How do you face disappointment? When a relationship falls apart, or a friend lets you down, or something you were looking forward to (like getting pregnant or clinching the next promotion) doesn’t happen, how do you respond? I don’t handle it very well. My instinct is to run from the pain, to numb myself with distractions and to avoid that awful feeling at all cost. It’s too uncomfortable, unpleasant and painful for my liking. So I scroll through my Facebook feed for the tenth time in four minutes. I lose myself in a certain online game of matching coloured candies. I text my friends to see if anyone’s around to chat. I search for something, anything, to soothe the aching hole in my soul where my dream used to be. Then I come to my senses and I sit down to blog.
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Please Celebrate Your Birthday
So your birthday’s coming up.
Soon you will turn 20, or a quarter of a century, or 29, or the big 3-0 (…GASP), or 37, or whatever age you will be. You are trying not to think about it because there is this feeling of disappointment that comes with thought of getting another year older.
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The day I felt like a Terrible Father
This is the story of my worst day as a father, the day I felt like a complete failure of a dad.
It was a Saturday in early July, shortly after we had moved into our new home. As was often the case, Olive and I decided we would split the parenting duties for the day. She would watch Allie in the morning while I unpacked the house. And I would watch Allie in the afternoon while she unpacked the house.
When God Feels Like a Meany
What do you do when God sets you up for something great, only to pull the rug from underneath you? This past week has felt like that for me. Being the recovering perfectionist that I am, I had wanted to wait until this story had a happy ending before I wrote about it. But as I contemplated what was going on, I felt convicted to be more honest and real; to tell it as it is.