It’s been exactly a year since Lisa went into surgery to have her tumor removed. That morning, she told me she wanted two things. First, she wanted me holding her hand and praying for her as she was taken away, and second, she wanted to wake up from sedation without the breathing tube still in […]
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To understand how difficult it is to be married to a certain kind of person, you need to know that the Bible was written in a desert. The Promised Land is described as a place of “milk and honey” but even the most generous of geographers would call it “arid.” Average temperatures run in the […]
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A friend of mine is a medical doctor who has held the beating heart of a living person in his hands. That blows me away. I can’t even imagine that kind of responsibility. But here’s the thing: every husband has his wife’s “spiritual heart” beating in his hands every day. Our wives make themselves just […]
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She looked like a new woman. My coworkers marveled when they finally realized that this was the same woman who had come to see me some weeks ago. The difference was that stark. The first time we had met she felt beaten down. She could hardly speak three sentences without reaching for another Kleenex. But […]
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One of the kindest words God has ever spoken to me is the word “no.” One of God’s most effective tools to preserve my freedom and keep me out of spiritual slavery is when God says, “Don’t.” Spoken by a supremely loving, all-wise, heavenly father who wants me to enjoy the abundant life, “no” and […]
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A divorce lawyer recently posted an article arguing that the vow “till death do us part” is passé, unrealistic, and needs to be discarded. There’s no shame, he said, in knowing that it’s unlikely and “even rare” for marriages to last for a lifetime, so let’s stop with the pretense. He admitted children face some […]
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Nicolas Rolin frolicked, adulterized, gambled, and even murdered his way through the fifteenth century until he looked mortality in the face and realized he was going to die sooner rather than later. Given that he had broken every one of the Ten Commandments at least once, the prospect of facing God terrified him. A priest […]
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I got a call from a friend who had some extra time on his hands while he was at the airport waiting for his wife. “Hey, Gary,” he asked me, “why is it that when I came home from a trip, I’m always taking Uber to my house. But when my wife comes home, it’s […]
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Can a celibate nun who was born over five hundred years ago unlock the secret to a more intimate marriage? Yes, she can. In her autobiography, Teresa of Avila explains why, for a short season, she avoided being alone as much as possible. She began experiencing spiritual ecstasies in prayer and some of her confessors […]
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Now that we’re empty nesters, Lisa travels with me on most of my trips, at least the pleasant ones. Winnipeg in February? Pass. New York City in the Fall? Book two tickets, please. In our new season of joint travel, Lisa had an uncanny ability to always turn the wrong direction coming out of the […]
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