{"id":252,"date":"2009-02-23T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T14:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2009\/02\/furlough.html"},"modified":"2009-02-23T14:08:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-23T14:08:00","slug":"furlough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/02\/furlough.html","title":{"rendered":"Furlough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I once heard a sermon about becoming friends with God. The point of the sermon was to encourage everyone in attendance to spend some daily time with God, be that in prayer or reading the Bible or something else. And although I was in college at the time, I distinctly remember the preacher saying, &#8220;This does not apply to one group of people.&#8221; Pregnant pause. He went on, &#8220;Mothers of young children.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>And now I understand why. Not only is it difficult to find quiet time during the days to pray or read the Bible or do any number of other solitary activities I once took for granted, it is also difficult to keep writing my thoughts on this blog.<\/p>\n<p>I still have lots of thoughts that I&#8217;d like to write. I just happen to have them while nursing William or taking a shower or dropping Penny off at school. I&#8217;d like to write about our new Prius, for instance, or taking a day of rest, or the nature of prophecy. But, in addition to time with William and Penny, my writing energy has recently been directed in two other directions. First, I&#8217;ve been promoting my book <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Penelope Ayers<\/span>. Second, I&#8217;ve been writing a proposal and sample chapters for a new book about our daughter Penny. <\/p>\n<p>My original intention with this site was to post one thought\/essay\/reflection per week. By that measure, I&#8217;m behind by about 20 weeks! I will try to get up and running again soon. Meanwhile, do be in touch if you&#8217;re interested in attending or hosting an event related to <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Penelope Ayers<\/span>. And stay tuned for more reflections as time allows&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I once heard a sermon about becoming friends with God. The point of the sermon was to encourage everyone in attendance to spend some daily time with God, be that in prayer or reading the Bible or something else. And although I was in college at the time, I distinctly remember the preacher saying, &#8220;This&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-down-syndrome"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Furlough - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/02\/furlough.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Furlough - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I once heard a sermon about becoming friends with God. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}