Have you heard about my newest project? It’s called Early Morning Read Alouds. In these daily Facebook Live videos, I sit at my kitchen table (after just rolling out of bed around 4:30 a.m.) and share my heart and writing. I love doing this! And I am honestly a little surprised that I have been…
Author: mackenziechester
My name is Mackenzie Chester. I am a wife and mother of seven. Welcome to my blog, The Sacred Everyday, where I write about waking up to the miracle of ordinary life through prayer, reflection, and creative practice.
Flashback to Sixteen (Through the Lens of My Journal)
Flashback to sixteen. I had almost forgotten this season of great sorrow that I experienced in my childhood and early teen years. My memory has softened, and I tend to look back and summarize my childhood as a happy one. I was loved, cherished by my parents, befriended by my eight older siblings. The hardest…
Fear, Regret, and a Bridge to Peace
Can I be honest? Sometimes my everyday life does not feel sacred. Sometimes the music of my life sounds more like noise than song. Existence is exhausting. It feels routine in the most uninspired way. Drained of joy and beauty. Life feels like hard work that is never-ever-ever-ever going to get done. It feels scary….
Wake Up and Make Things
It is early morning. I stole away from the nursing baby and am sitting in my little quiet corner of the world, on my back-deck, surrounded by potted plants and birdsong. I am writing and contemplating my messy life. I am a homeschooling mother of seven children. My husband and I have a home business…
Motherhood and Creative Fire, Keeping the Flame Alive
I am the mother of seven children. This weekend, I hit publish on a dream come true. I’ve spent the last 11 weeks in a state of creative flow that I have not experienced since I became a Mama twelve and a half years ago. Looking back, I remember the shock my body went through…
Innermost Journaling Course: Mining the Depths of Your Sacred Everyday Life
Have you ever had a dream where you wonder if you are dreaming? In those kinds of dreams, I have often told myself I must be dreaming, because in real life you never question if you are awake. Or in real life, have you ever suddenly been jolted into a heightened sense of reality–through intense…
Faith and Miracles (How Do You Feed Them, Answered)
One of the first questions people ask me when I tell them we have seven children is, “How do you feed them?” It’s posed as a joke, and even though I’ve been asked this dozens of times, I still scramble for a good response. I know people don’t only mean how do we pay for…
A Room of My Own (And a little bit of big news for The Sacred Everyday)
I don’t know how many times I have had a dream where I was walking through the house and I suddenly found a door I had never noticed before. I opened it up, and there was an empty room. And my heart just welled up knowing I could do anything I wanted with that space….
First Birthday (love song for a baby)
You came to me from a distant landThe secret place of my innermost beingYou traveled miles and milesTo find me You came in the space between my two greatest sorrows. When the lamp of my womb went out, suddenlyLeaving me with a cold-wind feelingLike the door to every chamber of my heartHad been left blowing…
Free 3-Week Creative Family Culture Curriculum for At-Home Learning (Easy, Fun, and Adaptable for All Ages)
Wishing you could gather up your family together and do something meaningful with your time at home? Do you love the idea of art and creative play, but don’t know where to begin or how to teach it? Are you looking for something easy, with little-to-no preparation required and no previous experience needed to teach…
Broken Open-Hearted Love
Yesterday I learned that a dear friend is dying. There is no time to visit. No time to wrap up loose ends. This news just rips it all back open–that wound that I thought was nearly healed. The blow from my fall where I realized that death is actually a part of the human story….
Embracing This Breath
The perfect beauty of this morning actually hurts me. As I steal a quiet hour in my little garden with a cup of coffee, the world saturated in green, trees in bloom, birdsong, the first signs of new life coming up in my raised beds… My heart aches. The unabashed brilliance of life. It stings….