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About Brian & Laurie

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So far Brian & Laurie has created 33 blog entries.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day! You can’t have a Marriage Blog and not have an entry regarding Valentine’s Day - the day set aside to celebrate romantic love! Advertisers and retailers would like you to believe that Valentine’s Day has to do with gifts of chocolate, jewelry, flowers and lingerie. Networks are busy flooding the airways with saccharine sweet love stories.  And while all of this is a great way to celebrate Valentine’s Day, we all know that it takes more than gifts and romance to make love last. But what does [...]

By |2020-02-14T11:06:35-05:00February 14th, 2020|General, listening, love, relationships, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Happy Valentine’s Day!
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Using Our Story for His Glory

Recently, we were asked to speak at an event for parents raising a child with special needs.  They asked us to follow their theme of “Using Our Story for His Glory”. In several of our past Blogs, we have written about the blessings that have come as a result of Mary, our daughter, being exactly who she is.  While we’ve talked about the difficulties of raising a child with special needs, we have also discussed how God has used Mary and us, not despite our situation, but because of it. [...]

By |2020-01-11T11:48:32-05:00January 11th, 2020|faith, General|Comments Off on Using Our Story for His Glory
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2020 Vision

Happy New Year! Can you believe that it is the year 2020?  With a year named 2020, perhaps our New Year’s resolutions should be something like, “to have a clear vision, improved insight or balance in my life”.  While these are all great goals or resolutions, we encourage you this year to have an additional resolve --- to make your marriage a priority. Making your marriage a priority is one of those ideas that most people agree on, but unfortunately place it on the back burner to concentrate on more [...]

By |2020-01-02T11:09:34-05:00January 2nd, 2020|General, perspective, priorities|2 Comments
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Transitions Can be Challenging

We know it has been quite a while since our last blog.  One of the reasons our lives became quite hectic over the last several weeks is that we moved! We moved from our family home of 20+ years where we raised our 3 children (and a dog) into a much smaller (and hopefully easier to take care of) home. So, all the sport’s equipment, children’s artwork, important files/papers, furniture, clothes, even paper clips had to be either, given (or sold) away, thrown away or packed in a box! We [...]

By |2019-10-18T13:39:59-05:00October 18th, 2019|change, family life, General, transitions, Uncategorized|1 Comment
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Happy Anniversary!

Earlier this month we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary!  We have to admit that there were days early in our marriage that neither one of us thought we would make it this far.  But by God’s grace, and hard-work and commitment to make it work on our part, we were able to celebrate this milestone … happily!  Anniversaries often allow you to stop and reflect on where you’ve been and where you are headed. Also, in the month of June, we celebrated another anniversary.  It has been one year since [...]

By |2019-06-20T09:07:08-05:00June 20th, 2019|General, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Happy Anniversary!
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Listening Well

Recently, we went out to dinner with a group of people we were just getting to know.  The group was an eclectic mix, for sure; a businessman, educator, person in the medical field, someone from retail, a counselor (Laurie) and a software entrepreneur (Brian).  It was interesting to us that we were able to land on a topic that seemed to be crucial in each one of these diverse areas. The conversation centered on how “listening” was vital in any relationship (business or personal) and how we, as a society, [...]

By |2019-06-08T13:37:46-05:00June 8th, 2019|conflict, General, listening, teamwork, Uncategorized|1 Comment
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Because of Mary

Often our blogs are about the unique challenges we face as parents of children with special needs.  Although we acknowledge that there are indeed multiple challenges in raising our children, we also know that our lives have been forever changed, in a good way, - because of Mary. We know of many individuals who have chosen a profession as a special education teacher, director of therapeutic horseback riding or in the medical field – because of Mary. A Day Program serving over 30 individuals with special needs was birthed in [...]

By |2019-05-16T06:48:57-05:00May 14th, 2019|blessing, family life, General, perspective|21 Comments
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Adjusting our Perspective

We haven’t written our blog in the last few weeks as we were in China. We toured the country and visited our daughter, Emily, who lives and works in China. No matter how often we have said the words “our daughter lives and works in China” (and she has been there 3 years!), it is still hard to believe. She lives in a working-class city in inland China … and from what we can tell, where almost no one speaks English! We are very proud of her and the work [...]

By |2019-04-25T11:05:42-05:00April 25th, 2019|General, perspective, Uncategorized|5 Comments
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Tough Decisions

Parents of children with special needs are often faced with making difficult decisions: What type of a school should my child attend, should we try this new medical procedure, should we take advantage of specialized training even though it is far from home?  The reason some of these decisions are so difficult is that these decisions are quite unique to each individual family … and of course there aren’t guidebooks specific to each decision. For us, a big decision was, “Do we allow Mary to enter a group home living [...]

By |2019-03-07T17:25:18-05:00March 1st, 2019|decision, family life, General|Comments Off on Tough Decisions
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Reclaiming your Hope

Perhaps one of the greatest casualties that result from a difficult life situation is the loss of HOPE.  Hope is a powerful force.  According to the book of Psalms, strength and courage come from hope.  Hope keeps us going, growing, dreaming and loving.  A loss of hope is a great loss. We remember back when Mary was little and her prognosis was overwhelming, we were very short on hope.  At that time, someone gave us the verse, Jeremiah 29:11, “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. [...]

By |2019-02-18T20:10:41-05:00February 8th, 2019|faith, General, hope, perspective, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Reclaiming your Hope
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