I don’t want my children to be simply entertained through life. I want them to show up for the purposes for which God has created them. I want them to do the things that only they can do. I want them to have the living conversations that can only come from their hearts and mouths….
Archives: Episode
One Small Garden (Ch. 7 Read Aloud of The Sacred Everyday Book) Podcast #40
We never really know what we are building with our lives. I try so hard to understand what it’s all about. I pray for vision, I research my past for clues, I desperately seek God for the next step. This is the life of faith. And though we may think our lives will look one…
Faith and Miracles (Ch. 6 Read-Aloud of The Sacred Everyday Book) Podcast #39
Are you going to have more? How do you feed them? How do you do it? And the often-implied but never-spoken–why??? When people see us with our eight children, they are curious. For the past 6 weeks, I have been reading aloud a chapter at a time of my book, The Sacred Everyday, A Search…
Questions at 2 a.m. (Chapter 5 Read Aloud of The Sacred Everyday Book) Podcast #38
If you find yourself lying awake at 2 a.m. asking questions that seem to have no answers, this episode is for you. Many of these reflections were written in the dead of night, stealing out of my dark bedroom, making my way to the kitchen table to pour out my heart to God, to empty…
Every Morning I Wake in an Ocean (Chapter 4 Read Aloud of The Sacred Everyday Book, available exclusively on the podcast, epsiode #37)
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) Podcast #36
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 (Podcast #35)
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 Podcast #34)
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…
Overcoming Fear (Podcast #33)
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…
Birth, Motherhood, and Wholehearted Surrender (Podcast #32)
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…
Motherhood When It’s All Too Much (Podcast #31)
Have you ever found yourself wondering what you were thinking when you believed you were capable of raising children into adulthood? Or have you ever been overwhelmed by a season in your family when it just all seemed too much? Sometimes, this happens to me. (Ok, it happens to me a lot…) I realize that…
Searching for More (Podcast #30)
It is human nature to want more. We are so easily caught up in the search–a better life for our children, a more meaningful existence, convenience, efficiency, easier, faster, better… There is a searching that leaves us restless with what we have been given. And there is another searching that steps back, reevaluates what we…