Review: Parenting by Holly Taylor Coolman

“Across seventeen chapters, Coolman accomplishes much, examining each stage of childhood and concerns like single parenting, education, and technology. The chapter on adoption is as thorough and nuanced as many entire books on the subject. And the section on maintaining a healthy marriage is so helpful that I am toying with the idea of giving this book to some newly engaged friends. At 160 pages, Parenting is confidently, refreshingly short. 

Throughout, this book offers the clear-eyed, gentle companionship of a seasoned parent who is also a gifted theologian. It is pastoral, giving spiritual solace and empowerment to enthusiastic, bewildered, and despondent parents alike.”

‘Lord, When Did We See You in Foster Care?’

“From the giving of the Mosaic law (Ex 22:22, Deut 24:17) to the establishment of the early church (James 1:27) to the Christian almshouses of the Middle Ages, providing for orphans and strangers has been an established command and privilege of belonging to the Lord. Caring for vulnerable children is characteristic of the people of God. It also is formative: Caring for such children makes us more his people.”

“Friends, Mirrors, Prophets”

Friendship may be thought of as something nice – even delightful – but with “no survival value,” as C. S. Lewis famously stated (“rather it is one of those things that give value to survival,” he explained). Even theologies of friendship sometimes treat it as a contingent relationship, one that flows downstream from other, more vital forces. Prophetic friendship shows that on the contrary, friendship is deadly serious, a matter of life and death.”

“My Life as a Gambler”

“I had wagered more than I could afford to lose on the probability that God was a friend to the orphan and a protector of the vulnerable. I heard a friend pray Psalm 147:3—“he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds”—and felt tears run down my neck and into my shirt from a longing for that to be true and a simultaneous numb fear that it was all magical thinking, a bad bet, and that all our efforts were merely throwing good money after bad.”

Wendy Kiyomi