The Dude Abides
My father is my hero, a gentleman in every sense of the word...He is a wonder. I love him more than I can say and have been blessed beyond words to have been loved so well by him for all of my (nearly 40) years. Read more
My father is my hero, a gentleman in every sense of the word...He is a wonder. I love him more than I can say and have been blessed beyond words to have been loved so well by him for all of my (nearly 40) years. Read more
Last summer, I moved from Chicago to Southern California, and my stubborn hope of someday being a successful gardener received a healthy dose of optimism. Here, in our village by the sea, seemingly everything flourishes. Bougainvillea pours over their walls. Claret, orange and sunset-yellow kangaroo paw plants grow as high as my waist. Bird of paradise blossoms peek over the top of my second-floor patio, held aloft by their two-story-high “tree.” And hummingbirds flit from shrub to shrub outside my... Read more
Dragonflies have a way of turning up at threshold moments in my life--like God's early warning system for amazing grace Read more
Honor is a destination and through the act of honoring another person — our life partners or our parents, for example — by the way we live our lives, through the choices we make and in our posture toward world, we verb it into a noun. Read more
HEAVENBOUND: GENEVIEVE’S JOURNEY HOME Gracefully, she put her head down on the pillow, took a few gentle breaths and then she was gone. Her spirit had moved on — passing through the veil to the eternal place where I believe a communion of saints joyfully awaited her arrival. I felt her leave. It was something I’d never experienced before this week, despite having lost many people dear to me over the years. I hadn’t been there for those moments where... Read more
CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL DRINKING: CHEERS! Picture, if you will, a husband and wife — he 60 and she teetering on the edge of 40 — in the back of a taxi rumbling through the streets of an African city at night, frantically searching for mints in a jacket pocket or purse to cover the trace of wine on their breaths. It’s a pretty silly scenario, but that’s exactly what my husband and I found ourselves doing one night not too... Read more
The first time we visited Kondanani was the afternoon following our successful adoption hearing in Blantyre. We dropped Vasco off at our host’s house to play Wii and XBox with the boys to his heart’s content, picked up a golden retriever puppy that the family was giving to orphanage and all piled into the SUV – with Rob and Francisco and their equipment – so that we could make it to the children’s village before the crew ran out of... Read more
Kondanani Children’s Village is the most beautiful, best-run and nicest orphanage in all of Malawi. More than 150 children live there presently, on a campus of rolling rural land, huge gardens, lovely brick dormitories and learning centers and under the watchful care of the loving, fiercely protective Dutch lioness Annie and her conscientious staff. Kondanani takes in only infants and has committed to raising them until they are married. Not just 18. Not just through college or whatever. Until they... Read more
They day after the High Court approved Vasco’s adoption in Malawi, we went back out to visit with his extended family in Chileka, one of the poorest sections/districts of a really poor city in one of the poorest countries in the world. That’s where Vasco lived, on and off, for an undetermined period of time after his mother and father’s deaths and living on the streets. The family tells one version of the truth about how their desperately sick, orphaned... Read more
Dear Madonna, Thank you. Earlier this week, after a month-long sojourn in Malawi, my family arrived home in California with our newly-adopted son, Vasco Fitzmaurice Mark David Possley. His adoption would not have been possible without you and the bold actions you took in Malawi last year when its High Court denied you the adoption of your precious daughter, Chifundo “Mercy” James. You didn’t take no for an answer. You didn’t buy their argument that allowing your adoption of Mercy... Read more
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