I’ve been leaning hard into rhythms lately. Autumn seems to have that way about her, doesn’t she? I am not good at routine at the same time somehow in love with ritual. The ones that come most naturally are the ones that bookend my days: grinding my coffee in the morning, drinking it with my …
“Sometimes, at the dinner table, a man might get up and go outside and walk and walk, simply because there’s somewhere in the East a church.” (Rilke’s Book of Pilgrimage) My fourth child is a junior at Hillsdale majoring in politics. First of all, what? How am I old enough that my fourth born is …
This post is not a flex by any means. Maybe it will be a comfort to my fellow mommies in the trenches who lay awake at night pondering all the things left undone on their lists and all the unmet desires of their hearts. I am not a great homeschooling mom. Since day one 16 …
I met my friend Jenn the summer I was 17, while we were on a missions trip to Pakistan. It was one of the most formative summers of my life. At the end of the summer she went home to Washington and I went home to California. Every morning we sent one another a fax. …
Dear children, my children, There are some things in life that are scary. You won’t want to face them. Sometimes those things are outside in the big confusing world. And sometimes they are inside, in your big confusing heart. Wherever they are, you must not be afraid to face them. There will be a deep …
Several recent events have caused me to reflect on my parenting and the culture I am creating in my family. They may not at first appear to be connected, except that each incident has built on the previous as I have taken a mental step back to consider whether the motivations and intentions of our …
I loved my grandmother’s hands. Her nails were always beautifully shaped, just naturally. My daughter has the same hands. They are lovely and I like to look at them. As my grandmother got older I used to pinch the loose skin during church and feel the softness of the aging. She was so tactile. She …
I’ve been working through Jordan Peterson’s Self-Authoring program as a Lenten exercise. It’s been difficult at points—especially deeply examining the past. But overwhelmingly positive. When taking an honest look at my faults and virtues, I realized something rather important; that is that I am happier than I thought I was. I know, so weird, right? …
I was a “gifted” little kid. The kind who got to get out of class to sit in a room with other gifted kids and do special gifted things. I was a little snob. I was a people pleasing little kid. The kind who never got corrected by a teacher and rarely by a parent. …
I think about boundaries a lot. I talk about boundaries fairly often. I wouldn’t say I am obsessed with boundaries, but some people have accused me of being so. Maybe because I didn’t discover this concept until so late in life that it has taken a decade to get the riff-raff out of my yard …
reconciling things 