the pastor's wife
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what worked and what didn’t in 2018, part 2.
Hi friends! So I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath for the things that didn’t work for me in 2018! Have no fear, I am back and ready to finish up this series. What didn’t work: Running Yes. It’s true. Running did not work for me in 2018, and I have no one to blame but myself. Here’s the secret: I just don’t like running. I’ve tried for years and years because I know it’s good for me, and because, as my husband tells me, it’s the most time-efficient form of exercise. I’ve also tried because, in all honesty, I want people to think I’m a runner.…
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what worked and what didn’t in 2018, part 1.
Hello there, my friends! I hope you’ve recovered from the holidays and are settling into 2019, ready as I am to embrace the comfort of familiar rhythms and routines. This post was a request from my husband and it gives me a chance to say: I love blog post requests! I enjoy writing and sometimes run out of ideas, or think maybe you get bored of reading about the same old/same old, so if there’s anything you want me to write about, don’t ever hesitate to ask! I like a good assignment. In lieu of making New Year’s Resolutions I typically take some time during the first couple weeks of…
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new members class.
Happy November, my friends! Fall has really and truly come to Columbia. The leaves typically don’t begin turning until after Halloween, and so here and there a golden or berry-colored tree can be spotted and there’s a pleasing brown crunch underfoot. I love this time of year because windows are thrown open day and night, we’ve pulled out everyone’s sweatpants but don’t yet need jackets, and it’s pleasant enough that the kids want to be outside for large portions of their day. I love fall. For our family, fall also means church New Members class, which is one of my favorite things I do as a pastor’s wife. So I…
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expect to suffer in 2018.
I know that’s an alarming title for a blog post, but please hear me out. Typically I write some sort of New Year’s goal post. I’ve been thinking about it all month, taking time to reflect on last year, asking myself what I hope and pray for this new year. All the while I’ve begun reading daily from Tim and Kathy Keller’s new devotional book on Proverbs: God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life. It’s only January 29, but already this book has impacted me. I stopped short three days ago when I read, “The mark of wisdom is to be ready for suffering.” The Kellers go so far as to say…
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fasting.
Until this year, I never fasted for Lent. Fasting is a word that has always made me feel a bit uncomfortable. As a child, I remember my parents fasting, and I fasted from a meal for the purpose of prayer a couple of times back in Bible college, but quite honestly haven’t given it much thought ever since. Even though I’ve known the Lord for years and years and should’ve known better, I think in my head I thought of fasting as something religious people do to make their god happy with them, and something non-religious people do for health reasons. And so when I heard of Christians fasting for…
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a birthday post.
Hi friends! Yesterday was my 35th birthday! Can you believe it!? It feels like a sort of milestone. I’m halfway to 70! I’m really not one to be sentimental about my kids getting older (I love older kids!), but yesterday I had a sort of earth-shaking revelation: I’m 35. Judah is 9 1/2. That means I’ve lived exactly one half of the life I have with him at home, before he spreads his wings and flies away. A few moments of heart-thumping panic, and then I moved on. Here’s to seizing the next nine years with my boy and choosing not to be consumed by guilt! Here’s to having lived…
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a new way to spend tuesday afternoons.
On Tuesdays at 1:00, my mother-in-law, Linda, comes over to sit with my kids. She reads or works while they have their afternoon room time until 3:00, then walks them two streets over to her house to play until 5:00. Tuesday afternoons are one of God’s gifts to me in this season. For the past six months I have exercised, gone to counseling appointments, scheduled my trip to the dentist, and run errands in a blessedly quiet van. My counselor is so great that she works herself out of a job; currently I’m seeing her once a month, which leaves many Tuesdays wide open. I guess ideally I would use…
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what worked and what didn’t in 2016.
Hello my friends! I hope your Christmas was great! We had a wonderful holiday weekend, and then I woke up on Monday and wanted every single decoration taken down, stowed away in the attic, pine needles swept, and our house organized. As you well know, I have a much lower threshold for clutter nowadays. All the kids have to purge some toys before Christmas or birthdays, but we did even more on Monday, and reorganized their rooms to accommodate new things without losing dozens of Lego pieces throughout the house (which David and I inevitably step on). Now our home is back to normal and everyone’s at peace and getting…
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how to survive the summer with anxiety.
This is a hard post for me to write, because I’m still very much in the thick of my anxiety issues. I wish I could tell you I’m doing better — actually, I take that back. I am doing better, I think. I have more good days than bad days. It’s just a slower journey than I’d like. If you’ve traveled the path of trying different or more medication, you yourself know that it’s a slow and laborious process. I wish I could write these reflections from closer to the mountain-top. But I’m picking my way over roots and rocks, sweating up the incline. I love the blog Design Mom,…
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house update: let’s try this again.
Well, you guys, I wrote the previous blog post this weekend, and then one of my holds came in at the library: Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World, by Kristen Welch. I started reading it hoping to find some practical tips to help me teach my children to complain less, but what I didn’t expect was to crack open the book and immediately feel convicted for my own complaining. Reading Kristen Welch’s description of our entitlement culture exposed my own subtle feelings of entitlement, which I’ve been blind to of late. I realize that underneath my so-called “disappointment” with our house process is a belief that I deserve better.…
