When Jon and I were first married, I felt like the new kid in town. Although we lived just a few miles from my hometown, I had been away at college for a few years and had lost touch with most of my childhood friends. Our marriage was new, our home was new, our church was new (to me)–I was...

When you were a child, did you dream about your future? Did you have a plan for your college, your career, your family? Did you picture how many children you would have, what their names would be, what your house would look like?

How has that worked out for you?

Try as we might, we cannot control...

I met my parents when I was seventy-two hours old. That’s not how most parent-child relationships start, but this was no ordinary story. Instead of months of pregnancy, my parents experienced years of attempting to adopt. Instead of hours of labor, they spent hours in the car, racing to a...

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. We’ve all uttered those words at some point, but for a while they basically became my mantra. This morning I read through some old posts and journal entries from the days (ahem, months) following Joey’s Down syndrome diagnosis,...

A few months ago, my family of five pale Ohioans spent an afternoon at Daytona Beach. The conditions were perfect: the sun shone without melting us, the water temperature was refreshing, and people milled about without overcrowding. We set up on the beach, sun-screened ourselves, and settled in...

Sometimes we find ourselves living a life full of plot twists we never imagined. We set out on a path in our youth, certain that we know where it is headed–when the Playwright of our lives has something entirely different in mind. A broken relationship, a traumatic accident, an...

“The person you spend the most time with is you, so be careful and intentional about how you speak to yourself.”
Tricia Lott Williford, You Can Do This

For six years of my childhood, I competed in something called Bible Quizzing. Though this is not the time and place for a...