At the age of 18, I had a solid five-year plan. I was going to graduate from a Christian college with a degree to teach deaf/hard-of-hearing students, and I was going to do it within an undergraduate program. Never mind that there was only one college in all my searching that met my criteria, and […]
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I sat on the small bench across the classroom while a second grader patted my arm. “It’s okay, Mrs. B.” Emma said. The concern in her eyes only made me cry harder. I was student teaching in a general education setting that semester, and I loved those second graders from West Godwin Elementary. There were […]
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On Easter Sunday, we put on our fancy clothes and listened to special music, and with much fanfare, we celebrated that Jesus rose again. This year, as part of my job as Director of Children and Family Ministry, I took the stage to give a three-minute kids’ sermon. I used a pair of bright yellow-tinted […]
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It was that awkward time during a gathering, when the food is ready and waiting on the buffet table but no one has started eating yet. The adults were clumped together near a table of crafts set out for the children. The kids were running around with their makeshift foam headbands, stickers flying. Soon, a […]
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Last month here in San Diego, parents were hit with a double whammy of circumstances which made proper planning paramount. During the last weekend before school started, when last-minute moms like me were raiding what was left in the Target bins, Hurricane Hillary was due to hit us—the first tropical storm to hit southern California […]
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I cherish my slow summer mornings at our family’s farm in Michigan. I can sip my coffee on the back porch and listen to birdsong, watch the sun rise over the fields. Looking out over the oak trees, I wish that every morning could be a slow summer morning, but I know that eventually all […]
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I grew up asking my parents if we were there yet. On road trips from Orange County to Oregon to visit my grandparents, and later on planes when my parents became missionaries to France. Wedged next to my little brother and sister, and struggling with motion sickness, the question stemmed from my own impatience and […]
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Every day has felt a bit like Christmas at our house lately. Amazon packages arrive in waves. I open them, make a note of who to thank, then bring the contents to work with me. In my role as Director of Children and Family Ministry at my church, I’m in charge of running VBS (Vacation […]
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One of my responsibilities as part of my new job as Director of Children and Family Ministry is to teach preschool chapel once a month. Like many churches, we have a thriving preschool on our campus and it’s a delight to see all those 3- and 4-year-olds gathered together in a squirmy mob on chapel […]
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When we lived in the south of France during my junior-high years, we had a cherry tree in our small backyard. Our house shared walls with a row of houses on a busy street near the edge of town. My parents had chosen to rent this house for all the space it afforded us: three […]
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Sarah K. Butterfield 