The Lord knows we can all be pretty darn self-involved. The illustration a recent guest pastor at my church gave to make this point cracked me up. He said if he and his wife hold hands while sitting in the front seats of their car they hear a big “NOOOOOO” from their two-year-old in the back seat. Even if Jay Catanus, a church planter in Chicago who was the guest speaker, simply puts his arm … [Read more...]
When Your Church Doesn’t Miss You
It all began with a rush to the emergency room after school. I called friends from the car asking them to notify our church. I prayed that my triage at home was incorrect, that I was just being overly concerned. Unfortunately, testing revealed that my worries were well-founded. My son was having a life-threatening internal bleed in his hip area. He was hospitalized while a plan was formulated for … [Read more...]
Walking By Faith
A few weeks ago, we attended a friend’s wedding and had some time before the reception began. We drove by a park that I knew like the back of my hand. It was a place that only we knew, though it looked different now. It was a place where, on that warm and humid June evening more than three decades ago, my soul mate (Jan) and I swayed on those park swings. Planning our future together, forever. A … [Read more...]
Every Child Welcome: Cooking Up Special Needs Inclusion
Katie Wetherbee and I first met at a special needs ministry conference around 2010. She made a beeline to my book table and introduced herself. I attended Katie’s workshop and loved what she had to say. Before the end of the conference, we exchanged email addresses. We quickly became good friends. Maybe because we had a lot in common. We were both the parents of kids with special needs. We … [Read more...]
Stringing Others Along: Kantian or Christian?
Once, when our boys were young, I remember sitting at a table with my husband talking to a very wise Christian friend who was a School Psychologist. We were discussing how to encourage some positive improvements in our son's behavior. He pulled out a piece of string and put it on the table. "How can you move this string?" he asked. Then he showed us, "Well, if you push it, it will move forward—but … [Read more...]