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…
Tag: purpose
The Great Value of a Hidden Life (Podcast #26)
Sometimes motherhood can make me feel very small. I have such ideas and plans and ambitions and so little time to devote to anything but what seems like the most basic of needs. God has been impressing on my heart the beauty and great value of the hidden life, here in this house, raising my…
Embracing Every Season of Motherhood (Podcast #17)
Sharing Pitter Patter, a song that I wrote when my first babies were small, as well as thoughts about becoming a woman who embraces motherhood at every stage. This photo is my breathtakingly beautiful mother, age 43, holding me, her ninth child. I learned so much from her example. Talking about finding gratitude, praying for…
When Every Choice Is Too Hard (Podcast #16)
“I am just trying to figure out my life, one day at a time. I am just trying to discern which direction to walk. I desperately want a clear path to follow. Someone to hand me a map and say, “Here. This is your life. You will maximize it if you take this road, turn…
Entering a Year With Vision: How Do I Begin? (Podcast Episode #8)
You can also listen and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. Each of us longs for a life that has purpose and meaning, the feeling that we are contributing to a greater story, that we are living out the reason for which we were created. Today, I invite you to sit down with…
Enter Your Year With Vision: An Online Journaling Retreat
Friends, we are about to start a new year, and I want to enter into it with purpose and a clear vision of how I can step into the role that God has designed for my life. I feel a deep need to quiet the noise, take a holy breath, and pray, journal, and reflect…
For Which My Heart Is Yearning
In the busyness of the the day, I forget that I am soul and spirit. I move, like a machine, through the mechanics of my life: Head turning at a sudden cry, arms lifting baby, voice humming softly like a washing machine. Fingers folding laundry, hands scrubbing muffin pans, feet moving through rooms, ears listening,…
Grief and the Path of Beauty
Let me start by saying I do not pretend to be an expert on grief, and I truly hope I never am an expert on grief. My life has been colored by it just enough for me to know that this is something that’s going to stay with me forever. And that it is worth…
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…
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…
Looking Deeply Inside Myself (The beautiful work of journaling)
5:17 a.m. My eyes open in bed. I had a dream that woke first my mind, then my body. My face is pressed against a sweet, softly-sleeping baby. In the dark I lift him up and carry him across the room to place him gently in his crib. He doesn’t wake. A small miracle. I…
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…