Books lists are coming out. The New York Times has announced their editors' favorites. President Obama has been shopping for books. I'm on my way to the bookstore later this afternoon, with a list that includes The Boxcar Children, Pippi Longstocking, and the first in the Ivy ...

We started our Advent calendars on Sunday. Penny read the opening poem from our devotion/sticker Advent book:

There is a star in Bethlehem, bright shining as the sun,Announcing that the Light of God shines here for everyone.Let's look upon the star this year, as God wants us ...

I appreciated Bob Fu's story, as recounted in God's Double Agent: The True Story of a Chinese Christian's Fight for Freedom, for a number of reasons, including the glimpse at recent Chinese history and the story of an unlikely conversion to Christianity. But I was most struck ...

Every year, Peter and I pull out our very favorite Advent book: God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas. (Here's what I wrote last year, when I recommended it.) If you'd like the opportunity to prepare your heart to celebrate the incarnation, this book ...

Somewhat spontaneously, we decided to go through Penny's memory box tonight. She spied it upon her dresser and brought it to the sofa in their room. She and Wiliam both decided that viewing its contents trumped reading the final chapter of Prince Caspian. So we leafed through ...

I mentioned a few weeks back that I had the opportunity to contribute an essay about male and female roles within marriage for the new book Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank About Faith (see my post Should Men Be the Head of the Household? for the beginning of ...

"What's one word or verse I can pray for you?"

Those were the words from a friend I received earlier this week.

One word, or one verse, that sums up my needs before God right now. In this season. This season in which God is beginning to feel quite near quite often, for the first ...

Last week, Kari Wagner-Peck wrote, in an open letter to Chuck Klosterman, the New York Times' ethicist:

Today people with cognitive disabilities and their allies are asking members of society to refrain from using the word "retarded" (along with all mutations of the word) for ...

Twenty-six stories of abortion told in first person. Across state lines, across the past four decades, and across generations. From the woman who procured an illegal and unsafe abortion in the late 1960s to the more recent women who passed through protesters to assert their ...

Today I'm excited to be attending the Q Women Conference in NYC, with speakers such as Kate Harris, Katelyn Beaty, Rachel Held Evans, Lauren Winner, Kathy Keller, and Rebekah Lyons (plus a cameo by my husband but that's another story). Next week, I'll share an interview with ...

1. Assess the situation and realize, after ten minutes of coaching, that this door is very old and it involves a deadbolt with no external release mechanism.

2. Tell your daughter that unless she can turn the lock the opposite way, you will need to get someone to cut a ...

I am honored to be a contributor to a new collection of essays called Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank About Faith. I wrote my essay about the question of male "headship" in marriage. Also in the collection, you'll find reflections on motherhood by Micha Boyett, ...

Marilee decided not to take a nap today. It went something like this:

"Mama," she says, under her covers, after her stories, after two songs, "I need to go poopy."

"Okay, kiddo. Call me when you're done."

"No! I need to go poopy ...

"The beggarly question of parentage – what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care." ...

If you read one thing this week, check out Ellen Painter Dollar's cover story for the Christian Century: Messy Stories: Disability and the Choices Parents Make. To whet your appetite:

In the illness narrative, disabilities are seen as problems in need of solving, abnormalities ...