“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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Waiting is a muscle that you practice using at an early age. Counting down the days till Christmas, waiting for your next birthday, waiting your turn, waiting for the weekend. It’s excruciating—feeling that eager anticipation of a reality not yet realized and having no power to speed up the process! Childhood is just the training […]
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When the moms in our book club read and discussed Where the Crawdads Sing*, I had to laugh because we envied the main character instead of pitied her. In the story (don’t worry: no spoilers), Kya survives alone in the marshes of North Carolina. Her contact with people is limited and her only friends are […]
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My morning routine was interrupted last month when we packed up the kids and the dogs and drove to Joshua Tree. We booked three nights in a charming desert bungalow expertly decorated in bohemian-hipster-chic style. As I walked through the house and marveled at all the decorative touches—geodes, antlers, dreamcatchers—I noticed that the tiny kitchen […]
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March 14th was Pi Day—a day that, in the past, was hardly worth noting. In previous years, either Max or I would say “Oh hey it’s Pi Day. Too bad we don’t have any pie.” and that would be the end of it. This year, we planned ahead. My husband wanted to try his hand […]
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We claim we want to know God more, we say that we want to grow in our faith, but words are cheap. We don’t always back our good intentions with action. It’s all too easy to become complacent in our spiritual journeys, pointing to God’s unconditional love for us instead of doing the work to […]
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A few years ago, an incredible exhibit came to the New Children’s Museum here in San Diego. One part treehouse, one part labyrinth, it’s called The Wonder Sound and it was designed by Wes Bruce. When my boys and I first stumbled upon it, my eyes widened in delight. The structure is full of whimsy, […]
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Shrink it and pink it! This has been a common strategy in marketing campaigns geared towards women over the years. It has backfired on a number of occasions, most notably in Bic’s pink and purple pens “for her” which were 70% more expensive than their non-gendered pens.* The pink and purple pens elicited many snarky […]
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Jesus’ disciples were a lot like moms: exhausted and constantly surrounded by needy people. As I read the story of the feeding of the five thousand last week, I saw what was happening behind the scenes instead of the typical flannel graph telling of the miracle. Jesus had just sent out his twelve disciples two […]
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My word of the year in 2020 was “savor.” It made sense in January, in my rushed and busy-doing-good life to slow down enough to savor the small, good things of my day. And then March happened and the world shut down. All four of us were sick and we lounged around the house, resting, […]
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Sarah K. Butterfield 