-
Sabbath Devotional :: The Accuser and the Advocate
Recently, my spouse and I were strolling through a leather market in Florence. I had wanted to buy a bag to store my wallet and water more securely. I found one I liked and tried to do a bit of haggling to bring the price down before I bought it. As we walked away with the bag, my husband paused and suggested I probably could have gotten a better price if I had bartered a little more. WHAT?! In my jetlagged state, it didn’t take much for defensiveness to set in. How dare he imply that I’m stupid and incompetent. This is the first bag I’ve bought in years. So what…
-
Sabbath Devotional :: Advocate
As I stood to exit a meeting at the school, the teacher said, “Your daughter is lucky to have you as her advocate.” Advocate. The word caught my attention. In that situation, I was teaming up with teachers and administrators whose purpose was to help my daughter be successful. Her success was a shared goal. But without my advocacy, they wouldn’t have known how to help. As I drove home, I dwelt on the word advocate. One of Christ’s titles is Advocate. This title makes me feel especially loved by him. In the Doctrine and Covenants, Christ says, “Lift up your hearts and be glad, for I am in your midst,…
-
Are You Aware? How to Be an Advocate
This is part IV in our Awareness Wednesday series on disability. Read the other posts in the series here. My third child, a daughter named Marisa, was born in 1991. The pregnancy and delivery went well, but after she was born, we began to see behavior that was much different than our first two children. She would tantrum (screaming at the top of her lungs) frequently as a baby, and a toddler. Because of the intensity of her crying, I kept thinking she must be ill. So she was taken to many doctors and was poked and prodded, so very many times. All her medical tests came back normal. But she…
