mentoring digital wordsmiths
I met my husband when we were thirteen years old. Our families exchanged mailing addresses after a “chance” meeting and a few hours’ conversation in Yellowstone National Park. His big sister became one of my many pen pals. Soon so did his little sister. And then one day, when I was 17 years old, I found a letter in my…
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At any given hour of the day, you can hear Thornton W. Burgess audiobooks in one room of our home, Jim Weiss’ reading of Story of the World in another. Other times it’s The Wingfeather Saga in the girls’ room, and The Tales of Larkin in their brother’s room. I have to ask them (approximately half a dozen times a…
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The year our baby girl was born was one of the hardest yet. Six weeks of bedrest, wondering if the baby was going to make it anywhere near term. Four hours of emergency induced labor, knowing each moment was further endangering the baby’s life and mine. Hearing the words life flight. Seeing that look on my husband’s face as he…
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Dear Everyone, My name is Sara Elizabeth but my family calls me Sara Bear or just Bear. Since my mommy is really busy, I am writing our Christmas letter this year. There’s this pretty white stuff coming down from the sky outside and it’s really, really cold. But my family says it doesn’t look much like Christmas inside (I don’t…
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“Don’t Take the Girl” was the first Country song my boyfriend played for me. I cried. The song is a story (as all good Country songs are) of a boy and a girl. The little boy is going fishing with his daddy and doesn’t want the girl to come along. “Daddy, please don’t take the girl.” Then he’s a teenager…
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My son had double hernia surgery when he was two months old. But that didn’t stop the spitting up. First I couldn’t bear to let him cry because I knew what it did to his hernias, and then to his incisions. And then, crying just exacerbated his indigestion. We finally concluded that it was diet-induced reflux issues. And changing my…
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I love babywearing. But in all honesty, there are some reasons you may want to steer clear of the babywearing fad. Thus, I present these ten points to consider before you jump on the babywearing bandwagon.
I thought babywearing was just for all-natural moms who practiced attachment parenting. I loved being a mom. But I wasn’t the stereotypical “crunchy mama”. I breastfed as long as I could but I didn’t do home births. I made my own baby food but I used rice cereal sometimes, too. I would often fall asleep nursing a baby but we…
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I like to sing. I can’t sing parts, but I can usually keep to the melody (if not on key). But I can never remember the right words. So I make my joyful noise. And I mix up the lyrics and verses and put them in the wrong spot in the song altogether. And as much as I’d like to…
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Sometimes the biggest truths come in the smallest packages. Often some of the most important stories are found in children’s books. It’s no wonder He told us to become like little children. “He chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). Always Plenty is a little story written for children, with a big message…
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What’s not to love about tales of little people? John Peterson’s The Littles. Mary Norton’s The Borrowers. And of course, E.B. White’s famous little mouse adopted by big people, Stuart Little. But The Tales of Larkin by Alan W. Harris are our family’s favorite. The Larkin aren’t just little people. These books are about little people with a big God, Whom they call the…
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She should have known it would be a storybook romance. From the time she learned to read, she immersed herself in the best of love stories, fiction and non. From Little Women and The First Four Years to Anne’s House of Dreams and The Twenty-Fourth of June, she knew what it should look like when The Little Colonel’s Knight Comes Riding….
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