A Prayer Over the Church for Mother’s Day

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A Prayer Over the Church for Mother’s Day

Dear God,

We see your fingerprints all over the precious mothers around us! They have loved us by sacrificing their bodies—you loved us the same way on the cross. They have loved us by preparing homes and meals for us—and you do the same for us in heaven. They have loved us by caring deeply for seemingly insignificant details in our lives—and you do the same for us every moment. They are doing the things that you placed in their DNA to show the world what YOU are like. We praise you for mothers, God, because you came up with them in the first place, because they bear your image so faithfully by the way they love, because you didn’t have to give the world the good gift of mothers—but you did. We praise you for they are fearfully and wonderfully made!

We’re celebrating mothers today not because we deny the pain and loss that many in the room are enduring—but we celebrate because pain and loss do not win and do not have the final say.

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Selfless v. Needless

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Selfless v. Needless

For a Christ follower, it’s difficult to make this distinction between selflessness and needlessness. We know we are called to lay down all things, including our needs. After all, didn’t Jesus do this very thing on the cross? But, Sister, laying down our needs doesn’t mean denying they exist. Laying down our needs means humbly confessing that they exist both to God and others, remembering and praising our ultimate Provider, and vulnerably asking for help from God and our community that God has given us. Actually, neediness is a gift in funny packaging.

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Your Best Beach Brain

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Your Best Beach Brain

Who cares about their brain when they’re prepping for the beach? Maybe no one. But I think we should. Because love handles and thunder thighs and muffin tops and stretch marks are not the true enemies of beach bliss. The true enemies are the thoughts that wage war in our minds.

I’ve created a seven-day guide to Your Best Beach Brain. It may not be what you think, or it may be exactly what you think, but either way, it’s my prayer that God would use this to draw you nearer to him and to equip you to marvel over him and have fun—even when you’re in a swimsuit.

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Simple Discipleship for Ages 9-13

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Simple Discipleship for Ages 9-13

On a recent chilly night, I put on a pink hat (a…weird decision since my hair is purple), so my four-year-old daughter wanted to wear her pink hat. Our commonalities go deeper than headwear: She sways to music the same way I do, loves The Great British Baking Show the way I do, and on this weekend’s donut run, my husband said she dramatically sighed and said, just like her mother, “My nerves are shot.”

Though parenthood is far from formulaic, it’s still fraught with plenty of this kind of inadvertent copy-pasting. We experience a similar phenomenon as adults when we catch a glimpse of our reflection in the mirror or hear ourselves talk and think, “I am my mother!” Replication happens all the time with parents and their kids, and often the stakes are higher than pink hats and reflections.

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The Gospel for When January Feels Mean

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The Gospel for When January Feels Mean

Every year between Christmas and New Year’s, I start to feel panicky. I can hear January lacing up her Nikes, and I know she’s coming for me. GO AWAY! WE WERE ALL HAVING SO MUCH FUN UNTIL YOU SHOWED UP. I’m afraid of her because I think she’s mean and will knock these Christmas cookies out of my hands and make me eat fistfuls of lettuce instead. I turned off the lights, and I’m pretending no one is home, but MAN she is persistent. It must be the endorphins. JANUARY, GET YOUR GIANT LIST OF GOALS OUT OF MY FACE BECAUSE IT’S BLOCKING MY VIEW OF THE HALLMARK CHANNEL.

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