{"id":489,"date":"2011-01-05T13:34:46","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T13:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/perfectly-human-flying-high-by-kate-truesdell.html"},"modified":"2011-01-05T13:34:46","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T13:34:46","slug":"perfectly-human-flying-high-by-kate-truesdell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/perfectly-human-flying-high-by-kate-truesdell.html","title":{"rendered":"Perfectly Human: Flying High by Kate Truesdell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/IMG_4267.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"IMG_4267.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/113\/import\/assets_c\/2011\/01\/IMG_4267-thumb-300x400-20712.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 12.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px;font: 15.0px Lucida Grande\"><font>My sister Kate was asked to contribute a photo and inspirational story for a new magazine, <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/serendipitygreenwich.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><font>Serendipity<\/font><\/a><font>. She chose to write about Penny, and I asked her if I could reprint the photo and story here. Thanks, Kate!<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 12.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px;font: 15.0px Lucida Grande\"><font>I took this photo of my Brother-in-Law and my niece Penny three years ago, on a family vacation in St. John.&nbsp; I love this photo because I see a father sharing a moment with his daughter, encouraging her to take risks, to nurture a sense of adventure, to celebrate with laughter, to live a life any one of us would wish for our children.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 12.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px;font: 15.0px Lucida Grande\"><font>What is remarkable is that when Penny was born with Down Syndrome, her doctors recited a long list of limitations that Penny would face and explained that her quality of life would likely not measure up to that of a typical child. Thankfully, Penny&#8217;s parents had great faith in her abilities and refused to raise Penny any differently than they would have had she not been born with special needs. Penny is four-and-a-half-years old now, and the canvas of her childhood has been painted with moments like these, moments filled with joy and meaning.&nbsp; Penny, and her parents, inspire me.<\/font><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My sister Kate was asked to contribute a photo and inspirational story for a new magazine, Serendipity. She chose to write about Penny, and I asked her if I could reprint the photo and story here. Thanks, Kate! I took this photo of my Brother-in-Law and my niece Penny three years ago, on a family&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability","category-down-syndrome","category-family","category-perfectly-human"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Perfectly Human: Flying High by Kate Truesdell - 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\/2011\/01\/perfectly-human-flying-high-by-kate-truesdell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Perfectly Human: Flying High by Kate Truesdell - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My sister Kate was asked to contribute a photo and inspirational story for a new magazine, Serendipity. She chose to write about Penny, and I asked her if I could reprint the photo and story here. Thanks, Kate! I took this photo of my Brother-in-Law and my niece Penny three years ago, on a family&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/perfectly-human-flying-high-by-kate-truesdell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-05T13:34:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2011\/01\/IMG_4267-thumb-300x400-20712.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"amyjuliabecker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Perfectly Human: Flying High by Kate Truesdell - Thin Places","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/perfectly-human-flying-high-by-kate-truesdell.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Perfectly Human: Flying High by Kate Truesdell - Thin Places","og_description":"My sister Kate was asked to contribute a photo and inspirational story for a new magazine, Serendipity. 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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\/489","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=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}