Last weekend I received an email from a mom at her wit’s end. That in itself is no rare occurrence… but this one was a little different from the rest. Not the first one of this nature I have received, but not the usual scenario either.

This was a mom with a biological son who was born with a congenital birth defect that required several surgeries. Usually this particular problem is fairly easily corrected, but this mom’s child had the additional difficulty of having a clotting disorder as well. So the surgeries became very... more

MSNBC and the Associated Press released a news article a couple of days ago that I found very, very interesting. States wrestle with medicating foster kids blares the headline. Critics worry psychiatric drugs flow too freely to forgotten children.

The article describes how states struggle to deal with “the legions of emotionally troubled foster children in their care.” It quotes a statistic provided by the Child Welfare League of America stating... more

Continuing along the lines of predicting our children’s choices and/or investing indefinitely into their future, Deb Hannah provided a classic example of seeing what lies ahead for our children and yet being powerless to do anything about it. At the risk of “spilling the beans” on her book (you MUST read it!) Deb has had long and arduous interactions with her local juvenile justice system because of some of her kids. She shared with me some of the inner workings of the system… creative and effective... more

Part One Part Two

The third principle necessary to change the world, according to Pastor Dr. Bob Beltz, is:

• The Principle of Partners—William Wilberforce could not accomplish God’s purpose for his life by himself. For that reason, he and his friends all moved to the Village of Clapham, building their homes adjacent to one another in a circle. They became known as The Clapham Circle. ... more

Dr. Bob Beltz, our guest pastor, suggested there are five essential principles to change the world. They are:

• The Principle of Pardon—Wilberforce had fallen away from his faith. His renewed faith in the power of the Holy Spirit and the support and grace extended to Wilberforce by his friend Newton (as well as the grace extended to him by God) enabled William to view his life in a new light.

• The Principle of Purpose—Wilberforce had identified his purpose—the reason God had placed him upon... more

The guest pastor who spoke at our church last weekend was Dr. Bob Beltz. As I mentioned in the previous blog, he was involved in the production of the soon to be released film entitled Amazing Grace. His sermon topic last weekend was based on that film, and on the success of William Wilberforce in stopping the slave trade in England. Let me start by giving you some history about the accomplishments of Wilberforce…

William was born in 1759 and died in 1833. When William was young, he spent a fair amount of time in the... more

I spoke to a room full of foster parents tonight. I spent an obscene amount of time yesterday working on my presentation… rearranging my slides and editing Nancy Ashe’s amazing video from our conference last year. I never could get PowerPoint to play the videos right in the presentation… I finally decided I would just open them separately in Window’s Media Player. I even downloaded a program designed to address that and it didn’t play the clips correctly.

So today I burned a DVD and headed off to speak…. And once again was plagued... more

It seems inconceivable to me that I could be so overcome with emotion merely by reading this book, and that it would take me a few days to recover. I thought I was further down the path than this. After all, my tough kids are gone. I’m the one who holds the hands of moms these days, not the other way around. Actually, I have been holding moms’ hands for a decade now, even as some of my close ADN friends were still holding mine. I was once told by a therapist that I should not have started ADN until after I had “recovered” from my own experiences,... more

I feel as if I have been hit by a Mack truck today. I could explain it away as just physical fatigue as I try and catch up from a wild weekend followed by a non-stop past 3 days. Or I could just acknowledge what I think it really is… emotional overload from reading and processing Deborah Hannah’s book.

I spoke with Deborah several times yesterday. We have much, much in common. Except I was surprised and saddened to realize she really, truly did make this walk entirely alone. She never knew of the existence of ADN (although someone somewhere... more

As I mentioned previously, I read An Unlit Path in two installments… the first one in the car, using a penlight, on the way home from Chicago last weekend, and the second one late Monday night when I should have been catching up on my sleep from a grueling weekend! In between those two opportunities to read, I scoped out Deborah Hannah’s website. The picture you see here shows Deb, her husband Joe, and five kids. Hmmmnn, I thought, I am reading about a family that has four biological kids, an... more