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Adventures in Advent
I’m trying to catch lightning in a bottle, carefully crafting my daughter’s impressions of Christmas as being magical, one of family and warmth, of cozy reading and precious traditions passed down to her, bonding her to our family, rooting her in love, creating the foundation of celebrating Christ’s birth in our adventures in advent season. She is four and a half, young enough that everyday moments still inspire wonder and excitement, old enough that these moments are becoming memories, hopefully that she will pass onto her own children someday. When I think back to my Christmases as a child, I struggle to remember more than a handful of specific gifts.…
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A Change in Perspective
Heaven Not Harvard started with my acknowledging that all the world’s pressure on my parenting was creating unnecessary stress, weighing on me, pushing me to be cranky and insistent with an incorrect perspective, trying be a perfect mom based on imperfect standards. Inside my head, I yelled, ‘stop!’ And I shifted my parenting away from a generic “Harvard” goal and prioritized my focus on a “Heaven” goal. Over time, that mantra has shifted my focus in a myriad of ways, including my goals for myself, including my perspective on my marriage, and including events like Thanksgiving. Today, I simply wanted to focus on being thankful, with a peaceful attention on…
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Quit Comparing: Running The Race Set Before Us
Comparison is a sin we all struggle with, but it’s especially insidious when we’re comparing our spiritual walk to the journey of someone else. We need to run the race God has set before us. Not compare our beginning to another’s finish line. (this site uses Affiliate links-purchases support our ministry through a small referral fee that never affects your cost.) A few years ago, I was talking with a young wife in our church, discussing the amazing witness of another woman we both admire. She is a beacon of light, hope, love and faith to all who meet her. She is an on her knees, give it all to…
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Be careful little tongue * Part 2
We all know children imitate what they see. From very early days, my daughter would imitate me talking on the phone. Because her daddy deployed when she was three months old, I spent a lot of time on the phone as a new mom with her husband in a war zone. She imitated me by pacing with the phone in her hand, gesturing while she talked, even laughing periodically as if the other person in her imaginary conversation had just made a joke. I was amazed at the depth of the details she picked up about talking on the phone from watching me, before she could even speak. It was…
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It isn’t the rule that matters
Today, my daughter needed to tell me something while I was in the bathroom. We’ve instituted a rule that if the door to the bathroom is closed, she is to knock before entering and/or wait, unless she has an emergency or something is really important. She’s four, so we give her some latitude with what she considers important (i.e. her brother holding a toad in the living room), but today she by-passed three closed doors to get to me. Opening all of them without knocking. So far she has only done this with me, but the rule is partially in place to avoid her walking in on her father or…
