My kids like to listen to a song called “Busybusybusy”. The kids find the rapid delivery funny, but their mother finds the whole thing a little dark. It’s worth a couple minutes of your life.

For those of us in charge of a house and maybe a kid or three, life sometimes seems to boil down to busily shuffling stuff around. I dress the kids, put the kids in the car, buy the groceries, shuttle them home, assemble a meal, wash the dishes and car, then wash and dress the kids for bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It’s easy to get stuck on the treadmill of this material world and to forget the Lord’s eternal purpose.

After a spiritually foggy year, I stopped making excuses for why I wasn’t raising my mind up to the Lord and His Word regularly. (I’m too tired, I need to sweep the floor, I can’t decide where to begin, and so on.) I joined an online study group.

Last week, I was dutifully trudging through the Arcana, and as often happens when I dutifully trudge through the Arcana, the Lord had a gem of a passage waiting there for me. I was reading a section explaining Genesis 35. Continue reading Busy Busy →

“We have no portion in David, and we have no inheritance in the son of Jesse; every man to his tents, O Israel!” – 2 Samuel 20:1

This quote comes from the mouth of a troublemaker speaking in a troubled time thousands of years ago. Sheba, a Benjamite, questions King David’s authority as the united tribes of Israel are splintering into factions. It was a time of confusion and grief, anger and betrayal.

“Every man to his own tent!” The call sounds familiar to my modern ears. I read this part of 2 Samuel again recently, because the story felt applicable to the state of the world today.

Many felt grief and confusion this month. The shooting in a Florida high school has affected many hearts. We air our theories, mourn, rage. It seems easiest to pull away, to splinter into comfortable factions–everyone to his or her own tent.
Continue reading Connect →

We live in an age of openness. News, gossip, opinions, and images spread like wildfire over the internet. We put a lot of energy into curating Facebook walls and Instagram feeds to show our followers a desirable image. But watch out. One tweet can ruin your life, warns the New York Times. Years ago, a relative of mine who works in politics said something to me that stayed with me: “Operate as if everything you say, write, or type is tattooed on your forehead.”

As wives, friends, or mothers, we occupy powerful positions. I see my loved ones at their lowest, grumpiest, holey-sweat-pant moments. The annoying habit my husband has? Noted. The toddler tantrum over the wrong cup? I’m there. The parenting mistake my friend made? Saw it. If one tweet can ruin my life, I should be just as careful with others’ reputations.
Continue reading Reputation →

The well-travelled passage in Divine Love and Wisdom comes to mind at this time of year: “Love consists in this, that its own should be another’s; to feel the joy of another as joy in oneself, that is loving” (47). Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. It’s especially fun now that I have three young kids to share it with. To watch the face of my baby as she stares and gasps at the lovely Christmas lights—that’s love. I’ve been looking forward to baking cookies, decorating the tree, preparing presents, and talking about the Christmas story with them.

Today I read the rest of DLW 47: the part that doesn’t get quoted nearly as often; the part that is more chilling than inspiring.

“But to feel one’s own joy in another and not the other’s joy in oneself is not loving; for this is loving self, while the former is loving the neighbor. These two kinds of love are diametrically opposed to each other. Either, it is true, conjoins; and to love one’s own, that is, oneself, in another does not seem to divide; but it does so effectually divide that so far as any one has loved another in this manner, so far he afterwards hates him. For such conjunction is by its own action gradually loosened, and then, in like measure, love is turned to hate.”

Continue reading Don’t Mess with My Christmas →