The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I like to think I am not a Scrooge.  I enjoy almost every aspect of the Christmas season starting with that jam-packed plate of food on Thanksgiving Day ending with the latest BCS Champion somewhere in the second week of January.  The Whaley family packs a lot of good stuff into this time of year.  We [...]

Woke Up This Morning Feeling Fine

I have been sick for most of the past week and a half.  It started out as just a little stuffy nose.  I took some allergy medicine and thought that would do the trick.  By the next day my head hurt and my nose was running off my face.  The day after that brought “the [...]

Pray for Each Other

While you are going about your daily activities, if you are at all like me, you will have things happen to you that remind you of people in your life.  You may think of someone you are currently involved with.  Or you may think of an old friend long gone.  It is funny to me [...]

Crunchy on the Outside, Chewy on the Inside

We are getting ready to have the exterior of our house painted.  It is going to be a different color that it is now.  To me that means it is basically a different house.  When people drive past they will think one of two things: “That house looks great now.  A new color was what [...]

Setting Yourself Up

I am very much a task oriented person.  I love to have a list and cross thing off and see the progress I am making.  My wife and I sit down every Sunday night and make a list of the major things we need to get done in any given week.  As the week goes [...]

Don’t Give Up

This past Sunday I was able to share with you some of my story and my philosophy on life.  I am a firm believer in not giving up on people.  And that is saying a lot because people can be extremely frustrating (myself included).  But we should never, ever give up on people especially ones [...]

But Daddy, I Want It!

Why are we never satisfied?  Our contentment is so limited that even when we finally get that thing we always wanted, within a short frame of time we are already on to the next thing.  We say the kids are bad, but really they have a pretty good example to follow. And our wants are [...]

State of Body equals State of Worship

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test [...]

It’s Been a While

I would like to apologize for not putting something fresh up here in almost a month.  I am sure all four of my readers are highly disappointed.  I always thought I would have plenty to say and that I could pound out one of these posts once a week without any problem.  But that is [...]

Grass vs. Weeds

Since summer started my wife and I (with the help of a landscaper) have been trying to transform our yard from a very scary place to a lush haven of greenery the likes of which few have ever seen.  OK, so maybe I exaggerate a little, but our yard was pretty bad and while it is still [...]

Day to Day

Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross DAILY and follow me.”  (Luke 9:23)  This verse has been picked apart over the last couple of thousand years, so I just want to focus on one word…DAILY.  There are some tihngs I do daily.  I eat, sleep, talk, [...]

John Cougar was wrong!

In the early eighties one of the best known songs was “Jack & Diane” by (at the time) John Cougar.  There is a line in the song that says, “Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.”  That seems so true sometimes.  Cougar was writing about that after the glory days of high school, [...]

And So It Goes

How come it seems like sometimes life is a big train wreck and other times it is a party?  Why do I have a great sales day one day and the next I don’t even get a phone call?  Why do my kids act like angels when my parents are around, but like escaped convicts [...]

My Bad

Why is it so hard to be wrong?  I mean the way I see it I do about a thousand different things on any given day from eating breakfast, to running, to getting the mail, to working, to blogging, to playing with the kids, to reading, to talking, and the list goes on and on.  [...]

Just Being There

Following Christ requires a lot.  Sometimes it requires laughter.  Sometimes it requires tears.  Sometimes it requires money.  Sometimes it requires hospitality.  Sometimes it requires strength.  But it always, always, always requires love and time. I have learned over the past few months that just by being there for someone or something, you can make a [...]

Check Me Out

On Monday, April 19th I celebrated nine years of sobriety.  To be honest the day came and was close to over before my wife reminded me of the significance.  She asked me if I had remembered and when I confessed it had slipped my mind she followed up with this question: “So is this day [...]

Atticus Finch

My favorite book of all time is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  My wife and I love the book so much that we named our first child Harper.  This book really touches at the core of human behavior, how perceptions are developed and how they can be wrong, and regardless of how circumstances [...]

Questions

I love this concept of the question box.  I think it makes our place more comfortable.  I love questions.  I love getting them and I love asking them.  I love looking for answers and knuckling down under a particularly difficult head-scratcher.  I also like being able to say, “I don’t know.”  Because when you get [...]

Hurting

Sometimes I hurt.  I am not talking about pain in the joints or headaches (although I have those too), but about emotional discomfort, mental weariness, or just soul-scorching, hard biting pain.  Sometimes I feel that pain within myself, but often it is cast upon me by listening to the pain of others.  And it sucks.  [...]

Farming

Today I believe I am going to just give you a link to someone else’s blog.  Recently I have been struggling with my own identity in my professional life.  That term “professional life” sounds funny to me, because I really don’t see myself as professional at anything.  I really like being a husband and a [...]