By Erin Davis
“There’s something wrong with your baby’s kidney.”
I’d heard these words before. Five years earlier, I was lying on a table in an ultrasound room, the image of my tiny baby was on the screen and a doctor was telling me something was wrong.
By Erin Davis
I have a random theory.
I think that God chooses one thing from nature to remind each of us individually of His love for us. He uses that thing to woo us and to remind us that even though He is the Creator and we are the created, He’s totally smitten with us. I’m not sure if it’s a theory that works across the board, but I do know that God has always used one specific creature in nature to affirm His love and remind me of His sweetness.
What is it, you ask?
Groundhogs.
By Kimberly Wagner
A precious young mom shared with me last week that she had to ask her son and the rest of his eleven year old soccer teammates for their forgiveness. She loves the Lord, loves His Word, but in a moment of frustration, she lost her cool in front of the team. The next week, she gathered them together so she could look each one in the eye and explain why she needed to ask their forgiveness. Many of these kids are from non-Christian homes and had probably never seen or heard a gospel demonstration like that!
By Dougetta Nuneviller
Spring is the perfect time to talk about birth. Baby animals are born, baby plants spring from the ground. Life begins again, and all things are new. Just like when we are born again in Christ.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! II Corinthians 5:17
By Amy Catalina
Of all holidays, Mother’s Day is probably the one that evokes the widest spectrum of emotions. Perhaps it’s warm thoughts of your own mother or joy that you ARE a mother. Perhaps it’s pain and disappointment if you are enduring infertility. Perhaps it’s heartache if your relationship with your mother is strained or she’s gone. Perhaps it’s angst if your current season of motherhood involves more pain than joy.
By Erin Davis
One of the things that troubles me about raising kids in the current cultural climate is the trend toward blurring gender lines. In the eyes of the majority, what makes girls girls and boys boys is all up for negotiation. The implications of this shift seem huge in the lives of my children (and their children, and their children…).
But frankly, I’m a little too swamped with bedtimes and temper tantrums to find time to figure out how to instill Biblical gender roles in my sons. I don’t have a clue how to cut the Truths in God’s Word up into pieces small enough for my littles to digest and embrace. Most days I just tell them to go play in the mud and hope that somehow translates into an understanding of who God wants them to be. I recognize that it it’s important to teach my kids about God’s design for who they are, but I need some tools to make it happen.
By Heather Patenaude
I received a text from a new mom recently. It took me right back to those first few weeks I navigated the waters of motherhood. Everyone else made motherhood look easy! But now, with this 7 pound bundle, I felt clueless!
8 years and 3 kids later, I read the text from my new mom friend and just smiled thinking, “Oh the newborn stage goes so fast and yet everything seems so overwhelming!”
The answer to this question might seem pretty obvious.A child from outside a family becomes a part of a family. Forever.
The circumstances from which that child comes can vary immensely from one child to another. The essence, however, is the same in every case: the presence of both extreme loss and need. Loss of a birth family. Need for a stable, secure, loving, and warm forever family.
Romans 8:37-39 … in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“We are soldiers of the Lord”, I told my children one day. “You mean were going to war mom?” This was the start to a very interesting conversation.
I pen these words the day after a bomber took out an 8-year-old as he waited for his dad to cross the finish line of the Boston marathon. There’s not a single day that I drop my son off at pre-school that I don’t think about Sandy Hook and have to fight the urge to do a U-turn in the school parking lot, bring him home and lock all the doors. Then there are super viruses, bacterial infections, and childhood cancers…It’s enough to make me want to say this desperate prayer all day, every day “Jesus, keep my kids safe. Jesus, keep my kids safe. JESUS, PLEASE KEEP MY KIDS SAFE!”
By Erin Davis
“For we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us” Luke 11:4.
Kids make mistakes. Lots of them. Sometimes those mistakes are pointed squarely in our direction as moms. We understand that missing the mark is part of the learning process but when we are extra tired, extra stretched or extra raw as we mother all of that disobedience, anger and loss of our personal property can sting. Continue reading
As the kids piled into the van, I noticed Lindsay’s hair, which looked like it hadn’t been brushed in a week. I said, “Lindsay! Did you even look in the mirror today? Your hair is a mess! We never see these people! They’re going to think you are a little ragamuffin… And, oh no! Are those the jeans that are too short for you?”
It was too late. My husband had already pulled out and would not be turning around for longer jeans.
Last month I attended the funeral of my 49 year old friend, Lisa, who battled cancer. Our pastor said, “The more she got squeezed the more the glory of God came out of her!”
It’s true! The more Lisa suffered physically, the stronger her faith became. She became a beacon of strength to all of us! She smiled and would say, “I don’t want my cancer to be wasted!”
By Heidi Jo Fulk
I was grocery shopping…pushing one of those semi-truck-like carts with the set of double seats on the back filled with my then toddler girls while my infant son bounced along in the Baby Bjorn on my chest. We were a sight. A couple stares, a few knowing giggles, and a raised eyebrow or two. I was plowing through that store praying we’d make it home with everything we came to get without a major mishap or scene.
As you may well know, Megachurch Pastor Rick Warren’s 27-year-old son killed himself this week. I’ve been troubled that so many have felt the need to weigh in on this one. There are those who have built a tiny platform on that boy’s casket to talk about everything from politics, to homosexuality, to mental health. This is not one of those posts. Truth be told, those posts are making me kind of nauseas.