Guaranteed ways to be a miserable mom: Compare yourself to other moms. Volunteer to be classroom mom, soccer team mom, girl scout troop mom, and sign up to teach Sunday school. (Related: sign your kids up for ALL the things!) Stay up way too late, every night. Sacrifice your needs and wants always, in every […]
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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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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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Out of Place – Casey’s Story “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s the question every little kid is asked no less than 1000 times throughout the years. We’re told, “You can be anything you want to be.” But that be, I found, has standards. Be means success. It means making […]
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Out of Place – Sarah’s Story As we stepped off of the plane I knew life would look different. I just didn’t know how. Walking into the unknown is scary, but suddenly choices we had made, my husband and I, to walk this path, felt undoable. We can’t do this! I kept thinking. I was […]
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Out of Place – Carrie’s Story As I watched the group of twelve-year-old students standing in front of the homeschool group waiting for their gifts and prayers of blessing, I had this empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. This was an important rite of passage before moving up to the “Challenge years.” My […]
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There’s a dangerous myth in Christian culture that can effect our health and well-being. Maybe you’ve seen it floating around in one of its many disguises, but it boils down to this: Self-care is selfish. Moms are especially prone to believing this lie. We are supposed to be masters at setting aside our own needs […]
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Out of Place – Amy’s Story I never thought about names and labels and how they can affect feelings of belonging until I became a wife. Being “Ron’s wife” was my first label and I was eager to be a part of that club. Of course I’ve always been someone’s daughter, sister, or friend, but […]
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A Guest Post by Emily Sue Allen I show up at the sink to an insurmountable pile of dishes. Nothing is scraped. Nothing is sorted. My frustratingly miniscule counter space is overrun with remnants of our previous two meals—room-temp food, wadded up napkins between plates, stray silverware, and pans that need to be soaked. I […]
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“So, are these two extra kids mine now?” She gestured to a five year-old splashing water in the shallow end of the pool and his little sister toddling dangerously close to the edge without a swim vest. Meanwhile, her own three year-old played with pool toys on a towel nearby. “I don’t know,” I told […]
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Sarah K. Butterfield 