Calling & Limitations
Limitations don’t have to be losses; they can be the avenues to our flourishing. This is particularly true if we stay focused and creative within their boundaries, if we care for and cherish what’s inside them.
A Picture of Grace in Italy
The world I will roll into tomorrow deserves to see the light of the world shining in the darkness and the works of God displayed through a life disabled but one gloriously enabled by grace.
How to Wait
I became a master at what I dubbed monotasking, born mostly out of an effort not to die of boredom while enduring a hospital stay during COVID times. I made a conscious effort to do only one task at a time, no matter its simplicity. But when I found that I could do more—walk and talk, eat and listen—I found that I didn’t want to. I enjoyed focusing all my efforts on one task at a time. Maybe this is how we are meant to live—a meditative life.
A Good and Perfect Gift
Before Penny was born, I would have assumed that an extra chromosome was just that, a crack in the cosmos, evidence of the fractured nature of all creation. But how could I imagine such a thing about my daughter? I couldn’t figure it out.
World Stroke Day
Before April 21, 2008, Jay and I knew nothing about strokes. Do you? My guess is no. When my life and recovery hung in the balance, you better believe we got pretty educated on it. The sad thing is that many people may not have the chance to understand what a stroke is before it takes their life or changes it forever.
Redefining Ability
We are not alone in disability. It’s a reality all of humanity shares at its core. But more than that, we are not alone in our disability because God is there with us, to show us himself in ways that are hard to see when we are blinded by the illusion of our ability.
The Blessing of Neediness
And while I certainly needed a lot of help to show up in the world, I like to think I did my share of helping. I’ve learned that rhythm is called the mutuality of ministry, which forces us all to both ask for the help we need and to offer the help we can give.
The Scars We Have and the Scars We Give
Maybe the best way to parent my boys is to not to hide the hurt, but to show the healing.
Survival Guide: Lisa & Eric Barlow
Life isn't over. It took me some time to figure that out, and there were moments when I had wished it was. Looking at it now, I realize that we have been able to fulfill so many of our dreams, it has just looked different than we had planned.
Survival Guide: Katherine & Jay Wolf
Hope Heals seeks to re-narrate the story of suffering by sharing the lives and lessons of real people—their honest answers, vulnerable struggles, and surprising transformations through enduring life's greatest storms.
We Are All Disabled
Solidarity is born when we agree to destigmatize inability and invite each other into the beautiful possibilities of interdependence.
The Good/Hard Life
When we choose to embrace the stories we’re living and release the stories we wished for, we can know in our deepest places that this good story is being written a God who can’t write any other kind of story.
Post-Traumatic Growth
Trauma can be more than a dark pit of despair or a spiral of depression. It has the potential to be our deepest source of empathy, strongest point of connection, and most forceful impetus for growth if we bravely choose to let others into both the brokenness and the mending.
Invisible Wheelchairs
Our limitations today are merely shadows of the ultimate limitation—death—which was exactly the limitation through which Jesus worked out our salvation. If Jesus can redefine death as the way to life, can we believe our pain can have a purpose.