“I can’t tell her about my trouble. Even if I begged her not to tell, I know she would tell everyone she talked to. And the story she told would be an awful distortion.” A saintly friend spoke of a … Read more
Are We Not All Beggars?
By Wallace Goddard
When We Ask the Wrong Question We Always Get the Wrong Answer
by H. Wallace Goddard
Recently I served on a panel at a parenting conference. At the end of the panelists’ presentations we invited questions from the audience. A young and earnest mother with a baby in her arms asked, “I … Read more
Conflict Resolution and the Creation of Peace
Conflict Resolution and the Creation of Peace
by H. Wallace Goddard
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”
Nancy and I have some friends who have been married for a few years longer than … Read more
Taking Your Marriage From Misery to Joy
Mom says I was a pleasant baby. As I grew, I must have become less pleasant. I remember spending a lot of my growing-up years annoying and battling my siblings. I suppose that struggles with life and siblings teach all … Read more
Would You Rather Be Right or Be Good?
The default setting for human minds is evaluation. We are constantly evaluating what people say and do.
A family member exclaims: “It’s a beautiful day!” and we immediately check the evidence to see if their exclamation is fully justified.
A … Read more
Choosing the Soundtrack of Our Lives
In movies, there is periodically a discordance in the soundtrack that warns us that something terrible is about to happen. It makes us feel unsettled. We usually don’t notice the sounds consciously but our bodies and minds tense up. We … Read more
Thinking Big in Family Life
An older widow was in the habit of going to the grocery store every day. She bought just a few items, hardly more than a day’s supply. The clerks thought this odd because most people buy groceries for several days … Read more
The Road to Marital Misery is Paved with Good Intentions
Often, we think we are acting nobly when we are actually being destructive.
Some examples:
Hoping to strengthen their marriage, a wife approaches her husband: “We need to talk.”
Hoping to state the problem, she describes the husband’s faults. “You … Read more
Do You Ruminate?
“Ruminants usually have a stomach divided into four compartments and chew a cud consisting of regurgitated, partially digested food. Ruminants include cattle, sheep, goats, deer, giraffes, antelopes, and camels” (Dictionary.com).
It sounds quite unappetizing to have food going back and … Read more