I always anticipate the month of March. Aside from welcoming the warmth that comes with spring and flowers blooming (I hate winter), I consider it my favorite month. It sets in motion a wealth of good memories. My dear mother, darling son, favorite niece, generous uncle, and some great friends were all born in March. Also, some life-changing events took place in this month. So when dusk set on February 29, 2012, my mind and outstretched arms were more than ready to receive and bask in the joy of marching into the next 31 days.

The pop diva’s death should remind us of an uncomfortable reality: People in church take drugs.

Anyone who has listened to Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Love the Lord”—or who saw her perform with CeCe Winans and Shirley Caesar at the 1996 Grammy Awards—knows she had an incomparable voice best suited for gospel music. But Whitney chose a broader path: When the doors opened for her to make a pop album in the 1980s, it became the all-time best-selling debut album by a female artist. She became America’s diva.

But all her worldly success didn’t help her overcome her personal demons. Her stormy marriage was marred by domestic violence. She admitted in the 1990s that she took cocaine every day. She tried rehab three times over the course of eight years. Her voice was so damaged by her drug habit that people walked out of her comeback concert in London in 2010. She became a pathetic shell of her former self.

By Sharifa Stevens

Mark and Grace Driscoll have written a book on marriage, sex, and friendship with your spouse. It’s spicy. No stranger to controversy, Mark Driscoll has received rabid criticism from other theologically conservative Christians for his NC-17 discussions of sexuality. He’s even inferred that marriages would be stronger if wives gave more oral sex.

Thankfully, I knew nothing of the controversy when I read Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship and Life Together. The Driscolls write that they intend to “share biblical truths about some of the marital issues you may face, including how to be your spouse’s best friend, dealing with porn addiction, overcoming sexual assault, how to avoid being a selfish lover, and yes, even those sex questions you’d be too embarrassed to ask anyone, especially your pastor.”

By Julie Lyons

Gary Bryant has nice breath.

Which is a good thing, because he is a greeter at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, where everyone is relentlessly nice and continually in your face. The moment I pulled up in my dirty Toyota Prius, I was accosted by a Fellowship handler, who ushered me into the bookstore and introduced me to Gary, an older gentleman with a sharply tailored blazer and shaved head. He shook my hand with studied firmness.

He didn’t ask me why I’d come to visit Fellowship, the area’s pioneering “seeker-friendly” megachurch, and I was glad. I wasn’t in the mood to “unpack” the truth (more on that later), but if he asked, the truth would be:

“I am here to learn about sex, and I have come with a bad attitude and a host of preconceived notions about your pastors, Ed and Lisa Young, because of the ridiculous bed they stuck on the roof of this sanctuary in a shameless grab for attention, and the fact that Ed and Lisa parked their bodies in that bed for 24 hours and did nothing, and Ed actually quit early because he got a teensy little bit of sunburn, and awwww…”