Our family attended a wild church when I was a kid. Nothing that would ever make it on Dateline. No matching Snuggies. No snakes. No one ever offered a cup of red Kool-Aid. But people did run up and down the aisles waving homemade Jesus banners. An older man in the back blew a horn that looked like it had been peeled off a dead animal. My sisters and I were terrified to invite friends. We didn't have much money growing up. Often we were down to one car, and it was a coin flip whether it would even start.

I'm sitting next to my son Noah on a train heading to Munich, hoping we're in the correct seats. Our first night in Berlin, we got yelled at by a drunken, angry German who looked like an extra from Sons of Anarchy. We were mistakenly sitting in his seats at a Metallica concert. As he flexed his massive pythons and barked orders at us from behind his waist-long beard, I saw my life flash before my eyes. I don't know exactly what he was saying, but I promise it wasn't, "Welcome to Berlin!" Staring out the window at the vast

Have you ever been in a parking lot and accidentally tried to open the car door of someone else’s vehicle?  Have you ever actually gotten in? I had just left the barber shop and opened the door to what I assumed was my car.  Sitting in the driver’s seat and checking my hair in the rear-view mirror, I glanced down at the console and thought, “When did I start drinking Diet Coke and smoking menthols?”  Sweat immediately started running down the back of my neck as I sheepishly slid out of the car, making eye contact with no one. Here

I was staring at my phone in an abandoned parking lot when I noticed a homeless man approaching my vehicle.  He had appeared out of the shadows of this run-down building and was staring straight at me.  I did exactly what you would do – glanced down to make sure my doors were locked and prepared to bail out quickly!  But something stirred deep down inside me, and I just felt like I needed to get out and spend some time with the guy. His layers of clothes were worn thin, his hair was matted and greasy, and he smelled