Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Tag: Joy

  • Not squandering summer

    Summer begins when school ends. It’s so in my middle age as it was in my childhood, but only because I have children. Otherwise, I would neither know nor care when school ends. I wonder how I’d know it was summer. As a boy, I knew how to get the most out of summer. It…

  • Seven things I want my sons to know about making their way

    Now that you’re both teenagers, my job as your dad is changing. When you were little, my job was more about teaching you some basics, keeping you safe, and showing you love. Now it’s about slowly letting go and coaching from the sidelines so you can go in your own direction and hopefully find success…

  • Find joy where life is

    It’s Down the Road’s fifth blogiversary! All month I’m reposting favorite stories from the blog’s early days. It was my third annual trip to the Vida Nueva mission in Piedras Negras, Mexico. The day after I returned from my first mission trip to Mexico, my wife and I separated. By the second trip, she had filed…

  • What’s the use?

    It’s Down the Road’s fifth blogiversary! All month I’m reposting favorite stories from the blog’s early days. In the spring of 1989 I graduated college, got a job, and moved into an apartment. I kind of hoped Dad would forget I was still driving his old car, but after a few weeks he called and said, “Enough freeloading;…

  • At the foot of the stage

    I last stood in the wings of this stage when I was in the sixth grade, so it was 1978 or 1979, but I didn’t particularly want to be here. I would rather have been singing with the choir at the foot of the stage. As part of a concert, a few of us entered…

  • Finding joy in service

    A year ago my church was still in our building on land where our congregation was founded in 1839, but we were dying. Six months ago we sold the building, bought some land, and prepared to build a smaller building, one we could afford to heat and cool while still paying our pastor. Today we’re…

  • It may not look like much, but it sure goes like stink

    I drive a 2003 Toyota Matrix XRS. That’s what it looked like last year just after I bought it, still shiny and clean from the dealer’s detailing. It replaced a red base model 2003 Matrix that I wrecked on the National Road in Ohio. My red Matrix had been a sedate performer but I liked…

  • Three good things

    A couple years ago a friend sent me a link to an article (which I can’t find now) about the virtues of thinking each day of three good things that had happened. She and I decided to try it together, e-mailing each other our list of three every evening. I was surprised to find that on all but…

  • 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…