In 1997, Tom Holmes was diagnosed with a neurological disorder called primary lateral sclerosis (PLS). As he struggled to adapt to that disability, he realized that he had experienced several other losses during what were then the middle years of his life, and it dawned on him that gradually he began to view those losses not only as tragedies, as "bad things that happen to good people," but also as profound opportunities to grow up in the way he relates to the world as it is, to the people in his life and to God. He uses the term response-ability for the art of using losses as opportunities for maturing in faith.