by jphilo | Mar 16, 2015 | Reviews
Dr. Lorna Bradley is the mother of an adult son with Asperger syndrome.and she’s an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church. If that short description rings a bell, perhaps you read her Different Dream guest post about beauty in brokenness. Now she’s combined her personal and professional expertise to write an invaluable new book for parents of kids with special needs. I’m excited about how much this book will help families, the book and am eager to tell you more about it.
Special Needs Parenting: From Coping to Thriving Addresses Issues
Special Needs Parenting: From Coping to Thriving addresses many spiritual questions parents ask when their children are diagnosed with special needs. It discusses difficult issues like dealing with grief and guilt with compassion and candor. And it also offers practical advice to makes life easier for parents. A sneak peek at the table of contents to see what it covers:
- God and Special Needs
- Understanding Chronic Grief
- Breaking Free from Guilt
- Tools to Increase Patience
- Self-care for Caregivers
- Building Healthy Relationships
- Hope and Healing
Appendix
Notes for Small Group Leaders
Blessing of the Parents Liturgy
Resource List
Self-care Inventory
About the Author
As you can see, Special Needs Parenting: From Coping to Thriving has something for every parent of a child with special needs. Each chapter ends with a list of questions for personal reflection, prayer helps, and Scripture references. The questions can also be used for small group discussion, which makes Bradley’s book a natural for Bible study or support groups.
To read the rest of this post and enter the give away, please visit Down the Gravel Road’s sister site at DifferentDream.com.
by jphilo | Dec 11, 2014 | Uncategorized
- The mark of a gifted teacher: Upon hearing of his death 40 years after last seeing him, you spend days mourning his passing and thanking God for using one man to impact your life in profound and positive ways.
- The pleasure of sleeping in your own bed can not be too highly rated.
- Louise Penny’s latest novel, The Long Way Home, is absolutely delicious. How long can I make the reading of it last?
What are you reading these days? Leave a comment.
by jphilo | Dec 9, 2014 | Top Ten Tuesday, Walking Down the Gravel Road
Two days ago, a dear high school friend sent a Facebook private message. “I ran across this tonight,” the message said.
“This” was an obituary for Roger Hallum, our high school speech and drama coach. According to the obituary Mr. Hallum–who will always be Mr. Hallum and never Roger to me–died on July 1, 2009.
He’s been gone five years and we, the students he touched in profound ways, never knew. We never had a chance to say thank you. We never had a chance to tell him how he shaped and bolstered the confidence of a bunch of squirrely teens as he tapped into our talents.
So five years late, this top ten list says thank you for the lessons he taught so well more than 4 decades ago.
10. Never judge a book by its cover. None of us believed a dumpy man who wore his sandy hair shaggy and unkempt, whose teeth that never saw braces, and who wore saggy plaid suit jackets and polyester pants could motivate high schoolers to spend months of each year rehearsing and performing in plays and speech contests.
9. When your director says, “Jump,” you say, “How high?”
8. Good writing isn’t enough to make a good speech. Neither is good delivery. But good writing + good delivery = magic.
7. Never, ever start smoking. Because trying to quit is hell and requires copious amounts of Live Savers candies.
6. Teenagers, given a vision of what they can do if they work far harder than they believe they can and tasked with far more responsibility than school administrators believe is wise, can accomplish tasks beyond what most adults think they can do.
5. Timing is everything.
4. An army jeep, a goat, and 30 tie-dyed bedsheets sewn into kimonos, make for an exciting, unexpected, and visually pleasing rendition of Tea House of the August Moon.
3. Character parts are much more fun to play than romantic leads.
2. A pregnant pause speaks louder than words.
1. One unassuming person…one dumpy, shaggy-haired man with crooked teeth, saggy plaid suit jackets and polyester trousers…who says “You can do this because you have talent,” can change the course of an insecure teenager’s life.
In memory of Mr. Roger Hallum, Feb. 8, 1939–July 1, 2009. Your former students are still jumping, higher than they ever thought they could.
by jphilo | Nov 11, 2014 | Uncategorized
The Top Ten Tuesday list will be back next week. This week’s Tuesday post is dedicated to remembering the veterans in our family with an updated version of a piece written for Veteran’s Day, 2012.
