Ted Haynes, current campaign chair of the Tulsa Area United Way, encourages staff, volunteers and donors by telling his story. Well, it isn’t his story. It’s Sara’s story (name changed for confidentiality), in which Ted and his family played a part. When Sara was 16 years old, her parents dropped a box off at school and told the counselor she could not come…
I know I talk big about doing justice even when you think you can’t. But I have to add that excuses are not always lame. While it is beautifully true that God strengthens believers to do works they thought they couldn’t handle, it is just as true that sometimes He wants people to lay low. If…
I can believe something without knowing it. For years sermons and accountability meetings nudged me to make Bible study a priority and I believed them, but I didn’t know how pivotal quiet time truly was until 2013. Through high school, I hungered for the truth- curiosity drew me to scripture often and I journaled avidly. But for…
There’s so much selfishness to teach out of my kids. I feel like I am teaching all the day long. Sometimes though, my kids teach me. Tonight my son’s compassionate little heart taught me a scripture application I had never thought of before. Our bedtime stories are usually about airplanes or horses or Buzz Lightyear. I make up plots…
I remember finding out about human trafficking and the orphan crisis all in one Sunday. In the months following, I attended local awareness events and scoured the internet for articles and initiatives. After the shock that turned to grief turned to compassion, I was spurred to action. After all, if someone like me does not help,…
Funny how I yearly lament autumn’s pending ending yet the first snow brings joy. I never settle into winter, as long as it lasts, I wait wait for it to end. And yet, when the last snow fall falls I climb atop our dryer to stare out this window and savor it. Now, I’m sitting on…
My friend, Steven Wen is the founding board chair of Love True, the anti-trafficking organization I helped found and still love dearly. In a post recently published on the Point Community Church’s blog, Steve answered the questions, What is sex trafficking? and How can we help its victims? He has agreed to guest post part of the article…
April 30-May 1, I’ll be at the 11th annual Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit in Nashville, Tennessee! CAFO is for anyone who cares about orphans. Whether you are drawn to adoption, foster care, mentorship, nonprofit work, policy, Orphan Sunday, church ministry, family support or awareness, you will laud the summit. Check out the list of workshops. Christianity Today…
To the start-up starter uppers out there willing to work years as full-time unpaid staff because you are committed to a calling bigger than yourself, can I (along with nineteenth century evangelist and orphanage director, George Muller) encourage you? I put down Muller’s biography today to write a letter to two such friends. I hope…
Freedom for the oppressed does not start or stop at their rescue. It starts with funding investigation and intervention by initiatives like IJM and A21. It stops with restoration of hearts and wages. Stigmas, post-traumatic stress and economic realities can hold freed slaves back from living in freedom. Budding organizations like Free & Crowned and Crowned Free give a…
Have you heard about The Drop Box? Pastor Lee Jong-rak is a modern day George Muller. His congregation is living out the gospel. When I heard about Jong-rak’s selfless efforts to rescue abandoned babies and his sincere love of each one of them, I remembered some church history. Early Christians were known among their unbelieving neighbors…
Just type Peggy O’Mara into your Pinterest search bar and see dozens of prettified quotations. Chiefly, The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice. On reading O’Mara’s words, I was first skeptical then curious. I laughed as I pictured a grown man reviewing his mother’s instructions as he ties his shoe, “Make rabbit ears with the laces… lasso…
Now that I have a preschooler, that degree in Curriculum Development and Instruction is leaking into my parenting. Today I considered how I could incorporate charity into our Christmas tradition starting this year. Yes, today. I’m still a procrastinator. I sat down to jot down some ideas and out flowed a step-by-step lesson plan. 1)…
Dad’s top answer to my curious-kid questions was “to make you ask questions.” I may have actually believed that God made the sky blue so that I would ask why. He would turn my books upside down, put my little brother’s pants on backwards, sneak buttermilk into our breakfast glasses and sing old Roger Miller songs. When…
I confess that I relied heavily on that DVD player for those hectic months postpartum. “Good morning Linus,” I’d greet my toddler rubbing the sleeplessness from my eyes and jiggling my newborn, “What movie would you like to watch this morning?” Actions repeated build habits and before long the words, “Watch Cars, please? Watch Jungle…
