It’s May again, my favorite month. Filled with birthdays, spring flowers blooming, cornfields awash in new life, turning the countryside in our state a most delicious green. May is also my least favorite month. Filled with wrenching separations, fading lilac blossoms and tulip petals blowing in the wind, not to be seen for 12 more long months. May, for me, is a tangled mess of … [Read more...]
Why Do We Weep?
...Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus’ body had been laid. They said to her, “Woman, why do you weep?” “They took my Master,” she said, “and I don’t know where they put him.” After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there. … [Read more...]
Special Needs Parent, You Still Matter
I’m going to tell you something now, and you might want to sit down before I do: You still matter. And not just matter—you are precious. Author Julie Barnhill reminds us that this is true, even amidst painful circumstances: “God watched over our construction from toes to fingertips to hair roots, and he has designed each of us to be exquisite, unequaled, and beyond compare. But it will always be … [Read more...]
Hope for the Continual Cycle of Grief Special-Needs Parents Experience
I've been seeing a therapist for a few months. A therapist who specializes in grief. Last week she said I've graduated, but I'm not so sure I'm done grieving. I may never be done. But I have found hope. Special-needs parents experience unique grief. Instead of moving through the regular stages and finding resolution, we can be struck with grief at any moment. We go through the cycles again and … [Read more...]
When the Enemy Whispers, “It’s Your Fault”
Read below for a guest post from Lisa Bonnema. I know the right answer. I know what I should feel. This was the plan. His plan. I had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t have prevented it, and I couldn’t have changed it. She was born this way, and she is beautiful just as she is. She is fearfully and wonderfully made. This I know full well. Yet there are days, nights, when the enemy … [Read more...]
the prayer you stopped praying
Can you even remember when you stopped praying for it? That thing you hoped for once upon a time but, as time moved on, faded from that hopeful place? I don't know about you, but I can't. I can't remember when I stopped praying for Zoe to talk. Friends would ask if she said any words, and I would answer yes, because she did. Technically. But, of her four or five words, we were lucky if … [Read more...]