Truth, Love And Books

 

Growing up as a home school kid in the 90's, "regular" school kids often voiced either their jealousy or genuine curiosity. "Do you get to sleep in ? What about snow days? Do you spend the day in your pajamas?? Your mom is your teacher?!  Now that I am a home school mom the opinions and questions are a bit different. " Oh I could never do that!" and "W hen are you going to send your kids to real school ?"  And my favorite..." How do you make sure your kids don't turn out weird ?"  We'll talk weird in a moment but for now allow me to address the first statement. 1) When a fellow mom mentions that she could never home educate... Pardon my snarkiness, (all these thoughts truly are coming from a place of love) but yeah, I  categorically disagree. I've heard too many stories and seen too much evidence. I feel the need to even post on this because I believe there are a lot of moms out there that may want to give it a try but are ...

If I could do parenting over, I would live more simply.  I would slow down and not feel the need to do so much, buy so much and be so much. Yes, I would do less because less is truly more. Except for when it comes to the library. Can I get an amen? Greed is not a thing when it comes to books on loan, right? Greedy about reading is a thing I want my family to be about. I love the above snapshot of my twins as seven year olds. Apparently, they couldn't wait to get to the car to crack open their library books and just sat down right in the elevator.  This year's favorites were a lot of theology books and mid-grade novels. Here are a few... The author was a pastor and an actual sheep-caring shepherd. I found captivating the parallels that he pulls from Psalm 23. An easy read but with a lot of depth. I felt like each chapter described varying stages of my Christian walk. Definitively explains why Christianity hinges on the trinity. The one true living God in three distinct persons ...

 I'll never forget when I got word of the Sandy Hook tragedy. At the time, I was a nanny and almost a year into struggling with fertility. Less than a week before, my husband and I had endured a chemical pregnancy. The pain of losing a child - even one you never held - is immeasurable.  But losing a child in such a violent manner as a school shooting? That made me question if I even wanted to keep trying to have and hold a baby of my own. Who wants to raise a baby in that kind of world? Parents should not bury their kids.  But parents do. This world is immensely broken. People are hurting deeply.  And the old adage surely rings true: hurt people hurt people. The evil and suffering of humanity is one of the biggest objections to the Bible and Historic Christianity. I believe, it is a completely fair question to ask...If God is good and all powerful, why doesn't he put an end to all this evil? Multitudes of books (by people way smarter than me) have been written on thi...

 The summer of 2016, the internet world went bananas over the true story of a boy making his way into a Gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo.  My own social media feed was rampant with comments along the lines of “ That parent is so stupid!”  I'll never forget how outraged I was over the lack of sympathy for this mom. I mean, good grief are we really all this insecure in our own parenting that we feel the need to put this woman down in a feeble attempt to elevate ourselves? Is that what makes us sure and confident? I would bet not. I also recall silently praying that my own kids’ inevitable, future shenanigans would never ever make their way to the internet world.So far so good. But check back soon, my boy is only 4.   From what I've seen, we all desperately want to do this parenting gig well. If we stop and think deeply we can recognize that to invest in what matters is to invest in people .  Especially little people. After all we can't take our Stan...

  Rainy Mondays. They tend to get me down. Today was no exception. When I feel the need to get out of the house and don't want to spend money or go far - we head to a little, suburban downtown with a beautiful bridge within walking distance from a library. Thankfully, my kids love to check out books and this way they could burn off some energy and not get muddy.  After placing our book loot in the car we headed out for our bridge walk. Straight away, we noticed that four men had set up a booth. Printed in large letters on their table cover read: "Was Jesus born on December 25th?"  Several pamphlets rested on the table. They were clearly Muslim apologists.  My husband gave me a look that said: " Don't do it, don't go there, please."  To be fair, I completely understood where he was coming from. Radical, hyper-fundamentalist Islam is quite scary. If I were to go there and simply ask the men even just one of the questions that were running through my mind,...