just enough light

Last week a U.S. Navy ship collided with a Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.  This could have been a tragedy or become an international incident.  It did not.  My first reaction was a concerned “Oh, wow,” but within seconds, I was chuckling, “How does the person in charge explain that?”  Granted, it happened […]

I decided long ago, when my daughter was in high school and my son was in middle school, that there is no “right way” to parent.  I am writing this on the heels of Father’s Day.  I got phone calls from each of my two “kids” who are a thousand miles away and dealing with […]

When my son was a teenager, he stayed out one night about 3 hours past his curfew.  This was unusual, because even though he was pretty headstrong in most things, he was also dutiful and rarely violated his curfew.  For some intuitive reason, though, I did not worry about him that night.  But I did […]

“Dad!” I could tell something was wrong. “What’s up, Son?” “I’m stuck in the intersection of Green and Lincoln and I can’t get my car to move!” Green and Lincoln is a busy intersections in the town where he lives.  If he was stuck there, he was in a heap of trouble.  “I’ve been stuck […]

As the story goes, the man selected to play the part of Jesus in the small town’s Easter pageant created a stir.  The oil field worker had a reputation for a quick temper and a foul mouth.  But he was grateful for the part and practiced diligently.  Among those selected to be among the angry […]

My son is going to learn to drive a car with a manual transmission. He’s been driving for 6 years but has never driven a stick.  Now he’ll have to if he wants to inherit his sister’s car. I learned to drive a stick shift with my best friend, Randy, on a Sunday afternoon in […]

The “Born Again” article was published in the Abilene Reporter News as an opinion article.  A few days later two different people responded to the article with letters to the editor.  They each quoted scriptures liberally informing me what it really meant to be born again.  They took me behind the woodshed and scolded me […]

The term “born again” used been often during this presidential campaign season.  The term has been tossed about by the media to describe a particular demographic, usually socially conservative evangelical Christians.  Many of the candidates, while trying to garner support from a conservative Christian group, identified themselves as “born again,” using the term with the […]

For years my list of New Years resolutions looked like a self-help book table of contents.  I resolved to be a better person, a more efficient person, a healthier person, a more thrifty person.  I resolved to jog, to eat less, to read more, to meditate.  If there was something to improve, it was probably […]

We have some big decisions to make in the next couple of days.  Those decisions will be difficult, painful, and will have significant consequences for our family in the coming months.  As we lay in bed last night, doing our final hugs and a kiss, Judy said, “It’s so hard to know the right thing […]