2014
I picked up No Greatness Without Goodness, by Randy Lewis, because I was intrigued that a senior VP at Walgreen's had successfully created hundreds of jobs for individuals with both physical and intellectual disabilities. I was even more intrigued to find out those jobs ...
I've heard Christians say that if we still lived in the Garden of Eden, we would all be walking around naked. The story in Genesis 2 seems to support this idea. It was only after God confronted Adam and Eve about their tragic and rebellious decision to eat the fruit that ...
Culture
"A culture that too tightly binds sex and self-respect is likely, in the long run, to end up with less and less of both." --Ross Douthat examines the issues behind the Santa Barbara killings, our sexual culture, and feminism in Prisoners of Sex (New York ...
A lesbian wedding, childhood sexual abuse, alcoholism, violence, pornography, and murder all show up within the pages of Wally Lamb's most recent novel We Are Water. So does love, loyalty, healing, beauty, and a confused evangelical Christian. In many ways, it was a hard ...
The word that sticks with me is "still". Are you still upset about that? Are you still hurting? Are you still grieving?
For many of us, yes, we still are. We are still working on what that loss has done to us, living tentatively, with pain right beneath our skin, so ...
I only saw my dad do a few household chores as a kid. Mom managed the household and he went to work in an office. It was a pretty typical gender-based division of labor. Except when it came to the dishes. Mom would happily let them sit until the morning, and Dad wanted them ...
I asked my mother for a bird feeder for my birthday. I'm not sure what inspired my request. Unlike her, I've never been much of a naturalist. My one attempt at a vegetable garden failed. I often need someone else to point out the beauty around me because I find myself ...
Yesterday I interviewed Cameron Doolittle, President and CEO of Jill's House, a respite care ministry for families with children with disabilities. Today's post is a follow up from that interview, focused on Oxygen3, the program Jill's House has developed so that ...
I first learned about Jill's House—a respite care facility for children with disabilities—at a Q Conference in 2012. I've stayed in touch with Cameron Doolittle, Jill's House's President, since then, and I'm running an interview with Cameron today ...
I received a music video from a friend yesterday. It's about children with special needs, and the singer means well. She wants to affirm children with intellectual disabilities. She wants to reassure parents. She wants to cast a spotlight on her own flaws and failings ...
If you were conducting a poll and asked me if I read regularly to my children, I would say yes. I can name chapter books we have enjoyed with our older two: James and the Giant Peach, Pippi Longstocking, The Trumpet of the Swan, among others. I can point to our youngest child's ...
I didn't get much reading done this week, what with another round of the throw-up bug hitting our house on the heels of Penny's ballet recital, Mother's Day, and the school spring concert. We did manage to finish Pippi Longstocking and start Owls in the Family ...
I've been thinking about the nature of friendship.
It started, oddly enough, with House of Cards, a show in which no one has any true friends. But as the season progressed Rachel—a former call girl who is trying to keep her head down and create some stability ...
I have only paid cursory attention to the hundreds of girls kidnapped recently by a militant group in Nigeria. And even when I have stopped to listen to an NPR update on the situation, I haven't registered any emotional response. I could have tried to get my heart to ...
In anticipation of Mother's Day I've featured posts about mothers all week--my own reflections on how being a mother has helped me to grow up, Ellen Painter Dollar's thoughts about how sharing her body--a body disabled by osteogenesis imperfecta--with her kids has ...
2015
