It becomes hard to trust your own thinking when nothing seems to be working. The space between how I thought it would go and how it is going seems to widen in front of my eyes. Maybe most difficult of all is how often the undesirable outcomes around us spill over into our relationships, both at home and at work. An errant comment too easily turns into an argument. I become blind to my impact on people around me, caught up in the unresolved problems surrounding me. During times like these, we often underestimate the power of the choices we make and how it can create a path back towards what’s working or down the slippery slope of self-destruction, which my husband affectionately calls “flirting with the gutter.”

 “We must love one another or die.”  -W. H. Auden

A near tragedy was averted by love this week in a Georgia elementary school when the school’s bookkeeper was able to connect with love to a troubled, angry, lonely young man who could no longer bear the weight of being unloved. He arrived with a loaded gun and enough additional ammunition to kill everyone in his path. He was accustomed to being...

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” -Albert Camus

Today was the memorial service for the doctor who recently took his own life. The local high school auditorium was full to capacity again, for yet another untimely death in our community. First I was struck by how many lives a single life touches. We are often so unaware of how many people we impact each day...