WILL MY KIDS BE OK IF I GET A DIVORCE? By Michael Misja, Ph.D.   Most people struggling with whether or not to stay in a marriage wonder how a divorce will affect their children.  They ask if their kids will be better or worse off if they decide to divorce. Many come to the conclusion that their sons and daughters will be fine if their parents’ marriage ends. Their reasoning goes like this:   -I don’t want to teach … [Read more...]

One of my deepest life convictions is that pain must not be wasted. Pain is the rich, fertile soil for the growth of wisdom.  God wants us to reflect into our pain.  I once led a weekend retreat focusing on how God can help us “mine” our difficult life experiences in order to arrive at personal beliefs about life. Recently I have come to believe that I can also learn not only from my pain, but from my own stupidity. Let me walk you through … [Read more...]

  Sammy Davis sang “I gotta be me!”  Frank Sinatra crooned “I did it my way.”  In Hamlet Shakespeare wrote “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Was he right?   Contemporary culture tells you to become unbound from anyone who tells you how you should live, how you should think, or what standard you should conform to.  Nothing should … [Read more...]

Dad just lay in the hospital bed - a shell of a man. He had been rushed to the intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic. My brother, Chuck, and I watched as he emerged from his comatose state to discover he was strapped into a bed. His bewildered look revealed his confusion of having needles and tubes stuck into his body. Perhaps his largest frustration was the ventilator tube stuck into his mouth, preventing speech and intensifying his … [Read more...]

We live in a culture obsessed with success. Our kids, our jobs, our homes, our churches can’t be ordinary. To accept being average (not exceptional) is agreeing to give up on ourselves and God. I recently spoke to someone on a search committee for a new pastor. The pastor they were looking for had to demonstrate success. He told me his church would only contact pastors who had churches that had 20% growth in the last year. We’ve got to be … [Read more...]

It was 4 o’clock and we knew we were in trouble. My brother, Chuck, and I had just returned home from the baseball fields after having lost all track of time. The lawn had not been mowed. The trash cans had not been emptied, and we never did pull the weeds by the string beans and radishes. There was no way we would get everything done by 4:30. You see, at 4:30, Dad would be home and he would not be happy. Dad hated hot summer days because … [Read more...]

What does God want you to do when you have worked so hard to heal your marriage and nothing has changed? Perhaps you are one of the many Christians who has spent years praying and trying find anything to help to bring love and joy to your troubled marriage-only to find that every effort has failed. Now you must decide. Should you live the life of a suffering martyr until the kids leave or the Lord takes you home? Perhaps you need to … [Read more...]

I am frequently asked the question, “why”? Why did God allow me to suffer? Why did God save me from the consequences of the mess I made? After trying to help a client make sense of a recent loss, I recalled a time when I agonized over how to understand a loss experienced by a godly, caring mother. My daughter, Olivia, had come home to attend Emmy, her younger sister’s, high school graduation. After the weekend, she left for her home on … [Read more...]