An Irreconcilable Difference?

June 8, 2016.Reading time 5 minutes.

We’ve had a good run. I have always been amazed that two people who are so different can make a marriage work. We don’t have very many interests or hobbies in common. She doesn’t like sports and I don’t like her choice in movies – but those are little things. We’ve raised fine children and built a house together, agreeing on the big things.

Our parenting styles are very compatible. Religion, politics, financial goals – those life influences that can divide a couple… we’ve always been on the same page. Oh sure, we’ve had arguments. I don’t recall many knockdown dragouts, but we have fought. In the end, we have made up. We both believe in the Biblical admonishment to never let the sun go down on your anger so we have always tried to solve our issues before we go to bed. It has worked for over two decades. We suffered through seemingly unendurable pain of late. But we did it together.

Now, however, something is changed. Read More

What I Learned in a DC Men’s Room

May 25, 2016.Reading time 5 minutes.

I had an epiphany!

I know that sounds like such a liturgical word that men wearing robes with dangling crosses share from a pulpit. No, I didn’t have the “appearance or manifestation of deity” kind of epiphany. I had the “sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple or commonplace experience,” kind. And ironically, I had it in a men’s room in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, right across the street from the United States Capitol!

Like most men, I have always done some of my best thinking in bathrooms, but this one surprised me. Read More