#6
This past summer, we had the opportunity to speak at several Joni and Friends Camps. This camp was started by the ministry of Joni Eareckson Tada and is for families that are affected by disability. (We encourage you to check out these nationwide camps via this LINK). We shared things that God has taught us and things we wish someone would have told us when we were first married. Every camp has its own unique personality, but certain items always generated a lot of discussion. Perhaps, one of our most controversial principles is # 6, “Be cognizant of the “special” needs [...]
Letting Your Kids Grow Up.
When Mary was a little girl, she loved to watch Barney the Dinosaur. We watched every episode and bought all of the Barney Movies. As Mary got older, we stopped watching Barney. We often wondered if we stopped watching because Mary lost interest or because we subconsciously decided she was too grown up for Barney. Truth be told, we struggle with seeing Mary as the 32-year-old young woman that she is. In many ways, we are still waiting for her to grow up, but she is grown up! She may be “stuck” developmentally as a 2-year-old, but she is 32. [...]
Finding Time For Each Other
Facebook, I think, has changed how we live and think about ourselves. I love that I have been able to reconnect with old friends on FB and find out what is going on in their lives; but I hate the fact that looking at Facebook can also make us feel worse about our lives. Too often, we allow ourselves to compare our lives to those of our friends' on Facebook, and we are led to believe that we come up woefully short. Everyone’s life “seems” more exciting and glamorous than ours. For those of us that stay at home with [...]
Hurricane Warning!
Our blog post is a little later than usual this week because for the past two days we, along with 1.5 million other people, have been evacuating the Carolina Coast ahead of Hurricane Florence. During the past several days, we have been in a lot of traffic, waited in long gas lines and have watched entirely too much of the hurricane coverage on the Weather Channel! Although we certainly have prayed for God’s protection on the people and property in the Carolinas, we also heeded the warning signs and did what we needed to do to protect ourselves from the [...]
Happiness and Success Through Mary’s Eyes
We are shaped by our environments. My career centers on the tech sector and higher-education. Both worlds can be very performance-driven; the tech sector with its focus on company valuation, innovation and financial performance and higher-education with its focus on research, publications and teacher evaluations. While these worlds do not have to be seen through a performance-driven lense, it is predominately how I saw both worlds. These worlds shaped my definitions of success and happiness and I eventually realized that I had largely viewed success and happiness from these secular and performance-driven perspectives. My world got rocked a few [...]
Mission: Possible
Forgiveness; probably one of the most powerful, yet difficult obstacles in our lives. We cannot underestimate how important forgiveness is to our faith walk, our relationships, and our overall health; truly a juggernaut in our lives with the potential to heal or destroy. Too often we hold onto our resentment as if by not forgiving someone, we are getting even with them or returning a hurt. But being unwilling to forgive always ends up hurting the offended, not the offender. Corrie ten Boom, who was a Nazi concentration camp survivor once said, “Forgiveness is to set a prisoner free and [...]