The Best Time to Talk with Your Kids About God
When my boys were little, I always wanted them to associate God with something good and special. I wanted them to notice the beauty in God’s creation round us—the wildflowers growing along the sidewalk, the ladybug spontaneously landing on their arm, even the worms that would dot our driveway after it rained—eww, I know. I […]
What Your Child Needs to Know Without a Doubt if They are Bullied
We don’t talk about…bullying. Whenever I write a post like this one or share our experience, the response I overwhelmingly get is private: a friend pulls me aside, an email or message finds its way to me and in confidence reveals there are dozens more parents and kids they know, suffering in silence. As you […]
The Powerful Win of Emotional Maturity in Sports (and Life)
He came off the court upset, face smeared in blood, dripping red down his arm, wet falling from his eyes. He was frustrated by the indignation—certain of the intention, to hurt him. I helped him remove the shirt under his jersey to sop up the gushing from his nose. “We won’t miss the end of […]
5 Little but Mighty Ways to Speak Love Over Your Family
The water falls gentle over my hands as I clean and pluck grapes off their dried up stick-vines in kitchen sink. I’m thinking about tackling the prep for dinner next when my eyes wander up to the swoop of a cardinal past the window. My grandma used to say this meant a loved one was […]
Dear Son, You’re One of the Good Guys
An open letter to my oldest on his 15th birthday. You turn fifteen today in the near middle of this wild and crazy year, and there’s this thing I have been meaning to tell you about who you are. I have let fear keep me from saying it because well, you’re only fifteen— God willing, […]
The Grace of Planting in the Dark
My husband came back from an early morning trip to the store for ground meat to form into patties and be devoured within minutes by our crew. We had hamburger buns, but no hamburgers. The care and feeding of boys seems like a puzzle these days—a riddle that keeps shifting each time I get close […]
As We Shelter in Place
If there were an enemy wanting to eliminate our collective good, perhaps he would send a virus that would create worldwide panic, shut down our schools and places of worship, stop us from gathering and joining together. He would expect us to turn on one another and hoard, become overly dependent on technology to soothe us, […]
To the Moms of the Big Hearts, Kind Souls, and World Changers
In these weeks, the re-entry, there can be some turbulence, yes? And not just for the kids. The transition of sending them back to school whether it’s the first time or the last—it can evoke all the same feelings. Those big hearts walking around wide-open exposed. We wonder if we have prepared them well enough. I get […]
A Deeply Rooted Home
The trees we planted in the yard have grown and our boys have followed suit. We don’t notice the changes as much overnight, or even season to season, but a cluster of years tells a different story. Like the pencil marks that tracked each summer stay on my Grandma Marion’s kitchen wall, the visual changes […]
Why I Won’t Forget My Son Had Cancer
We started the day like any other, my sweet baby and I ready to head out and enjoy the long awaited spring weather. Yet I couldn’t shake a nagging at me, a little gnawing that something wasn’t just right with my son. As a first-time mama, I sought advice from the people I trusted, called […]