Category: Life lessons

  • I Wore the Wrong Shoes For This

    I Wore the Wrong Shoes For This

    It has been a rainy week here. And when I say rainy I don’t just mean brief periods of soft rain lightly misting the flowers and greening up the grass. I mean absolute downpouring rain. I mean standing at the bus stop waiting for my kid with water gushing around…

  • A Train of Thought

    A Train of Thought

    Recently, someone gave us a box of conversation starter cards to use with kids. The cards cover a range of topics, and have been a fun way for us to talk about some different things at our dinner table. Sometimes Finley’s answers are predictable and sometimes they catch me totally…

  • What Does Normal Even Mean?

    What Does Normal Even Mean?

    The algorithm knows me well and frequently feeds me parenting/mothering specific content. There’s a lot of it. Something I’ve been seeing more lately is posts with the general idea that it takes mothers some extended amount of time to “return to normal” after giving birth. I’ve seen it in a…

  • Not Enough

    Not Enough

    Last weekend, I participated in an IF:Local women’s conference at my church. We enjoyed some time together and watched several of the sessions from IF:2024 that took place in February. The first session of the day was a message from Christine Caine, someone I’ve heard about for years but never…

  • False Spring

    False Spring

    I live in Ottawa and every single year, the entire city falls victim to false spring. After a long, cold, and snowy winter, temperatures finally peek above freezing and the sun shines for a couple of days in late March or early April. The snow melts, at least enough that…

  • I Wish I Knew

    I Wish I Knew

    When we found out we were having twins, we of course asked everyone we knew or met with twins for advice. We heard a huge variety of advice that sometimes contradicted itself. But one thing that almost everyone told us was that the first six months would be unbelievably hard…

  • Thriving

    Thriving

    Since the twins were born (almost 6 months ago!), I have been thinking a lot about trying to make the most of the time I have with them little. I sometimes look back with a twinge of regret at the first few years of Finley’s life. I was in a…

  • Remembering

    Remembering

    Last week at church, we were singing a song by Phil Wickham that took me right back to the darkest moments of our infertility journey.  The song is This is Our God and there is a particular verse that goes: Remember that fear that took our breath away?  Faith so…

  • Say What You Wanna Say

    Say What You Wanna Say

    Ever since I can remember, I’ve found it difficult to volunteer my opinions or thoughts in a group setting. Put me one-on-one, and I’m pretty comfortable sharing what I think. But in a group, it gets really tough for me. I’m way more likely to just keep silent, except for…

  • The trouble is…

    The trouble is…

    Another year has arrived, and with it the onslaught of messaging telling us to become better versions of ourselves. Kent and I were talking about this as New Year’s Eve approached and I asked him if he was making any resolutions this year. He said “no” with such disdain it…