I am come that they might have life. And have it more abundantly. John 10:10b, KJV I had my first social media dust-up a few months ago. It freaked me out to the point of making all my accounts ultra-private, and stopped me from commenting on anything for quite a while. I had the audacity to comment something positive on a special needs parenting post. I threw my glass-half-full attitude into a … [Read more...]
Looking for the Bright Side
It can always be worse. There’s always something to be thankful for. Look on the bright side. Whenever my child is sick or in the hospital, people try to encourage me to keep a healthy perspective with familiar sayings. I know these people are right, but it’s hard to do at times. My medically complex child has thrown many curveballs over the past 11 years. We’ve had planned surgeries and … [Read more...]
The Weight of Loving Someone with Great Need
This Weight. It's heavy. The weight of special needs was something we've gotten used to along the way. It was gradual, never too life threatening. But this. It's daunting. We long to be at home, away from the hospital, but there is no doubt being home, alone, is its own kind of hard. When I was young I remember thinking how difficult it is to keep a baby alive. Oh, young, naive Stephanie. Silly … [Read more...]
Praise: God’s Antidote to Discouragement
Did you know there's an antidote to discouragement? And it works almost immediately, if we can only remember to pull it out of our spiritual tool kits and use it! What is it? Praise! Some of you may be thinking, Really? You don't know what our family is facing on a daily basis! I get it. Sometimes I feel like my prayers for healing within my family (autism, bipolar disorder, traumatic … [Read more...]
The White Noise of Disability
It’s my birthday. What do I want, you ask? A little peace and quiet. That’s all. I want the fighting to stop, and the doors to stop slamming, and the dogs to stop barking, and the hollering for “can you bring me up a whatever” to just cease for a blasted minute, because kids are loud, and ours are louder. They are a next-level kind of loud. The loud of special needs and mental illness that … [Read more...]
Help in a Flash
To every stranger that steps in, especially in such unexpected ways…Thank you! Max and I aren’t planning to go anywhere, exactly. It’s more that we’re planning to go everywhere. But now a days the criteria for doing so has changed. When I was a kid you could pack up your woodcarving tools, wheel them onto a 747, and whittle a spear mid-flight. But things are different now. The world is different … [Read more...]