Training wheels

We were having the perfect day, you know the ones where you want to freeze time and enjoy the moment forever. Madelyn and I were on our way to the park pursuing our ongoing quest to get her off of her training wheels, and she was stealing more of my heart with every passing second—that is until she asked the question: “You’re not going to…

How to come out of a tail spin

Ever racecar driver learns three critical lessons very early on in their training. First, they learn that no matter how talented they are, there are times when they will inevitably go in to a spin. With smoky crashes happening around them, and oil slicks pooling on the track these drivers know that the occasional tailspin is unavoidable. Second, they learn that they can’t just stop…

God and roller coasters

Disneyland had a big day a couple of weeks ago. Madelyn (my breath-taking, little, eight-year-old daughter) graduated from the Toontown roller coaster to the Big Thunder Mountain. Our family wasn’t sure this day would ever come (she was so nervous about trying anything bigger that we thought for sure her sixteenth birthday party would have to be held in Toontown), but she surprised us when…

The beauty of rock bottom

Rock bottom is that phrase we use to describe a desperate place where people’s lives have either fallen apart or where they’ve run out of all options, and although I don’t want to be there (none of us do), I’ve been thinking about it recently and wondering if God views the low spots of our lives differently than we do. For many people, rock bottom…

Run your own race

“Let us run with endurance the race set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1) As Christians each of us is running toward a prize—Paul called it the “upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). And the beauty of our spiritual race is that while we each have the same end goal, the course for getting us there is uniquely designed for our individual destinies. I…