I was watching the news story about the Dallas nurse who is now the first person to ever contract Ebola in America. And I was hit by a lesson that is intensely personal to me.

The authorities were talking about the "contact tracing" they're doing to identify people she'd been with. They also did that with Thomas Duncan, the first person to die of Ebola here. In Africa, and now in America, contact tracing is a top priority in containing the spread of this medical serial killer.

For some reason the headline sounds so ominous. "First Ebola death in America."

I don't think most of us thought it would ever come close. But it has. Ebola is out there, and the world is on edge.

People are worried. The news is pretty unnerving.

Our family's seeing more anxiety through social media recently. People who seldom watch the news are watching it now. Our national leaders are speaking more ominously than we've ever heard them speak.

Yesterday a U.S. Senator said Ebola is "one of the most explosive, deadly epidemics in modern times." In Africa, the number of cases doubled in just the past month. You feel fine for three weeks after you've been infected. It's so easy to spread.

A friend recently asked me for advice on a new relationship he had begun with a girl he was interested in. I have been extremely happily married for almost 20 years now. So I thought about it for a bit, and came up with a few ideas about new or developing Christian romantic relationships. Hopefully they'll be useful for you or someone you know:

It's not been a happy, happy, happy week in Washington.

National leaders usually try to cool the rhetoric so we don't panic. Not these past few days. They're saying things folks like that just don't say.

You know something's up when the Secretary of Defense says in a press conference, "The world is exploding all over."

Why is "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" the number one movie in America for two weeks in a row? Critics hated it! The Turtles received a dismal 20% rating on movie critic site Rotten Tomatoes. But now these green martial arts experts have become an international mega-hit. What in the world is going on?

Robin Williams, one of the funniest men in America. Successful in movies. TV. Even Broadway.

"Never leave a soldier behind."

Pretty powerful stuff. The time-tested promise of our military to its men and women. And the stated reason our government swapped some dangerous detainees for one imprisoned - and controversial - sergeant.

Most Americans weren’t around on that D-Day 70 years ago this weekend.

But we’d better be glad they succeeded when they hit those Normandy beaches. They stopped perhaps the most powerful threat to freedom in history. Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

"We may never know why this happened."

That's the usual reaction when another "senseless" shooting leaves its trail of death and heartbreak. Not this time.

The vengeful gunman in last week's horrific rampage near Santa Barbara, California left a hate-filled, 141-page manifesto to explain it. Three were stabbed to death, three sorority girls shot to death, 13 injured. It was one student's self-described "day of retribution."

"My Twisted World" is, in part, a journal of growing romantic and sexual frustration. Girls went for other guys but not for him. Others were having sex while he was an unintentional virgin. Frustration morphed into loneliness, then desperation, then a hellish personal agenda of destroying what had hurt him.