It has been my responsibility and privilege to hold out hope with people who have struggled to hold it on their own. Offering light to one another must not overshadow the real pain that people experience, but small gestures and words of encouragement remind us that grief will not have the last word.
I am limited in my humanity to understand why it took me 37 years to find my husband, and why it took me 9 years to learn teaching was not for me, but I also know that in those times of waiting the Lord was doing important work.
“Draw the circle wide. Draw it wider still. Let this be our song. No one sits alone. Sitting side-by-side, draw the circle wide.”
A kingdom vision is one without hunger, thirst, sickness, loneliness or imprisonment. Rather than, wasting time trying to determine who among us belongs to what category of "the least of these", can we work together and with God toward that vision instead?
What would it look like if we welcomed one another as we are, and took the time to learn how to love each other well?
The movie Penguin Bloom is highly refreshing because it opens a window into the physical and emotional pain that is often associated with adjustment to disability [...] Most importantly it shows each member of the family journeying through their own experience of grief related to disability and eventually coming out the other side, not wishing to die but learning to spread their wings and fly with reinvigorated passion for life.
One of my fears is that we are losing the ability as a society to help someone who experiences a disability or is suffering in some way, because we are afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing.
In today’s world, people with disabilities are largely ‘othered’, and there’s movement of self-advocacy afoot among them. There’s no telling what can happen when people unite across differences.
In the group home they are waiting...
Then it finally dawned on me. The tree is a metaphor for life. It is weighed down by its branches but yet keeps growing taller and taller towards the sky.