-
Bad Mommy?
Are you a bad mommy? We’ve all had those moments; the week of crabby behavior gets explained by an ear infection we didn’t know the baby had. We feel terrible. How didn’t I know? We spent the entire week being frustrated, and we wonder if CPS is coming to take our children away because we stink at this mommy business. Somehow that one moment confirms what we’ve secretly felt all along, “I’m a bad mommy.” We hold up Facebook posts, Parents articles and measure ourselves, falling woefully short. Yep, not perfect, not even close. We don’t measure up to the slew of moms in our circles. What about that mom…
-
The Devastating Agony of the Night Before Deployment
The nights before deployment were some of the most difficult of my married life. Every moment is full of the devastating agony of letting go. Each second is rich with longing and fear. Saying goodbye is a balancing act between saying enough and never being able to say enough. It’s the agony between he is still here and he is leaving that hangs like a sword over your head every minute. It’s trusting that God will bring him home. It’s fearing your children won’t remember their daddy if the worst happens. It’s taking a deep breath and holding it for a year. August 22, 2010, the night before his fourth…
-
Just Another Day – Waiting with Hope
Waiting with hope for answers to prayer can be the toughest challenge of our lives. We wait not knowing what the answer will be or when it will come. We try to have faith in the waiting. But what does the day before your miracle look like? Just another day. After a long cold winter, maybe I’m just ready for some sunshine, but I have found that I’m usually seeking HOPE when I come to this special day on the calendar. My verse of the day was this sweet promise in my devotional this morning. This verse was so encouraging in my present circumstances, praying for my own healing and…
-
Taming the Laundry Monster
Is laundry the untamed monster in your household? Letting that monster run rampant can quickly become chaos, frustration, shame, anxiety. I want to do it better, faster, and with less stress, don’t you? (Heaven not Harvard is as a participant in affiliate programs including the Amazon Associates Program. As an affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.) Housework is part of how we serve and love our families, but it can feel disastrously overwhelming. It is the job that is never finished. Sometimes, late at night, I have a moment the house is clean, organized, and smells good. The laundry is finished, and the dishes are done. A brief moment of…
-
Its Own Way: Having 1 Cor. 13 Love in my marriage
Sunday, my husband and I decided to cook spaghetti together. We had different ideas about making the sauce. Tomato sauce is one of the few things that I have worked to perfect, so I started to fight for my way. What should have been a simple discussion about which step should go first, started to be about who was a better chef, smarter, and generally the most rightest person in all the universe. I silently prayed for the right heart in that moment, and adjusted my attitude before it became a fight. Yet, I should have stopped before I started. The next day, God pointed me right to what He…
