THE AWKWARD MOM

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Category: guest post (page 2 of 4)

Guest Post: Taming the Chaos in Your Home

October 17, 2017 / / 2 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

There are moments in my home that can only be tidily described as chaos.

Last night, as my two youngest were building a fort in the bedroom, I heard some concerning-sounding thuds: “That was the bathroom mirror, Mom! ” (Oh. I think that’s supposed to make me feel better?) There was also the repetitive, distinctive bleat of a kazoo, which I could have sworn I’d already thrown away. At least there was a lot of giggling, wrestling, and role-playing complete with foreign accents. (This time, at least, it was a good chaos.)

I thought of this today as I was thinking of the first time we actually hear of the Holy Spirit in Scripture: The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. read more

Guest Post: Helping Our Kids Become a Safe Place

September 21, 2017 / / 0 Comments
Reading Time: < 1 minute

becoming a safe place person of refuge

It’s been a rough month for a lot of people around the United States.

As I type, there are children in Florida and Montana and Texas whose lives have been precisely, heart-rendingly divided into before and after. read more

Guest post: Where’s the Holy Spirit When My Marriage is Hard?

August 17, 2017 / / 0 Comments
Reading Time: 3 minutes

It was late, and she was crying now. Her marriage had been hard–hard for a long time.

I think it was there that I really saw Him, though He’d been there the whole time. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is a little like an I Spy book to me. Knowing what He looks like, I’m learning to spot Him among the clutter of circumstances, ones He’s meticulously arranged.

I want to tell you what He looked like, there in that dimly-lit room, where she was just so tired of waiting for God to change things. Even there, in her road-weary face that longed for a break in being “tough” and “strong”–I saw Him making beautiful things out of dust, as the song goes. read more

Guest Post: When Parenting Means…Fear

July 18, 2017 / / 0 Comments
Reading Time: < 1 minute

I didn’t know what a turquoise-painted pumpkin was—until my nephew, the one with the chocolatey eyes and the wide grin, was allergic to peanuts. Now I know that a teal pumpkin outside a house on Halloween means they have non-food treats for kids with food allergies. When I was a young youth intern, it felt extreme of one mom to walk through the mission-trip bus and ask all the kids to surrender snacks with peanuts. Now, having known at least three moms who grappled with this life-or-death allergy on a daily basis—I get it.

My sister-in-law have had some heart-rending conversations over the last year about the fear she deals with around this allergy—which could take her son in ten minutes’ time. One wrong snack, one EpiPen too far away.

But my heart balled up with a single text last week from the same sister-in-law: Her daughter, who’s not yet one, had an anaphylactic reaction. …To eggs. read more

Guest Post: A Fast for Your House: The Surprising Treasures of Simplicity

April 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

I always learn something from my friend Monica.

She learned to read and write in the last decade or so, when she moved to Kampala from her village in northern Uganda. But despite my college education, she has a lot to teach me.

When I visited her shared compound on Saturday, she couldn’t wait to show me inside her house. I had to comply looking into the toothy ivory grin parting that smooth, ebony face. And when I entered, I understood why.

Guest post: God of My Heartbreak: Teaching Teens to Pray

March 24, 2017 / / 0 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Of the many nuggets I’ve gleaned from my father-in-law, perhaps one I am most grateful for is his response to my husband’s teen years.

A lot of people find merit in Mark Twain’s quip: When a boy turns 13, put him in a barrel and feed him through a knot hole. When he turns 16, plug up the hole.

But my father-in-law wasn’t one of them. Those tornadic years of my not-yet-husband’s were a signal to pull out the outdoor gear, summit as many of Colorado’s fourteeners as they could knock out, and tack on some decent kayaking, cycling, and snow caving along the way. My father-in-law saw the rippling strength of the teen years as a chance to explore manhood together. read more

Guest Post: Are We Raising Spiritually Entitled Kids?

February 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Grief is a chisel.

As you know now,  my family and I are moving back from Africa, i.e. place I have felt technicolor, I-heart-my-life alive for the last five years. Though I believe God is showing us it’s time to move back for now, and though it’s also been a place where our family has encountered profound suffering, it’s been far more of a place of deep satisfaction. All of us are struggling with returning. We’ve been so stinkin’ happy in this place. For me, serving in my sweet spot has throbbed with purpose and meaning.

Ugly truth: My hide has been, off and on, a little chapped. I don’t completely understand why God’s doing this. And after all we have endured here, truth is still percolating into my heart that, hey, God can put me wherever He wants me. read more

Guest post: 9 Ways to Pray for Your Marriage in Tough Times

February 9, 2017 / / 0 Comments
Reading Time: < 1 minute

It’s been one of the most pressing seasons for our marriage.

We’ve been navigating a crux of major life decisions—only one of which included the continent we’d be living on. And our marriage that has been characterized by fairly fluid teamwork can at times be pulled taut by our diverging passions, longings, and reasoning.

“Stressed” doesn’t begin to cover it. read more

Guest post: Breathing Lessons

January 28, 2017 / / 0 Comments
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.

Guest post: He loves me, He loves me not

January 12, 2017 / / 0 Comments
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

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