I don’t like to be busy, that’s what I’ll tell you. And then I may complain about a schedule that overwhelms me, an introvert and a homebody, when our calendar may appear a paltry collection of appointments and extracurriculars to the mom stimulated by activity.
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I’m probably a cessationist, but I’ve taken the online quizzes; I always get the same results. My spiritual gift, according to the algorithm, is prophecy. It makes sense as long as I’m not considering it predictive or, even, as an actual word from the Lord.
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Over the course of an entire weekend, because we are tired parents and cannot commit to a three-hour movie in one sitting, my husband and I watched the Godfather. The violent scenes were few, but unwitnessed: I would bury my face in Timothy’s shoulder and ask “ can I look can I look when is it over is it over…
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The first time it happened, I found Sam—a unisex name since we were uncertain if the chick would turn out to be a rooster or a hen—face down, wings outstretched, the other babies carrying on scratching and pecking and fluttering as though their yellow sibling was not stiff in the pine shavings right next to them. The loss was not…
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Click click click BOOM. Every time I cook anything on the stove, it starts with these sounds, with a little flame, with a whoosh of blue fire, with the faint scent of gas. It isn’t like our old electric range, which was sluggish, flat, and flameless. This is quick to ignite, and there’s no way to miss it. With our…
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Last night, we had good intentions: yoga, reading our next Anxious Generation chapter, early bedtime. And the sun hadn’t set when we lounged on the deck and opened a bottle of Chenin blanc. The chickens were still scratching in the backyard, the shadows were long but we could see each other in the fading light. I don’t know what we…
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I have one tattoo that scrapes across my left ribcage and another that blooms on my upper right arm. My husband is equally marked: left rib, right arm. But my children are no less permanently stained: pens and markers bleed all over their fingers. Their cheeks are smudged with greens, reds, blues. Clothes that I forget to spot treat emerge…
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I say I have no time, but what I lack is eternity. I do have time, just not enough. What I need is not more minutes, more hours, but more diligence, more wisdom, more grace. I have time, but not for everything: not for homeschooling and cooking and baking and cleaning and socializing and gardening and small group and date…
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It began with sticks, with fallen branches. My son planted them like they were alive, jabbing their snapped-off ends into his sandbox. When he’d constructed a veritable forest of dead limbs, he collected crispy brown leaves and sprinkled them over the tops of the sticks, and handfuls of rotting pine needles. I wasn’t sure—did he know these were all dead?…
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Of course I noticed my son was constantly going to pee. But I made excuses: he wanted to urinate on a bush or a tree outside and didn’t actually have to go; he wanted to leave our homeschool co-op classroom and had learned this was the best way to escape his education; he drinks water religiously; he’s turned pottying into…
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I am living the dream, but it belongs to someone else. This is the lie that discontentment whispers: sure, this is good, but it’s not good for you. Sure, technically you’ve been blessed, but not really because you never asked for these so-called blessings. Maybe my life looks like it should be full of joy, but it’s okay that I’m…
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As much as I love the sun, some days when it flings aside the gray clouds and we get a warm damp afternoon instead of a drizzly wet one, I’m disappointed instead of grateful.
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It may be true that a watched pot never boils, but a scrutinized lump of dough never rises, either.
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I know and have known for a long time that love is not the lurch in my belly, the thrill, the rapid heartbeat, the flicker of passion. It is, instead, the deep part of the ocean, where the water is always dark even if the sun is high and hot on the surface of the sea. Where no current yanks…
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Day two of rain, although it has slackened so I can now see the sky. It’s the color of snow, but we won’t get any; the temperature has risen to the fifties. I hear the sound of water everywhere: the dishwasher humming, tires splashing through puddles on the street, hot water dripping through fresh coffee grinds in a new pourover,…
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Our life together began long before children, but you wouldn’t know it by stepping into our house. The only photos lining the walls are professional shots of newborns and a few family sessions in between. There’s nothing to document a life before the babies came. That life did exist, and it was both troubling and glorious, but all you’ll find…
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The days are short, cold, dark, and busy. The calendar is bulging, the timer dinging, the kettle screaming. We’re shuffling here, scurrying there, forgetting this, losing that. And the image of Jesus I repeatedly find myself facing is one of a swaddled baby stuffed in a bale of hay, swarmed by an assortment of farm animals. I need Jesus now…
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I’m not an angry person, only an irritable, grumpy, frustrated person. I’m not prone to rage or fury, only a quietly simmering annoyance. I would have sworn those weren’t the same things, rage and irritation, before I had children. It takes a lot to make me mad, that’s what I would have said. Not a lot to annoy me, though.…
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The Lord may be slow, but I am not. Perhaps the Creator can unhurriedly speak life into existence, and then rest, but I can’t afford myself that luxury.
