“One day when the kids are gone, we will sit quietly by the fire and listen to the laughter in the walls.” For years a printed version of these stanzas from “Laughter in the Walls” by Bob Benson hung on a wall in our home, reminding me of a someday that, at the time, felt […]
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Today’s guest post is by my son, Samuel Rainey, husband of Stephanie and dad to four kids ages 15 to almost 7. Samuel is my third born, whose birth was by far my most difficult delivery, yet his life ushered into my world a son of delight whose presence makes me smile every time I […]
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I just wish my kids would behave! If I thought it once, I thought it a thousand times. All the lessons on common courtesies, kindness, saying please and thank you, and Can’t you just be grateful you have food to eat instead of complaining about the meal I chose to prepare for our family, seemed […]
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With a full house of six kids, getting ready for school each morning often presented more challenges for me than I was ready to handle before the sun came up. I’m not a morning person, so I struggled just to be alert and patient with hundreds of questions and complaints filling the air. Even moms […]
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Motherhood, for me, was a minefield of less-than-honorable passions. Sloughing through a thankless and often humiliating gauntlet of messes and mistakes elicited more anger and exhausted misery than I ever thought possible. Yes, there were multitudes of joys. But that was not where most of the lessons were learned. Not until I had been mothering […]
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