"Why doesn't God ever answer my prayers?" Her anguish rolls down her cheeks in large, salty droplets. I gather her shaking body into my arms and hold her close. It was a little thing that set off the flood of tears, but I know the question stems from something much bigger. Why, Lord? I've asked … Continue reading When Your Child Wrestles with Big Questions
As I spotted the sweater on the other side of the clothing rack, I knew. She was going to choose that one. It was blue camo. Old-school style fleece and massively oversized. It was everything I didn't like and everything she loves, and I'm trying to let her be herself. So when she picked … Continue reading Confessions of a Former Helicopter Mom: How Letting Go Has Changed Our Lives
To be a mom is to be a receiver of dreams. Of confidences. Of innermost thoughts. "Mom, can I talk to you about something?" To be a mom is to be entrusted with the heart of a child. The good. The bad. The ugly. The beautiful. To be a mom is to take those secrets … Continue reading To Be a Mom
In the noise and in the hustle, there’s a voice that whispers, “Come, My child, and rest.” In the twirling, whirling chaos of life, there’s a place of quiet that beckons. Peace, Even in the midst of it all. “Come away with Me.” Words so sweet, so full of promise. Words so soft, they … Continue reading Rest for the Overwhelmed Mom
"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." ~Aristotle This year, we're reading Home Education in our homeschool group. Home … Continue reading Charlotte Mason and Habit Training (Thoughts on “Home Education”)
They were so little. The youngest just a toddler. It was the last day of our homeschool co-op, and I promised the girls that if they were ready early enough, I would take them to the coffee shop beforehand for a special treat. They were so little. Yet they got neatly dressed in record time, the … Continue reading The Stranger in the Coffee Shop
The dryer buzzes loud in the morning silence with another load to be folded. There are piles of already-folded laundry on the living room floor next to bags that have yet to be unpacked from a weekend away. Our school day is starting soon and the girls should have been awake and ready long before … Continue reading You are not enough … and that’s okay.
At the very end of elementary school, I discovered I could run. It shocked everyone, myself most of all. You see, I was painfully awkward. I was always the last to be picked when we divided into teams in gym class. I liked playing sports about as much as I like eating fried liver. Which is … Continue reading The Day I Ran and What I Learned (The Secret to Winning at Motherhood and Life)
“Older women … are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” (Titus 2:3-5, NIV) I feel it acutely. There’s my mom, of course. She is an … Continue reading To the moms whose kids are grown…
“Wow, Mommy! You look just like a queen in that apron!”
Most queens, I bet, spend their afternoons makeupless and covered in splatters of a volcano experiment gone awry while scrubbing a sink full of dishes in an apron. And this, of course, was just a couple of hours after...
The Grace-Filled Life 