William

Penny is sitting on William's face.

He pushes her off. "Penny, my head is not a playground."

She nods. Good point.

Marilee

Marilee wakes us up at 1:30 a.m. Peter attends to her. From my half-awake state, I hear her say "Ha Da Da." It may well have been a loud exhale and then ...

I just read a book by a pastor of ours from our college days, Ian Morgan Cron. It's a story of conversion to Christianity. It's a story of deep hurt and longing for an at times abusive, at times absent, father. It's a story of a little boy growing up. It's a story of God's faithfulness. ...

Peter sometimes points out that we tend to do things with an extra level of intensity. Sometimes that's intentional–when he runs 16 miles in the sand, for instance, or when I decide I need to make sure that unusual words aren't repeated more than twice in the course of my book. ...

I hope to take the time to write more about this in the next few days, but for now I simply want to draw your attention to an article from the New York Times magazine about "pregnancy reductions." The article (The Two Minus One Pregnancy) describes the increasingly popular decision ...

I'm all for retirement savings and life insurance policies and buying shoes that our kids can grow into and planting trees with the hope that they will grow larger in time. There are times, of course, when planning for the future is good and necessary and right.

But I've had ...

They all have been, or will be, speaking at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College. I've attended the last two Festivals, in 2008 and 2010, and this year, I will be a much-less-exciting-than-the-aforementioned-people speaker too! I'm already ordering books by the ...

Jenni Newbury is a new friend of mine. She wrote a guest post a while ago about her younger brother Jason, who has Down syndrome, and she recently sent me the text of her keynote address from this year's National Down Syndrome Congress Convention. As she relates, if you are ...

I ran a series of guest posts in early August surrounding the topic of adoption. In one, Ellen Painter Dollar delineated the problems inherent in the question, "Why Don't You Just Adopt?" I recently found out that Melissa Florer-Bixler, blogger at Sign on the Window, responded ...

It's been in the works for oh, five and a half years now, if you count the journal entries I wrote as soon as Penny was born. Those journal entries provided an outline for A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny. And then the outline became ...

Penny started talking about kindergarten over a year ago. She's like her mom. She likes school.

But lately the reality has set in. She seems to know that going to kindergarten marks a rite of passage. She'll move from a 3 hour school day to almost 7 hours. There will be more ...

Yesterday morning, I wrote a response to an NPR report about evangelicals disparate beliefs about whether or not Adam was an historical figure. Many of you weighed in with comments and questions, both here and on Facebook, and I'd like to address a few of them now.

First, I've ...

So here's the question: should a man who was born without the lower half of his legs be allowed to compete in the World Track and Field Championships?

According to Juliet Macur of the New York Times ("As Debate Goes On, Amputee Will Break Barrier") some people think Oscar Pistorius ...

I read the Bible literally. Which is why I don't believe in an historical Adam and Eve.

NPR ran a long piece yesterday morning about the controversy among evangelicals regarding the historicity of Genesis 2. I commend Barbara Bradley Hagerty for even-handed coverage of the story, ...

Yes, I have the song lyrics in mind, and yes, that's William on the left with the microphone his great-grandmother gave him for his birthday. We've tried to teach William to use his performance skills to sing "You can't always get what you wa-ant,"  but he's had a hard time ...

Because I was away, I missed the opportunity to express my gratitude for John Stott's ministry after his death on July 27th. But I wanted to take a moment to draw attention to two of the many wonderful tributes written about his long and full career as a worldwide evangelical ...