While driving my minivan, a strange light appeared on the dashboard. I’d never seen it before and didn’t know what it meant. It looked like an exclamation mark inside parentheses: (!) I grabbed my phone and took a picture of the strange light (don’t worry, the van was parked) and I sent the picture to my husband, Jeff, with the question: Any idea what (!) means? He texted back and said it meant either a flat tire or a tire that’s getting low on air. So I stepped out to examine all four tires, and sure enough, one was quite low. It had a slow leak. Those flickering lights on the dashboard tell us when something needs tending. Maybe the car is low on fuel. Maybe the car is leaking oil. The lights on the dashboard help us intervene before we end up with a flat tire, run out of gas, Continue Reading
Rising Above Unhappy in Marriage
Honestly, the memories still feel fresh. They’ve long passed and healed, yet they’ve left scars. Not scars that remind me of pain, but scars forever reminding me of the power and hope of a God who saves. Life was upside down. Our once chaotic, yet predictably peaceful existence as a family of four had disappeared in a moment. We had stepped into the world of international adoption and fallen deeply in love with a little girl God called a Schumaker long before we’d ever seen her face. We didn’t know it, but our little Schumaker had suffered the unimaginable and the trauma and neglect had taken its toll on her mind and body. Classes. Books. Counselors. Doctors. We did it all in preparation, but none of it touched the depths of the battle we were about to fight. Malnutrition, PTSD, Continue Reading