There were exactly two snowballs in my south Louisiana childhood, and they didn’t fall from the sky in Baton Rouge. They rode down from Ohio on the side of our neighbor’s station wagon, and took their shape when she scooped them and gave them to wide-eyed children who had never seen snow.
In the retelling of this story in Acts chapter one, after Jesus ascends, the disciples are staring up towards the heavens and two men in white robes appear. They ask the disciples:“Why do you stand looking up towards heaven?”
Several years ago, Jen Hatmaker’s Worst End of School Year Mom Ever made the rounds, describing the desperate limp toward the finish line that many parents experience. More recently, the Holderness family produced a video about “Maycember,” illustrating the feeling that parents have at this time of year – just as busy as Christmas, without the lights and the peppy music.
My mom texted a picture to all seven of us kids at the end of August after Nathan, my youngest brother and twenty years my junior, left for his freshman year of college. “In the first week of empty nesting we found an empty nest!” she wrote.
As you make your plans for summer study or travel, for camps and play dates, consider making some time for summer formation as well. After all, your kids (at least) might have some extra time, and what better opportunity to grow in the knowledge and love of God?!
I’m not quite sure when eating as a family of six turned into a contact sport, but I work to convince my daughters to drop the mob mentality each evening. Elbows are thrown, insults may be hurled, and by the end, someone is crying.Usually, it’s not me.
On a recent Sunday in church, our priest quoted someone who once said, “Yesterday is the heaviest weight you can carry today.” He made sure to repeat the line for emphasis.As I let the quoted words settle, my mind wandered to my yesterday’s morning.
Sometimes I get into a parenting funk. Or really, a life funk. One of those seasons when there are too many demands on time and energy, too many nights punctuated by sleepless children, too many ills in the world reminding us that the kingdom of God is still super not yet here.
Welp, I turned into a priest-mom-Easter-morning-psycho.I mean, Christ is Risen, right? Might as well go crazy on your family.
On Palm Sunday, during the reading of the passion gospel, my three and a half year old learned that Jesus died. On the one hand, I was swelling with parental pride for his calm attentiveness and understanding of the story. But on the other hand, I was worried about how this new information would begin processing in his young mind.
