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About a year ago, my city’s council and mayor put me on the zoning board of appeals.

What does a zoning board of appeals do?

Let’s say that you want to put up a new sign on your building, but the sign you want to put up is bigger than the city ordinance allows.

The zoning board of appeals–five of your fellow citizens and neighbors–will hear your case and either rule in your favor or hold you to the ordinance.

City ordinances may cause drowsiness, but I find each case that comes before us to be thrilling.

Business or property owners come before us and make their best arguments for why the city ordinance is not fair or should not apply in their case. Most of the time, they make strong cases and we rule in their favor.

Sometimes, they just don’t want to be bothered by the city ordinance.

In those cases, we rule against them.

Some...

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I have three cousins.

Just three.

My wife, Tracy, has so many cousins she has a hard time counting them all or recalling their names.

She feels sorry for me when she remembers that I have only three.

Not only do I suffer a severe lack of cousins (as Tracy sees it), but my cousins and I never lived in the same state.

Since I grew up in Ohio and my extended family was in Tennessee, I saw aunts, uncles, and cousins about once a year (at most).

Tracy, however, tells stories about her childhood among her aunts, uncles, and cousins. When she was growing up, most of them lived in her neighborhood. They popped in to visit almost every day.

I love that Tracy’s family lived close by and that she grew up feeling close to them. But I don’t feel like I missed out on that, even though I rarely saw my family because they lived so far away.

That is...

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Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew 5:11-12).

April slapped me.

She was the only person in sixth grade who still tried to be friends with me. That ended the instant her palm met my face.

Sixth grade was a bad year.

I used to call it the “year of persecution.”

Halfway through the school year, my teacher, Mr. Crosby, started a science unit on the theory of evolution.

My church and my parents raised me to be a creationist. That is, we believed that the Book of Genesis Chapter 1 is fact: God spoke the universe into existence in six days.

Until sixth grade, I didn’t know that anyone believed...

I am not even one-tenth of the husband I hope to become for my wife.

That I know after 13 years of marriage (today!–October 3, 2021).

The thing about marriage is, we have to get into it with its last day in mind.

Marriage is made for making faith, hope, and love over a lifetime together.

When I married Tracy, I knew that it would take decades (if I’m lucky) to grow into the man who knows how to love her just right.

But on the day that I become almost ten tenths of the husband I hope to be for her, we will be very old (if we’re lucky) and we may be sick and weak and going through one of the worst times of our lives. When that time comes, I’ll give her all that I’ve got left in the tank. It may not be much, but it will be all she needs then and there.

Then, all the decades of building trust and learning each other will add up to one moment on Earth when our marriage meets its...

“What do you want to do with your one and only life?”

Jim stared at me from across his desk.

I knew what he wanted me to say: “Marketing.”

But I could not say it because I would not mean it.

“Look Brad,” he said. “This is the chance of a lifetime. Will you really let it go to waste?”

I walked out of Jim’s corner office and went back to my cube. I slumped in the chair and stared out the window.

What did I want to do with my one and only life?

A year ago, I would have given Jim the answer he wanted me to give. I would have jumped on the chance to fill a job that the company’s chief marketing officer made just for me.

But now something seemed off.

I was older. Wiser. I was 24 years old now.

A year earlier, I was a fresh face at the Fortune 500 information technology company that hired me two months before I graduated from college. I was sure the salary on my offer letter was...

In the Church of Christ, we teach that a person is “born again” (Gospel of John 3:3) when he comes up out of the waters of baptism.

If that is the case, I was “born again” on March 4, 1987.

But the day I was truly born again (or maybe we can say most born again) was September 24, 2012.

That was the day my son, Daniel, was born.

Before that day, I was just trying real hard to make believe God.

But when I heard my son’s first cry and they put him in my arms, I didn’t have to try to make believe anymore.

For the first time in my life, I knew God for real.

In that operating room where they took Daniel out of my wife’s womb, I found myself in a trinity of trinities.

The first is the trinity of our new family: Daddy, Mommy, and Daniel.

The second is Jesus, me, and Daniel. As I learn about manhood by following the life and teachings of Jesus, I pass on that manhood to Daniel...

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On the morning of September 11, 2001, my world was so bright I had to wear shades. Really. I had to wear sunglasses that morning.

I was 25 years old. I strolled out of my apartment in my new shoes and new slacks. I got into my new car, opened the sunroof, and turned up some dc Talk on the stereo. I picked up a breakfast sandwich and a coffee at the place around the corner. I drove to my new job at the place where I dreamed of working since I was 18 years old. I had a quick daydream about all the new things I would do at that job that would lead to more new things that I would do for the rest of the long life that stretched out before me. I thought of the new crush I had on a girl I just met. I imagined how she and I could fall into new love that would lead to a new family.

I took a bite of croissant. The wind blew through my hair.

I felt like the...

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This is the third post in a series about critical race theory.

You can read the first post here and the second post here.

In this post, I will only use the words “critical race theory” three times (and you already read two of them).

That is because critical race theory is not the point of this post.

Nor is it really the point of what cable news, social media, or talk radio have to say about it.

What is the point?

Read on and decide for yourself.

Let’s start with this: You have an opinion.

How did you let it form within you?

What information did you choose to let in?

What information did you choose to believe and keep?

In this post, I ask you to think about who you choose to believe and what you choose to do with those beliefs.

I will show you what I mean by telling you two true stories.

The first story is about “Jody,” a...

Irwin family Christmas morning breakfast, December 25, 2008. Photo by Bethy Irwin.

Ask me what my mom, Debbie Irwin, is all about.

My answer: “Sweet rolls.”

From scratch.

You see, Mom used to make a special breakfast for our family every Sunday morning. She always made it from scratch.

She made sweet rolls, applesauce muffins, banana bread, coffee cake, pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, and many other yummy carbohydrates.

Sometimes, she baked on Saturday nights.

Sometimes, she got up at 5 a.m. on Sunday mornings. She baked and got ready for church while the rest of us slept.

In our family, one thing was as sure as the sunrise: We ate a special made-from-scratch breakfast every Sunday morning before we pulled ourselves together and went off to church.

In fact, we ate breakfast together as a family every day of the week. The only exception was Saturdays. On Saturdays, my sisters...

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On Labor Day, I can’t help but think about my granddaddy.

He didn’t finish high school, but after his service in the U.S. Army, he went on to work on the railroad for about 40 years.

Granddaddy did not get rich, but he earned enough to give his family a comfortable life. He earned enough to save and share.

Granddaddy used some of his savings to pay for part of what it took for my sisters and me to go to one of the best private Christian universities in the country. Our education and experience there formed our faith and prepared us for our careers in the helping professions.

And even though Granddaddy died 19 years ago this week, the pension and savings he earned still support my grandmama to this day.

Granddaddy believed in hard work, but he also believed in organized labor. He knew that his legacy and standard of living would not be the same...