Weekend Reading

The Writing Process @ Rhythm of the Home

Every writer has her own process, but most involve lousy rough drafts and circuitous routes to something better. It’s true of even the best. It’s hard to imagine why most of us were taught to begin school papers by submitting outlines. We were forced to decide what we’d say before the writing could show us what we really wanted to say. Advice-givers will tell you that to achieve anything, you need goals and resolutions. I’m not convinced. Maybe it’s better to simply start with the work, whether that work be writing, or painting, or planting gardens, or parenting. We learn to write by writing; we learn to live by living. Maybe it’s best to skip making plans and simply dig in, do the work, make a hot mess that scares us and see what we can do with it. Let the process tell us how to proceed.

Having My Twenties to Myself @ A Deeper Family

Myself, the one who has seen and felt first-hand the love a parent lavishes on their child. Myself, who has learned that she must put a vice grip around Grace and never, ever let go. Myself, who learned that she is capable of far more than she ever thought possible. Myself, who sometimes finds it hard to tell where she ends and her family begins.

In a very real sense, I have both lost and found myself in my twenties.

In which I hope she remembers, today at church @ Sarah Bessey

And let her remember how I cried my mascara right off, and how I was such a gigantic mess in my real life but I kept trying anyway because I had stars in my eyes, wild in love, and how I sang too-loud, and clutched my breast with relief at being reminded again how He is faithful. And let her remember that He is enough, because He was enough for her crazy imperfect mama.

Parenting Beyond Me @ A Deeper Family

Everyday and in every area of their lives, I want God to be present and welcomed. In the mundane routine and the dire circumstance, God needs to be. God has no number of priority in our lives. He is not fit into our schedule at bedtime or as a corrective reference point. God is not a priority to appease. My goal is for him to be supremely present in everything.