The Miracle Box

  To be honest, today is a day I feel pretty ambivalent about.  Today my sister, Jane comes to stay with Karen and I for the next six months. The other six months of the year, she stays with my other sister, Dorothy and her husband. We decided to share the responsibility when our parents passed away. Jane is 62, has downs syndrome, difficulty walking, needs help with a lot of self-care things, is not especially appreciative, and can be very stubborn. I love Jane and sometimes she can be adorable, but it is still work to have her here. Our time is much more constrained as there are extra meals to be made, much more laundry, physical therapy to do, showers to give, doctors to see, etc., etc. Karen and I are no longer on our own, unencumbered. The whole atmosphere will be different. In the big picture of course, it could be much more difficult. Jane has very few serious medical needs. She can feed herself and is generally content to be on her own. Still, life is about to change r...

  The New John Simmons   I grew up in a two-parent family in St. Louis, Missouri. My grandmother used to take me to Sunday School and church, so I knew something about God early on. They were teaching me at the church how to pray and kept saying, just ask God for what you want because he answers prayer.    One Sunday night when I was twelve, I had a project due at school the next day and I hadn’t done it. So, I prayed to God I would have Monday off. The next morning, I woke up and saw my clock and school had already started. My mom must have let me sleep in. I thought, Wow. Prayer works. Then she came in the room and explained that my father had passed away from a heart attack during the night. That event broke my relationship with God up and made me feel so guilty. I was thinking, if God is going to answer prayers like this, why would I want to pray? Why would I want to be involved with a God like that?   I carried that guilt about my...

The Dress I grew up in a pastor’s home, the eldest of three girls. My dad was bi-vocational, so he worked a normal job in addition to being a pastor. My mom worked really hard at a Christian school teaching piano and other classes. She worked to help pay for our tuition at that school, which was a very expensive proposition for our family. But my parents wanted us to go to a school with a God view. It was that important to them. We actually drove thirty-five minutes to get to school, which was kind of unheard of in that time and place.  We didn’t have a lot and there was stress about money between my parents. I mean, we were very well taken care of, we never lacked for anything, but there was no room for extras. In my teen years that anxiety about money became more and more of a thing in my life. There was peer pressure of course and a lot of different income levels at our school kind of drove that. Understanding how tight money was and not wanting to be a burden to my parents I ...

    Psalm 127:3 – “Children are a gift from the Lord.” (NLT)   Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (NIV)    Fifty years ago, most couples married relatively young, compared to today. This was true for my parents. They were both twenty-one at the time. My mother was a strong believer in Jesus Christ and she brought my father to God through their relationship. And as most couples did back then, they also immediately began to try to have a family. However, after a few of years of trying it just wasn’t happening. In fact, after five years, they ended up going to a doctor and having tests run. The doctor’s sad conclusion was that they would never be able to have children.    This was devastating news to both of them, but my mom accepted the situation with grace. She believed in God having a plan for them and that He would do what was best in His own tim...

  The Christian Indie Publishers Association announced today that my book, A LITTLE FAITH: A FATHER'S MIRACLE STORY OF FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, AND A MICRO PREEMIE won the 2021 Christian Indie Award for Best Biography/Memoir. I'm very honored and humbled for the book to get this kind of recognition from peers, readers, and publishers. Thanks everyone for all your support. All glory to God! You'll find more information on the book at https://www.beliefbooks.com Blessings, Bob 

  "Proven Wrong by God. Again."        We lay there in the pitch-black living room sprawled about on couches and chairs. A bunch of 17-year-old boys chilling after a night of “going out.” It was 3 am.   We were now ruminating on the general topic of girls, girlfriends, and marriage. I declared into the dark something like, “I can’t see any good reason to get married.” I can’t remember if anyone commented back. Maybe everyone else was asleep. I continued with assurance however, “That’s not for me.”        It was the first of many times that God would prove me wrong. Eighteen months later I was at the altar saying, “I do” to the woman I’ve been married to for eleven years and share three wonderful kids with.        That summer of my negative proclamation about marriage, I took a job at a new pizza place that had opened in a local shopping center. They were hiring lots of high school kids as hosts and servers...