Mothering Prayer
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moreWhy Mother’s Day is for the Birds
On Friday, May 10 th, 2013Because I ain’t no Hallmark mother – and none of us are, if we’re really truth-telling here. If we’re honest– and what else is there really — there were burnt dinners and yelling mornings and neck strained words over lost shoes and scattered Legos and unfinished homework and there were cru...
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moreSo God Made a Mother:
When the Giving Tree is Really The Giving Mother *UpdatedOn Monday, May 06 th, 2013So, sure, there was this talk of The Giving Tree – but there wasn’t one of us who didn’t know all along it was you, The Giving Mother. You who leaned over a stove and stirred and let spices fall like leaves and you ladled and we slurped and it would be remembered when we ...
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moreThe One Song No Woman can Afford to Miss
On Tuesday, April 23 rd, 2013I heard of a woman once, who when she was with child, she turned and this song swelled in her, her child’s own song, and she would hum it as she washed pots. Hum it as she did her hair up, hum that song like a beckoning. And when that woman swayed at the end of her ripening, just before the child came, she had hummed it low between each tightening, how she had hummed that...
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moreHow to Get through Life’s Hard Parts (Video)
On Friday, April 05 th, 2013When the notes keep coming out all wrong, Hope looks up from the piano. “Is that what she said? Didn’t she say play only the left?” Yeah, that’s what she’d said, I had heard her — that willowy piano adjudicator who’d tucked a loose strand of mouse ...
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moreAfter Steubenville: 25 Things Our Sons need to know about Manhood
On Wednesday, March 20 th, 2013Dear Son, When you’re the mother of four sons, Steubenville is about us. Steubenville is about having a conversation with sons about hard things and asking you to do holy things. Because a Steubenville doesn’t begin with football and it doesn’t begin with alcohol and it ...
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moreWhy Weak is the New Strong: Radical Right Where You Are {Pt4}
On Wednesday, February 06 th, 2013So I fell extremely anemic in the fall. Could hardly drag out of bed, felt like jello, looked like a gaunt ghost, and got winded walking from the sink to the stove. I’d draped arms around the Farmer’s neck and told him I was sure I was right broke. ...
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moreGod Made a Mother and You — So Farmer On!
On Monday, February 04 th, 2013I sat beside a girl in Mr. Seuter’s grade nine math class who said she was getting out of here. She was getting out of this no name little farming town and she was getting out of this hick place with its hick boys and she was getting free of everything her daddy ever was. I knew her daddy. He was known for planting row...
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moreWhen You Give Up, and You Break, You’ve Made It
On Tuesday, January 29 th, 2013So that’s what I told my pretty wondrous friend, Sarah Mae: “My kids don’t need a SuperMama. They need to see a Mama who needs a Super God.” And Sarah Mae, author of Desperate, she nodded — and she guest posts with this story here today: ‘I don’t want to be a servant – I want to be a Caroline.” So says the three year old...
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moreBest Way to Get Through Hard Times
On Friday, January 18 th, 2013It’s what I sang over dishes. Sang on the days when I felt too weary to take another step, clean up another mess, change another diaper. Keep singing when I need to keep going on. It’s what I sing when the enemy attacks with lies, when I feel alone and scared,...
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moreHow to Be the Parent You Want to Be: 40 Things Every Child Must Know Before They Leave Home
On Friday, January 11 th, 2013Dear Son — You have to know how your unfolding from me was a miracle. That’s the miraculous thing about miracles – they really do happen. How is it in this crazy, holy world does a girl-woman bear a boy-child? How does she raise a squalling boy-child into a man? What can a woman know about raising a man? And this the thing: there’s only so much t...
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moreHow to Not Miss Your Real Life Calling
On Friday, November 16 th, 2012When they cut the three right open and start pulling out the inner guts, there isn’t a sound in the room. They’re focused and silent and pulling at strings and ripping away at things and I wonder if I am doing any of this ridiculous thing right? Not the pumpkins — I could care less how we hack these three up. It’s the kids, this year, my life. ...
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moreThe Truth about Really Having it All
On Friday, September 21 st, 2012I t was after the waves. After the waves of contractions, after the waves of blow out diapers and wet nursing pads that leaked through the let downs and the damp spit blankets that piled high at the bedroom door. Long after the waves of colic at 3 am and the 4:30 am crying, both the swaddl...
