Ekalaka, Montana: The First Town Over the Border

by jphilo | Sep 30, 2020 | Uncategorized

Ekalaka is the first town west of Camp Crook, the town upon which See Jane Run! and the rest of the Tipperary County Mystery series is based. I snickered when I first heard the town’s name because, I mean really, who names their town something that sounds like a cheerleading chant.

Ekalaka, Ekalaka, shish boom bah!

Someone mentioned that Ekalaka was named after an Indian princess. An interesting factoid to toss around, but that was all to a young college graduate who was pretty sure she knew everything. Before life broadened her lens and took her down a peg or two.

In June of 2007 a fellow writer, who had once lived in Ekalaka, and I visited the tiny western towns where we had once lived. We toured Ekalaka’s museum, which was amazing for a county seat which boasts a population of 369. The museum even has a complete stegosaurus skeleton. More on that in another post.

The exhibit about Ijkalaka Eagle Man, the town’s namesake, took the older and wiser me down a few more pegs. Like twenty. Or a hundred. Or a thousand. When I read the plaque under Ekalaka’s portrait, I thought of the changes she experienced–moving from a Native American upbringing to life on a ranch to her marriage.

How did she navigate those changes? What was it like to see her way of life obliterated? How did it feel to learn you were worth eight horses and a hundred pounds of sugar?

Those are questions I’d love to explore and answer in a novel. Maybe once the Tipperary County mysteries have run their course. The wonderful thing about fiction is that once the research about a time period and place is done, imagination and life experience can fill in the gaps. They can answer the question that’s niggled at me since I read the plaque in the museum: What it was about Ekalaka that led white settlers to name a town after her? In my book, that’s a question worth answering and a story worth writing.

Eklalaka. It’s a wonderful name for a town.

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Finding Grace in All the Wrong Places

by jphilo | Sep 24, 2020 | Different Dream, Uncategorized

Finding Grace in All the Wrong Places

Finding grace in all the wrong places has long been the purview of parents raising children with disabilities. When COVID hit the truths we have lived since our kids’ diagnosis–there’s no instruction manual for our lives, neither we nor the experts have any idea of what we’re doing–became the temporary norm for families around the country and the world.

For a brief moment when the shut down first began, many eyes were opened to the manifold graces that connected us despite the pandemic, and we were grateful. Far too quickly, our society allowed the hardness of our changed changed circumstances harden our hearts. Far too quickly, we forgot about grace.

My personal wake up call came on August 10, 2020 when an intense windstorm, which I have since learned is called a derecho, swept through our community and my entire home state. For 3 1/2 days, our family was without electricity or Wi-Fi, and our cell service was non-existent to severely limited. I had no contact with my mother, who lives in a memory care unit. No way to encourage caregiving families through my blog or social media. No way to power our refrigerator or the freezers that feed our multigenerational family of 6 until our neighbor, whose electricity was restored quickly, allowed us to plug into his.

Since then, I have made a practice of finding grace in all the wrong places in the midst of a pandemic that feels like it won’t. These manifestations of God’s grace have helped me maintain and grow relationships until physical gatherings are safe once again.

Old-fashioned mail. Finding an unexpected personal letter or card in the mailbox is good for the soul. So is sending a letter and imagining the lift it gives its recipient.

Phone calls. I call my mother every day. It’s only for a few minutes, and I do most of the talking. Those chats are Mom’s lifeline to the world, and I’m grateful for the grace of technology that makes them possible.

Sticky notes. The physical kind that can be left on the door for the delivery person. Or for others in my family to ensure they will see them and life will move forward. Having lived until age 25 without them, my delight in them is unending.

FaceTime. Once a month, we connect with our out-of-state grandkids, ages 5 and 7, on FaceTime. We’ve taken them on virtual tours of our property, the used camper we bought this summer, and to show them how work on our house addition is progressing. What a grace to share life with them this way!

YouTube movies. When the construction crews come to move dirt, build forms, or pour cement I film and upload short videos to YouTube. The grandkids love when they receive links to videos of what’s going on at Papu and Grammy’s house. Grace and more grace.

Texting. Some of our church community group members have experienced devastating losses recently. Texting has allowed them to communicate their prayer needs and for us to respond in rapid real time. Immediate, communal prayer for those submerged in grief is grace, all grace.

Online school. Every day I counter my negative thoughts about what my grandchildren aren’t experiencing through online school with what their pandemic education would be like without it. So much grace would be unavailable to them. Their lessons would come by mail. There would be no instant answers to questions or feedback about homework. Kids wouldn’t know what their teachers look like. They would have no connection to classmates.

