• Finding God in the moments of parenthood for ourselves as His children.
    Godly Parenting

    Ice Cream Messages

    Tonight I was searching for God’s answers to some big prayers. As I wrote about our day, I realized this evening’s events are a perfect example of the way I experience God’s answers in my everyday mom moments. Earlier, my daughter ran inside shrieking. The ice cream truck was driving past our house! Mommy, mommy, mommy. She jumped up and down. “The ice cream truck!” Last time we saw him was a night we weren’t planning a big meal, so we chased the converted school bus down the road, but couldn’t catch him to get any ice cream. I had promised we would try again another day. But here was…

  • Pointing fingers never lead me to the right answers. Only love did that. Heaven Not Harvard
    Faith based living

    Pointing Fingers

    I’ve seen a lot of Pointing Fingers on the internet in the past year about gay marriage, abortion, Planned Parenthood, Target’s restroom policy, etc. But I haven’t see anyone change his/her opinion because of pointing fingers who declare they have a lock on the truth. Instead of arguing, I just wanted to tell you a small part of my story. Nothing I ever did was out of a desire to destroy my life or ruin my relationships or disrespect my parents, but I did do all of those things. From the time I was a teenager, hormones and burgeoning independence and following the popular cult of ME led my life…

  • Faith based living,  Holidays,  Marriage

    Are your Expectations Ruining your Life?

    Expectations are sneaky buggers. They are often so engrained into our ideas of normal that we forget we have them at all. We have all these cultural expectations that we don’t even question. For example, think about the 4th of July. Most Americans immediately picture patriotic picnics and hotdogs on the grill. If our day looks different, we can feel a little let down. And when these ingrained expectations aren’t met, we can experience real costs in our lives. I sometimes don’t even realize I had expectations until I find myself disappointed. And then I’m upset, angry, sad, etc. because I set myself up for failure. My expectations were ruining…

  • Are you a bad mommy?
    Godly Parenting

    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…

  • Housework is part of how we love and serve our families, but it can feel disastrously overwhelming at times. Use this strategy to tame the laundry monster.
    Homemaking

    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…