Next month marks ten years since I came to LEADERSHIP. During that time, a lot has happened.

I've looked at more than 10,000 cartoons. (It's a rough job, I know.) Read a few thousand manuscripts, letters, faxes. Learned a lot from pastors. Written one book and a pile of articles. Made a few people mad. Won a few awards. Watched Marshall Shelley's hair turn gray. (I may be partly responsible.)

A lot has happened in my personal life as well. In the past ten years, Karen and I welcomed one child and grieved two miscarriages. Moved twice. Changed churches once. Wrote a book about marriage. Buried my father.

That last event, on a blustery April weekend almost four years ago, continues to affect me. I remember driving in the long line of cars down the winding, narrow cemetery road in western Maryland. Ahead was the shiny, black hearse, and in the next car, silhouetted in the passenger's seat, was the back of my mom's head. That must be the longest, loneliest ride in the world, I thought.

At the ...