We’ve always told our youngest son the story of the day he turned three. He woke up that birthday morning down in Texas (during language school) and told my husband, Peter, he had a dream he could ride a two-wheeler bike. He asked his dad to get it out of storage so he could ride it.

When we came off the mission field after ten years on the ranch, our debrief coaches handed us two plastic ducks. The kind you had in the bathtub as a kid.

The road less traveled was the ranch road. Four miles of washboard sand through the high desert. An abandoned ranch. And nothing. How could we ever have imagined thousands would be impacted just by saying yes to God?

If you were a stray in my childhood, I collected you and brought you home. I wrapped you in cloth, found out what food you ate, fed you—by eyedropper sometimes, made you a shoe box with tissue paper nest, put your box by my pillow, and stroked your fur or feathers until you calmed and slept. Baby mice, baby birds, baby rabbits. Anything lost or abandoned or too weak to survive on its own. I had a place for you in my house and in my heart.  

Some days, I don’t like people very much. Not just the mean kind. Not only the thieves who break into my house or my car, but those who break into my time. Who steal my energy, my focus. Those who ask me to step out of my world, put down my program, and pay attention to them at just the wrong time. Even those who want to do life together when I don’t want to. When I want to do it alone.

As parents, one of the hardest battles we face is in our own minds. Our own struggle as parents to make the best decisions for our kids. To lead them and guide them in the right direction. We wrestle with the thought: Did my decisions, the choices I made for my child … did they help my children? Or did they hurt them? Have I enriched their lives by my decisions, or have I scarred them? Are they better for it? Or worse off?