Sarah Anne I Am

  Yesterday morning I woke up with an admirable amount of ambition.   Ok, I thought to myself, Let's do this! I'll take a quick shower, get us both dressed and fed, and we'll get out the door! We'll visit the midwife, take Chloe coffee, pick up prescriptions...that will still leave us plenty of time to come home, fold laundry, bake cookies, and make dinner before we head off to Life Group! And then reality struck.   I look back on yesterday-morning-Sarah the way one might look at a child who says they want to be a dinosaur when they grow up: Aw, that's sweet. They actually think that's possible.   Nothing on my to-do list got done. Instead, I spent my day trying to trick my son into going to sleep. He's teething again, and it's worse than before- and somehow, the sweet escape of sleep has become his greatest enemy. Where three days ago my child would lay down in his crib and go peacefully to sleep, now he looks at me suspiciously just for carrying h...

  When I was about eleven years old I went to summer camp for the first time. Before my sister and I left, my mother talked to us about something. She explained that we needed to mindful of our behavior at camp, not only because it is important to be kind and respectful, but also because we would be a representation of both our family and Christ to the people around us. That stuck with me.   Now, with so many of us daily browsing and posting to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and blogs such as this, our representation is no longer limited to the people we are around in person- it is far-reaching, even global at times. It is certainly a far more widespread representation of yourself to post on the internet than it is to say something in person; on the internet, the dozens or hundreds of people you are connected with may see it. That is an enormous audience.   I feel very strongly that we need to be mindful of that audience, of that re...