About a year ago, I started the habit of keeping a daily journal.

One of the most important parts of that routine is giving each day a “happiness score” on a scale of high to low.

It’s a subjective score that reflects how I feel about what I did that day. After a year of this habit, it’s becoming clear to me what makes a day “good” in my mind.

Before I share that, please let me share what seems to make a day “bad”:

Time without structure.

Is that as interesting and surprising to you as it has been for me?

Days with no deadlines, meetings, obligations, or plans end up being unhappy, unproductive days that end with regret and sometimes shame.

“Good days,” however, focus on goals and move through a plan that I set in advance. Deadlines, meetings, and obligations actually help. I go through the day with drive and focus.

The kind of deadlines, meetings, and obligations make a...

Limits are gifts of great value.

I used to treat sleep as optional. “I’ll just go without sleep this week” were words that frequently came from my mouth.

My body argued a little (20s) and then protested (30s). As I was approaching 40, my body had it’s way: I will sleep at least 6.4 hours per night or else.

The “or else” is shuffling around all day, eyes drooping, head throbbing, unable to concentrate or produce anything of much value.

My body’s limit is improving the quality of my life a great deal. For the last six months, I’ve been averaging 6.4 hours of sleep per night (no alarm) and I feel great. The quality of my life and work is improving dramatically.

The limit is a gift.

We don’t tend to like limits because they force us to make hard choices.

In my case, my body’s limit on waking hours is forcing me to choose sleep. Which means I’m choosing not to do other activities...

It’s easy to say I want to be smart, but do I put my mind under the strain it takes to make it so?

It’s easy to say I want to be healthful and strong. Do I put my body through the pain it takes to make it so?

It’s easy to say I want to be successful. Do I put myself through the repeated failure and setbacks it takes to make it so?

It’s easy to say I want intimacy. Do I expose myself to heartbreak and vulnerability to make it so?

It’s easy to say I want faith. Do I do the good, but irrational-looking and scary things that make it so?

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”–Jesus Christ (Gospel of John 12.24-25 The Message).

You know, we should get along better with death.

It’s a much a part of our lives as three square a day. The truth is: The life in our lives is dependent on death.

Let’s start with minutiae. Your habit of watching an hour of what may be excellent TV each day may have to die so that you can begin living a more excellent life each day (perhaps by reading, running, or writing).

Your junk food habit may have to die so that you can live longer to enjoy more healthful meals with...

I believe we have an appetite for violence. All of us. It’s a human condition.

Mix that human appetite for violence with the human longing for justice. Now you have a perversion that is ripe for picking by cults of personality, politicians, religious fanatics, and the like.

I’m not writing about insurgents, protestors, or terrorists.

I’m writing about me and you.

If you’re an American like me, you have the luxury of living in a nation that spends $601 billion of your money to send someone else to assassinate, bomb, shoot, and torture without getting your hands bloody.

If you’re a white American like me, you have the luxury of living in a neighborhood far from the despair, poverty, and violence on the other side of the tracks. And when you’re afraid of someone crossing the line and threatening your safe neighborhood, you have a government that spends $80 billion to...

This morning in my journal I wrote:

“When facing a big challenge that seems impossible, take heart that God is giving you a chance to explore just how big, powerful, and sufficient his love can be.”

Or something like that.

I wrote it because I needed to read something like that myself today.

It rang like a bell. It sounded like truth.

Yes, Lord, I’m ready. Let’s go get it.

As I started to copy the phrase from my pen-on-paper journal to this online journal, I hesitated.

How would the same phrase sound to someone who’s child has cancer?

To someone who’s addiction to alcohol is about to take her life after spending her life’s savings and years in every conceivable treatment to no avail? Or to those family members who participate in her slow death?

To someone who lost a family member or friend–or the last trace of feeling safe in their hometown–in the Brussels bombings that...

Something may be clicking for me after 40 years of living life. I’d like to know what you think about it.

You’re reading my first attempt to put it into words.

It goes something like this:

As I’ve lived, I observe an axiom that the more I judge someone the more I take on her or his characteristics. I become what I judge.

Or another way to put it: The more I try to change someone, the more I change into what I’m trying to change about them.

For example: A few years ago I had a boss whose criticism, meddling, and mind-tricks bordered on torture. She would have been better a prosecuting deadbeat dads and Ponzi schemers–or perhaps as a James Bond villain–than a manager.

In the beginning, I tried to change her with kindness and love.

It didn’t work. I grew impatient.

My relationship with her became an obsession. I thought about her 24/7: My anger and frustration eventually became...

I’ve been doing it all my life.

The “prayer list” in the church bulletin–which the old men carried with them to the pulpit when they led prayers–was mostly sick people.

My little sister has Cystic Fibrosis, so our family prayed a lot for her health.

The last few days, I’ve been praying for my little boy’s health. He’s had an awful cold and cough that beat up my heart pretty bad.

My wife caught his cold, so I added her to my prayer list.

And finally, I started praying for my own health on Monday when I came down with the same crud.

Meanwhile, a Facebook friend’s young daughter is fighting cancer (and taking the beating that all cancer fighters take).

A friend of mine lost his 25-year old brother this week (I still don’t know the cause). Was it an accident or a health issue that suddenly overtook him?

Praying for health is a good and right thing to do. Sometimes it seems more...

It’s 5:15 a.m. and I’ve been up since 4 a.m.

The sound of my son’s coughing woke me and won’t let me sleep another wink in peace. The pediatrician opens for walk-ins at 7:30 a.m. and that can’t come soon enough for me.

What started a week ago as an innocent-sounding cough turned menacing and wolfish yesterday–as if my boy is coughing through beads of broken glass. Maybe that’s the over-dramatization of a first-time father at 5 a.m.

All I know is that I can’t focus on anything but my boy coughing. I’m listening for every catch of his breath like the sound of a gun cocking.

Be kind today. You’ll be tempted to judge the people you meet for not being as attentive to you as you think they should be.

Every one of them has a shadow across their heart. Because life in this world is what it is, every person you meet is carrying a burden they cannot put down. They’re not listening to you...

I wish we could have conversations about who will get our vote.

What I mean is that I wish a table full of friends who are voting for different candidates could enjoy a meal and some nice wine and share their views without anything but creative tension in the room.

In the United States, our republic functions best when people can do just that. Enjoy listening and sharing opposing views. Enjoy? Yes, because when we are curious, open-minded, and secure in ourselves we can listen and take in different points of view with an appetite for growth. We can affirm and thank those who have a different point of view for helping us become more aware, more in touch with humanity, and more well-rounded. All of which makes us better citizens, neighbors, and servants. And, all of which makes us better Christians (if that’s what we are).

I want to share my vote with you–not as a challenge or a...