“I don’t like that,” she said as her eyes graze over the food, then turned straight back around to march out of the room. “I don’t need a treat,” she adds from her bedroom. My husband and I exchange looks of unsurprised displeasure tinged with resignation. Despite meals being the way we keep time during …
Day 27: TV
:: an ambivalent haiku:: Oh, television My hero, my nemesis God’s gift to steward
5 Ways My Husband Supports My Mental Health, A Family Life Guest Post
“Today was not a good day,” I darkly greeted my husband as he entered our apartment and took in the scene. I laid on the couch while the kids had some screen time in our bedroom. My struggle with anxiety and maintaining my mental health had taken a more prominent role in our lives over …
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Day 23: Band-aid
Typical of little people, my children have both believed in the power of a Band-aid. Not just for broken skin, band-aids are requested for all kinds of boo-boos. Bug bites, scratches, or burns, and bruises, soreness, or bumps -- the act of adding a bandage has magical powers to soothe. It’s not just band-aids either, …
Day 20: Trash
A couple of years ago in preparation for a Bible study on the book of Galatians, I read Tim Keller’s excellent book Galatians For You. When he gets to the end of chapter 3, he stops and camps out on how Paul uses the imagery of clothes all over his letters and helps us understand …
Day 12: Paper
A drawer stuffed full of crafts and worksheets from school A post-it on every surface with lists and requests that you’ll Scribble quickly, then hold up “Hug me please," "Play tickle monster" Or “Time to color.” The counterfeit money that you made So that Irene wouldn’t crinkle your dollar, Or the heap of paper on …
Day 5: Hair
I often think that so much of growing up is just learning to tolerate life’s discomforts. We have come up with elaborate procedures needed to take medicine that tastes bad (honey spoon + medicine + immediately followed by another honey spoon, if you’re interested); we have offered lollipops for hair detangling sessions, abandoned entire packs of underwear or socks that were bothersome for some inarticulable reason, and all of this is usually after trying to reason until we’re blue in the face.
Day 1: Breakfast
I turned out okay. Poptarts and Little Debbies didn’t ruin me and, come to think of it, I wasn’t ever ruined at all. Even things less than ideal, painful as some were and even are, did not undo me. They made me.
No Matter How You Feel
“I love you no matter how you feel,” I tell her as she backs herself against the wall, panic in her eyes as her emotions overwhelm her. I’m familiar with that panicky feeling— not only because I’m currently walking alongside my second highly sensitive daughter through toddlerhood, but also because my toddler’s emotions mimic my …
Maybe You Can Forgive Yourself
I’d decided to meet a friend and her kids downtown at the Science Center even though the thought of just getting there aggravated my ever-present anxiety. In the 7.8 million person Asian metropolis where we lived at the time, our two best options for getting downtown were taxi and subway. I generally tried to steer …
hope for the sojourn 