Ray and I struggled at times with just how to handle our church’s youth group when our children were teenagers. We had had no youth group at our church in Illinois. When we moved to Tennessee, we were excited to have the…
Our friend — I’ll call her Pamela — was here for a couple of days earlier this week. I love when she comes to visit. She knows how to make people feel very special. She was kind and gentle in talking with my…
“It Is Well With My Soul” is a song I have sung at church since childhood. I heard years ago that it was written by a man in grief after losing members of his family in a ship wreck on the Atlantic Ocean.…
Ray and I lingered in conversation with a college administrator and a local school administrator after the church auditorium emptied yesterday morning. The college administrator (I’ll call her Janie) works on a campus out of state, but returns often to her…
Many months ago I had a phone conversation with a homeschooling mother I have never met. One sentence she said in our conversation has stayed with me. We were discussing homeschooled children homeschooling their own children someday. She said, “I have three sons and…
I published my first blog post on April 29, 2013. I got my first encouraging response from Melissa (not her real name) on May 2. Many more have followed. I first met Melissa at a small homeschool event about 2001…
We heard a wonderful story from John yesterday. On Monday he did “One Soldier’s Story” for a group in St. Louis. This is John’s performance in which he dresses in Ray’s dad’s World War II uniform and tells his grandfather’s story in the first-person.…
On the twenty-third of February in 1979, I was waiting, as I had been for the last eight months–waiting to see the little joy growing inside me. I saw my obstetrician that day for one of those weekly appointments expectant mothers…
Yesterday morning was our first trip to town since our icy weather started last Monday. I was surprised at how slick the roads still were and completely unprepared for what we found in town. The street in front of our church building…
