My seven-year-old looked adorable in his basketball jersey. It hung down way past his waist, but he didn’t care. He was too excited for his first day of the basketball program through our YMCA: skills assessment day. He was one of the most enthusiastic participants on the gym floor, and we cheered him on from […]
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Reading is my favorite hobby, and this year I read over 80 titles! Narrowing down my favorite reads was an agonizing process, but I’d love to share my favorites with you here. I used the following categories to make it simpler: top fiction, best of young adult (YA), best of memoir, best Christian nonfiction, most […]
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For many of us, fall ushers in a new kind of busy. We are finding our new rhythms for the school year. Extracurricular activities are starting up again. Seasonal holiday activities are on our minds. Home and garden projects demand our attention. And all of it crowds around our regular, daily to-do’s. We might miss […]
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This summer, my husband scoped out his family’s farm in Michigan for interesting rocks. Combing through the fields and woods on his family’s land, he discovered several rocks of interest, carting them up to the house in a wheelbarrow. I’m not sure how he sees the potential in these drab stones. I look over the […]
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One bright Tuesday as I walked my dog around our condo complex, I spotted a dad with his two young sons. In front of his open garage, he set out a shiny green bike for his preschooler and a red tricycle for his toddler. In the middle of their street, he had set up an […]
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Last week, a package came for me. Inside was a new Bible and a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. I could hardly wait to open both of them! It used to be that I would have categorized one of the items as sacred and the other as secular, and although I would argue that the Bible […]
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“Play with me, mommy!” I hear this a lot, and I bet you do too. Right after the earnest request, one of my boys will lead me by the hand toward their block tower, or superhero capes, or plastic doctor playset. In recent years, I’ve battled more than my share of beyblades, lost many Nerf […]
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In many traditional households across America, moms are carrying an invisible workload. We are “the rememberer,” the one who coordinates all the moving pieces that go into running a household. This looks like planning meals, monitoring the levels of shampoo and laundry detergent, setting the kids’ schedules, keeping the refrigerator stocked, booking medical appointments, and […]
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I step outside in the early morning hours, our eager dog by my side. We walk through grass glistening with dew past the barn and pasture where the horses are already grazing. There’s a bit of a chill to the air; the hay field ripples with the breeze. The sun’s first rays illuminate the mist […]
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“Dear God, please make him sleep!” I’ve lost count of the number of times I uttered this prayer in the early years of parenting. During nap time, in the middle of the night, my voice sighing with exhaustion, cracked with desperation. Instead of a dedicated time in which to pray everyday—what I used to do […]
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Sarah K. Butterfield 