In August, my brother Steve took his final breath this side of heaven. He was surrounded by the love of his family and of others who have walked closely through the devastation of Parkinson’s Disease. The cruelty of PD is the slow erosion of the physical abilities we need in order to participate in life,…
How you live is determined by your hope of what is to come. Hope keeps us walking forward. As Helen Keller said, “Nothing can be done without hope.” But what is hope? The biblical definition of hope is different than the colloquial definition. When you say something like, “I sure hope this happens” you frame…
I’m staring at the mountains rising up behind the screen of my laptop. The sky is impossibly blue, and the sun is shining. The breeze is cool on my face. It’s almost cold enough to grab my jacket. Birds are singing. Voices, music, and even some laughter are drifting over from neighboring campsites. This entire…
A mouse and I are in a showdown. I have it corralled, and I’m hoping it follows its appetites to its demise inside the bait station I’ve set up. Lovely, I know. As I write, here at the tail end of the cold weather, all the critters have tired of searching for food that seems…
We didn’t have much of an opportunity to prepare, and we certainly didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into; not many parents do with special needs children. He was only six weeks old when we brought him home with a feeding tube and six different medications to be administered around the clock. Only six…
I am both privileged and thankful to say that my childhood was mostly happy. Almost every day was graced with laughter, friendship, family, food, and fun. My best friend lived only a few doors down, and we recklessly chased adventures all over our neighborhood. Winters were truly wonderlands. Summers smelled of hot dogs, macaroni, and…