THE AWKWARD MOM

because uncomfortable conversations are the ones worth having

Month: January 2017 (page 1 of 2)

Essential Social Skills for Kids (and Ideas to Teach Them), #5-7

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Guest post: Breathing Lessons

Reading Time: 2 minutes

For those of you who’ve been married: Do you remember what “just married” felt like? After the sound of the tin cans clanking behind the car faded, after you set your bags down in your together home after the honeymoon—what was it like?

Reality: No matter how much training you’ve had, one flesh takes a lotta work. My sin settled in our little 500-square-foot apartment right alongside our stacks of wedding gifts. And when my sin collided head-on with his? Well, let’s just say sometimes I wished our duplex walls were a little thicker.

A Time-sensitive Stand for Refugees: Will you Help *Today*?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

At the risk of entering a fray from which I’ve worked so diligently to refrain…my heart is breaking today. So after a few hours of deliberation, I’m asking for your help.

There’s a distinct possibility that after today–January 27, 2017–the United States will have in place an Executive Order dramatically limiting my nation’s ability to welcome refugees.

Reports indicate the order will stop all refugee settlement for 120 days, end the resettlement of Syrians, temporarily block resettlement from six other “terror prone” countries, and reduce refugee admission for this fiscal year from 110,000 to 50,000.* read more

Memos to Myself: On Keeping Your Heart Soft When Times are Tough

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I felt it the other day as I bumped along in the backseat of the car, recounting as best I could my interpretation of some recent events. It was a brittle layer settling around me, hardening more rapidly than I could scrape it away. (Perhaps an alternate title to this post: “When Your Hide is Chapped and There Ain’t No Bag Balm in Sight”).

I imagine bitterness or resentment not unlike a callus of the heart. It’s the surface rubbed raw through hurt, then blistered in a cushion of (occasionally bursting) self-protection, then layered in a rough, thickened crust of skin designed to keep us from feeling as much.

read more

10 Questions to Take Your Relationship with God Deeper in 2017, Set #3

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last year, I kicked off 2016 with 6 Ways to Take Your Relationships Deeper, parts I and II and dug into that a little with six sets of questions help tug your most intimate friendships to the next level.

This year, I’ve kicked off 2017 with questions to help us pursue our relationship with the most potential for fulfillment and gut-level happiness, no matter what’s around the corner. (Check out the previous two sets here and here!)

read more

Off-season: When you’re not where you wanted to be, when you wanted to be there

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Why does it seem like everyone else my age is promoted, and I’m stuck in Gruntwork Land?

I should be married by now. read more

10 Questions to Take Your Relationship with God Deeper in 2017, Set #2

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last year, I kicked off 2016 with 6 Ways to Take Your Relationships Deeper, parts I and II and dug into that a little with six sets of questions help tug your most intimate friendships to the next level. 

This year, I’ve kicked off 2107 with questions to help us pursue our relationship with the most potential for fulfillment and gut-level happiness, no matter what’s around the corner. (Check out the previous set here!)

read more

Guest post: He loves me, He loves me not

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Do you remember the moment that first made you wonder if He truly loved you?

I don’t know if I remember the first one. But I remember the first big one, and I can trace the crooked, faltering lines of the rest of them through my past. (Fear has its way of searing itself upon the conscience.)

For me, unbelief usually blossoms as fear; as worry. My unbelief stems directly, stealthily, from its taproot in my heart. He loves me? He loves me not? read more

Guest post: On Giving our Kids the Gift of Hard Work

Reading Time: < 1 minute

The idea bubbled up not long after my kids’ grandpa helped them each weave their own survival bracelets: eight feet of 500 paracord specially plaited and buckled around their wrists. The idea is that if you were in an emergency situation, you could use it, say, for a tent; a tourniquet; a climbing aid.

But even those neon colors couldn’t outshine the sparkle in my nine-year-old daughter’s eyes when she realized she could start a business with those little bracelets.

Her little business she started recently tumbled our family into a (lovely, really) domino effect of initiative, knowledge, community, work ethic, and perseverance. I love the dynamic it continues to create among my kids! read more

Essential Social Skills for Kids (and Ideas to Teach Them), #1-4

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Think of these social skills as little golden keys to the future for your kids: They can get your kids into a lot of places! Bummer is, they can shut some doors, too, when our kids don’t master them. (Disclaimer: Writing this post does not declare my children in mastery of said skills.)

Social skills are key because manners are a form of loving others well. They lubricate the potential friction of social interactions.

(Some of them I’ve broken down because of my own experience with my son’s ADHD, such as giving him “scripts” for social situations; see #1.  I won’t speak directly to special needs in this post. But some of these ideas might work to put tangible steps onto often intangible skills.)

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