For most of the summer, I said no to opportunities that came my way. No to the article assignment for a magazine I regularly write for. No to a friend who invited me to speak at an event she hosts. No to camping trips and vacations and even a funeral. No because I had said…
Dear Reader, I live in Florida, so every summer we hear tragic stories of toddlers falling into backyard pools and drowning. We have a pool, and we have a 3-year-old grandson who spends a lot of time at our house. We also have a pool fence. Or at least we did until we paved our…
One long weekend we took our children to Los Angeles, to the hills under the Hollywood sign, to Griffith Observatory. The air was clear, the observatory a stark white nestled in green hills. It felt iconic: the city that isn’t quite a city lay below us, but from high up we could make Los Angeles…
Susanna Wesley used her apron. They say it was her way of disappearing into prayer. Her 11 children knew what an apron over Mom’s head meant: They better leave Mom alone. I was thinking about Susanna the other day, this heroine of homeschool families and bustling households—the living, breathing Proverbs 31 woman—the ideal mother we…
Jake came to live with Stacy when he was six. Born a fetal alcohol baby, he’d been abandoned as unmanageable by four different foster homes already. His bright brown eyes and mischievous grin signaled a child behind the almost feral face and spidery tangle of skinny arms and legs. Stacy, an elementary school teacher, was…
Quiet time. It’s a description. A noun. A command. A miracle, really. I’m not sure when the phrase “quiet time” became defined by the perfect chair illuminated by the perfect light at the perfect time of day, flanked by the journal that has the perfect paper to capture our thoughts as we study the perfect…
Healthy relational boundaries are kindness in action. Enablers and approval addicts often think they are being kind, but enabling patterns are deceptively destructive. We are not being kind when we inadvertently encourage others to form ingrained habits that are harmful to themselves and others. When we do not tell the truth because we are afraid…