This is an everyday occurrence, I kid you not. Love, praise, thanks, and encouragement rise spontaneously from Isaac’s sweet lips toward family, friends, and strangers. A gift and a lesson for all of us. ✨🤍

Reposting this 2024 blog cuz the message is the same today. 💙💛💙 Please know I understand and appreciate the sweet sentiment behind World Down Syndrome Day. We want to celebrate people with Trisomy 21, raise awareness of the condition, normalize it, challenge misunderstandings, squash prejudice...Hurray! All good goals. Yet I hope and pray for something else, something more. Way, way beyond celebrating this precious child of mine with a random extra chromosome. An outlier m

🎄 Merry, Merry Christmas! 🎄 Thank you for hanging with me through this tumultuous and deeply spiritually fruitful season. I’m truly grateful for you—for your presence, your prayerful engagement, and your openness to the work God is doing in our hearts. Before I take a prayerful pause as we move into the New Year, I wanted to share the final posts from this past week — reflections rooted in Christ’s peace, presence, and surprising grace. You can always find these and more a

I often share about my son Isaac, who is a precious object lesson about so many spiritual truths. He teaches me a lot. Isaac has Down Syndrome, and he has given me countless insights, particularly about love. I can only describe the quality of his love as Divine, and I believe that people with unique abilities are indeed closer to heaven than the rest of us Now 15, Isaac still greets me with a wistfl or joyful “Mama”, as though I’d been away for a long time. His voice is full

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” 1 John 4:18 (ESV) My 18-year-old son and I recently jumped out of an airplane. I had zero fear. I’m not bragging; it’s more God’s credit than mine. He has walked me through decades of unrelenting fear that once had a profoundly destructive grip on my life. I simply couldn’t take another minute of living that way. Many people would never guess that fear was ever an issue for me. I’ve bungee-jumped 150 feet, started a

I love the exquisite romance of the Song of Songs—not only as a breathless portrait of marital love, but also as a picture of Jesus’ love for His Bride. Heady stuff. In this fragment (Song 2:10–12), the Bridegroom calls: “Arise… winter is past… the rain is over… flowers cover the earth… it’s time to sing..” (NIV) You can almost feel the joy after a long storm—the invitation to step out of the dark and into delight with Him. If you’ve ever been in love, you know the ache and e

Proverbs 31 is among the most quoted passages in Scripture, but its celebrity segment often upstages its powerful introduction. Most people associate Proverbs 31 with the idealized biblical wife described in verses 10–31. I have been, at turns, shamed, inspired, and affirmed by her standard. At first she seemed a lofty ideal I could never reach. Later she became a checklist for measuring progress. Eventually, more like her, I beamed at the affirmation that it was more than ok

✨ TOOLS & INSIGHTS: The Four Absolutes ✨ The Four Absolutes—Honesty, Purity, Unselfishness, Love—give us a simple way to hold our lives up to the light of Christ. Don’t get stuck on the word absolute. This isn’t about perfectionism or nit-picking every tiny mistake. It’s about clarity and repentance: bringing our motives, desires, and choices into the open before God so His Spirit can transform us. Sometimes we get hung up on this sin or that. Sometimes we catalog every small

Did I get your attention? I’ll bet! I’m so sorry to tell you there’s no version of Christianity that allows for sexual immorality. Just to clarify: No premarital sex. No extramarital sex. No porn. No unchecked fantasizing. No self-indulgence. No spouse-swapping or orgies. Not of the heterosexual or the homosexual variety. God considers all of it—every bit of it—outside of His will. Call it “love” all you like. God says it’s not. Jesus said pluck your eye out (Matthew 5:29). Y

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What I didn't share in this entry is the reason I rushed into marriage twenty-odd years ago is that back then, I couldn't bear to be alone for eleven minutes, I didn't know or love myself, and had a crippling fear of rejection of any kind. Do I need to tell anyone this is a lousy basis for good dating choices or a healthy, loving relationship? In the years since my divorce, I have indeed cherished my solitude, getting healthier, enjoying my kids, and getting more grounded in

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