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I started my journey of blogging in 2003 — mostly to capture what I called “transitioning life’s journey”.
In 2023 I took a 3 year break from blogging, but have decided to return to it. I hope you enjoy.
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“Frantic Family” Question #1…
“What makes your family unique?” In his book The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family, Patrick Lencioni writes this about that question: “Another way to phrase this question is, what differentiates your family from every other one on your block, or at your school, or in your church? Two primary topics help us identify […]
How Do You Answer the 3 Big Questions for Your Frantic Family?
If you have been following me online, you have now realized that I really love the book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family by Patrick Lencioni. I first came across the book when my good friend and colleague Todd Sandel recommended it to me. He and his wife had been using it in […]
Intentional Parenting: Responsibilty, Privilege and Consequence
If you are like me…then a lot of times parenting is less intentional and more fly by the seat of your pants. Even though I have all the desire to be intentional about various aspects of my parenting, I often let it get crowded out by other things. One area of parenting that I talk […]
Join Us for a Sneek Peak at My New Book — What It Means to be a Man
The last 6-7 months have been a blur as I was busy reading, researching, writing, editing — and a whole lot of staring at a blank screen — in preparation for my new book, What It Means to be a Man: God’s Design for Us in a World Full of Extremes. It’s my second collaboration […]
Do you contribute back to your community in an edifying way?
Back in December I was laid up in bed sick for a few days. And while in bed I decided to watch a few documentaries on Netflix. There were so many options to choose from and I couldn’t decide. But I remember someone on Twitter or Facebook mentioning that if you work with youth you […]
Beyond Ordinary: when a good marriage just isn’t good enough
For many of us there is a gap between the marriage we have and the marriage we thought we would have. Sometimes the gap is created by unrealistic dreams and expectations. But more often that gap is created by a subtle equation that defines many marriages: Time + unintentionality = ordinary marriage. It isn’t that […]
Why Men Need To Identify And Develop Their Emotions
“Helping boys and men learn how to be both tender and tough, strong and bighearted, is a new ideal that will take some time to digest. But, having worked with men day in and day out for decades, I know from experience that they can reclaim the language of emotion–once they see the sense of […]
My 40 Day Experiment Without Social Media Apps On My Phone
Over the last couple of months I’ve really been thinking about how I can be a more thoughtful consumer of the technology that I consume, especially my mobile phone. As a pastor and therapist I have grown increasingly concerned with the side effects that our technological culture has on relationships. And I’ve wondered aloud more […]
Living Into Some Answers: A Talk With My 17 Year-Old Self
I’m so excited for Emily Freeman’s new book, Graceful: Letting Go of Your Try-Hard Life. It’s a book for young girls, ages 14-18, and I can’t wait to recommend it to young girls I work with in therapy and ministry. Emily is a great writer and has taught me a lot about grace through her […]
Why Men May Be Good At Their Job, But Not In Their Relationships?
I’ve been doing a lot of research for my new book (which all I can say at this point is about men). And as I have been doing research I came across this phrase that has really stuck with me: “they live within the boundaries of their competence.” The Silence of Adam by Larry Crabb, […]
Youth Workers: Come Join Us at The Summit Conference in Atlanta, Georgia
I’m super excited to be part of The Summit this November 9-10 in Atlanta, Georgia. This event is put on by The Youth Cartel (i.e. Mark Oestreicher and Adam McLane). I love their ideas for this event, and love their passion for youth ministry. I got to spend a week with them in Haiti back […]
Wrecked: A Wonderful Book From A Passionate Writer and Voice
A little over two and half years ago I had the opportunity to travel over to Haiti on an amazing team that had been put together by Adventures in Missions. Our job was to blog daily and tell the stories of the Haitian people that we had met. But behind the scenes, putting that all […]
Fighting the Fear of Missing Out
A couple of weeks ago I wrote the post, Laptops and Mobile Phones: Creating the New Deficit In Our Kid’s Lives. In the post I talked about the emotional deficits that parent’s use of technology can often create in their kid’s lives. One of the articles that I referenced in that post was called, Is […]
Laptops & Mobile Phones: Creating the New Deficit In Our Kid’s Lives
Last week I was reading a fascinating article at The Daily Beast on the use of technology and some of the new research on the impact it is having on our lives. The article was called “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” In the entire 5 page article, one little line really stuck out to […]
Male Depression: The Men Who Suffer and The People Who Collude In The Process
I have to admit to you all that I knew little about male depression until the last ten years when I started reading more and more writers who were openly talking about it. People like Henri Nouwen, Parker Palmer and Archibald Hart to name but just a few. The more and more I read, the […]
Don’t Let Your Energy Dissipate Into Nothing
“When the door of the steambath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its rememberance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a […]
How Anxiety is The Greatest Motivator for One Author and Blogger
Today I asked author and blogger Renee Fisher to share with us about how anxiety has transformed her life and motivated her to continually pursue God. You can learn more about Renee here, as well as following her on Twitter @devotionaldiva — and don’t forget to cruise over and check out her books Not Another […]
When Couples Fight — The Argument Is Rarely About the “Issue”
It probably took me a good 5-6 years of marriage before I realized that the fights my wife Heather and I were having were rarely ever about the issue that we were fighting about. The fight is just the top of the surface, or as I like to tell couples — the top of the […]
It’s Impossible That You Aren’t Communicating In Your Relationship!
Often in the midst of a therapy session a couple will frustratingly declare to me, “We never communicate.” The truth is that they are communicating all the time, but they just don’t like the message their partner is sending them. If my wife decides to get up when I’m talking to her, walk into our […]
Anxiety Makes Humanity Unique
Eric Chinski at the Paris Review, has a great interview with Brian Christian, author of The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive. The article is a fascinating look at the interaction between humans, computers and AI (artificial intelligence)…and a probing look at what makes us […]