Zoom. Because of Zoom I’ve recorded podcasts, presented at conferences, been involved in a denominational launch of a special needs and disability ministry, participated in a women’s Bible study, done live Facebook interviews, and more. All great, but they don’t hold a candle to the grace of our family gathering virtually to celebrate our grandson’s 5th birthday. Or the grace of family history trivia contest with my husband’s family joining from around the world.

Now it’s your turn to open our eyes to the grace around us. Leave a comment below about where you have been finding grace in all the wrong places since either your special needs parenting journey or the pandemic began.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is both parent and daughter of loved ones with special needs and disabilities, as well as a former educator who worked with children for 25 years. She’s written several books about caregiving, special needs parenting, and childhood PTSD, including the recently released Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilties, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman. She speaks internationally about caregiving and parenting children with special needs and blogs at www.DifferentDream.com. Jolene and her husband live in central Iowa.

Author Jolene Philo

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The Special Needs Lord’s Prayer

The special needs Lord’s prayer came together for Mark Arnold on a Sunday morning when he attended virtual church with his son James. Here’s the fruit of his musings and his labor.

As I watched church on Zoom Sunday morning, enjoying the opportunity to relax and be in the congregation for a change, we reached the part of the service that is so well known that the words don’t need to be provided—the Lord’s Prayer.

As I spoke these oh-so-familiar words last Sunday, speaking these oh-so-familiar words, I thought of them in the context of parenting a child with special needs. Since then, I’ve created my version of the special needs Lord’s Prayer. I hope you find it helpful!

Our Father in heaven. It’s great to call you Father! My son can say Daddy. It’s one of the few words he can say, and it melts my heart. Is that what happens when I say Father to you? I think it is, because you love me even more than I love my son, and that’s a lot!

hallowed be your name. Hallowed means holy, sacred, and yet you clear up when I make a mess, which is often. Parenting a child with special needs, I know what that’s like and how it sometimes feels. But you clean me up and sort me out time and time again. Never minding. Always loving.

Your kingdom come. Sometimes, there’s a beautiful look on my son’s face as we pray. Or a light in his eyes as I sing Jesus loves me, this I know to him. He joins in with Yes! Jesus loves me, and I glimpse heaven as your Holy Spirit ministers to him. Thank you!

Your will be done, on earth as in heaven. However you want to work in and through us to share your will with others, we want that too. Lord, use the journey we are on, the good and the challenging stuff, to help, support and inspire others. Let us always serve you.

Give us today our daily bread. Our daily bread is everything that sustains us. It includes more than food–the joys, the delights, the thrills of special needs parenting. It fills us and nourishing our minds, bodies and souls for hard days. It gives us reserves to draw upon. You always give us what we need and more.

Forgive us our sins. So many times we say, think and do things we shouldn’t. When we walk into a poo smeared room and swear before we can stop ourselves. When we are so tired that we just sink into self-pity and ask why me?

As we forgive those who sin against us. This can be so hard! But we must forgive the person who sneers at our child during a meltdown. The person who offers opinions on our parenting ability. The social worker who says our respite care had to be cancelled. Those who take away needed financial support. If we don’t forgive, bitterness and resentment fills the void. If we do forgive, we are released from negative, life-draining emotions and filled with God’s grace and love.

Lead us not into temptation. Being tempted is so easy. To be economical with the truth when filling in financial support applications. To find comfort and temporary satisfaction in unhealthy or inappropriate ways. To say what we think about people and their opinions when they just don’t get our lives.

But deliver us from evil. Save us from the lack of forgiveness we harbor. From the temptation we fall into. From giving the enemy any power over us; especially from using our families and children with special needs to get to us.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours. We pray that you give us what we need. Equip us to serve you and others and to give honor and glory to you and your kingdom. Use our life journeys, our family experiences, our passions, our knowledge to the benefit of others. It’s all yours. All for you.

Now and forever. Eternity has started. New life has begun. Help us not to waste a second but to make it all count.

Amen. As James is able to say–Amen!

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop-up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Mark Arnold is the Additional Needs Ministry Director at Urban Saints, a leading national Christian children’s and youth organization. He is co-founder of the Additional Needs Alliance, a national and international advocate for children and young people with additional needs or disabilities. Mark is a Churches for All and Living Fully Network partner, a member of the Council for Disabled Children and the European Disability Network. He writes an additional needs column for Premier Youth and Children’s Work (YCW) magazine and blogs at The Additional Needs Blogfather. He is father to James, who has autism spectrum condition, associated learning disability, and epilepsy. To find out more about how Mark’s work can help you, contact him at: marnold@urbansaints.org or @Mark_J_Arnold.