Every summer day, I stare over my sink at my neighbor’s garden shaded by four four-story oaks and surrounded by eclectically painted houses. Beautiful. From my living room chair one can see only leaves leaves leaves. If I showed you this window only, you may think we live in a romantic tree house loft. But if you look…
Remember childhood, when the small things evoked excitement and the big things, elation? Dandelions for instance. Dandelions seemed almost magical to me, their spores like little fairies. I have always loved dandelions. Related to them even: free-spirited, adventurous and scattered-brained. Surely I vexed many a homeowner west of the wind because that weed when bare…
When I was 23 years old, I drove from Florida to Maine by myself. I borrowed the Little Women audiobook from the Jacksonville Library then mailed it back from Kittery. Once home, I purchased a beautiful copy for the daughter I hoped to have one day. I’m several years from reading it to the…
“Uhh it’s snowing” I texted Chris in his business school capsule “on November 8.” At lake level, it had been raining but as we ascended the hill, I could distinguish the unexpected floating specks among the cold drops. The ratios flipped and I heard “mommy it’s snowing!” from the backseat. “Mommy, it’s Christmas!” My three-year-old hawed…
I watched my mother do the friendship dance through my seven childhood moves. So when I married a military man turned graduate student five years and four apartments ago, I knew all the tricks. When I arrive in a new town, I talk to random people in the library and awkwardly ask women for their phone numbers. I…
I appreciate a tri-tone leaf green, yellow and red all on one like I relish in a tri-tone street like I savor a tri-tone state of mind. Our block this week seems three seasons at once. Beside the park looks winter; along the road wears fall; and the giant oaks hiding in the green backyard-cluster think it…
we climb the hill to roll back down it we climb again to sit on it Linus hops rock to rock talking about bugs and prying caps off acorns to “help the squirrels” Joy cruises the bench seat, where I sit watching to see what I will see: on yonder hills shadows come and go…
It’s been one of those days. Low on memory-making. High on need-meeting. You feel like the whole day got eaten by a diaper. You reheated your coffee four times in the vain hope that you might actually sit down to drink it. One kid is sick and the other is loud. You played tag with the…
I’m still smitten by my renewed delights in creating things and in solitude. The dilemma is that moms have so little time for these leisurely delights. Singing can be done while driving. Dancing, with a child in my arms. Learning, during chores via podcast. Cooking- it’s a good thing I already enjoy it. All these add to my happiness-…
The gorge is dim and cool. Where moss does not cover the walls, wet rocks glisten. The roar of the waterfalls grows louder until our route suddenly flanges out- cliffs above, a cliff below and a 2 mile view of sun spilt hills beyond them. I bravely peer down to the bottom of the rocky bowl at…
I have been reading a borrowed copy of The Valley of Vision, a collection or Puritan prayers and devotions from John Bunyan to Charles Spurgeon. I recently read from p.26, “When I think upon and converse with Thee, 10,000 delightful thoughts spring up; 10,000 sources of pleasure are unsealed; 10,000 refreshing joys spread over my…
Bright colors are richer through tinted eye wear. So when you go leaf peeping this season, wear brown sunglasses. Choose a narrow winding forest road and drive toward the sun. When the breeze picks up, slow down and gaze up through the underbellies of sunlit leaves shimmying in the cool gusts. The leaves literally sparkle- like…
I did not model imaginative play to my son or inspire him into inventiveness. Creativity just flowed naturally out of him at thirty-six months old. Rather than building the towers depicted on the box, he places his blocks in a single layer radiating out like a mosaic across the floor. When we can’t find his…
Since our toddler follows our improvised bedtime stories so well, I was curious to see how he’d receive a chapter book. A barnyard book like Charlotte’s Web fit September well. So we plunged one chapter a day with warm milk and pillows into E.B. White’s beautiful descriptions of seasons, country-living, and farm animals. Linus knew every character well and immediately wanted them added to…
This letter to my 10-month-old daughter is part of the Letters to My Children Series. In each child’s journal, I write prayers, encouragement, advice and little memories for them to read later. Sweet Baby, Tonight, you and I laid on my bed silently staring at one another, faces an inch apart, for a long wonderful time….