This chapter is a collection of writings that were born out of many difficult seasons of my life. The exhaustion of motherhood, the weight of raising a family, the struggle to find my breath after grief knocked the wind out of me. I share my search for hope and beauty in spite of, and often…
Standing in the Hallway of Sorrow (Chapter 3 Read-Aloud about The Search for Beauty in Grief)
Today I send my most vulnerable and intimate words out into the world, written at moments in my life when grief was shaking me down to the very core. In this chapter of my book, I share about miscarriage and the death of my beautiful mother. These words chronicle the numbing pain of loss, the…
My New Book: Chapter 2 Read Aloud
I have been looking so forward to today, knowing I would be reading the next chapter of my book, The Sacred Everyday: A Search for the Exquisite Beauty of an Ordinary Life. This book does not yet exist in print form, and you can only find it here on my podcast, where I’m releasing these…
Chapter 1 of My Book, The Sacred Everyday: A Search for the Exquisite Beauty of an Ordinary Life (A Read-Aloud)
Today I am brimming over with emotion. I cannot hold these words in any longer. In this special edition of the podcast, I am reading aloud the first chapter of my new book, The Sacred Everyday: A Search for the Exquisite Beauty of an Ordinary Life. The book has not yet been published (I talk…
Open Journal: November 2020
I was four months pregnant with my eighth child. I was overflowing with words and ideas. I was wrestling with my ability to mother well while wielding a heartful of creative fire. I had recently rearranged a storage/utility closet in our cold, concrete, naked-insulation-ceilinged basement and made myself a makeshift office that had one electrical…
Dear Friends (Family Newsletter)
Dear friends, For some time, I have been wanting to write a newslettery kind of post to let you know a little more about my life, our family, and what is going on in my heart. At the end of the post, I will be asking you a question–feel free to respond in the comments,…
Overcoming Fear (Podcast #34)
I have dealt with paralyzing fear for much of my life. As a child and a teenager, when I fell in love, became a wife, when I became a mother, when I wanted to follow dreams in my heart that were impractical and deeply rooted in my soul–every step of the way, fear has steadily…
Love Like Ocean Waves
It’s the ocean again. This time in a dream. I found out two friends would be traveling there, and I silently imagined myself asking them if they would mind if I tagged along. Without the fare of gas, with a place to stay, without a family to care for. There would be nearly no expense….
Translating the Heart: A Personal Journaling Retreat
Most of the time, I do not even know what I think or feel until I write it out. I have often thought that journaling is a way of taking thoughts captive, and once you see thoughts on paper, you can see them for what they are—truth or lies, something to hold onto, or something…
Birth, Motherhood, and Wholehearted Surrender (Podcast #33)
I have written a lot about birth on this blog. God has used it like nothing else in my life as a metaphor for wholehearted surrender. In today’s podcast, I share a bit about birth, about surrendering hopes, surrendering regrets, surrendering fears, and ultimately surrendering our whole hearts to God. I hope this is an…
Open Journal: Heidi’s Birth Journal
Because I have eight children, people often assume that I just breeze my way through pregnancy and birth and that it is no big deal to me by now. If you have been with me any amount of time, you probably already know how life-changing every one of these births have been for me. How…
The Memory of an Unexpected Rain
The time we left the little houseIn a whispering rainAnd ran to the shore,Umbrellas in handI became, again, a child,My daughters, dearest friendsWe three, splashing, fully dressedIn the lapping wavesAnd laughing. The experience I imagined in full sunSand glittering, shore shining,A perfect day at sea,Dimmed, bending to theShimmery silver and muted beautyOf an unexpected rain…