Category: Personal

  • No fallow season

    Wer rastet, rostet! – German saying (Whoever rests, rusts!) The Germans may be industrious, but we Americans are driven. Just before Christmas I read a Texas preacher’s blog entry in which he quoted an author’s observation of how Americans like to push themselves past burnout and then spend a weekend on the couch in a…

  • I don’t get sports

    Even though I was unathletic, sometimes I’d play vacant-lot sports with the neighborhood boys. I was marginally competent as a goalie in soccer and on defense in football, the latter largely because I was a little bigger than the other kids. Otherwise, I couldn’t catch, I couldn’t hit, and I threw so badly that the…

  • Shopping in the suburbs

    I’ve always lived in cities. I groove on grids of streets with curbs and sidewalks. So when I moved to Indianapolis, I didn’t consider living in the suburbs for a minute. But to get a better school system, I did buy an older home in the old suburbs outside the old city limits. (The city…

  • Find joy where life is

    In the few months before I went on the mission trip to Mexico last fall I started a new job, my divorce became final, and I left a one-room apartment and rented a five-bedroom house. I grieved my marriage (and tried to be a good dad to my sons as they grieved the changes in…

  • What’s the use?

    In 1989 I bought my first brand-new car. I had just graduated college, gotten a job, and moved into an apartment when Dad said, “Enough freeloading; I’m coming in two weeks to get my car back.” I looked for a used car, hoping to save money, but nobody in town would lend me money because…

  • Please stand by

    I try to write here about once a week, but a family emergency has thrown me off my pace. A small bleeding tumor was found on my father’s lung last week, and he was sent straight into surgery to have it removed. Dad came through surgery remarkably well and has been recovering faster than expected.…

  • Holding up my hand

    On my first day of Kindergarten, my mother walked with me the half mile to school so I’d know the way. I was a little anxious about meeting so many new children, but only a little anxious because I felt tremendously reassured that Mom was taking me there. When the time came I reached my…

  • My Terre Haute home today

    I was in Terre Haute a couple weeks ago and, of course, drove by the house where I had my first apartment. I thought I’d share what the house looks like today. The apartment entrance is on the far left of the house, below. I was disappointed to see that the house, currently for sale,…

  • Re-integrating joy

    My dad once told me that I was the most joyful little boy he had ever known. During my first few years, he said, I seemed to constantly have a big beaming smile on my face, and everything seemed to make me happy. Now, I’m sure I didn’t enjoy it when I got in trouble…

  • A place to start

    I got my first apartment just before I turned 22. I was excited about having a place to myself, but I didn’t make much money and the classifieds showed affordable apartments mostly in Terre Haute’s rougher neighborhoods. On the way to see one of those apartments one afternoon that summer, I passed through the Collett…