Weekend Reading

Raising kids that craft (or not) @ FIMBY

We create because it brings us joy. We make useful things, and some not so useful things, and we learn important skills. We make time for creativity in our homeschool curriculum because it is one of our family's core values.

Does this mean you have to craft with your kids? Not at all. Maybe you bake with them instead, or play musical instruments together, take dance classes, or spin wool from your own sheep. Maybe you speak Japanese in the morning and conjugate Latin verbs in the afternoon.

If this is what you love, what brings your family joy, and is inline with your family values - then do it! And do it with gusto. Do it well, do it often. Do it to the glory of your creator.

Our hearts are stone and flesh, all at the same time @ Mama:Monk

“It means I’m asking God to make your heart soft so you can hear God’s voice and so God can make you more and more like Jesus. If your heart is hard like stone you forget how to love and you forget how to listen to God.”

He rolled away from me to face the wall, whispered, “Mommy, I’ve got both those hearts in me.”

I whispered, my hands tickling his back. “I know, honey, we all have both those hearts. That’s why we need Jesus.”

“Not Presents but His Presence” and Other Christmas Cliches @ A Deeper Story

It’s Christmas again, that season where Truth gets sentimentalized and made into tacky décor.

As if always, you are one or the other. As if you have either shut God out or you’re experiencing the fully majesty and miracle of his presence.

So often, life is lived in the in between. You have chosen the baby in the manger. You’ve chosen Immanuel, God with us. But it doesn’t feel like he’s here. It feels like you are wandering the cold dark streets of a strange town alone.

In which it’s a two-part invention @ Sarah Bessey

I keep secrets because my family and my friends didn’t sign up to have their lives aired publicly.

I keep secrets because I like having my own life, tucked away, just for me, or just for my husband, or just for my tinies.

I keep secrets because it’s good for me, for my family, for my spirituality, for my sanity, for my soul, for me to keep secrets.

I feel like my truest self is expressed here but it’s not my whole self either.