Children
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moreThe 1 Habit More Important than Quiet Time? {Memorize the Mount: Free Sermon on the Mount Memory Booklet}
On Wednesday, January 25 th, 2012Who memorizes God in the age of Google? For a week, longer, I wake with these fears choking hard. Fears pushing me into the pit. And it comes while I struggle to get out of bed, comes early as the light pries back the dark, words we’ve been committing to heart — and I murmur them, hold onto them like a lifeline tossed: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for thei...
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moreA {Nutcracker} Birthday Party
On Thursday, January 19 th, 2012On her second birthday, she awoke to balloons and a baby brother. She’s happily shared the cake ever since. But this year, as she approached her 13th, just before Christmas, and that little brother, Levi, asked for lazer tag for the big shared day and his three brothers cheered rowdy, she did wince a bit. And whispered in my ear if we couldn’t make cookies and fin...
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morewhen sickness knocks quiet…
On Tuesday, January 17 th, 2012When we meet an ill moment with a surrendered smile, it loses some of its sting. I bring her a cup with a prayer and she takes it up and her eyes light and nod. And too, a little tray of beauty, a cool cloth, a few favorite things, and a bud in a vase. Perhaps this is the...
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moreThe Way To Really Conduct A Life?
On Tuesday, December 06 th, 2011It was free. And ever since that free concert for kids at the symphony, this is what Malakai’s been doing: going around wildly conducting life. A burst of hands, an exaggerated swoop, then a punctuating of thin air (the drum! the drum!). This makes him happy. He can’t stop smiling. ...
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moreA Good Plan for the Day
On Thursday, November 17 th, 2011And we sit with silence — and this is could be the plan: make the scraps of quiet our handcraft, so we can craft a life. That is when it happens, her pouring a cup, and me listening to the soundlessness, just for a moment — ...
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moreWhen You Desperately Want God to Hear Your Prayers
On Wednesday, November 02 nd, 2011When we buy her two pygmy goats for her birthday, who knew how big faith could get? We bring them home in June in a mini-van with no air-conditioning. Two miniature goats neighing back and forth — on the laps of two boys making jokes about something warm running down their legs. “We do need to name them,” the birthday girl announces. She strokes on...
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morewhat a family is really about
On Tuesday, October 11 th, 2011When she stands in the garden, hauls the pumpkin up in both arms, she laughs and says it’s like she’s the one grown all round and full. “Haven’t I grown so big?” She’s a riot. Summer and light and this reaping, it makes us tipsy happy. She giggles and the pumpkin rounding out her belly, it jiggles, and I grin. A mother’s smile is the ch...
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morefor mothers : {frames of time}
On Friday, September 30 th, 2011I could only get them all to stand still for one frame. Because they were doing the real work of playing prisoner’s base, running and hiding and stealthing, through the skeleton of an old mill, through all that once stood. ...
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moreHow to Get the Most out of A Day
On Monday, August 29 th, 2011It’s a scant harvest of sweet corn this year. The rains deluging in spring, then giving up it’s obsession with us come June. From my post at the stove, out the window to the south, there the Farmer bends and bowsover the cornstalks like an offering, the only way a life can reap a harvest. The Farmer brings in cobs and the kids husk it back to kernels, to the nugg...
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moreHow to Go into all the World?
On Tuesday, August 16 th, 2011So we wallpaper the children’s bathroom with thrifted maps from old National Geographics. It only cost the price of the sticky tack, to moun...
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morewhen dreaming of something new…
On Thursday, July 28 th, 2011The day the two of them imagined making something, they up and took a lamb’s sacrifice and headed back to the garden. Back to the orchard, back to the tree. Back with one hank of wool yarn and the dye and their dreams, and a sheet of clear directions, highlighted and circled in yellow. ...
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moreThe Farm Report: {Work Days}
On Thursday, July 07 th, 2011‘Thank God every morning when you get up, that you have something to do that day which must be done… ~Charles Kingsley ‘We lived here by our work. Our life and our work were not the same thing maybe, but they were close…” ~Wendell Ber...
