Author Archives: rkdenlinger

For our family, this is day 90 of our version of shelter-in-place. Don’t want you to feel too badly for us. We just got back from Freeze and Frizz where we could meet up with some family while socially distancing in the breeze. We aren’t in prison, like many members of nursing homes. As toContinue reading “Cautious / Driven by Love”

Joan and I had no idea how relevant the above topic might be when RHMA wrote and asked if we would be willing to give a seminar at their Lancaster Conference this coming October. Then, when Covid-19 hit, we offered to do a “practice presentation” by video to the missionaries of RHMA when their AprilContinue reading “Caring for Others When You Have Significant Needs Yourselves”

Do you feel like your home is a zoo right now? I sure do! Which made me think about Noah’s wife who (not original with me) lived in a zoo for a year! Talk about “sheltering in place!” She couldn’t even go outside for a walk when life got too intense inside those boat walls.Continue reading “Our Zoo”

So I can’t thank you enough for your prayers through the night. Kari has a treasure in her “jar of clay” body. And that treasure is an amazing strength she has from the Lord. Ron and I went against medical advice yesterday. The neurologist-on-call yelled at me to call 911 and get her to theContinue reading “A weak vessel”

Thank you for the prayers! It was a long night for Joan who was at Kari’s side and tuned in, making sure she kept breathing, waking her if her oxygen level dropped too much, repositioning as needed, etc. We aren’t seeing any seizures this morning! And she still has a low grade fever, but notContinue reading “Kari is better this morning!”

Kari’s seizures went out of control today, after being worse than average the last couple weeks. We gave her a rescue med – so far so good but we won’t know for sure until it wears off completely. Will the seizures return? She also has a low grade fever and has for nearly two weeks.Continue reading “Pray for Kari (and for us)”

Joan sits by the bed of our daughter. A few weeks earlier Kari had major surgery on her spine. We were warned that she would be in the OR for a long time (as much as twelve hours), but the silver lining was that we could expect a very brief recovery period. It would beContinue reading “A “Social Distancing” Story”

My son Matthew has an astounding ability to break toys. It’s what you do when you are a seven-year-old boy. I’ve started throwing these disabled items into a box that I’ve mentally labeled: “things I’m gonna fix when I get a round tuit.” Whether toys, tools or other trinkets, things get broken so easily. TheContinue reading “On Fixing Things”

In these novel days of coronavirus and stay-at-home orders, I find that I am counting much more than I used to. I count the daily rise in Covid-19 cases in our county. I am counting the hours spent in homeschooling Matthew every day. He counts in math class and counts the hours till he isContinue reading “Unprecedented Counting”

The speech therapist at Schreiber gave me the results of her evaluation. “This must be a mistake,” I thought. “Instead of a percentile of .2, it must be a 2 or a 20.” But it wasn’t. In Matthew’s receptive language, in a group of 100 children his age, 99.8 kids are better at hearing andContinue reading “Quick to listen?”