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…
Tag: large family
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…
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….
Creative Family Quarantine: 15 Inspired Projects that will help your family slow down, show up, and create lasting memories from this season together at home.
Let’s all admit we need a break from what’s going on in our own minds right now. We need a little time where we can turn off the phones, shut the laptops, look into the eyes of the people we love and find some joy in this season where our worlds are turned upside down….
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…
The Space Between Here and a Miracle
If you are up, like me, at 2 a.m., wrestling with questions that do not seem to have answers, tired of trying to drown out your own thoughts so you can finally get some sleep, welcome to this post. Get up and join me at my kitchen table. It is soooo quiet. I just got…
The Woman and the Seed, A Parable
This is a true story. It is the story of a woman who fell in love with a man. She married him with a certain picture of what life would be like in the back of her mind. It looked like a garden in springtime. Everything beautiful was in bloom. Every bird was singing. They…
Being There (On the Shores of Life and Loss)
A week ago we cried over the body of my beloved Mother. She is gone. This keeps hitting me like ocean waves, one after the other. How it swells. How it breaks. It all seems like a dream. The next day was of course a birthday. My daughter’s third. The only time to cry was…
Thoughts on My Mother and the Miracle of Existing in this World
My Mama had nine children. I am the youngest. The fact that I exist in this world at all is not a small miracle. I see it all now, like the iconic scene in It’s a Wonderful Life, where Mary is closing up the library. A world where I don’t exist. My husband is scorching…
Embrace the Mess, A Letter to My Future Self
This letter is to my future self. One day, when you are storming around your messy life as a mother of many small children, scowling at spilled crayons and upturned buckets of legos, haunted by the ghost of clean kitchens past… When you reach the point, clocking in late for laundry after a long day…
Marking a Season
I miscarried nine days before our 15th anniversary. There we sat, across the table at a little cafe, drinking coffee together. Our six living children were home with a friend who gave us the day together to celebrate our marriage. The week before, Randy and I had privately laid the whisper of a body down…