THE AWKWARD MOM

because uncomfortable conversations are the ones worth having

Category: time management (page 2 of 2)

Spiritual Disciplines for Real Families: 10 Practical Ways to Teach Simplicity (…and just in time for your crazy holiday!)

Reading Time: 6 minutes

One of my favorite aspects of my African lifestyle is a lean muscularity of simplicity. Forget keeping up with the Joneses. You are the Joneses, when your kids are going to play with kids whose families (who may or may not be literate or have lost a child) live in one room, which may or may not have electricity and running water.

So people expect my light fixtures to, say, look like I swiped them from my church in the eighties. They anticipate that when I serve lemonade, it will cascade from an ugly plastic pitcher.

Perspective is everything. read more

How would Jesus tweet? Social media as love, Part III–FREE GIVEAWAY

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Missed the first two posts? Get Part I here and Part II here.

6.  Love = Telling the truth.In love. Is a status update artfully alighting upon all my strengths the same as telling the truth? Like a camera, we all choose what we zoom in on. But is it possible we’re airbrushing our lives, and creating a climate of unnatural expectations? (Check out this post on perfectionism vs. pursuing excellence.) Though we may look for sympathy when our kid smears poop on the wall or throws a fit in Target’s housewares aisle, our lives on social media generally lean toward the photoshopped side of things.

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How would Jesus tweet? Social media as love, Part II

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Missed Part I on Monday? Grab it here–and make sure to come back for the social media giveaway on Friday!

4. If social media is to love others, it’s gotta stay in its proper place. I highly value this post on 6 Ways Your Smartphone Is Changing You, in which the author asserts that our smartphones can take the place of embodiment—of simply being fully present with the real, live folks around us.

How would Jesus tweet? Social media as love, Part I

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Confession: I have a love/hate relationship with social media.

Love: Part of it feels like that old gameshow, “This is Your Life” (though I confess to only seeing the Sesame Street version with Guy Smiley). I love connecting to people with whom I attended Sowers Elementary, when I had eighties hair. To my refugee students whose wide, blindingly-white grins I miss from Refuge and Hope.

Deep(ly) Fried, Part II: Processing Burnout (…and am I Playing the Martyr?)

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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Missed Part I? First, grab it here.

When you felt like you were finally surfacing from burnout–or as I called it, tired-mad, I might tell you what I found out. That sometimes burnout is simply burnout, because life is hard. And even though God never gives us more than He’ll give us strength to handle (He says so here and here), it still can feel like a rightful scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel, ta-da-I-survived type thing. (Whether it’s godly or not to be burned out is another post for another time, perhaps. But pretending it’s not there doesn’t really help.) read more

Deep(ly) Fried, Part I: Burnout

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I glimpsed it in the slight tightness, the fatigued determination of her face that day: that distinct weariness that comes from herding toddlers and preschoolers 24/7. Having worn that particular look for approximately eight years myself, I know it well.

And though there are few exhaustions like young-mom exhaustion—I felt my own version of tired-mad that week. (Um. My family may have felt it, too.) One of my favorite takeaways from the movie Home were those hybrid-emotions, like sad-mad. Anger is a secondary emotion anyway, right? We feel angry usually because we were first hurt; afraid; grieved. Depleted, taken for granted; so very tired. So I have to plunge my fingers into my anger, exploring a bit.

31 Anything-but-Vanilla Methods to Bring Fresh Flavor to Times with God

Reading Time: 6 minutes

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God’s Will…and the Clarity I Don’t Have

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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We weren’t clearly “called” to Africa. That I know of.

Maybe God will correct my thinking in the future. But there my husband and I were in Little Rock, with four little kids (youngest two and a half), contemplating whether or not to, you know, sell 70% of our stuff and wheel our bags to a continent I was sure was just buzzing with malaria and typhoid. I say that—but honestly, I was thrilled. Africa is a dream come true, one I’d put on the shelf in the “maybe God will explain why” category of my mental Dewey decimal system. And as we discussed it, I don’t think I’ll forget what my husband said one night.

Memos to myself: On the dangers of overcommitment

Reading Time: 4 minutes

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I’ve written before about this whole idea of our opportunities versus whether we’re actually called to do something. Oh—and about the true cost of my overcommitment.

And I’m happy to report that I have proudly mastered these concepts in full. And it seems I’ve still got a looooong. Long. Way. To go. read more

On God hijacking my day

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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You’ve been there before, I bet.

For me: The wall boasts a to-do list scrawled in various colors and medium (crayon, perhaps; whatever’s available before my brain suddenly transforms into mashed potatoes and I remember squat). The items extend from the mysterious acronyms and cryptic personal shorthand (E-M BR; write for GG); to the perpetual residents (laundry); of the far-fetched, someday I will do this, maybe-when-there-is-a-snow-day-even-though-I-live-on-the-equator variety. read more

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