joel's thoughts

I am an American. I am a conservative. I am a Christian. I grew up in the 80s while Ronald Reagan was president, followed by George H.W. Bush, and I was raised with fairly conservative values — honor God, family, and country, respect and support the military, give an honest day’s hard work for honest […]

Yesterday was February 2nd, Super Bowl Sunday, and it began as most typical Sundays do. Got the kids up and moving to get ready for church, ended up running later than we wanted, went to worship, chatted with the Pastor, went to the class I’m helping with, listened to some good teaching on some early […]

Yet another tale today from a friend (this one on FB) of a man in a divorce situation forgetting what it means to be a man. Lacking vision, lacking responsibility, lacking commitment to continue the parenting job you started in any remotely responsible way that puts the kids’ needs before what you want. Too bad […]

One of the things about this property that appealed to us, as I mentioned before, was that we had an interest in having goats and it was already set up for that. There was a nice little barn, two pastures with plenty of forage, and a wooden board fence with a few strands of barbed […]

I’ve learned that, at least for us, life is going to be crazy no matter what we do or leave alone. But I’ve also learned that if we can accept that as a given, we always have a choice — we can let the crazy bus take us wherever it will, or we can drive it ourselves. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather stomp on the pedal, steer as best I can, trust God with everything, and see where we end up.

Okay, I know I’m a little late to the party for commenting on this whole 7-year-old dancers video, but I’m actually commenting on the clip of the Early Show discussing it (click on “Launch video player” on this page to see the Early Show clip).  I just find it remarkably ironic that three grown women […]

I tend to have certain Libertarian leanings in my political views, so I was very interested to see Rand Paul win the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Kentucky.  He’s now on the national stage, and the more liberal side thereof has zeroed in on (and is seeking to amplify) his take on the Civil […]

So I just got done reading this fascinating piece on the upcoming Tea Party convention, and I had a bit of an epiphany.  The author kept talking about waiting to see if the movement could be organized into a “political machine” with “influence” while pointing out the inherent challenges in organizing rather disparate groups, some […]