Everywhere you look there is evidence that the Fall Sports season is soon upon us. High school students are waking up early for practice. Parents are at the sporting goods store buying shin guards and shoulder pads and coaches of every level are giving interviews extolling the merits of TEAMWORK!

Welcome to the first entry of OUR SPECIAL MARRIAGE! This site seeks to give couples who are facing the challenges of raising a child with special needs the tools, insights and most importantly, the hope to have a marriage that doesn’t just survive, but thrives.

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”.

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.

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?

A commonly asked questions that we hear from friends who don’t have a child with a disability is, “Should we offer to help someone when their disabled child has a need, or will offering help offend the parents?” We generally know how we would answer that question, but this is an individual decision.

I was introduced to the notion of thin places several years ago by a dear Christian friend of mine from Ireland. The concept of thin places has its origins in Celtic spiritualism and later in the Christian movement in Ireland.

When we were first married, a pastor told us to “Try to See our Differences as God’s provision for balance in our marriage.” Honesty, this statement sounded more like wishful thinking or a fantasy statement, than real advice. Perhaps you are responding the same way.

There are some things we learn by reading or studying. Some things we learn through experiencing a single event.

Can you believe it is our twentieth blog? Can you also believe that we’ve done 20 blogs on marriage and we are only now getting to talk about sex? Of course, you can. We all know that sex is incredibly important to a marriage, but we rarely talk about it.

Recently, we met with a family that was looking to relocate to our area from out of state. They have a son with a disability and wanted to know about services and funding.

I’ve always been a sucker for a beautiful sunset.  I’ve been known to pull off to the side of the road just to take a picture of one.

Sibling relationships are, well, complex. Our siblings can be our best friends, confidants, rivals or pain in the necks and often all at once. You add the dimension of a sibling with a disability and the relationships become even more complex.

Last week we wrote about the impact that having a sibling with special needs (SSN) has on our typically developing (TD)children. To write this week’s blog, we asked our TD children for their input.

Often when we give our marriage seminars, someone asks a question about siblings

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.

Everywhere you look, we seem to be enticed by the possibility of perfection. Eharmony.com can find you the perfect mate. A certain facial cream provides perfect skin. Liposuction can help you get the perfect body. “Cosmo” can tell you how to have perfect sex.

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is hearing and singing Christmas carols. There is something comforting about the familiarity of the carols and how we are still singing the same songs that we sang as children. My absolute favorite Christmas carol is “O Holy Night.

Forgiveness; probably one of the most powerful, yet difficult obstacles in our lives. We cannot underestimate how important forgiveness is to our faith walk, our relationships, and our overall health; truly a juggernaut in our lives with the potential to heal or destroy.

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).