Stories & ReflectionsFaith · Memories · Everyday Grace · Humor
Personal stories and reflections about belief, family, memory, and the meaning we discover in ordinary moments.
New essayWhether you are building a business, raising a family, or just trying to get through a Tuesday, the human mind often feels like a chaotic laundry room. A look at the paralysis of perfectionism and the ancient wisdom that helps us finally break the cycle.
A reflection on the paralysis of perfectionism—and the ancient wisdom that helps us finally begin.
Read the story01
I was sitting in a Sunday service recently listening to my pastor talk about the importance of staying close to God, and my mind started comparing my spiritual walk lately to a car that just won’t start. The picture came so clearly I had to pull out my iPad right there and jot down the scenario before I lost it. I pictured myself sitting in the driver’s seat, sliding the key into the ignition, and giving it a turn.
02
In the classic Depression-era film The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family piled everything they owned onto a flatbed truck and headed west with nothing but hope and some dubious flyers promising work in California. They were characters on a screen, but for my family, those rickety trucks and dusty roads were real life. My mother was less than a year old when her family left West Texas and joined that river of headlights flowing toward California.
03
When God created the earth, He didn’t make a single thing to stand on its own two feet forever. Not an insect, not a bird, not a beast of the field, or a plant was designed to be self-sufficient. Every living thing has a hunger that must be satisfied, a need to be made new and whole again day after day. In Psalm 104, David wrote, "When you give them your breath, life is created, and you renew the face of the earth."
“I don’t refuse to work;
I refuse to begin.”
From Observing the Wind
About the author
I write about the things that stay with us: faith tested by real life, memories that arrive without warning, and the grace hidden in days that seem unremarkable.