By now, many of you have already read Notes From a Dragon Mom, Emily Rapp's beautiful and honest meditation about her son Ronan, who is terminally ill with Tay-Sachs disease. She writes,

How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, ...

Yesterday should have been rough. Peter was away, and I had gotten about five hours of sleep. But then, Marilee signed "eat" for the first time. William prayed, "Um, God, please help Dad get home safety with no accidents." Penny got frustrated as she tried to hang a photo on ...

"You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus."

–2 Timothy 2:1

I believe that God's grace, offered through Jesus to each and every one of us, is always available. Even if we "cheapen" it (to paraphrase Bonhoeffer) by persistent ...

I have a post on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog today that discusses a recent survey comparing Protestant Christian schools to their Catholic, public, homeschooling, and private non-religious peers. As someone who attended a private non-religious boarding school, worked for ...

A friend remarked a number of years ago that writing a memoir has three stages–living the story, writing the story, and then sending the story out into the world. Each part contains its own risks, of course, but I'm feeling the vulnerability of part three these days. I want ...

When we sit down to dinner as a family, we often go around the table and share one good thing about our day. But last night I decided, on the suggestion of a book I'm reading, to ask everyone, "What's one mistake you made today?" The idea is that we start giving our kids freedom ...

I don't have the words to convey how much I liked Geore Estreich's book, The Shape of the Eye: Down Syndrome, Family, and the Stories We Inherit. Estreich is a poet, and his simple yet elegant prose tells the story of his daughter Laura's entrance into their family. It details ...

I've been thinking about comparisons. We do it without thinking–compare our waistline to the person next to us, notice what car he drives, what bag she carries, what beauty they possess. And once children are a part of the equation, it all steps up a notch. We compare everything ...

I'm years away from being an "empty nester," and although I suspect that Penny will one day live independently, there's always the possibility that our daughter with Down syndrome (or, for that matter, our typically-developing son or daughter) might end up under our roof for ...

A post by Joanna Goddard that describes the struggle of infertility: What if You Can't Have a Baby? Especially if you are struggling with infertility or trying to understand a friend in this position, Goddard's post might be a helpful guide. I resonated with these words as I ...

Over the course of the past few weeks, Patheos has featured A Good and Perfect Gift on the Patheos Book Club. Click here to read an excerpt, Q and A, etc. In addition, they featured four bloggers who reflected on the book:

Jennifer Grant, "The Nature of Love Is to Expand," who ...

Tuesday morning started at 5:30, with a text from our babysitter explaining that she couldn't come in that day due to a death in the family. I got up shortly thereafter, made breakfast, got myself and the kids dressed, packed Penny's lunch, made sure everyone had clean teeth ...

I have a new post on The Goody Blog for  Parents Magazine called "What I Learned from Raising a Child with Down syndrome." It could also be called, "What I Learned from Raising a Child," even if the "lessons" have been more pronounced due to Penny's extra chromosome. That's ...

I have a new post on Motherlode, the parenting blog of the New York Times: "Has Down Syndrome Hurt Us?". (Incidentally, for those of you who love the content of Motherlode and read it regularly, as I do, Lisa Belkin, the editor, is moving to the Huffington Post. I'm hoping to ...

A few weeks back someone asked me, "When did you know there was something wrong with your baby?" I hesitated for a moment before answering, because I'm not convinced that there was something wrong with my baby. I think he meant, "When did you find out Penny had Down syndrome?" ...