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Five Finds Friday (maybe five, maybe four – I can’t guarantee anymore)
All of the weeks in December seem speedy beyond reason. It’s how the time works – right? But we’ve had marvelous quiet evenings home sitting in the living room near the tree’s twinkling lights and you could almost hear our collective sighs at the pleasantness of it. (Don’t worry – we’ve also had rush here and do this and…
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reading and literary journals and your suggestions
There’s a lot of details I’ll get wrong in education. (Same was true when I was employed in mainstream education too.) Ideas shift. Trends in education rise and fill. Diagramming sentences matters in one decade, not so much in the next. I started farming out math to tutors and computer “textbooks” at about the third grade. Science isn’t my…
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parenting.
Maybe it’s been my attempts at doing nightly Advent readings during the month of December. Or the conversations that sneak up on me with my teenagers at bedtime. The way one of my kids looked at me with genuine surprise when I said I enjoyed the singing of all the songs at church each week – the part of…
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Five Finds Friday (mailbox surprises & a video)
This week feels a little like it’s been two weeks long. I’d call it a pretty productive week, but also a week with full evenings and sometimes that equals a really tiring week too. Here we are though – at the week’s end with Friday at our door. funny This week this text appeared on my…
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A Christmas Catch Up (Because I needed one more than you did, I’m sure.)
You know what I need? More hours in the day? Better time management? Someone to sweep my floor continually? (How much are those robot vacuum cleaner things? No – for real. How much are they?) Maybe I do need those things. I don’t know. Maybe I need less distractions. Or fewer tasks. Or something. I don’t know. It hardly…
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friendship
Even when friends directly say the words to my face, sometimes I have a hard time believing them. Even when those friends are gracious enough to write the words down in a held-in-my-own-hand tangible sort of way, I am tempted to doubt their sincerity. You see, I bring a lot of baggage to a friendship. Extra drama. A generous…
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being okay; being the parent
I thought they were all asleep. There were kitchen chores to do. I turned on some music, lit a candle, rolled up my sleeves and got down to work. Sometimes I like baking in the quiet of the night in my eternally gritty yet somehow cozy little kitchen. Because I was alone, I sang out loud. Bits of a…
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The God Who Sees
El Roi. It means The God Who Sees. A few years ago the kids and I read a book about the different names of God. I’ve particularly remembered this name. There are moments I feel seen. Moments I can sense the “being known”. Through conversation divinely orchestrated. In a situation so obviously brought about by a grand master plan.…
Keep Reading . . .
Parenting Teens: Say Yes
water. the gift & the cost.
Hey Clay: A Timberdoodle Review
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the routine of the every day
My regular daily routine is pretty, you know, routine. Attempt to rise before my children. (Though that Mosely is a hard one to wake up earlier than.) Read quietly. Write a little in a journal. Check emails and get a touch of work done. Prep breakfast, wake up the remaining sleeping younger kids who do not yet own an…
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The Last Few Days – in Photos
It’s Monday of a holiday week but you already know that. I tried to fight my urge to stay in bed on these cold mornings and wake up early to greet the day and feel a little more in charge of my life – it’s an illusion I keep trying to maintain in a half-hearted capacity. I have neither…
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Five Finds Friday (should I buy the boots & a little poetry)
When the temperatures drop even slightly, my crew and I become hermits. We want to sleep late, stay under the covers, hibernate. It’s just so cozy at home. Give us all the hot chocolate and thick novels and warm blankets. It’s hard to get up and go anywhere. But we do force ourselves out of the house from time…
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what does repentance look like?
I use to think about it a lot. Repentance. That one word. And all of its connotations. About what it looked like and what it talked like and what it sounded like. I don’t think about it so much any longer. For a whole host of reasons. But the biggest (and the best) reason is this. I don’t need…
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she prays for us.
She sought us out Sunday morning before the service started. Hugged us with genuine affection and greeted each one of my children by name. She was excited – legitimately excited – to see our faces. She told us Tuesday. Tuesday was the day she prayed for us each – by name. Who knew that would matter so much? And…
