels on the floor again.” “Yep. Happens in my house all the time. I just can’t get him…
Guilt is a stingy emotion. It will not release us from something we have done if we have caused harm to come to someone else. There is guilt in us all, which also means that it is present in all relationships. One thing of note, guilt and shame are very similar emotions. The big difference…
