Stepping Up
Tuesday night I was at Comerica Park for the Tigers game. For most of the evening, things did not look good for the home team. Zack Greinke, the White Sox pitcher, shut us out with just four hits over the first seven innings. The Sox were ahead 3-0…
God Works
As the baseball season for the Tigers wraps up, another season – “conference season” – arrives for me. This week I spent two days in Frankenmuth for the Circuit Visitors’ Conference, with some Best Practices mixed in. One week from today I will be…
Hard Pressed
What a dark and difficult world this can be. It often is hard enough listening to the news, but when this darkness travels up-close and personal, it becomes all the more difficult. Financial struggles … mental health issues … hospice care … prejudice ……
Spartan Times
I think I don’t really know what “spartan times” are, but I am using the term to describe my last two weeks … which have taken me from living without a functioning bathroom in our cottage … through a stretch of near overwhelm when we got back … to now…
Tired Even Before I Start
Tell me if you have ever been here or not: You know that you have a very busy schedule in front of you, and your focus upon its business drains some (or much) of your needed energy even before you begin. In other words, just when you need all of your…
Lazy or … ?
Last night – or, technically, this morning – we arrived at the cottage a little after midnight. The night before I had worked on a document until finally retiring around 10:00 p.m., and then was back at church by 6:30 a.m. Wednesday then was way too…
Generation Gaps
This has been quite the week for Monica and me. Last Thursday afternoon we drove to Valparaiso, IN (Actually, I should say our son Joel drove us there and back because I was seated in the rear seat the entirety of both drives). On Friday our other son…
Stressors
I met with a young father this week to make funeral arrangements for his grandmother and aunt, who both died suddenly two days apart last month. He is responsible for making the arrangements because his grandmother was a widow and his aunt never…
Basic Truth
The other day I googled “truth checkers” and started counting how many different options one has. I stopped counting at 20, and then scrolled to see an almost limitless number of options beyond. There even were some that talked about fact checking the…
Reality Check
Sunday morning someone said to me, “Go back on vacation!” He then went on to explain, “The Tigers’ bats came alive while you were gone, then on the first day you are back they get beat 10-0.” The sad reality is that they just are not very good this…