Classic re-post from 2009
Heidi wanted the family to sing at her wedding. I modified this song for her and we sang it as she and Austin stood together at the altar just before they exchanged their vows.
Download: Heidi and Austin
In September of 1979 Lois and I drove away to begin our lives together. That was thirty years, eight children and two grandsons ago. Driving this same road earlier this month I was thinking about Austin and Heidi. In a few weeks they would drive away together. I wrote …

Classic re-post from 2002
“You need to get more exercise,” they said. But when you weigh as much as I did that’s not as easy as it sounds. And on a perfectly innocent-looking day a few years ago it landed me in trouble.
I had talked my then thirteen year old son Kyle into a bike ride with me. We were biking the Kokosing Gap Trail in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. It was a beautiful path along a river built on an old railroad right of way. Most of …

A classic from 2003
When we moved to Flint to assume the direction of the ministry here at the Character Inn we discarded or gave away many, many things. We now live in an apartment on the sixth floor in six rooms. We have a storage room in the basement. In preparation for our move we hauled away six truckloads of things at one point and gave many things to Goodwill or just threw them away.
There was one thing I could never throw away because it was too …

Have you noticed that there are times it is really hard to act like a Chrisitan? When you have a personal conflict with another Christian it’s hard to act like a Christian. When you have a personal conflict involving sports, it’s really a lot harder. When you have a personal conflict with another Christian involving sports and your children, then it is really, really tempting to set aside your Christian profession and just throw down the gloves and go at it.
Linda had a conflict with another Christian, named Paula. …

The most important lessons you learn will be outside the formal leaning structure. My second fall in college I toured the west with a singing group. Our classroom for three months and hundreds of miles was a bus. We had no privacy. We had to be with the same people for hours at a time. In a setting like that irritations inevitably surface.
One young man in the group rubbed me the wrong way right from the beginning. His name was Jerry. Usually I find it easy to like people but …

I have to admit to some quaint ideas. I still feel an inner warmth and get a little misty-eyed when I see a picture of a family walking to church on a spring morning. In these warm fantasies the sun is always shining, birds sing, and the walk is lined with daffodils. The trees are in the tender bud of spring and church bells ring in the distance.
Dad is wearing a suit. Mom is in a beautiful Easter dress, her hair “just so”. The boys …

Purring through the dark on a long trip one night my Dad got to talking. He told me a shocking story about our family. During the depression chickens were mysteriously disappearing from the family farm just north of Chatham, Ohio. Times were hard. Money and food were scarce.
After a number of chickens disappeared they began to realize it was not animals but humans who were spiriting the chickens away in the night.
They formed a plan. The boys took turns out on the back porch each night waiting, shot-gun in …

My Grandfather named things. He named his cows. He named his tractors. He even gave my Grandmother a nickname. She had a perfectly good name when he met her. It was a beautiful, appropriate, honorable name that fit her perfectly. Her name is Grace but grandpa always called her Tiny.
My Dad acquired the habit of naming things from him. His names have never been literary masterpieces. They are more playful and descriptive. Examples include names like “Tricky Little Copper” and “the Cardboard Bank.”
I’ve named a few things myself. (Ask me …

I was just finishing some yard work when I saw a Hispanic man drive up in a pick-up truck. A young man was with him, later I found out it was his son. I smiled and waved, he smiled a waved back. They unloaded some equipment and went to work. I finished packing my things away.
They had not been there five minutes when suddenly there was a load bang. The young began to scream over the noise of the power equipment, “Father, father! My …

We used to live less than an hour from the heart of the Ohio Amish Country. The countryside there was pleasant to see and we frequently drove the back roads in every season and watched the progress of growing things and family life. My day off was Monday. That was usually our day to wander the back roads, browse the bookstores, and sample the baked goods of the Amish Country. We enjoyed picnics in the summer, apple cider in the fall, and coffee with cheese tarts …