Suitcases and bathing suits have been packed away. The sun is beginning to set a little earlier. Buses are rolling down the street, the voices of children can be heard everywhere, and parents are transporting children here and there. Fall is in the air as school bells begin to ring.

At the beginning of every school year, there’s usually an open house for parents. It’s a chance to meet your children’s teachers and learn about their expectations for the year.  There are many parents who breeze right through those sessions without blinking an eye toward the curriculum. There are some, though, who feel very overwhelmed at the prospect of what lies ahead.

The young man’s baggy clothes drooped on his slouching sixteen-year-old frame, and his long hair seemed just a day or two away from becoming matted completely. The appearance was typical for him, but as he stood in my office doorway that day something else seemed uncharacteristically haggard.

 My job at that time was working with youth, and this kid (we’ll call him “Mike”) was one of the students I had regular interaction with. You could even say I was mentoring him a bit. Mike wasn’t the kind of guy who stopped by my office often, so when he showed up at the door I began to wonder if something was going on. Never one to beat around the bush with that sort of thing, I launched the two of us into a little dialogue.

A few years ago, we launched a campaign at Winning At Home called STAY Married For Life. Since that time our mission has not wavered. Our focus continues to be encouraging people to publicly commit to stay married for life. Since 2007, over 50,000 people have taken a stand for marriage.

This is not a gimmick and there is no cost to sign up. Our goal is to simply bring marriage back to a place of prominence. Instead of hearing all the time about how many people are getting divorced, let’s celebrate how many people get married and stayed married. It’s okay to try and figure out what went wrong in someone’s marriage, but why don’t we invest the same amount of time and energy in learning how people stay married.

Depression is something all of us have to deal with one way or the other. Seniors particularly are susceptible to it as we age. Depression comes in various shapes and sizes, from a very temporary feeling of unhappiness to a long term state of debilitating misery that may require medical intervention.

How can we know the difference? Basically the difference between a minor mood problem and deep depression requiring medical help involves the length and depth of the depression. If it lasts for weeks, is affecting normal life, is impacting others, and may be inducing thoughts of suicide, it is time to seek professional help. Very serious cases may involve brain chemistry and require psychiatric intervention and/or hospitalization. Short of this, however, we may all face periods where we feel blue, unhappy, and distressed without needing outside intervention to change our mental attitude.

I was in an art store recently and a woman was there getting a picture back that she had taken in to be framed. The picture was a wedding photo of her and her husband from 20 plus years ago. When the clerk handed the woman her picture back in the nice, newly-matted frame, there was this deep gasp that grabbed my attention. I looked over and realized what caused the sharp intake of breath. She had put the old picture into a newer, larger frame than the one before. Where the sun had been shining through the glass with the previous frame, it had discolored quite significantly so that you could see a real clear line where the fading and unfading met. And she was just taken aback by the effects 20 years of fading had on her picture.

The food was sumptuous, the atmosphere eclectic, the music vibrant. The conversation? A bit dull. After dealing with kids and work all day, who wants to talk about kids and work? On a date night? There’s nothing that says romance like “Johnny threw up this morning.”

So I’ve come up with a list of twenty-five, thought-provoking questions to engage your loved one in intelligent conversation. Warning: Don’t ask these questions unless you honesty want the answers!

As I age the answer to the above question becomes more interesting to me. I find there are a number of formulas available that purport to be able to help me predict just when I might depart this life. Before I go deeper into this, let me say, as a Christian, I realize that the matter of when I die is entirely in the hands of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, where I am happy for it to be; however, speculating about how long I might have left is kind of fun to do.

Because seniors are living longer many are encountering a decision earlier generations did not face. The issue develops when the spouse of a senior dies and the surviving partner still has 10 to 20 years to live. In such a case should they consider remarrying?

This issue came to national attention recently when the Rev. Pat Robertson answered a question on his 700 Club program. He was asked what a senior should do if their spouse had dementia to the point where they were institutionalized and no longer knew them. Pat replied he felt the healthy senior had the right to divorce his spouse and remarry because the marriage had been broken by the illness and the surviving senior needed the compassion and intimacy of a loving spouse. Pat's answer got a great deal of response particularly from Christians who felt the marriage vow, which contains the words, "until death do us part," did not permit a divorce in this situation.

When I was growing up, at times it seemed like my mom was a broken record. She was always repeating herself.

“Danny, clean your room,” she’d say, or “How’s your homework coming, Danny?” Then there was my least favorite “Are you lying to me?” and the always-classic “Run up the street and help Mrs. Simms.” Mom’s Big Four phrases involved cleaning, homework, lying, helping—a.k.a. The Top Four Things Kids Can’t Stand Talking About.

The cleaning thing wasn’t too bad, really. I’ve always been a fairly neat person, and our house was so small that there was barely enough room to have things out of place. Plus, you could see into my bedroom from the living room—if my stuff was a disaster, everybody had to look at it. So every night after dinner came a gentle reminder: “Danny, clean your room.”

Bullying is long-standing violence, physical or psychological, conducted by an individual or a group, and directed against an individual who is not able to defend himself in the actual setting.

Too often, the result of bullying is paralysis. Fighting, tattling, paybacks, truancy, hiding, don’t allow the victim to fix the situation cleanly. Further, rarely does a school-age child have the experience to organize an effective solution. This can quickly become an agonizing situation seemingly without remedy.

Two years ago I wrote about reverse mortgages (RM) so an update is appropriate as some things have changed. As I mentioned earlier, the RM is a federally initiated program to help seniors over 62 use some of the home equity they have built up over the years to pay for current expenses. In effect, the senior gets a loan from a bank or mortgage lender pledging their home as security for the loan. The senior can take a lump sum payment, establish a line of credit, or take monthly payments based on a percentage of the equity in the home.

Beginning April 1, by the way, the lump sum payment will no longer be an option. The RM provides that seniors can stay in their home until death at which time the home is sold and the loan is repaid from the proceeds. The senior while alive always has the option of selling the home and paying off the loan. You can check on the amount of your equity the RM loan could be for by going to www.reversemortgage.org where they have a calculator.