They all have been, or will be, speaking at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College. I've attended the last two Festivals, in 2008 and 2010, and this year, I will be a much-less-exciting-than-the-aforementioned-people speaker too! I'm already ordering books by the ...

Jenni Newbury is a new friend of mine. She wrote a guest post a while ago about her younger brother Jason, who has Down syndrome, and she recently sent me the text of her keynote address from this year's National Down Syndrome Congress Convention. As she relates, if you are ...

I ran a series of guest posts in early August surrounding the topic of adoption. In one, Ellen Painter Dollar delineated the problems inherent in the question, "Why Don't You Just Adopt?" I recently found out that Melissa Florer-Bixler, blogger at Sign on the Window, responded ...

It's been in the works for oh, five and a half years now, if you count the journal entries I wrote as soon as Penny was born. Those journal entries provided an outline for A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny. And then the outline became ...

Penny started talking about kindergarten over a year ago. She's like her mom. She likes school.

But lately the reality has set in. She seems to know that going to kindergarten marks a rite of passage. She'll move from a 3 hour school day to almost 7 hours. There will be more ...

Yesterday morning, I wrote a response to an NPR report about evangelicals disparate beliefs about whether or not Adam was an historical figure. Many of you weighed in with comments and questions, both here and on Facebook, and I'd like to address a few of them now.

First, I've ...

So here's the question: should a man who was born without the lower half of his legs be allowed to compete in the World Track and Field Championships?

According to Juliet Macur of the New York Times ("As Debate Goes On, Amputee Will Break Barrier") some people think Oscar Pistorius ...

I read the Bible literally. Which is why I don't believe in an historical Adam and Eve.

NPR ran a long piece yesterday morning about the controversy among evangelicals regarding the historicity of Genesis 2. I commend Barbara Bradley Hagerty for even-handed coverage of the story, ...

Yes, I have the song lyrics in mind, and yes, that's William on the left with the microphone his great-grandmother gave him for his birthday. We've tried to teach William to use his performance skills to sing "You can't always get what you wa-ant,"  but he's had a hard time ...

Because I was away, I missed the opportunity to express my gratitude for John Stott's ministry after his death on July 27th. But I wanted to take a moment to draw attention to two of the many wonderful tributes written about his long and full career as a worldwide evangelical ...

As I mentioned last week, the past ten days were a staycation, which is to say we stayed home, for the most part, and didn't work, for the most part. (And for any of you who didn't check in last week, I highly recommend scrolling through last week's posts–four excellent reflections ...

Sara Hagerty is a friend through marriage–her husband and mine were housemates for two years in college. But in recent years the bond has grown stronger as both of us have found ourselves with families that are less conventional than our peers. Sara and Nate adopted Eden and ...

Margot Starbuck, author of The Girl in the Orange Dress: Searching for a Father Who Does Not Fail, comes at adoption from two angles. First, as her book narrates, she was adopted as an infant. Second, she has two biological children and an adopted son. In Ellen Painter Dollar's ...

In the early stages of this blog, I wrote a post about in vitro fertilization. I essentially wondered out loud why people would attempt IVF given the fact that there are babies "out there" in needs of homes. I basically asked, "Why don't you just adopt?" ...

Earlier today, I ran a guest post from Jennifer Grant. I also had the opportunity to interview Jennifer after reading her new book, Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter.

How did you and your husband decide you wanted to adopt?

In Love You More, I wrote: ". ...