Living
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When Life Punches You In the Face
“Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face”. Muhammad Ali Hello Everybody! How are you doing? Me? I had plans this week: plans to get my carpets done and my bathroom wallpapered and to finally get my schoolroom in good order, amongst other things….so many plans. To be honest, I actually managed to get a lot accomplished this week. I cleaned my carpets (my, they needed it!) and began my wallpapering project (something I have never done before) — but life just started happening (as it tends to do) and somewhere in the middle of my week, it all kind of went sideways. Does that ever happen…
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Finding Your Bedrock
A funny thing happens when you are about to drop your daughter off at college for the first time: you begin to evaluate how well you have prepared your child for this moment. You may even find yourself taking advantage of lulls in conversation or long drives to dive deep into serious conversations that you feel must be had before you can consider your child “ready” to leave the nest. You have, to this point, been the first line of defense, and that likely afforded your child the opportunity to grow up without full knowledge of the dangers and ugliness of humanity. You took on the role of protecting your…
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True Devotion to Mary A.K.A. Mary’s Got Your Back
We are back from our family adventures in Croatia. It was an amazing trip! Let’s just say I am left with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for our time there and the graces received. If I were to sum up the spiritual theme of the trip, it would be “True Devotion to Mary”. I returned with a strong sense that Mary really is our Mother and, like any good mother, she adores us and wants to better equip us to fight the battles of our life and overcome our enemies. And I know that some people reading this will feel a repugnance at that idea — because maybe it seems…
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Maybe He Shouldn’t Have Kissed Dating Goodbye
This week, I was saddened to see a very public statement by former megachurch pastor, Joshua Harris, announcing his divorce from his wife and a renunciation of Christianity and its teachings. Harris had risen to fame at the time I was graduating from college with his wildly popular book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I am sure I have a copy of that book gathering dust somewhere in one of my boxes from that time, so I am relatively familiar with the impact it had on a generation of young adults. In many ways this man, Joshua Harris, had begun a revolution amongst evangelicals trying to navigate the sex-saturated world around…
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The Hardest Part of NFP
Hey everybody, it is Natural Family Planning awareness week! I figured an honest look at the challenges of living out NFP is in order, but first a little background on my own NFP journey. Before I was married, I studied Christian Marriage and Family and the basics of NFP. I fell in love with the concept of it all — diving deep into the philosophy and theology — it made complete sense to me. If I’m being absolutely honest, though, I was probably a bit too idealistic about how NFP was going to look in my own life. And that was before Instagram, people, so imagine how bad I would…
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You Were Not Made for Comfort
It seems many Christians have forgotten Jesus’ command, to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel”. It’s understandable, really, when so many of us have so much to do and we can barely handle what is on our own plates. It’s hard to imagine adding sharing the gospel with the entire world to our never-ending “to do” list. Nonetheless, Jesus did command those who love Him to share the gospel with the entire world — and it should make us feel a bit uncomfortable when we evaluate our own response to that command. Before I was married, I was traveling the country sharing the good news about sex…
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Martha and Mary: When Life Gets Too Busy
The last two weeks have been absolutely crazy — full of non-stop activity, gatherings at friends houses, and preparations for our own gathering this weekend. Sometimes life can get so busy — too busy, really — and you find that in the midst of it all, you are slowly beginning to lose yourself in the process. Losing yourself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, Jesus made it clear that Christians need to die to themselves to bear fruit that will last. No doubt, there is a dying to oneself that actually leads to regeneration and renewal — it is this dying to one’s ego and selfishness that also leads…
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Time for a Gut Check
I’m sitting down to write a post. To be honest, it’s not because I want to write a post. In fact, I guess you could say I’m not “feeling it” right now, but I made a commitment to publish a post every Friday. So here I sit, fighting my inertia, because I believe I ought to stay true to my commitment. It reminds me of a quote of one of my favorite people, John Paul II. Like most things in life, it’s in the doing the thing that you ought to do — even when you’re not “feeling it” — that will make all the difference in the end. This…
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The Freedom of Not Giving a Flying Flip
Last week, I posted a simple picture on Instagram with some words of encouragement to all the parents out there trying to parent and potty-train and tackle the plethora of other responsibilities that are a part of being mom and dad to people we adore. Seemed simple enough. Within minutes, one woman started sharing what I assumed was “just being helpful” potty training tips. I was sincerely grateful. Quickly, though, it moved to fear mongering about the harm I was doing to my child by delaying potty-training and finally to accusations that I was, in essence, being a bad parent by waiting until I thought my little guy was “ready”.…
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Thinking Outside of the Box & Growing in Trust
Hello everybody! This post is going to be a short one because we are coming off a busy week and are preparing for a little Garden Tea Party Fundraiser! I figured I’d share something that we are slowly discovering as we try to provide the very best education for our kids — with limited funds to make it happen. What we have discovered, is that, for most parents of big families, you need to learn to think outside of the box when it comes to helping your kids get to college. Most of us don’t have endless funds at our disposal, am I right? But just because you can’t personally…
