Go Time
Disney never ceases to amaze me.  For my family it has become a familiar destination as we can't seem to avoid a trip for longer than a year or two.  It is a fun tradition that marks time among us: "How old was Riley when we did that?...Graydon wasn't even born that year..." etc.  The magic of meeting characters...the rides that cater to the entire family...the rides that don't (you'll be big enough next year, etc.).  We love it, manufactured joy or not!This year's trip was more of the same.  Great family time together focused purely on being together.  Plenty of difficult and rough moments as well, but truly overshadowed by all of the fun.  I

Bad Dad
Well, I finally fell from grace yesterday.  After years of perfection, I blew it with my son.  As I'm sure this is hard to believe, I'll relay some of the details...I think many people might find them oddly familiar.Yesterday was a hectic one.  We've been getting over illness at our house (literally every one of us...both me and my wife...all four kids...) and simultaneously preparing to go on vacation.  At the same time, my daughter turned 9 on Monday and my wife's birthday is today.  Busy.One of the things my daughter wanted to do this week to celebrate was have friends over for dinner.  We originally had this planned for Tuesday, but

Unbeliever
I've come to realize of late that, for the most part, I'm pretty bad at this whole "belief" thing.  That sounds so nonchalant; the statement itself is strikingly symptomatic of my problem.  My ability to distance myself from that problem, not just here but far more importantly in my daily life, IS the problem...if that makes any sense?I've started this badly - let me clarify: across the board, in the midst of wide and varying circumstances, I all too often make poor choices.   Not intentionally, of course, nor exclusively.  And not, as you might fear, in the midst of the "big" issues.  I'm not talking about the monumentally "obvious"&

Hi & Lois...Really!?
I am a stalwart reader of the comics.  I don't know how or why I fell into the habit, but I generally manage (to my wife's chagrine) to read the funnies every morning before leaving for work...even when it means that the kids need to ask twice to grab my attention and get, say, more milk in their cereal bowl...or maybe a spoon with which they can, you know, eat... said... cereal.While I read the comics every day, I don't generally expect them to speak to me...not with a message from God or anything.  Which made it doubly-strange when they did, this morning.  He did, I mean.  I guess. And it seemed particularly odd when He chose "Hi & Lois" to do

One Thing I Question
For no good reason that comes to mind I turned on the radio this morning on my drive to work.  I don't often do that.  If I can maintain "upward" focus on my drive (instead of spiraling into thoughts about work, my to-do list or, more often, picking up my phone to make a call), I sometimes use the 15 minutes from my house to the office to engage in prayer...but rarely, if ever, do I turn any "sound" on in the morning.  No real aversion, just not something I do - except for today.Scanning through the available stations I came upon a song that I later discovered to be called "The One Thing."  A youtube or google search indicates that title has been us