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What Is Sasha’s Hope?
About ten years ago my husband and I established an organization underneath the non-profit Fixed Point Foundation called Sasha’s Hope. Those who know the story my husband wrote in his book The Grace Effect will understand why we named it that. It is for Sasha, our precious daughter, who was abandoned at birth in a hospital in Ukraine, which resulted in the first ten years of her life being lived in an Ukrainian orphanage. Sasha was adopted into our family in 2009. She has a remarkable story. The beginning is told in The Grace Effect, but as time continues there is much more to tell, especially as Sasha has gained…
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True meaning of Christmas-from Sasha’s Hope archive
I don’t know how many of y’all are looking forward to the holidays. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas! My favorite holiday is Christmas! I love spending time thinking about what I am going to give to my family and friends. I have so much joy giving gifts to my family and seeing them opening their presents. I love baking Christmas goodies (and eating them too!), being with family, playing games, hanging the Christmas lights and decorations, going to Christmas Eve service, reading the Christmas story and opening gifts and celebrating the birth of Jesus! Now I want to take you back in my childhood. Christmas was really sad for me because I did not have anyone to enjoy the most wonderful day of Jesus’ birth. I remember we were…
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The Lesson of the Lizard
Recently a small garden lizard got trapped between the window and the screen in our bedroom. We could see it at different times each day moving about in between. We commented about it and would watch it briefly and then move on. After several days it became clear the lizard wasn’t finding its way back out. There was a small bend in the screen and apparently Mr. Lizard couldn’t find his point of entry again. Larry mentioned he would try to remember to let the little guy go, after all, we like lizards around the place. They help decrease the insect population. But we would get busy and forget until…
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Health, Fitness, and Beauty
Health, fitness, and beauty are topics on which I have recently spent quite a bit of time thinking. It probably has to do with my current season of life more than anything. As a nurse, health has always been a focus for me. Fitness and beauty would have been more in my periphery. But changes in my health were a wake up call, and searching for some answers led me to discover some valuable ways of thinking and looking at health, fitness, and beauty as more of a group rather than separate topics. Actually, looking at our lives holistically, most things are intertwined. Our inside (inner) and our outside (external)…
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What Is A Family?
Many years ago I read Edith Schaeffer’s, “What Is A Family?” It had a profound effect. I had always had a strong view of family, but this enlarged my vision. Edith viewed family life as the crucial environment that encompassed everything from creativity, to security, to spiritual teaching of Truth, economics, education, memories, our most significant human relationships, and all the interplay of ages and changes through the years. It is the foundational place through which life is processed. Now, years later, I look back at my own experience of the richness of family life. My heart is full at the depth and beauty of it all. I wouldn’t trade…
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About Lauri and Sasha
Lauri was South Dakota born and raised, and then transplanted to the beautiful state of Alabama after marrying her high school sweetheart, Larry. Together they have raised four wonderful children and are enjoying the blessings of being grandparents. Lauri is a registered nurse who has devoted her nursing career primarily to Labor and Delivery and Mother/Baby nursing. She loves traveling, reading, health and fitness, artistic endeavors, and spending time with family. A longtime writer of journals that date all the way back to high school, she finds putting her thoughts and ideas into writing to be therapeutic and extremely helpful in processing the past, present, and future in the journey…
