Around the Web:

The Giving Tree of Motherhood

At the Desiring God blog, Amanda Dalla Villa Adams writes of learning—from God’s Word, life experience, and The Giving Tree—about contentment and joy in motherhood and as a child of God.

• You see, I juggle many different jobs — my husband calls me a “Hybrid Mom” — dividing my time between stay-at-home mom, doctoral student/university instructor, freelance writer, and pastor’s wife. Because each task requires a large degree of self-motivation, I have been trained to constantly push ahead in order to accomplish just one more thing; this equates into a constant plague of restlessness and discontentment. When my daughter came along, I thought I could easily insert her into the whirlwind schedule of forward progress. What I got instead was a life change — a stop sign and a U-turn — that God has been using to redirect my purpose, contentment, and joy.

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Unrelenting Prayers

Nate writes at Breaking the Silence on faithfulness in prayer. When prayers feel useless, perhaps faithfulness is the only answer—ours, and that of the One we are praying to.

• Is He really going to do anything about the words I cry, shout or sing to Him?

  These questions are too often the questions that I ask as my prayer time starts.  I long for an immediate answer.  And I only kept hearing the phrase, “Be Faithful.”  And so, as I struggled, I learned to be faithful…. whatever faithfulness means within my humanity – the few words of praise, pleading or petition.

Phillips makes some challenging points and leaves us with important questions to think about as we pour into the boys in our lives. Read more.

The 3-Second Pause That Can Save a Morning & Spare Some Pain

Rachel Stafford writes at Hands-Free Mama about the realization that a three-second pause can change an entire day.

•  You want me to write a note now? You should have thought of it sooner.

  Sore arm? Let me guess—too much Wii? I am not writing a note for that.

  You will be fine. Come on, we need to go. The bus is coming.I thought those responses. I thought them all.

  But I didn’t say them.

  Because as I was thinking about all things I wanted to say, I gave myself a 3-second preview of what those responses would do for the situation. From past experience, I knew those particular words would not help the situation—they would only cause it to deteriorate.

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Around the Warren:

The Greater Glow

Alan Howell writes of the D.D.D.W. principle: Darkness and distance does wonders. He challenges us to see that Jesus’ life was the opposite of that idea: the closer people got to Him, the brighter He shone.

• There are people who shine their brightest from a distance. Maybe they have a large platform or a large personality, and that gives off an aura of spirituality. But it is disappointing and discouraging when we find that the more time we spend with them and the closer we get, somehow their glow gets dimmer. They shine in all their brilliance from a distance, because that is how they look best. The ways they treat those around them do not seem to line up with their public persona.That is not how it should be.

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“…that is our hope.”

Words from Jennifer Trafton. Graphic from Paul Boekell.

The Value of Happily Ever After

Liz Cottrill writes of how fairy tales shaped her understanding of the world, and her discovery that many children’s lives have not been so shaped.

• Through my work, I also discovered that fairy tales were not only not part of the story life of many children, but that other careful parents had a deep mistrust and caution about exposing their children to them at all. Witchcraft is evil, magic dangerous. In a culture that staunchly holds facts as supreme, waving wands and ladders of golden tresses had been relegated to the rubbish heap, along with our grandmothers’ other silly beliefs. Fairy tales apparently had no credibility and had been sentenced to literary irrelevance.This was all very alarming to me. I consider the world of make-believe to be critical to a child’s moral development. Innocent children do believe in the fantastical – perhaps why Jesus said, “Unless you become as one of these…?” – and, it is that ready belief that makes the liberal sprinkling of fairy stories throughout their childhood so necessary.

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My Plow Day

Something to Do with Your Kids:

January is a long dark month, and the nature of the northern hemisphere is that much of our time must be spent indoors. Here are some indoor games to play!

And Something to Watch

Many years ago (we’re not going to count them), I was camping with friends in Normandy, France and one morning we took a drive over to the coast. As we turned off the highway, I saw our destination rising from the mist in the morning light. I’m fairly sure I will never see anything that strikes my heart with sehnsucht the way the sight of the cathedral of Mont St. Michel floating slightly above the water like that did. I desperately want to return, but until I can, I’m happy there are photos and videos like this one, where someone explored the mount with a drone camera.

Thank you for reading. We’re on your side.