The Shepherds, the Light, and Us

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I stood in the midnight silence, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the twinkling distance and watching a faint, shadowy light flickering across the sky.   The Aurora Borealis, or the Northern Lights, is a magnificent creation to behold.   This beauty is caused by particles in Earth’s atmosphere meeting particles released by the sun’s atmosphere. It’s a grand and glorious collision.       On nights like this, as much as I love sharing the experience with my family, I also don’t mind standing alone in complete darkness, … [Read more...]

I Made a New Friend

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friendship blanket

I made a new friend recently. Not the kind you meet at the park, play with, go your separate ways, and rarely see again.   No, it was the kind of friend that C.S. Lewis identified when he said, “Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”   This week, I made a “you, too” friend. I got together with someone I had encountered weekly but never actually spent meaningful time with. I had been tiptoeing around the idea of inviting her over for awhile, unsure if she would … [Read more...]

He Remembers Our Frame

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gentlyleads

  At some point with each of my five children, I have fallen into the temptation to treat them like they are older and more mature than they actually are. The first time I was conscious of this, I had three boys ages 3 and under. My middle son was talking by 18 months and could identify the letters in the alphabet by 21 months. And sometime after I had our third baby, I allowed his abilities to distract me from his frame and I created a habit of treating my middle baby as though he should behave like his older, three-year-old brother. One day, I was … [Read more...]

About Your Reputation

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My sweet friend sat curled up on my couch and between sips of tea, told me how worried she was. She had been made aware that someone who had previously been a close friend was now spreading something painfully false about her. This friend had even admitted to telling people this lie, because they were so determined that "everyone should know" their version of this false narrative. She couldn't hold back her fear that all the people who heard this slander would start believing it. She was already devastated over the loss she had suffered up to this point, and worried … [Read more...]

How to Find Joy for an Action-Packed Family

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Elliesummer 2017

  If your family is anything like ours, you’ve probably spent your summer juggling toddler nap times, summer camp, family vacations, play dates, and many requests for popsicles. It’s mid-summer as I sit writing this, and my kids are enjoying 90 degrees and fun in the sprinkler. But even as the sun shines down on us, our future fall schedules loom large, and I can already sense the many pressures that September is going to bring. Speaking honestly, I could probably schedule our lives down to the hour, and I have done that at times, just to manage moving … [Read more...]