I’m so proud of our 16 year old daughter, Leah. All her life she’s had to struggle. She was born with “issues” – ears, chromosomes, & speech. It all makes the world an unfriendly place.

Children in America are coddled as it is – it would have been easy to default to an over-protective mode. Certainly your reflex as a parent is to stand between the pain that a cruel world has to offer and your child. But we aren’t the coddling types. Our whole ministry is based around the principle of throwing people in the deep end.

So Leah has been going on mission trips all her life. The past 2 summers, she has served on AIM’s work crew in Mexico for a month. The work crew leader, Anne Mulligan is amazing, so it’s not as though we’re being irresponsible. But at the same time, we’re not going to deprive our daughter of the opportunity to learn to serve by making excuses for her.

Tomorrow I fly to Mexico to pick Leah up. She’s been serving others for a month solid. She’s learned lessons that so many others have not had the privilege to learn. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the pain Leah has to bear, but we as parents are not going to further handicap her by telling her that her pain is different than anyone else’s.