Happy summer! Summers are always a great time of the year: graduations, retreats, mission trips, family picnics and vacations.
People often forget that serving God should be fun. No matter what we do – whether we’re working our jobs, raising our families, growing our businesses, or serving in ministry – joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit that should be manifesting in our lives, and His joy is to be our strength.
So much of what’s out there these days lacks personal connection. Most people are simply afraid to really be themselves. I thought I’d have a little fun with this update, put away the polish, and share another side of Dave & myself and the work we do in order to prove we’re very real and human, and not always serious.
Here are 10 of our quirks, some closely guarded secrets, and some weird trivia we hope you will find interesting.
Laura
1. I fell out of a second story window at 3 years old, landing on the ground below, with no broken bones or major injuries.
2. I only liked the smell of coffee (couldn’t drink it, yuk!) until just a few years ago, when my daughters introduced me to coffee shops with flavors to vastly improve the taste. My two favorites are white chocolate peppermint, and pumpkin spice.
3. I have reading glasses from the Dollar Store in almost every room in my house, so it doesn’t matter if I misplace them.
4. One of the memories my kids still like to laugh about me doing (and still share with others) happened in the day of cordless house phones. I was hitting the button on the receiver stand to make the phone beep, so I could find wherever someone had left it lying in the house from last using it. Everyone started laughing at me, because the phone was hung up on the stand right next to the button I was pushing.
5. When I was really little, I wanted to be a clown when I grew up, and would stand in front of the TV and imitate them.
Dave
6. I used to embarrass my mom when I was a toddler. Evidently, I loved the feeling of the ears of our two English Setter hunting dogs in the back yard. My mom would hear them yelping and whining, come to the back door and yell “DAVID! STOP BITING THE DOGS!”
7. When I was three I was playing jack-in-the-box with my friend in a suitcase. I ended up locked in the suitcase and miraculously my mom turned off the vacuum cleaner upstairs and heard my muffled cries for help before I passed out. I would never again be a jack-in-the-box, and choose a different vocation later in life.
8. At age nine, I amazed my family by winning a 2nd place trophy at a local golf tournament. My brother was less impressed when he discovered there were only two people in my age bracket.
9. My wife and I own an NFL team. Yes, we are shareholders of the Green Bay Packers! Even though our shares have no financial worth, it is by far my favorite investment.
10. We were married April 28, 1984 which happened to be the last time daylight savings time started at the end of April. I have forever felt robbed of losing an hour on my wedding night!
Okay, I’m headed back to get some work done, but I’d love to hear a bit about you! Here’s to summer fun 🙂
Summer is a good time to make an effort to slow down and enjoy life. If you would like some ideas on how to do that, we would like to send you Seven Tips on How to Slow Down and Enjoy Your Life. Just submit your information below.
work box and stay there, but grief had just shattered my “Becca box” into a million pieces. I tried to sweep my grief into a grief box, but the problem with grief is that it cannot stay in a box! Somehow those shattered pieces find a way into all the other boxes. These pieces tend to appear out of nowhere and not always at convenient times.
Even within my own deep painful loss, as a husband and father, I quickly learned how vitally important it was for me to make allowances for my family members, especially my wife, in the way they processed their grief.
it comes to grieving the death of our child, it seems.
I want to recognize how difficult this day can be for you. It is probably one of the most difficult of all “dates” for me regarding the loss of my daughter, Becca. One thing I do on Father’s Day is to ask God to tell her how much I love and miss her and to give her a big hug and kiss from me. I have no doubt He does that for me and will for you, too.
speaker and singer Laura Diehl. She and her husband, Dave, are the founders of Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (
find you are literally forgetting to breathe, and have to remind yourself to take a breath. Your body is out of whack; your mind is full and empty at the same time. Your sleep is off. Often times you can’t stop crying, and it might even seem like everything around you looks gray and colorless. You can forget things, even as simple as how to peel an orange or find yourself panicking because you suddenly forgot how to get home from the store you have shopped at for ten years. You don’t know how you can go on living, and probably don’t want to, which makes no sense to your mind if you are happily married or have other children still here. You are barely in survival mode, and don’t think it is possible to get out of the darkness, much less to a place of wanting to live without your child, and impossible to have a life with purpose and meaning ever again.
the midst of your intense pain.
Sometimes you will be forced to give in to your limitations of grief. Sometimes you will learn how to work around it. And yes, there will be times you will be able to soar above it. There is no right or wrong way. It is whatever way works for you at that moment in time.
to help you find your way out of the darkness and into a place of light and a life with meaning and purpose once again, BECAUSE of your child’s life, not in spite of their death. It won’t be easy, but hang on to the hope that it can be done.
I was unaware of this the first three years after my daughter died. It happens on the first Sunday in May each year, the week before Mother’s Day, as a special day to have our child, and our never-ending grief, acknowledged.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want this to be a temporary movement. Yes, it would be wonderful if Mother’s Day was handled differently by most of the people around us. But it is also wonderful to have a special day set aside for all of us mothers who have a child no longer here with us; a day set aside to share our child with family and friends, to make sure he or she is never forgotten by others.
to acknowledge the death of her child, it would make her upset with them for bringing up her child and her painful loss. The fact is, the exact opposite is true.
will give each of you precious moms who have had to live through the death of your child, a beautiful day of sacred joy within the grief of remembering your precious child this Sunday, on International Bereaved Mother’s Day.
Barbara’s hair started turning white, which she attributes to her daughter’s illness and death. She was only 28 when her daughter died. Barbara Bush was known for that white hair, but it came at a high price. We change when our child dies, not just emotionally, but it takes a toll on us physically.
W. Bush) was instrumental in “saving her life” after Robin’s death. At seven years old, he wouldn’t go out and play with his friends, insisting his mom was lonely and needed him. Most of us who are blessed to have other children have the same testimony – our other children are what kept us barely going.
research before being buried. All of us want to know that the life of our child mattered and somehow affects other lives for the better. Some of us are able to connect in some way to a cause, based on how our child died. Others put scholarship funds in place, write books or start organizations. We give gifts or have something permanently placed in a public venue in our child’s name. We are determined that our child’s life and legacy will somehow live on.
we are taken from this earth and join our child. But each day we are here brings us one day closer. And each day here is an opportunity to live in a way that honors the life of our precious child.
