My daughter and I have a message for oppressed women around the world: You are priceless.
Today, on the other side of the world, a woman woke up having no idea she was anything to shout about.
Considering the way he treated her, the way her boss looks at her, all she’s ashamed of, and the money she doesn’t have for a bank account (if she had one)–she’s had too many messages to the contrary.read more
This morning I walked through my house, trying not to see things.
I tried not to see the underwear packaging left on the floor by my two teenage boys. The clothes my daughter left on the bathroom floor. The cereal bowl on the counter of a few floating Honey Nut Cheerios.read more
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 aboutread more
Okay, one of my least favorite job descriptions of motherhood: Media Nazi. ‘M I the only one who feels like I’m constantly saying “nope”?
Because see, I want more than “Mom said no. Again” for my kids’ worldview. When they get to college, I’m certainly not going to be harping over their shoulders. (At least I really hope not.) Plus, they’re about 100% more likely to have buy-in if they’re the ones making the [hopefully right] decision.read more
In the car last week, my kids and I were discussing the American Civil War–and whether they thought it was initially about slavery or about the states’ rights. Maybe you’re like me in these discussions, or in reading books about abolitionists: Maybe you wonder whether you would have had what it takes to do what was illegal and could put your family in jeopardy in order to free slaves.
Confession: I caught myself thinking of slavery as something that happened back then.
As if abolitionists were only needed then.read more
It needs to be said. Blogging about parenting can feel a little like heading for an outhouse in a snowstorm, y’know?
Because honestly, there’s waaaaay too much I don’t get right. (And aren’t we all a little skeptical of the people who seem to be doing it with Pinterest perfection?) Sometimes I pull up a chair to blog about parenting and I’m thinking, Which failure shall I blog about this month?
From the beginning, I think God’s had it out for me to shake up my (firstborn, overachieving, idealistic) parenting goals. As in, pretty soon after those two little lines turned pink.read more
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.
We were headed to church, exhaling clouds of steam in the still-cold car. Up in the front seat, I happily remarked to my husband about the expanding diversity in our small town–as judged authoritatively, of course, by my trips to Wal-Mart. After five and a half years in Africa, I can feel a little stifled amongst all the vanilla around me.
My daughter, from the backseat: “Why does ‘diversity’ make you happy?”
She didn’t, it turns out, know what diversity was. So we talked about it: That God expresses Himself through every culture. That differences make us more vibrant and loving and whole. That we want people of all types to be welcome here.read more