Rose DeShaw

My husband was unemployed, so I needed a job. I was writing a monthly column for a national Canadian church paper, but we couldn't live on that. I was invited to an interview by an American firm that had just bought out the oldest … Read more

While my husband went to university, I ran a hostel for teenage runaways in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Kids from every small town came to the city for what they thought would surely be fun times and adventure, only to wind up beaten, lost, … Read more

During my first year at university, I moved back in with my parents. But school was in another town, requiring me to drive there if I enrolled. Cars didn't rust out where we lived, and my father kept an old car going for each of the six of … Read more

A large man was kicking in my front door, interrupting the nap that I'd been taking with my children, ages three and four. "I want my kids!" he was screaming. There was no time to run and hide, so I bundled my sleepy two under the … Read more

One of the most helpless things that we ever do in life is to have the entire care of a newborn baby. The fact is that that is what the Christmas story is all about — not just any baby, but the Son of God. I was just home from the … Read more

Pregnant with our last child, I begged my husband to stop sending the Unwed Mother Worker from her job with Children's Aid to visit me whenever she was near the tiny village where we lived temporarily. My husband was her boss, so she had … Read more

Once I had come to believe, to step out in faith, and to embrace the truth of God's offer of salvation, I wondered, What do I do now? Some have summed up the Christian life after first believing as Trust God. Clean house. Help others. … Read more

When I was seven, my father worked in the Mammoth and Morning coal mine in Washington State, USA, till his frozen lungs wouldn't let him go underground anymore. We knew what "poor" was, but "jobless" was a whole other experience for our … Read more

When I look back over God's hand in my life, a time when I was in charge of a hostel for runaways in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, comes up. The police brought me two teenage girls, who knotted bed sheets while I was doing something … Read more

Many years ago, I received a phone call from some local disk jockeys at the radio station downtown asking me to gather up what we called a gaggle of politically active older women, to come down when their phone-in program was on air, to … Read more