From Me to You

Did you know that Charles Dickens—that's right, the guy who wrote "A Christmas Carol"—wrote a book about the life of Jesus? And the best part is that he wrote it for his kids! The handwritten manuscript was a private family treasure for many years, until the children decided to share it with the world in 1934. It was the last work of Dickens to be published. I have a tradition of reading the short book each Easter. As a Christian, I appreciate the overview it gives of the life of Jesus Christ. But most of all, it's a good reminder to me that each of us—whether we have "children of our own" or not—have the opportunity to create something meaningful to leave the next generation. Whether that ''thing" is a tangible item, or a teaching, or an influence, it has the potential to continue shaping, strengthening, and empowering our children long after we've left. Every day gives us another chance to create—through words, artwork, letters, v

I’m trying to get back in the habit of exercise, and found myself thinking a lot about comparisons while on the stationary bike today. You know how when you’re on a treadmill or some other machine, you can choose different programs to run? The machine makes the incline steeper or the pace faster for certain intervals of time. The changing difficulty levels are often represented by vertical bars on the machine’s screen. As I looked down the row of machines today, some people were running fast, others were sweating hard and pushing the pedals slowly. How could I tell who was working the hardest? I realized that I couldn’t! Because the person who seems to be flying by might have zero incline, while the person barely moving might be climbing steep terrain. The person who is only walking might have already been through an intense workout and is finally doing a much-needed cool-down interval. In a similar way, we don’t know what experiences other people ar

On January 7, 2015, Kevin Jorgensen clung to the side El Capitan—a rock formation in Yosemite National Park. He and his climbing buddy Tommy Caldwell would go on to become the first people to free-climb Dawn Wall, but they didn't know it at the time. Instead, what Kevin knew was that he kept falling. Over, and over, and over again. He was stuck on Pitch 15, a treacherous sideways part of the climb that had only the tiniest of sharp handholds. He would fail to complete the pitch 11 times over seven days.  Fast-forward two days. On January 9, Jorgensen slid along Pitch 15 with renewed determination. Put your foot here. Grab there. Shift foot there. Release and regrip. Every technical move had to be done exactly right. Finally, the magical moment came. Jorgensen clipped his tether into the carabiner, marking the completion of the pitch. He had done it! What made the difference? I wonder if part of his success came about because of two important practices Jorgensen did