Our baby’s due date came and went without the first sign of nearing labor. Each following day could have been the perfect beginning of a birth story. The day Randy discovered the song of the wood thrush and absorbed himself in writing a piece of music using the intervals of the bird’s song. There was…
Tag: God
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…
Hope and Miracles
What in the world is even happening? I find myself sifting through the media, shaking my head in wonder at all the different perspectives that claim to be true. I read statistics from experts in every field, see photographs that prove the arguments without a doubt, absorb the shocking headlines. I hear yelling from every…
Every Choice Is Too Hard (Or, Where Is the Map For My Life?)
Every choice is too hard. Is there anybody out there who understands what I mean? I have started down a path for my life, and I honestly have no idea where this is going. I have spent years traveling, hoping to stumble across at least a rudimentary map of what lies ahead. But there…
On Words (In every storm, mercy…)
Words are a comfort to me. They press in around me while I am lying awake in bed. I can feel the word mercy wrap me up like a weighted blanket. I have heard the heavy clank and felt the ground shake under the weight of that word as it anchored my soul to the…
Looking for a House and Finding Home
I have opened my heart up to want this year. One day in early January, I woke up with the clear vision that this house is never going to be ideal for our family. And I began to want something better. When we bought this brand-new 2-bedroom, 2 bathroom house as nearly newly-weds, we saw…
Having Children: A Spiritual Journey
Over the last few weeks, I have been rereading old blog posts and speculating about my life. The past year has been both incredibly sweet and difficult, trying to balance daily life with six young children with all the demands of three meals a day, the never-ending laundry, growing a home business, homeschool, planning for…
Moving Through Fear, Walking by Faith (How This Pregnancy Is Giving Me a New Kind of Courage)
I am in the second trimester of my sixth pregnancy. This is really happening. This is set in motion. In a few short months, this pregnancy will end in labor, delivery, and the prize of all prizes–another sweet baby in our family. People literally say to me all the time, regarding birth, “Oh, you’re a…
The Daily Turn #18: {The Song of My Daughter}
The woman who scanned my groceries in the checkout line felt compelled to tell me (in the two minutes that she held my undivided attention) that she would never bring children into this world. She had watched the news too much, and it was only going to get worse. I wouldn’t want my kids to…