It can occasionally seem desirable to be someone else. Perhaps to be someone who doesn’t feel what we feel or who says the right things (or who doesn't care that they don’t). Sometimes I’d like to slip out of myself like an outfit poorly chosen at the beginning of the day and roam about for the rest of the afternoon as another person, as someone who is not me as I or others know myself but who in some way still reflects something essentially true about who I am.
Read MoreA few months ago, I sat across a table from a four-year-old named Thomas. He and I were waiting on his dad who was in the gym coaching my son and the rest of a high school church league basketball team. I had some paper and markers, so we began to draw. Thomas drew his brother, where he lived, a mystery map, the gate to his house, the family car, his mom, his dad, a basketball, a fish in the water, and much, much more. Did I know this because he was a gifted illustrator?
Read MoreThe pine trees towered over us, swaying precariously in the winds high above, but down on the pine needle-laden ground my boys and I hardly felt the gusts. Besides, we were hard at work and couldn’t be bothered with the weather. We had gathered pieces of mostly rotting wood with plans to erect a grand establishment: a place that would say, “We were here, and we did something great.”
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