just enough light

Forty years ago I sat across the table from an imposing man 20 years my senior.  He was taller than I and had a deep, baritone voice.  He was cordial, he smiled with his eyes as well as his mouth, he shook my hand with a firm grip, and then we sat down to business.  […]

This article begins a new series about growing up.  Not growing up in the traditional sense, where you can mark your progress on the door frame or you start shaving or you get your drivers license, but growing up on the inside. Leg aches were a tangible sign of physical growth.  I had severe leg […]

While sitting in my favorite study place a few years ago, a campus coffee shop, I overheard one side of a phone conversation between a student and a parent.  I wasn’t trying to listen in, but the student’s volume and intensity made it unavoidable.  The young man had apparently overdrawn his bank account and a […]

“17…18…19…20.  Ready or not, here I come!”  With those words, a new round of “Hide and Seek” began.  Children scrunch into their hiding places, giggly with excitement.  They become as small as possible behind a stump, up in a tree, under a bush.  The one who is “it” stalks carefully around the yard, watchful for […]

I was leading a panel discussion in front of about 200 parents of incoming freshman students.  The mood in the room ranged from bored (it had already been a long orientation day for them) to highly anxious.  The topic of the moment was “Move-in day” and one of the parents on the panel had just […]

Your son or daughter is about to leave for college.  At some point, you will say “Good-bye” and drive away.  You have said good-bye to your child before, but probably not on this scale.  You said, “Good-bye and call if you need to,” the first time they left the safe confines of your house to […]

I knew I had to turn around and walk away.  The time had come.  I could have prolonged the moment.  I could have hung around to be helpful or supportive or something, but I knew it would just be delaying the inevitable.  I knew the time had come to say good-bye, to entrust my child […]

I was one of four people being interviewed on a radio program a few years ago.  The topic was homosexuality in our culture in general, and in the church specifically.  The panelists represented several different Protestant denominations.  Two panelists were lesbian; the other two were heterosexual who were affirming of gays and lesbians.  It was […]

Several years ago I woke at 2:00 a.m. in a cold sweat, filled with the certainty that I had ruined my life and the lives of my family members.  My mind began darting around like a scared squirrel, but I did not know where my distress was coming from.  It was a couple of hours […]

One of my favorite forms of emotional self-abuse is to engage in long musings of “What if”.  This is the futile, tail-chasing exercise of running mental scenarios of what’s ahead if this or that happens.  I have been holding this game at bay for the past couple of weeks.  I can hear my inner sinister-self […]