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As a human being, we fight many battles on many fronts. Children’s battles are mostly local skirmishes fought on a relational level – with parents, or with other kids. Then our intellect matures and the battle moves simultaneously inward and outward – inward battles with ourselves and our emotions and our intentions; outward battles with the “great ideas” surrounding politics and theology and philosophy. We wonder about how life should be lived.

Rarely during those early years did I glimpse the “war to end all wars”: in other words, death. Battles with death came as flashing sorties when a grandparent died or a friend tragically passed at an early age. Yet death, at least in my life, made so few inroads during those early years, and I could almost pretend that death did not exist.
Continue reading “What if Death is Independence Day?”

Last month the muse landed in your brain and you were astounded at what came out.

That one particular blog post seemed to flow effortlessly from your fingertips.

A host of people loved what you had to say.

Now share it with us.

In the comments section below, please let us know the link to your most-read OR your own personal favorite blog post from June – either one you wrote, or one you read, or one of each. Next week I’ll compile my own favorites from the list and announce the best of June.

This is an excerpt from a family history book I’m working on. Two of my great-great-grandparent’s (Amos King and Catherine Stoltzfus Lapp) first spouses died, which is how they ended up together. It’s strange to think about how the death of these two people, both in their twenties, led to the marriage of my great-great-grandparents, then the birth of my great-grandmother. Which eventually led to me.

Twists and turns of a storyline that determined my existence reached a hectic pace at the end of 1898. First, on November 17^th, my great-great grandfather Amos King married Katie Stoltzfus, daughter of Jonas Stoltzfus and Catherine Mast. Two months later my great-great-grandmother Catherine Stoltzfus’s first husband, Samuel Lapp, died while while undergoing an operation on a kitchen table, the victim of appendicitis.
Continue reading “Twists and Turns in a Storyline That Led to my Existence”

“The notion that one can write better during one season of the year than another Samuel Johnson labeled, ‘Imagination operating upon luxury.’ Another luxury for an idle imagination is the writer’s own feeling about the work. There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.”

– Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Yet again I feel chastised by Ms. Dillard. She is a stern mentor, even in book form.
Continue reading “I Write Better in the Autumn (sorry, Samuel Johnson)”

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.

The couple walks to the front of the church holding their child. She is asleep now (of course she is – it’s day time). They are awake now, every night, rocking her and feeding her and sleeping on the floor beside her crib. The baby’s needs come first.

They have laid down their life. Continue reading “Dying For Your Friends”

Mostly I just remember the heat. And the dust. And the fire ants. I suppose the cares and concerns of children remain on fairly basic levels, and as a four-year-old boy living in Laredo, Texas, those were my main worries.

I remember hearing that there was a swimming pool in our new trailer park. My mother packed us up for a walk through the mid-day heat. Now that I have children of my own, I know what a production that can be: changing into swimsuits, slicking everyone up with sunscreen, grabbing a few pool-friendly toys and maybe a lawn chair. She probably carried all of this plus my two-year-old sister. I probably walked, dragging my towel through the dusty dirt roads, eyes peeled for red ants wielding cross bows with fiery arrows.
Continue reading “My Life’s Metaphor For Disappointment”