“I don’t know how you do it.” Special needs parents, raise your hand if this a sentiment you hear often. I hear it a lot. And I attempt a charming joke, “Not very well, that’s how I do it.” Small, calculated chuckles abound for five seconds making my conversation partner and I both feel good. But…
I was the best parent before I had kids. I just knew that I was going to do things differently. I was pretty prideful about it, let’s be real. It would not be my kids watching a video on a phone in the restaurant. It wouldn’t be my kids having a tantrum in public. My kids would…
On Sundays when I was growing up, it didn’t matter if we were facing imminent danger or in the throes of a natural disaster, we were going to church. Literally, I can’t remember not hearing my mom’s alarm clock go off every Sunday morning at 8:00am—because, of course, church was always preceded by a solid…
As the mother of an atypical kid, there are so many things in your world that you cannot control. You can’t control or change your kid’s diagnosis, how he’s treated at school, or how she develops. So much of what happens is out of your hands, and that’s a very difficult reality for most moms…
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive,…
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7 (NIV) A bonus of being the pastor of a church with a preschool is the daily opportunity to see children exploring their world and making new discoveries. A few years ago…
Creating a Rhythm that Helps your Kids Open Up on Their Terms Every day now, I wait for my five-year-old to come home on the bus. I can see him stretching to peek out the window as it pulls around the corner. When he steps off, his cheeks are red from the heat, and his…
So your kid comes up to you and asks, “Dad, how do we know there’s a God?” And you . . . freeze. You say something like “Because I believe there’s a God,” or “We just know,” or “Because there is,” or “Because the Bible says God exists.” Then your kid does what every kid does: he asks…
So there we were, standing on a sidewalk in the middle of downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee. A couple in their mid-thirties with three kids ages 5, 8 and 10 struggling to have fun and enjoy a vacation together. It wasn’t happening. People were passing us on either side much like water going around a rock in…
Some of my earliest memories are anchored in the sensations that accompanied our family’s Easter observances. Scratchy petticoats under new spring dresses. Bonnet straps tied too tight under the chin. The tickling ruffles of white anklets and toes crammed into shiny new Mary Janes. The smell of ammonia rising from Dad’s urinal zipped into the…