THE AWKWARD MOM

because uncomfortable conversations are the ones worth having

Tag: compassion (page 1 of 3)

How to Be an Emotionally Safe Place for Your Spouse

Reading Time: 6 minutes

emotionally safe place

When my husband and I tied the knot, I was pounds lighter–and not just because that was four kids ago. I was peering over the edge of anorexia.

My carefully constructed salads for most meals and stringent rules for all things eating meant I was consuming around 1200 calories a day. I jogged relentlessly. And I was only beginning to recognize the deep dysfunction beneath my white-knuckled control over my life–complete with spiritual overtones. read more

Raising Kids Who Move Toward

Reading Time: 4 minutes

move toward

So this past weekend was the community garage sale in my small town. Though I’m really aspiring to greater simplicity, a community garage sale is my kryptonite.

I was super-excited about a necklace I found. But when I paired the necklace with a bracelet I’d nabbed for $.50, my husband’s eyebrow cocked. Not a good sign. read more

“I just don’t understand”: What it says about me

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I just don't understand

“I just don’t understand how…”

I heard it again this week from someone else. This is after hearing it more times than I could count with someone else’s conflict. read more

2019 Best Posts of the Year!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

2019 best posts of year

Sitting with my daughter yesterday, she expressed she had a little fear for 2020. It’s a big year, she explained, with some personal stuff, plus elections and Olympics and what-not.

My first inclination–in light of how young she is, of course–was to brush away her fear. read more

When It’s Hard to Let God Take Care of You

Reading Time: 4 minutes

take care

It was the second time in a week I’d misread her texts. GAH.

We’d been trying to go on a walk together, but if I wanted it to rain? I should just schedule a walk. read more

Spiritual Life Skills: 10 Ways to Teach Compassion (with book list!)

Reading Time: 6 minutes

I don’t know about you, but back-to-school prep is real, folks.

Your kids are asking if they need shots (which makes you, in turn, ask if they need shots.) You’re buying 8-packs of dry erase markers, enough pencils to take the SAT every day for an entire year, and wondering if you could still repurpose that lunchbox with the barbecue sauce stain on it that looks like Ronald Reagan. read more

Guest post: 12 Discussion Starters to Help Kids Think Personally about Poverty

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Open House kids playing hospitality

Playing with a friend in Uganda

A couple of weeks ago my trusty Subaru was packed with a bunch of sweaty kids (mine), headed home from our organization’s picnic. The mood was light, the windows down. We played two of my admittedly weird games:

  • Where in life do you think your sibs and yourself will be in twelve years? 
  • Where around the world could you see yourself going to help people?

The first was pretty hysterical, peppered with some interjections about read more

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Of all the vibrancy of being in another culture this week, one of my least favorite is the language barrier. It’s as if I’m constantly stopping myself from asking the questions I want to know of people–from relating.

The late neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, in his bestselling When Breath Becomes Air, writes of the two areas of speech in the brain: read more

Compassion–and What We Step Over (or, the Good Samaritan who Wasn’t)

Reading Time: 4 minutes

It was a handful of years ago now. Our family was hauling around the States on a trip back from Uganda. I stood at a gas station in Arkansas, an eye on the climbing digital numbers of my gas purchase. I was deliberately attempting not to look at the car parked two lanes over, whose car alarm was freaking out at what looked to be its owner.

I didn’t want to embarrass the woman. Poor thing. It didn’t help that her lapdogs were going bananas behind the glass.

I looked up at my oldest son climbing out of the car. Blonde, blue-eyed, and nearly eleven, he spoke in a low voice so that I inclined my head. read more

Holiday Rerun: Spiritual Life Skills for Kids: 10 Practical Ways to Teach Simplicity

Reading Time: 6 minutes

One of my favorite aspects of my African lifestyle was 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

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