I have the privilege right now of doing premarital counseling for a young couple who plan to wed in October. I've never done this type of counseling before, but it has been a wonderful way to reflect upon our own marriage and try to offer some words of practical advice and wisdom ...

On Friday night, Peter was on duty in our dorm of thirty boys. As we sat down to dinner with a dear old friend who had flown in from Denver earlier in the day, there was a knock on the door. The knocks continued throughout our meal, with Peter popping up to answer a question ...

They met in college and fell in love. They talked about getting married, and he started looking for a ring. They dreamed about life together, a life of beauty and joy, raising babies and laughing with friends and growing old.

They did not imagine a car accident. They did ...

Penny lost her third tooth today. They are falling out just as expected–first the bottom two, and now one up top with the one beside it wiggling as well. It came home from school with her in a small lavender box.

At first, she was feeling brave. "The tooth fairy can ...

"My Perfect Child," an essay in Christianity Today about coming to understand Penny as a gift and her life as very similar to mine in both its brokenness and its perfection, won First Place in the Evangelical Press Association's Higher Ground Awards for 2011. One paragraph from ...

I've held naive assumptions about both abortion and adoption in the past, and I've asked naive questions. One of those questions brings the two together as I've had trouble understanding why women who are unexpectedly pregnant chose abortion instead of adoption, especially when ...

A few weeks ago, I ran a series of posts about the possibilities for friendship for kids and adults with disabilities. I've written about Penny's friendships, I shared a post from Ben Conner about friendship among adolescents, and an exchange between two adult women– Tryn Miller, ...

I'm still working to get the eye makeup off after a really nice morning on Friday on the set of 100 Huntley Street, a Canadian Christian television show. I spoke with Moira, the host of the show, about my darkest parenting fears, living in the present moment, our purpose ...

This post started out with a different title: "Things I Love, Hate, and Wish I Loved About Being a Mother." And then I thought, well, I don't allow my kids to use the word hate, so I'll modify that to say "things I really don't like" about being a mother. And then I started ...

I'm heading to Toronto today for a quick trip–first, tonight, to meet in person my online friend Louise Kinross, editor of Bloom: Parenting Kids with Disabilities and then to offer some thoughts on achievement and identity as a Bloom speaker tonight. Tomorrow morning, I'll be ...

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk with Tony Rossi about A Good and Perfect Gift. He has posted the interview on his blog, Christopher Closeup. It includes a link to our conversation as well as transcribed excerpts to questions that range from the practical:

"In today's ...

I just realized that I forgot to tell you all that Quin Hillyer reviewed A Good and Perfect Gift in the American Spectator a few weeks ago. I remembered because he blogged about it again last week, in response to George Will's column about his son Jon, who has Down syndrome ...

When Penny was first born, when the doctors shocked us with the news that she appeared to have Down syndrome, the presence of a third copy of her 21st chromosome, I was hit hard with doubts. I doubted my abilities as a mother. I doubted my capacity to love a child who was different ...

This morning, I linked to my post for her.meneutics in which I reviewed Ellen Painter Dollar's No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction. As a follow up to that review, I asked Ellen to reflect upon some of the questions her ...

My friend and fellow Patheos blogger Ellen Painter Dollar has written a book about reproductive technology in the context of faith and contemporary culture. It's called No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction, and today ...