Low-key change helps the human mind circumnavigate the fear that blocks success and creativity.* Robert Maurer When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur.* John Wooden, one of the most successful coaches in the history of college basketball A fellow told me recently that when he quit drinking Mountain Dew and switched [...]
Returning Evil for Evil? Or Not
You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good. Joseph to his Brothers (Genesis 50:20; NKJV) This is another of those verses that I use as the foundation of my therapy practice. It helps to have a working model in my head. I don’t just sit there and say, “A-ah. You poor thing.” [...]
Relationship Laziness
How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest- and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man. Proverbs 6:9-11 One of the saddest things I hear as [...]
Room On The Roof
Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife. Proverbs 21:9 These words sting like a slap on a sunburn to our hypersensitive modern ears. You don’t pick on women after all. There are a number of these kinds of verses in Proverbs and if you aren’t [...]
Flux in Stepfamilies
Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers. Proverbs 22:28 As the verse above says, sometimes change comes too quickly. Certain things are to be left alone. In stepfamilies, boundaries are in flux and awkward. It doesn’t take long for people who are divorced or widowed with children to discover that [...]
Iowa Supreme Court Math
Let’s do the math that the Iowa Supreme Court wishes us to believe. 1 male married to 1 female = 1 male married to 1 male = 1 female married to 1 female The Iowa Supreme Court has declared that morality does not exist, as we know it; morality is only simple math: 1 +1 [...]
Song of Fools
(Dr. Wall’s response to the Iowa Supreme Court decision on Friday, April 3, 2009, declaring marriage is a meaningless term.) Where will this people go? The judges shout “evil is good!” The people bow in praise At body parts in sewer pipes: Boundaries are bad Limits denounced Darkness is light Wrong is right Disagree and [...]
Conversations After Porn
For want of fuel a fire goes out. Proverbs 26:20 Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not an addictions counselor. If you are so addicted to pornography that you can’t stop, no matter what, and you keep doing what you’re doing even though your spouse is threatening to leave you because you just got arrested [...]
The Advantages of Wisdom
Keep my commands in your heart. Write them on the tablet of your heart. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Proverbs 3: 1, 3, 5 In an earlier blog I discussed what happens to people when they don’t guard their heart (Proverbs 4:23 “Guard Your Heart“). The example Solomon uses to explain what [...]
The Prison of Happiness
He holds victory in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. Proverbs 2:7-8 I just want to be happy. Too many clients God bless America, but instead of having the “pursuit of [...]