“It’s okay.” These were the words a godly counselor shared with me one day when I was distraught over my child’s diagnosis of autism. Clifford was a friend of the family and a marriage and family therapist who had come to town for a visit. My first thoughts were to scream at him, “No, it’s…
Have you ever felt so emotionally and physically exhausted, that it was all you could do to just keep going? Ten years ago, we moved to Fort Worth, TX in pursuit of a calling that God had laid on our hearts. We were going to help bring his word, the Bible, to millions of people…
I can’t tell you how many times, over my 32 year journey with autism, I have returned to this quote for inspiration: On July 4, 1999, a twenty-minute maelstrom of hurricane force winds took down twenty million trees across the Boundary Waters. A month later, when I made my annual pilgrimage up north, I was…
Psalm 37:5 Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass. Psalm 37:5 I went to a meeting yesterday at the University of Central Florida. It was a College and Career Planning meeting for my son. Yes, you heard me I was at a huge University checking it…
I read someone else’s good news with a little bit of sting in my heart. All of the responses were filled with joy. (As they should have been.) More than a few read, “God is so good.” Yeah, God is good when the news is good. But what about when the news isn’t all we…
There are days I don’t know what to pray. This whole thing is so much bigger, scarier, than I ever could have imagined. I don’t even know which way I want it go. This is bigger than me. I’ve always had a pretty good handle on medical terms. And special needs was something we finally…
With the new school year picking up speed, it’s easy for me to forget the lessons hard learned over the summer. My gracious Father has been very committed to teaching me about living in true peace, and I want to be intentional about wrestling with the moments that send peace running to the hills. Many…
The week after my child was diagnosed with autism, I held it together for a few days and then sobbed uncontrollably while speaking to my friend/psychologist over the phone. I stood in the bathroom where I went to talk alone and gazed at my swollen eyes and red face in the mirror. I was in…
I have a secret to share with you. Sometimes, I don’t always know how I feel about my son’s autism. It seems there is a vast divide between two extremes of perspectives from parents of kids with disabilities. On the one side, there are parents who view the disability as something that makes an otherwise…
I remember my father once telling me, “It’s dangerous to live.” What he meant was that life is full of risks and dangers and that if we are constantly worried about those risks and dangers, then we’re not really living. I’ve often recounted this quote whenever a therapist overplayed the safety card with Ben—you know,…