Your Who Matters
Click below to listen to Jena’s story and interview on the Holy Ordinary Podcast.
Uncharted Freedom is featured on Heather Lobe’s Freedom Stories this month. Check it out!
“I knew from reading the Bible that God often sent his people adrift for reasons he didn’t always reveal right away, but they consistently led to a greater understanding of his holiness and purposeful plans…” {click over to read the whole story featured in Freedom Stories by Heather Lobe HERE}
Pizza, pasta, tacos, soup…repeat. It’s easy to get stuck in a meal rut when it comes to feeding multiple people with various likes and dislikes. Kindred Mom sets out to encourage moms as they gather their people around the table with this FREE e-book, Life Around the Table. You’ll find my name and recipes in the mix, and a bit about how our laid-back approach to meals works for us. It’s full of photos, stories, and recipes from real moms and I think you’ll love it. It’s free when you subscribe to their site (which has tons of other great free material)!
It’s not about a guilt trip. It’s not about overhauling our wardrobe. It’s about understanding the supply-chain relationships we enter every time we make a purchase.
Have you stopped to consider how the clothing you purchase impacts the people stitching them together?
I was recently invited to share perspective on Never-Static about why I care about supporting slow fashion practices. It’s no surprise that my “why” boiled down to relationships both in my home and on the other side of the world…
“It could be because most employees in the garment industry are women, and I’m raising three daughters of my own.”
Jump over to Never-Static read more and discover easy shopping solutions to fast fashion problems.
Raising and homeschooling three chatty daughters means our home is rarely (read: never) quiet. Opinions and ideas are thrown around like confetti on New Year’s Eve. Even with their constant noise all around, my heart began to experience something new and unfamiliar: deep loneliness…Read the full article HERE
(Article originally appeared on Kindredmom.com HERE)
I grew up watching my grandma fuss over her summer annuals. Her daily routine required a walk outside before the Missouri heat settled in to check on the flowerbeds dispersed throughout her country yard. She’d step across the dewy lawn to purge wilting petunia heads while cooing over that day’s latest blooms. The thicket of tiger lilies were my personal favorite; growing wild yet sophisticated to my 8 year old mind.
My grandma and I still chat about those summer strolls through her yard fondly. What stands out to me after nearly three decades aren’t the lessons in horticulture I gained from traipsing through the yard by her side, but the joy she expressed over something so temporary and fragile. She looked at the blooms and saw last month’s seedling and last week’s spouting bud. I looked at them and saw a plant I dared not trample in a rambuncious game of hide-n-seek: fragile. I saw lunch for wild, twitchy nose rabbits (grandma called them pests) I found so adorable: temporary.
Experience has a way of training our eyes to see in new ways. My definition of temporary and fragile hasn’t changed, but how I value experiences allowing me to express an eternal joy over the temporary and fragile reality of life certainly has.
A freshly fallen, perfectly formed snowflake before it melts
Nerves over our teenager learning to drive
Jellyfish navigating around boats and docks in the harbor
Rainbows
Grandpa’s dementia-free stories
Mountaintop view out of the airplane window
Snuggles from an aging cat
Hands up high on the rollercoaster
Laughing with the person I married 18 years ago
This past year we moved our family across the country to the Pacific Northwest where giant evergreens replaced Midwest fields of wheat and cattle. In the middle of a season of change I found joy in an all familiar place, a garden. The NW coastal areas are home to breathtaking public gardens where forests of rhododendrons flourish and cherry blossoms crown aisles of rich clover. Once again, I’m looking around reacquainting myself with joy found in the temporary and fragile. Since joy and gratitude go hand-in-hand, I’m thankful for opportunities to trade grief over what ‘was’ into joy over what ‘is’ and rejoice in the hope for all things eternal.
Psalm 103: 13-17
The LORD is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
For he knows how weak we are;
he remembers we are only dust.
Our days on earth are like grass;
like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
The wind blows, and we are gone—
as though we had never been here.
But the love of the LORD remains forever
with those who fear him.
“The days are long, but the years are short,” I heard a wise parent say, but there’s something about the endless calling of parenthood that both blesses beyond measure and exhausts beyond means. Parents are emotionally and physically invested in this occupation of preparing people to be the next generation of life-givers. In order to give our best, we need to be our best, and that requires something that isn’t given enough credit in our overly-caffeinated, deadline-driven, production-measuring society: rest.
Click HERE for more on establishing a family rest plan.
Snow didn’t fall across Vancouver, it dumped like confetti on New Year’s Eve. Friends had warned us not to expect snow in the lower mainland, so when reality exceeded our expectations we bundled up like all good Midwest natives know how to do, and trekked into the heavy powder. Gripping my matte black umbrella high overhead to shield my exposed camera, I walked the paths of Stanley Park snapping photographs of Vancouver’s winter wonderland.
