I was having dinner with friends a few weeks back. They have an adult daughter with autism, and their daughter has also been diagnosed with a rare syndrome. My friend described her conversation with a new social worker: "So the social worker asked the name of K's syndrome. I ...

My friend and colleague Karen Swallow Prior interviewed me about A Good and Perfect Gift for her.meneutics, the women's blog of Christianity Today (Perfection Obsession: What It Looks Like to Accept God-Given Limitations). Among other things, our conversation touches upon comparisons, ...

I can't really believe that I'm about to write this, but I just found out that A Good and Perfect Gift has been named one of the "Top Ten Religion Books of 2011" by Publisher's Weekly. They write:

Unexamined faith is not worth having, and Becker asks the right heartfelt questions ...

I wrote last week about our upcoming move to a small boarding school in Connecticut, and I wrote about my fears related to that move, fears which focused upon Penny's schooling. As we were contemplating the move, a friend said, "I don't think you want to have a Penny-centered ...

has been "out there" for about two months now, and I've had my first string of readings and talks associated with it (and by the way, I fixed the link to the talk about perfection from earlier this week so you can now access it). Overall, the response has been a positive one, ...

I wrote on Tuesday about missing Penny's Halloween party. She was very forgiving, but I also agreed to come to her school to read a book to her class. As soon as I showed up, she came to the door and said, "Mom, you missed the Halloween party."

I nodded. "But I'm here to read ...

My husband has a new job. It doesn't start until July, but he was recently appointed as Head of School at a small boarding school in Western Connecticut. In the early summer we will move to a 4,000 person town and settle down for the foreseeable future.

The job is exciting. The ...

Last Thursday night, I was invited to share my thoughts on the meaning of perfection in our culture at the City Church Forum in Richmond, VA. I tried to address three questions:

How does our culture understand perfection?

How have I—and in turn, you—unintentionally or inadvertently ...

Halloween. Never a holiday that brings out the best in me. Last year's Halloween post included my admission that I generally lean (heavily) upon my mother for costumes and decorations, including many a year where even the trick or treating occurred in her neighborhood. I remembered ...

Marilee and I just returned from a 5 day road trip to Richmond, Virginia. We had a packed itinerary–two book readings on Wednesday night, talks to a women's Bible study on Thursday morning and a church forum Thursday night, participation in a "Maker's" series with other artists ...

For those of you who read this blog regularly, you know that Penny started kindergarten two months ago, and you know that we couldn't be more pleased with her situation. With that said, as I've also mentioned, Penny has had a tough time "controlling her hands" and following ...

It's a question William asked me a long time ago, and I've been thinking about the answer ever since. I wrote it up for Lisa Belkin's new blog, Parentlode, at the Huffington Post "Explaining Down Syndrome to My Daughter, and to Myself." My post begins:

A few months back, I mentioned ...

This post is an excuse to a) show you what Penny did at her babysitter's wedding shower this past weekend, which is to say, spend an hour trying on different hats and "walk down the aisle" (her words), stop, twirl, and wait for the applause of the forty or so women in the room ...

My mother-in-law used to have a list of "feeling words" on her refrigerator. They were accompanied by a fill-in-the-blank statement, "I feel _________ when you __________." The idea was that you separate the way you feel from the person's action instead of blaming them directly ...

I can understand why lots of people assume that I wrote A Good and Perfect Gift with an audience of parents of children with Down syndrome in mind. It certainly speaks directly to our shared situation, and many parents have written me to say that they went through a similar ...