Sarah Anne I Am

   At 5:56pm my little family was in our not-totally-clean-but-passably-clean kitchen. My husband stands at the stove cooking chicken, our baby is army crawling around on the floor with his toys, and I am making coffee- because, you know, we're parents. And being parents means we drink coffee anytime we actually need to be around people, and/or capable of coherent speech, and/or in an upright position. It was relatively peaceful, or at least relatively quiet. And then I looked at the clock.   It is always a bad idea to look at the clock. I think of clocks much like a Glade air freshener that automatically releases scent when you walk in a room, except clocks automatically release cortisol into my bloodstream when I look directly at them.   "It's four minutes to six."   These were the words that sprang us all into action- Arthur heading out to church, I packing the diaper bag with baby food and grabbing a sweatshirt, Judah utilizing the 47 seconds I was gon...

Every once in a while there is a night when I am up far too late (ok, that part is pretty frequent) and something just hits me in the gut. It is usually something that saddens me deeply. It is usually something out in the world that I have no control over, something that is wrong, something that I wish I could right. Tonight it is no large thing. There is no catastrophic tragedy weighing on my heart tonight. It is just little things. Two little things hurt tonight, inconsequential though they may be. The first is a poor choice of words. Someone referred to Christ's sacrifice as empathetic- it may be unintentional, or an attempt to put a new spin on the way we perceive Jesus, but there is no need for a new spin. "Empathetic" hardly does my Savior's perfect sacrifice justice. Empathy is passion, emotion. But the Bible says Jesus went to the cross because He LOVED us, and the Bible describes love as a choice. The perfect God of the universe CHOOSING to LOVE us in our...

  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...

When I was a little girl, just old enough to have outgrown taking a nap each day, my mother began something called "quiet time." It was exactly what it sounds like- just a period of time each afternoon when I was to sit on my bed and be...quiet. My Mama would turn off the light and draw closed the curtains, close me bedroom door, and leave me so that SHE could have some quiet time as well. I was allowed to read or play on my bed, but it had to be done quietly. Well here I am, a mama myself. I am sitting in the car which is parked outside out apartment. We have been here for a half an hour or more. My sweet son, exhausted from a morning of hissy fits and meltdowns, is sleeping in this carseat on the backseat. So as not to disturb the nap that he is FINALLY taking, we sit here, quiet. I don't mind. I am loving this quiet moment myself, forcibly shut away from the dishes that need to be washed, the laundry that needs to be folded, and the dozen other things in my home th...

I am lying awake in bed at 4am as I far too often do nowadays, and my mind is full. I found myself feeling torn about something I did not expect, and as I began to examine my heart and search out the root of this feeling, I found an unpleasant surprise. The culprit of my problem was not an unfamiliar one. Like so many things I have noticed in myself lately- and really, throughout my life- it was simply a matter of pride. My pride is an ugly beast. It rises up to greet me from dark corners of my heart that I wish did not exist. While I am a new creation, constantly being transformed, continually being sanctified...still, with sad frequency, I stumble. For me, that stumbling often looks like pride. I have no excuse. I am not pretending that this ugly beast overtakes me against my will. No, I have a choice in the matter. And I choose it. That is the truly tragic part - not only am I prideful, I CHOOSE to be prideful. I choose to give in to the temptation to think far too much of myself, t...

   Our little family moved into this sweet, two-bedroom townhome two months ago, at the beginning of November. When we moved, my goal was to be all settled in by Thanksgiving. We were not. So my new goal was to be all settled in by Christmas. We weren't by then, either.   So my NEW new goal is this: I am going to pace myself. I will try to get a little done every day...and I will be satisfied with the little. Even if it takes me a month of Sundays to get one closet organized, I will not fret. I will not (anymore) go to bed stressed and overwhelmed by something as inconsequential as a closet, nor will I (again) stay up till four in the morning organizing that closet.   Progress is progress. Even if it is just a little progress, it is still progress. Even if that progress looks like things getting messier before they can get cleaner, it is still progress. ANY progress is progress!    There is a trick I discovered when I was 38 weeks pregnant. As I was ...