Read more →(I wrote the bulk of this while we were gone. This is the most diary-like blog post I’ve ever written, but not because it’s deeply intimate. Mostly because it’s just an assortment of memories. But they’re good ones, and I want to keep them.) There is no sign of the tropical storm now, except for maybe swaths of black sand…
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I’m quick to blame my lack of joy on my personality: as both a realist and a perfectionist, I don’t have much capacity for something that seems at odds with reality and imperfection.
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I have a cold. I’m not dying. But because I’m breathing through my mouth instead of my stopped-up nostrils, it feels like I’m dying. I picture my lungs, half-deflated. Surely I can’t be providing enough oxygen to my body through my dried-out mouth? My chest hurts; I’m sure that’s not anxiety, that must be me slowly suffocating to death.
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Recently, I’ve been trying to become more aware of how many times I say no when I could say yes.
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Five days ago, we celebrated our eleventh anniversary. Five days before that, Father’s Day. And the best part of both is that the best part is now.
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It’s not even noon, and I can hear my kettle hissing for the third time this morning. I’m not drinking a pretty little cup of tea; I’m pour-overing a strong black coffee.
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I must make a lot of lists, because list-making is a game my children frequently want to play. They rustle through the drawers in our dining room hutch for sheets of computer paper, journals, and pens. Then they work very hard: my daughter on making figures that look like letters, my son at writing a few words he’s learned (apples,…
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Somehow, I still find myself saying to people who ask about future education for my children, “I think I might homeschool.” My son is nearly five. Kindergarten approaches. We’ve joined a local co-op. I’ve ordered curriculum. I’ve read a few books on homeschooling and have several more waiting on the shelf. I’m not thinking about homeschooling; I’m deep in the…
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I blame the perfectionist in me for many wrongs; it’s the catchall scapegoat. Surely my worship is not disordered, my loves not in disarray. No, the reason I am warring inside myself is purely a result of my personality clashing with my circumstances.
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When we bought our house three and a half years ago, we knew we’d be gutting the denim blue kitchen with its mauvy purple countertops. I’ve loved our kitchen for many things: the view from the sink of the backyard, a perfect place to keep an eye out for children creeping out the back gate; the expanse of cabinets I’ve…
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I cried over a glass container of sauteed kale this morning. Maybe the kale isn’t entirely at fault; I’d been up multiple times in the night, convincing my two children that 1) three am is an unacceptable time to turn on the lights and play and 2) adjusting a shifted blanket does not require screaming for my assistance.
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Like many, I have a love/hate relationship with food. I’ll start with the positives: I love food. I’ll eat anything (so long as it’s mostly well-prepared; I’m much pickier about quality than content).
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My therapist (why do I cringe when I begin a blog post with those words? There’s something to work through later) recently mentioned the difference between a master list and a daily list. The master list is everything that needs to be done, or could be done. The daily list is what I can actually accomplish.
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I didn’t grow up practicing the Sabbath; in fact, for most of my life I would have believed that resting one day a week sounded remarkably like law-adhering, which we should have abandoned after Jesus fulfilled everything in the Old Testament. But now I’m a stay at home mom of two, and life, while rich and full and beautiful, has…
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When something is wrong in my body, I itch. For the past seven months, I’ve tried discerning what exactly the wrong thing is, because I’ve only been diagnosed with psoriasis, but my body has flared with rashes that are not related to my autoimmune disease.
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My skin—freckled, birthmarked, mole-spattered, and acne-prone—has never been my greatest feature. As time hurtles forward, I notice, almost vaguely, where there are creases in my forehead, around my eyes, and how the skin on my stomach pleats into so many tiny wrinkles when I bend over.
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