Category: family
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rhythms for when your former rhythms (i.e. attending church?) fall through… for whatever reason
When former rhythms stop working (for whatever reason), I’ve learned that I need to replace them. Otherwise I fairly consistently just abandon whatever I’d been formerly doing. Rhythms are great because then when we miss a day (or three), we can just pick up where we left off. No guilt, no shame. We’ve tried a…
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“God bless”es
Sometimes when it is time to pray around our dinner table, we take turns âblessingâ the people who were involved in the meal weâre eating. In some instances, âGod blessâ may be clichĂ©, but it doesnât have to be. For me and my co-travelers at the mealtime table, âGod blessâ is a dual way of…
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Code for “Mom, I’m more important than your phone.”
I have an iPhone. It is mostly a very good and useful thing. Overall, our family has good boundaries with screens of all kinds. But sometimes, my phone will latch itself onto my eyes and brain and unsuspectingly absorb them entirely into its magical screen to the detriment of the actual humans around me who…
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“Today salvation has come to this household.”
I’m so bad at remembering. For the past few years, I’ve been stewing over how/what to create to help our family remember things that God has done. In case you hadn’t noticed, remembering is a really big deal to God. All throughout the Scriptures, God tells His people to remember what He has done — for a…
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I Stand Amazed (How Marvelous)
Do you know any hymns? In my growing-up years, my dad would sing us to sleep with the hymns. I’ve done the same with my boys, committing more and more to memory over the years. Admittedly, a few of the hymns have some wonky theology, but overall they are a rich genre of Scripture set…
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12 Simple Christmas Traditions: Unique Ideas to Bring Your Family Together this Season
A short word before the list: It’s never too late to start a tradition! There are several beloved traditions among my adult siblings and I that weren’t begun until we were in high school or college, and that have since ceased to be. Perhaps we will revive them when our children are older. I guess some…
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How many kids should we have?
The whole issue of choosing whether or not to have children, when to have children, and how many children to have is extremely multi-faceted. It is an issue that has preoccupied recent generations far more than the generations preceding us simply due to the sponsorship of its patron saint: birth controls.* I know you know…
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Ritual
2boys and I have established a little ritual that we do on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings right before we leave our church. They made it up all on their own. On our way out, we go to the hallway that connects the main office hallway with the chapel and the lounge. It is a…
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A bow & arrows. Oh, and a quiver.
Howard spent his birthday gift card on something he’d wanted for a really long time: a bow and arrow set. And, so, of course, during this very slow, not-much-to-do-anyway month of December, I dropped everything that afternoon and made him a monogrammed quiver out of felt to hold his arrows. Actually, I really didn’t have…
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Count Your Blessings
I sing old hymns to 2boys every time I put them to sleep. One of the hymns I’ve always sung, and my mom tells me it was one of my favorites from the time I was a very little girl, is Count Your Blessings. The chorus goes: Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count…