“Are you ready to see how many statues we can find this afternoon?” I asked my four daughters as we headed into Central Park in New York City. It was about three hours later that the first “my feet hurt” of the day was uttered. It was closely followed by, “Are we there yet?” But …
Quick, name one infamous historical duo. Okay, time’s up. Who did you say? Bonnie and Clyde? Frank and Jesse James? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Me, I’d name Adam and Eve. The father and mother of all notorious pairs to follow. These two are often remembered as the world’s most scandalous fruit eaters, remarkably …
“I don’t get involved in my daughters’ friendships,” she informed me. The slight tremor in her voice, along with the way she uneasily shifted in her seat, seemed to convey that my efforts at conflict resolution unnerved her. Discomfort had not been my goal, though. Instead, peacemaking had. For over a month, one of my …
If you ask my husband Ted why church is good for marriage, he’ll most likely quip, “I met my wife at church. That was good for my marriage.” Wit aside, though, Ted takes being an active member of our local church seriously. So do I. In the decade since we first met, we’ve been purposeful …
When it comes to the joy and the stress of the holidays, how do you and your spouse approach it? As a united team? Or do tinsel, gift giving, and extended family get-togethers turn you against each other? If you and your spouse are struggling to face the holidays together, here are five ways you …
When our first baby was born, my husband Ted and I discovered that teamwork during pregnancy was the simple part. It didn’t take much for Ted to hop in the car and make a food run for me. But getting up in the middle of the night to help me with a screaming newborn? That …
I held my breath as the phone rang, hesitant to answer. In the last several months, my husband Ted and I had experienced back-to-back losses. It had been one piece of bad news after another, and I feared more would come with each call. First, we’d grieved the death of our preborn baby to miscarriage. …
I chopped vegetables, browned ground beef, and begin to combine all the basic ingredients for the harvest soup we were making into a pot. Friends of ours were preparing to welcome their third baby and my husband Ted and I had agreed to provide them with a home-cooked meal. When it came time to add …
I never imagined spending the first day of a holiday weekend in the ER, my body racked with flu-like symptoms brought on by a miscarriage in process. But there I was. My husband Ted and I sat in a small hospital waiting room. Instead of being surrounded by our three young daughters, we sat next …
The gel felt cold on my first-trimester belly. I was too excited to care, though. We were about to eavesdrop on our fourth child and listen to his or her tiny heartbeat for the very first time. As my nurse, Kathy, expertly moved the Doppler across my skin, my ears strained to catch that “galloping …
