Real Life Reflections

I had a teacher in high school who had his doctorate in English. He was the only teacher in this school of 2,000 students that had his PHD, and I was uhhh fortunate enough to have him as my instructor, not just one year, but two. As in most large schools, our class of 500 had been divided up into several learning levels. English had always been my strong suit, and so I managed to make it into the honors level English class. I don't recall much of what Dr. Joe (as we not-so-affectionately called him behind his back) actually taught us (or tried to teach us), but over the course of those two years, there was one phrase he said repeatedly and often to this class of honor students, "God! You're so dumb!" We would sneak sidelong glances to each other and grin. Hopefully without him seeing us. I don't think any of us took it personally, and yet, thirty something years later, I still recall his words. Several weeks ago I began to read the book of Matthew. I've r...

Perhaps you've heard of the young adult novels by Scott Westerfeld, The Pretties and The Uglies ( I could go on to tell you what they're about, but I think that might be obvious), and perhaps you've heard the terms, "the haves" and "the have-nots?" While these refer to appearance and financial position respectively, I have some terms for two basic personality types: "the all-or-nothings" and "the balanced." I belong to the latter group (sometimes I think I'm the poster child for it: I'm so balanced, I could send my personality to walk a tight rope over the Royal Gorge - note, my personality , not me!), but I have an extensive list of close relationships to people in the former group: my husband, my son, two of my sisters, and my boss to name a few. Without exception, their hearts are huge. They're passionate and relational. At work, they're the ones who have vision. They look towards the future, towards improvement,...