Yesterday was Veteran’s Day, and in my world it went out with more of a whimper than a bang. However our state’s major newspaper, The Des Moines Register, in a moving salute to World War II vets, had the soldiers tell their stories in their own words.
That story, combined with the passing of my husband’s Uncle Harold, a World War 2 pilot in October of 2012, was a reminder of how little time remains for our nation to say thank you to the men and women who risked their lives in that great war. Here are the heroes in our family–some still living and some gone in the past few years–I am proud to call my uncles, and for whom I am grateful today.
Harold Walker, Hiram’s storyteller uncle, and pilot in the Pacific Theater near the end of the war. He died in October of 2012.
Marvin Conrad, my piano-playing and very musical uncle. I believe he served in the Navy in World War 2. He died in 2010, only a few months after visiting Washington, DC on one of the Freedom Flights.
Ordel Rogen, my cattle-raising uncle. He served in some branch of the armed forces in World War 2, though I’m not sure of the details. He died several years ago in December.
Leo Hess, who told harrowing tales of fighting during the Battle of the Bulge in World War 2.
Jim Hoey is my history-loving uncle. He was also a dedicated friend to my dad during his long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Jim served as a Navy medic in the Korean War. He turned 80 in June of 2012 and still loves to travel and write letters to his grandkids and great-nephews and nieces.
Dear uncles, our thanks for your service is not enough, but it’s all I have to give. Thank you for fighting for freedom.
Because of you, our shared family histories continue.
Because of your sacrifice, our family is able to reunite in the summer to reminisce about old memories and create new ones.
Because of you, little children play without fear.
Because of you, elderly men and women are cared for and safe.
Because of you, we live in peace.
Because of you, we are who we are.
Because of you, we are blessed.
Because of you.
by jphilo | Oct 27, 2014 | Reviews
I suspected, when asking Mary Potter Kenyon for a review copy of Refined by Fire, that it would be a hard book to put down. Once I opened the book, my suspicions proved to be absolutely true. The book was nearly impossible to put down for two riveting reasons.
Refined by Fire: Two Reasons It’s Hard to Put Down
First, the author tells a heartbreaking story of loss. In the span of a few years, Kenyon lost her mother Irma and then her husband David. Just as she discovered writing as a way to regain her emotional footing, her young grandson Jacob died of cancer.
Second, she makes the story more compelling by being transparent. She lays her journey of grief before the reader, refusing to hide her emotional pain, her tears, her anger, her loneliness, and her doubts. We see grief take its toll on her relationships and especially on her youngest daughter, Abigail, who was just 8 when her father died.
Refined by Fire: Snapshots of Grief
Though overwhelmed by grief and shedding tears every morning for years, Kenyon somehow writes her way through her grief. Throughout the book, excerpts from her blog and daily journals are featured:
Grief at Ten and a Half Weeks
The First Holiday
Grief at Twenty Weeks
Grief at Five Months
Each entry is a word picture, a snapshot of grief frozen in time. Between those entries, the reader sees grief melt and morph and reform as Kenyon questions God and hears him answer in sweet and unexpected ways. Though devastated by her losses, she begins to see God at work in her life. Her heart is still broken at the end of the book, but thanks to her determination to cling to God, she is also stronger and more capable than before.
Refined by Fire: A Grief Handbook
Kenyon’s Refined by Fire is essentially “grief handbook” for those dealing with loss, something Kenyon wished for as she grieved. It is also a useful tool and resource for pastors, grief support group leaders, hospice workers, funeral home directors, and anyone working with people dealing with grief.
Refined by Fire Give Away
I have a copy of Refined by Fire to give away. To enter the drawing, leave a comment in the box below between now and midnight on November 1, 2014. To increase your chances of winning, sign up for the Gravel Road’s RSS feed at the top, right side of this page and leave another comment saying you did so by midnight on November 1, 2014.
Mary Potter Kenyon graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a BA in Psychology and is the Director of the Winthrop Public Library. She wrote several of the devotions included in the NIV Hope in the Mourning Bible released by Zondervan in 2013. Mary writes a weekly couponing column for the Dubuque Telegraph Herald and conducts writing and couponing workshops for women’s groups, libraries, and community colleges. Mary is also the author of Coupon Crazy: The Science, the Savings, and the Stories Behind America’s Extreme Obsession and ChemoTherapist: How Cancer Cured a Marriage.
