Riding the Waves
My sons argue over Avengers characters. The littlest insists he’s Captain America. Another claims Hawkeye. There’s an argument over Ironman. They resolve it by awarding that honor to me, given that I’m...
View ArticleAmerican Idol: A Guide for Hearing God’s Voice, Part 2
Continued from yesterday. While many desires prompt goodness, others trigger evil and thus can’t be signs of our vocation to love. Ignatius called these desires disordered, meaning that a God-given...
View ArticleMy Mother, My Daughter, Myself
My daughter Anna Maria was born on Orthodox Easter Sunday—Pascha—six years ago. That year, the date fell on April 19. While her brother had blasted his way into the world at the very bottom of the...
View ArticleSugar, Sugar, Part 1: June 10, 2011
I’ve written before about my father’s alcoholism. From my adolescence until his death, I spent a lot of time and energy being angry with him, and letting myself be hurt by him. At the core of my anger...
View ArticleSugar, Sugar, Part 2: May 8, 2015
Continued from yesterday. When the editors of Good Letters first asked if they could rerun my 2011 post on my sugar addiction, which was posted yesterday, I couldn’t even bring myself to read the old...
View ArticleIn the Marrow of Depression and Anxiety
By the time you read this, I’ll be feeling much better. Therapy will have commenced, medications will have been adjusted, and clinging to the One who clings to the brokenhearted will have kept me...
View ArticleA Good Fight: Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night)
If a pair of writer/directors exists that can rival Joel and Ethan Coen for a body of work with profound depictions of humanity, it is another set of brothers. The films of the Dardennes, Jean-Pierre...
View ArticleConference Envy: A Survival Guide
Yesterday I was running around the park in a T-shirt with a birthday party full of seven-year-olds. Today, I walked downtown through a flurry of hard, tiny pellets of snow that I couldn’t escape from....
View ArticleThe Cost of Writing the Truth
I remember my mother used to go to bed for the day. The blackness of her mood seemed to darken her room. I don’t know why she left her door open. Maybe she knew, even in her unresponsive state, that...
View ArticleMorning in a Forgotten Neighborhood
The other day it was raining. The clouds were impossibly low, skimming the tops of buildings as they scuttled across eastern Michigan on their way to somewhere nice. The rain fell not so much as drops...
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