Joyce and I have a real thing about fairness. It’s very humbling to admit this – sometimes embarrassingly so. I remember when our three children were young and we would have dairyless ice cream for dessert. It was my job to dish it out into five bowls. The catch? Joyce and the children got to pick theirs out first, and the last one remaining would be mine. There might have been some history about me occasionally taking too much for myself. I admit the possibility. So, giving these conditions, was I compulsive about exactly measuring the amount of ice cream in each bowl, in case I ended up with the smallest one? You bet I was!

Then there’s exercise. Joyce and I love walking our dogs on the multitude of trails around our house (mostly built by me). Our preference is to go with each other, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that we can walk together at the same time. It feels fair for each of us to take the same amount of time. Even being outside, particularly on a sunny day, doesn’t feel fair if the other one needs to be indoors, counseling for example. We take turns writing these monthly columns. It wouldn’t feel fair for one of us to write two consecutive months. Recently, we were invited to be guest speakers at a local church. We were informed we had fifteen minutes to speak. Joyce spoke first and kidded with the congregation that she would be speaking for exactly seven and a half minutes. And she did!