Eden and I are doing homework. He does a lot of it out loud because he has the family trait that he is brilliant verbally but writing things down is almost impossible. Sage has the same thing. I think I did, too. We are highly verbal, abstract, creative and terribly [...]

It is Christmas. Jude and I are not eating with family and friends, because it is a little too noisy and a little too bright. Someone is saving me a plate, they always do, because I spend many holiday meals with Jude. I don’t mind that much. Jude wanted to [...]

Jude is excited as we move along the sidewalk, towards the underpass and the lakefront. I am glad we live near the lake. Trails and trees, beaches and sailboats right there whenever we want them. It’s a blessing. I have been counting the blessings lately, cataloging them, sorting through them [...]

I am looking at Neil, my pastor, and my husband like they are crazy. They are trying to tell me that God is in the midst of Jude’s suffering. Also, Don points out, he is not suffering all the time. “What, so only eighty percent of the time? I am [...]

While this post by Tammy Perlmutter shouldn’t be read as an advert for our JPUSA community, it does speak to the deepest heart-hunger for relationship. Tammy Perlmutter lived with us for years before moving on to other things, then returning to JPUSA and Chicago. Her tammygrrrl.com / “Raggle Taggle” blog [...]

  I have lived in Uptown since the mid eighties. It is different now. Back then it was a bonified ghetto, with burnt out buildings, drunks to step over on the sidewalk and children of drug addicts playing on the streets in rags. Over the years it has changed. Like [...]

Loyola D-lineman doing “Good” things Chicago Sun-Times Updated: October 21, 2011 7:51AM Life is good for Darby Goodwin. He’s a rising star on one of the state’s top football teams, one heading into its biggest game of the season this weekend. But the Loyola junior doesn’t take his blessings for [...]

Jude wants to go to the park. Don and the boys are at church, where I would like to be, but Jude tends to yell at whoever is preaching to go get him a bag of potato chips. A friend suggested I should just provide the pastors with snacks to [...]

  In 1978, when Jesus People USA first moved into Chicago’s Uptown after a few years in the Ravenswood community, I was one of the “single brothers” picked to move into our new 4707 N. Malden digs. Only a few months after the move, three of us were playing cards [...]