Thou shalt not covet. Right?

Posted in Stories
thou shalt not covet

There was a time when I never wanted a family. No kids, no wife. Just me and blissful solitude.

That was last week. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. It’s not that I didn’t want my family. I was just on edge. All the time. My blood pressure never seemed to settle. I was either buried with work or walking through a hailstorm of noise when I came home.

Never a moment of quiet. It was, in many ways, familiar. But it had never been this worse.

Or should I say, it has never been this worse. Read more »

Are we afraid to hope?

Posted in Stories
FIRE_01

I almost healed a man once. Of Parkinsons. But it never happened. I never got the chance.

I was serving as a missionary in Kalamazoo Michigan. We were knocking on doors, soliciting converts and all that and stumbled upon a man. Let’s call him Rob. He was a short-ish man in his forties with bright red hair, a lean physique, and a crass sense of humor well-befitted to two emissaries of Christ.

Problem was, the guy had Parkinsons. Like, really bad. Every muscle in his body seemed to twitch when we spoke. He could hardly walk and when he did it was with an awkward shuffle. In order to listen to him, I had to place my ear within a foot of him. And even then, as deaf as I was (and still am), I struggled to understand him. Read more »