After a busy day at church, complete with a Sunday School Christmas concert practice, accompaniment on piano during the service and a fellowship meal to prepare, eat and then clean up, the last thing I feel like doing is digging out Christmas ornaments to deck the halls. Falalala….falafel. ‘Cause I feel like the former ground-up …
Over and over again, a common theme is voiced to me about The Church. That it is a place of hypocrisy, a magnet for legalists, the anti-thesis of true godliness. And in ways I have to agree. There have been several church groups and particular people in the congregations I have attended that would certainly …
My kids occasionally ask me what it is I want for Christmas. Which completely throws me… because I place very little stock in what I receive at Christmas. Whereas I realize this is the very large part of what makes Christmas magical for them. So lately, and after reading one Mama’s very consumer-driven, grown-up Christmas …
What happens when three children, one Grandmother and two Mamas/Aunties go shopping together in a crowded mini-van during a down-pour? A whole lot of candy gets bought. And very few Christmas gifts. Santa should provide a few of his slacker elves for babysitting service and maybe a reindeer or two for entertainment. Believe you me. …
We are sitting in circular formation, teaching colleagues, acquaintances and friends. The atmosphere is warm and inviting. Soft lights sparkle on a tree over against the wall. And we wait. In anticipation. Our facilitator directs everyone’s attention to the meeting at hand and then asks us to introduce ourselves. A discussion begins as to what …
Love isn’t love. Until you give it away. She leans in to talk to me, dark eyes sparkling. A beauty of a girl. I ask her what she has planned for the rest of the weekend. And then, her face lights up. And she tells me that she is going to see her son as …
Summer heat, haze of humidity presses down. I am sitting on the porch swing. It is August, and I have escaped to get a break from the children, from the craziness going inside the house. I settle in with a good read, or so I hope. And occasionally, I look up from my book to …
I am standing in front of him, my fists clenched. I feel frustration in every pore, every cell. My blood pressure is on the rise. Pulsating. Throbbing. Everything is crashing down around me, and I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. Sometimes a day just seems to bring more than one has …
I wrote the following in response to my son relaying a few comments made to him this past week on the school bus. The comments were very subtle, and seemingly innocent. In fact, my son excused the comments as his friends “just being mean.” But I beg to differ. I think these comments are malicious, …
I think I just might need to start getting more creative with my overall life organizational skills as well as with my child-rearing methods, as my status updates are becoming increasingly redundant (a.k.a ‘kids fight, I scream, exhaustion sets in, sanity starts slipping…’) Here is part of what I wrote as my blog update last …
I had a conversation the other day with a friend on the subject of, among other things, how absolutely fantastic and wonderful my children indeed are. She said it first. And yes, you read that right- I, the mother that tells it all, just like it is, agreed that my children were amazing little individuals. …
What if we saw the best in people? When our spouse offered to do something in a way that we did not prefer, instead of complaining, we saw the good in the effort. Not how annoying it was that they did it differently. Or wrong. Or what if when our children decided to ‘help out’, …