Christmas 2025: The Lessons We Learn When We Listen

Currently, as I write this, my one-year-old is “ballerina dancing” on the coffee table to the classical music playing in the room. Her hands are above her head, and she’s making clumsy, wobbly spins with a big, goofy grin. The living room is a mess, a pot of chili is cooling on the kitchen counter from dinner waiting for someone to put it away, and this mama is ready for bedtime.

Nothing is wrong. The kids aren’t misbehaving– except that I’d like the toddler to dance on the floor, not the coffee table– and there is no pressing things that have to be completed in the next hour, but I feel overwhelmed. And a part of me wonders: I wonder if Mary felt this way?

Read More

Being Drawn by Irresistible Grace

Tonight, I walked into the kitchen and into a swarm of fruit flies. There are not a lot of household pests that get under my skin the way fruit flies do. I see them and I feel like I’m breathing them in, they’re crawling on my skin; I get itchy just thinking about it.

The best trap for fruit flies is putting some dish soap in the bottom of a container, then a little apple cider vinegar and water before shaking it up. The trap is even better when you put a piece of plastic wrap over top and poke some holes in it, this way, when the flies crawl in to the trap, they can’t easily get back out.

Read More