Have you ever given birth? Remember the stage of labor called “transition”?
Transition: “A period during childbirth that precedes the expulsive phase of labor, characterized by strong uterine contractions and nearly complete cervical dilation.”
Ouch!
I’m 57, soon to turn 58. It may be physically impossible, but here I am, in the throes of transition. No, I’m […]
“It’s can’t be much different than getting a kid ready to go to college!” I’ve heard that comment numerous times as I’ve prepared our 25-year-old son, Joel, for his move into his new home, Safe Haven Farms, a farming community for adults with autism located in Butler County.
Wrong. Sure, we all shed a few tears […]
“The most frequent commandment given in scripture is so simple, so plain: ‘do not be afraid.’ And it is so hard to practice, so hard to model, so hard to live.”
Thom Shuman, Occasional Sightings of the Gospel
I am most likely to shed my well-worn cloak of fear over Joel’s future when I take […]
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 […]
“Faithfulness opens the door to the spiritual insight that it is not the amount of darkness in the world or in us that is crucial. In the end, it is how we stand in that darkness that really matters. Moreover, sometimes it is paradoxically during faithfulness in the darkness, not in the light, that we […]
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 […]