Have you ever had a distinct and unexpected impression?
When I was a young Boy Scout—and I was very young for my age—I went to a week longe scout camp. I left home with a fresh face and a full … Read more
Author: H. Wallace Goddard
Wally Goddard is a retired professor of Family Life having served in Arkansas and Alabama. He developed programs on personal well-being, marriage, and parenting. He is well known for his many creative family programs, including The Marriage Garden, The Parenting Journey, and Blueprint for Happiness. Wally has authored or co-authored several books including Between Parent and Child, The Soft-Spoken Parent, and Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage. He has been recognized by his colleagues with several awards including the Outstanding Family Life Educator Award. Wally and his wife, Nancy, have three adult children, fourteen grandchildren, and have cared for many foster children over the years. Wally describes Nancy as the finest human being he has ever known.
The Great Discovery: Jesus as the Balm of Humanity
Sincere mortals have one central challenge in mortality, figuring out what to do with our persistent badness. We strive to be good and regularly fall short. We seek to be holy but we have holes in the knees of our … Read more
Clinging to Misery
You’ve probably heard that the natural man is an enemy to God. (While there is less evidence to support the idea, it is probably true that the natural woman is also an enemy to God.) If we are not changed … Read more
The Conspiracy of Nature: Are We Set Up for Failure?
Nature conspires against us in many ways. In physics the conspiracy of nature means that there are limits to our ability to fully know and control nature and her doings. The law of entropy suggests that everything runs down. In … Read more
Trusting in Ourselves
… Read moreAnd he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
The Pharisee stood and
The Gospel at Odds with Self-Esteem
Picture a person with high self-esteem. Probably that person is talented and confident. Ironically, one of the ways that we may be sure that that person has high self-esteem is that we always feel inferior around him or her. We … Read more
When Kings and Queens Come to Call
Imagine that you own a modest farm in rural Wyoming. You enjoy your work. You make just enough to get by. But one day everything is changed. You get a call from a powerful monarch. The king is inquiring whether … Read more
Honest Lies and Shaded Truths
Honesty is tricky business. It can be either good or bad. Sometimes we do the bad kind of honesty and call it good. That is very destructive. It is also very dishonest.
Brutal Honesty
A mother had observed her daughter … Read more
The Perils of Excellence
If we were to create a caricature of the typical American commencement address, it would entail Famous Person X coming to say to a group of distracted students: “Take this one virtue (for which I am duly famous) and make … Read more
Bluster and Lies: The False Promises of Sin
A friend who had been raised as a Latter-day Saint once asked me why she felt so totally alive when she was involved in illicit sex. She apparently wondered why she didn’t feel miserable in the midst of sin as … Read more