(Especially When You're Crazy Busy) The end of the school year is just nuts. Band concerts, graduations, open houses, baseball playoffs, soccer tournaments, award ceremonies, end-of-year banquets, …
Wasting Time
Moms tend to be preoccupied with time. Or more precisely, with time management. The moms in the MOPS group I coordinate ask for a time management speaker every semester, worried by the way the days …
When Mom Is Sick…
It should have been a mother's dream. As I lay in my bed with a book, I could hear my husband starting dinner preparations and marshaling the kids into peeling shrimp, chopping vegetables, and setting …
You Don’t Have to Do It All. Nor Should You.
The night before the first day of school I was lying in the bathtub, indulging in a minor panic attack about all the things I needed to do before everyone headed out in the morning. Someone knocked …
How Not to Be a Crazy Sports Parent
It's been an intense spring with all three kids playing on various baseball teams. Many a Saturday afternoon has seen me scurrying around local fields with one team baseball cap on my head and two …
How to Do Nothing
All three of my kids are now in school (!) and so sometimes I really look forward to Monday mornings, when I can finally GET THINGS DONE. Anyone else relate? Recently, I had a week planned where I was …
It’s Fine: Keeping Christmas Meaningful and Manageable
All of a sudden it's November, that runaway train season of the year where time hurtles uncontrollably toward Christmas. Every year it's the same for me. I feel slightly confused by the Christmas …
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First Days and New Beginnings
It was a big first day of school for my three kids this year--kindergarten, sixth grade, and ninth grade. Three different schools, three different start times. I thought I'd gotten up early enough, …
My Trick to Banish Anxiety
At times in the past year it seemed like we would all be here in this house, occasionally seeing other people in the yard, forever, and that didn't seem like an entirely bad thing. Life had a peculiar …
Making the Most of Your Family Time
It’s official: online-only school in the fall for all three of my children. So we’ll be spending even more time together. Yay? We’ve had an awful lot of togetherness since this pandemic …
God is in Charge
Over the past few weeks of sheltering in place, I've... Caught my four-year-old daughter using roughly 40 sheets of toilet paper and LOST MY MIND... Found a forgotten half-full package of flour on …
Back to School, Back to Work
Embracing the Rhythm of the School Year As much as I anticipate and love summer, by the time we get to about mid-August I am looking forward to the start of the school year. I don't exactly throw …
Easy and Effective Ways to Encourage Your Young Athlete
Spring and summer are all about baseball in my house. Then just when baseball is winding down, soccer starts up in earnest. Between my two sons, it sometimes seems as though most of my time is spent …
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Find Your Flow
When I speak to groups of moms with young children, I ask them to close their eyes and think of the last time they felt themselves relax into the moment so much that they lost all sense of …
When You Feel Like You’re Not a Good Enough Mom
I studied all the wrong things in school. Based on my daily life, I would have been much better off had I studied nursing, nutrition, defensive carpool driving, physical therapy, and child psychology. …
The Spiritual Practice You Didn’t Know You Were Doing
Several days a week my 2-year-old daughter and I walk several blocks to our church, either for services or Bible study or for her morning preschool. We live so close that I often tell people it's …
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Teaching Kids to Talk (and Listen) to God
I once shocked a bunch of kids while giving a children's sermon. I told them it didn't matter if they bowed their heads or even folded their hands when they prayed. That they certainly …
The Secret to Working at Home with Small Children
I've been working at home for almost 15 years now, both before and after becoming a mom of three. Over the years I've learned many lessons about getting work done at home, in the midst of diapers, …
Daily Tasks Are Real Life
My daughter is 15 months old. What that means for my house is that there is no safe place to keep the toilet brush. That as I put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, she is joyfully unloading them …
One Easy Way to Simplify Family Life
This time of year many of us start to think about simplicity. Practicing Christian simplicity is about doing less or having less in order to focus more on God. I think many of us want to better …
