I can’t believe it—the sun is shining! Have you ever taken sunlight for granted until it disappeared for weeks on end? I have, but no more. Today I’m praising God for Monday morning sunlight in the middle of January!
This weekend we had dinner with two other Safe Haven families. How I needed the intimacy of […]

In my prayer group last week, we spent time in Lectio Divina on Isaiah 43:1-7. The verses that spoke to my life circumstances were these: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the […]

Ten years ago, when Joel was 14 and in the middle of a more-than-difficult adolescence, I led a workshop for parents and grandparents of children with disabilities at Ghost Ranch in Abique, New Mexico. While there, I met Marcia, a mother who had recently placed her 18- year-old son in a residential facility. We spoke […]

Twenty-four years ago, I had no idea what the acronym MRDD meant (mental retardation and developmental disabilities), much less what the Hamilton County Board of MRDD was all about. Then our son Joel was born. It took awhile to get a diagnosis of Pervasive Developmental Disabilities and Moderate Mental Retardation, and even longer to get […]

We ran into a host of orange barrels
coming home from our third son’s birth.
Our daily route,
parenthood-by-the-book,
ended.
No detour sign in sight.
No big, black arrows
pointing the way
forward.
We drove in circles
before pulling into a gas station
to ask for directions
Funny, how gas station attendants,
even ones with Ph.D.’s,
don’t know the names of
side streets leading back
to well-traveled roads.
We got lost.
Really lost.
But […]

Nursing a cold drink in a shaded courtyard, tired from tromping up and down the cobble-stoned hills of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s Old Town, I heard a distinctive laugh.
Sure enough. There was my friend Tom Mullen, entertaining a table full of companions, no doubt expounding on the vagaries of old age and diabetes.
I stood […]