back to slow

Disclaimer: In the name of full transparency, please be aware that this blog post contains affiliate links and any purchases made through such links will result in a small commission for me (at no extra cost for you). Every time I play a board game with my child... Every time I reach out for prayer... Every time I make a chicken pot pie... Every time I send a thank you card... ...I remember the woman who introduced me to that skill or lesson...and I smile. I have been made a stronger, deeper woman because of those women that have poured their love and life into me. In one of my favorite books,  Wild at Heart , John Eldredge explains how femininity cannot bestow masculinity. A young man without a father cannot grow to be a man just by watching mom or grandmom. A young man can only become a man by watching and learning from other men--whether it's a biological father, family member, or mentor.  In the same way, I believe that femininity cannot be bestowed

I was about to begin my 7th-grade year. Normally, I loved back-to-school shopping. I loved the smell of fresh crayons and pencils. I loved choosing my binders and notebooks and labeling, sorting, and organizing everything neatly into my backpack. But this would be the first year I remember also being excited about what I would be wearing to school on that first day. I was really looking forward to seeing the friends I had gotten to know the year before. To a 12-year-old girl, friends are everything. Fitting in with those friends is everything. So I had to be wearing the right clothes. My mom instinctively knew this and together we had picked out a pair of Reebok sneakers for me from a mail-order catalog. It was the first time I had ever been able to choose my own sneakers and have them be a name brand. I was ecstatic.  A few days after my mom had put in the order she got a call that made my heart sink--they were out of stock of her sneaker and wanted to know if she wanted to orde

Disclaimer: In the name of full transparency, please be aware that this blog post contains affiliate links and any purchases made through such links will result in a small commission for me (at no extra cost for you). We become what we repeatedly do. Sean Covey Over the last couple of years, my husband and I have been implementing small changes in our family's lives to hopefully help us become closer to each other and healthier in our minds and bodies. It’s amazing to look back and see how those small things have become routines--most of the time, we don’t consciously think about doing them anymore. Our world has plunged into panic and fear and the unknowns of a danger we cannot see--but our family has remained remarkably unshaken. It’s not that we’re somehow lucky. We aren’t oblivious to the changes in our state and nation. But our lifestyle choices have helped smooth the transition from “business as usual” to our new normal of social distancing. I wanted to share

This week was my daughter's birthday. Being the extroverted, fun-loving, child she is, she had been looking forward to a party with all her friends since Christmas. But with all that is going on in our nation and in our world, that was not possible. So we talked about it: as we ate lunch together, we talked about why we wouldn't be seeing our friends for a few weeks and why we didn't have money to get her a bigger bike. She was disappointed but also understanding. She's a good kid. So in order to make her birthday a little special, I wanted to do the little things I know she loves: like flowers, which are not in bloom here yet in PA, so we picked some up at the store. And making cupcakes, which she has been asking to do for a while. Y'all, I've never made cupcakes from scratch before--especially not gluten-free ones. I have friends who love baking and who make beautiful cakes for their kids' birthdays all the time. But I found a reasonable recipe and we had

Disclaimer: In the name of full transparency, please be aware that this blog post contains affiliate links and any purchases made through such links will result in a small commission for me (at no extra cost for you). Seven years ago, I had given birth to my daughter via C-section. I was looking for a way to ease back into physical activity and get rid of the pooch I had developed. During a diaper run to Walmart, I stopped by the fitness aisle and was surprised to find a 30-min workout DVD for new moms. As my new baby slept the next morning, I got down on the living room floor and began what was, to me, an extremely difficult 10-minute core routine. I knew my core was in bad shape and I almost gave up—but the DVD kept playing, and the next routine was a yoga flow. I had never done yoga before. I pictured a skinny woman with ridiculous flexibility chanting while standing on her head. But instead, a normal woman greeted her viewers and walked us through proper pose alignment, breathi

“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff." Robert Eliot A few months ago I drove over a deep pothole and instantly knew my tire was busted.  On the way to the car place, I was explaining to my daughter, in a slightly exasperated, woe-is-me voice, that we were going to get the car fixed. I explained that she had to be patient because it might take a long time and we would have to wait until the car was done to drive home.  She stopped playing with her dinosaur and started bouncing excitedly in her car seat. "Mommy is that the place with the table and chairs and the kid toys?!" "No honey, we're not going to a restaurant or the library. This is the car place." "Yeah, where we get our wheels fixed?" "Yeah, that one." "Mommy, there's a table and chairs and lots of toys there! Are we gonna play with them?!" I was too preoccupied at that moment to answer her ques