Over the years we develop ways to cope with, manage or mitigate stress. A lot of those are even really great things. We may walk, meditate, practice yoga, exercise, talk with a friend, go to recovery meetings, go to therapy, the list goes on. Sadly, not even the best...
At times our culture seems to glamorize and idolize romance and marriage. Meanwhile this beautiful narrative of singlehood can get overlooked. I believe these years are full of meaning and purpose. I’ve compiled six truths about singleness that help us better live...
Among the many characteristics that grow a healthy relationship, five markers stand out as foundationally significant. These five characteristics give opportunity for others to trust us, to want to be with us, and to be close to us: These five characteristics give...
When people get hurt in relationship and do not receive healing from the wounds, they have a logical and defensible tendency to become protective against more pain. A wound that does not receive attention remains sensitive; a person becomes wary of being relationally...
Children are human just like parents, except that they are younger. A great separation between the parent and the child, however, is that children neither know, nor have they experienced all that the parent has found out or been through. With that reality in mind,...
Boundaries in relationships are the markers that help differentiate you from someone else, or communicate where you “begin” and “end.” Using an analogy of land ownership with fences and gates, boundaries are the fences around your land. Gates are the passageways that...
A primary responsibility of a healthy family system is to help develop children into capable human beings. Two hallmark expressions of the emotionally and spiritually capable human being are the ability to work and to love, i.e., to be able to live fully in...
A famous rock star said that she never felt more alone than after a performance in front of thousands of admirers. After the performance ended, she had no one to turn to who met her need to belong. Heroin became her closest companion and the counterfeit experience of...
What is a need? To put it as starkly as possible, needs are deficits that require biological, emotional and spiritual gratification for fulfillment. Deficit fulfillment keeps us fully alive. Needs have to be gratified to be alive. The specific needs we have are the...
You and I are created as emotional and spiritual creatures, created to live fully. We find life to the full through emotional and spiritual relationship with ourselves, others, and God. We cannot find full life otherwise. We are predesigned to find fulfillment in...
My father died December 18, 2010. The song O Holy Night was sung at his funeral. It was beautiful and fitting. It celebrates a light in the darkness, a rescue for a people in need, and the conquering of death in a world where we still must physically die. It tells us...
There are three basic components of every good listener: 1. Good listeners know, and act on, their limitations. Knowing our limitations is the work of learning our own stories and the makeup of who we are. When we know ourselves, we can plan around and sometimes...
Our lives as parents must not be about perfection, but about the courage of affection. We live our affection clearly and courageously through confession of the following, and we must do so imperfectly because that is the nature of life. Remember that affection is no...
The river of life never stops and the cycles of living move in never-ending circles. The sparrows keep chirping in the nearby trees while a casket is being lowered into the ground. Life itself stops for no one, but we can. A famous, ancient story tells us about...
When you or I say to someone, “I feel sad” about some loss, or “I feel lonely” about some disconnection, we are simply laying claim to our own internal emotional experience. The “I feel” statement, followed by our reference point to...
A good friend recently took the time to send me a prayer that he has been praying for himself and his friends for some time. I’m very grateful to be someone he prays for. He told me to pass it along, so other friends and loved ones could be reminded to pray for...
If we love well, allowing ourselves to be “all in,” we will undoubtedly have experiences that bring pain to our lives. We will have vulnerability, the possibility of being wounded. And we will need perseverance, the ability to remain courageous in the experience of...
Please read the words below about the power of love from Song of Solomon 8:6-7. In an intimate whisper, the words tell us about the deepest connection and richest surrender our hearts can ever make. They call us to receive and give our hearts to love. To the...
What a gift to be able to take love for granted. Much of my life, I thought that for me to take anything for granted was somehow an expression of ingratitude or callousness towards something or someone. Or ingratitude or callousness towards me, if someone took my love...
Calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK have increased 25% since the recent deaths of two very notable people. The highly publicized deaths have shaken people with shock, fear, and awareness. The increases in calls are from friends of...
Children really have only a few essential questions of caregivers. Will you grow with me? Will you help me become grown up? Will you live in the struggle of remaining present with me? Children need to be able to take the affirmative answers to these questions for...
Trust allows us to rely on something or someone. Trust has to do with the next step towards wherever we are headed. If I step off of solid ground on to a swinging bridge to cross a chasm, I am trusting that the bridge will hold me as I take the first and then the next...
According to the journalist Johann Hari in the book, Lost Connections, researchers have concluded, “humans need tribes as much as a bee needs a hive” (pg. 77). When a bee loses its hive, it goes “haywire” (pg. 90). When humans lose connection with other humans, we...
In English when we tell someone, “goodbye,” it can mean much or almost nothing. If we are referring to something final with our goodbye, we have to use more words to communicate finality, or more words to wish great things for the other’s good as we depart. Or goodbye...
When my sons were little, we planted a slim stick of a poplar tree beside our driveway. We must have planted it during the exact sign of the moon in Farmer’s Almanac, or something like that. The poplar grew very fast, from no more than a stick 18 inches tall to four...
