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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

When Mary was a little girl, she loved to watch Barney the Dinosaur. We watched every episode and bought all of the Barney Movies. As Mary got older, we stopped watching Barney. We often wondered if we stopped watching because Mary lost interest or because we subconsciously decided she was too grown up for Barney.

Over the past several weeks, we talked about the unique and varied challenges that face a marriage when couples are parenting a child with special needs.

Well, the Hallmark Christmas movie season is upon us. Brian, who isn’t one for movies in general, has probably never seen a Hallmark movie; but I confess, that on more than one occasion, I’ve taken my box of tissues and watched a Hallmark movie.

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.

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.

We are shaped by our environments. My career centers on the tech sector and higher-education. Both worlds can be very performance-driven; the tech sector with its focus on company valuation, innovation and financial performance and higher-education with its focus on research, publications and teacher evaluations.

We disagree in two ways. First, and of less importance, we disagree with the statement because it seems to imply that for us, raising Mary has been relatively easy. And if you are a parent raising a child with a disability, “easy” is not one of the words that come to mind.

Facebook, I think, has changed how we live and think about ourselves. I love that I have been able to reconnect with old friends on FB and find out what is going on in their lives; but I hate the fact that looking at Facebook can also make us feel worse about our lives.

I remember the day my husband and I sat in the doctor’s office in Washington DC’s Children’s Hospital and received the news that the concerns we had over Mary’s lack of development were indeed due to brain damage.

We’ve all heard that song and possibly, it is the most wonderful time of the year. It also is perhaps the most stressful time of the year for families who have a child with special needs.