Category: The Valley
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Birth Story #2: I am (still) not God.
Monday, September 21, was a day like any other. I was one day past my due date and fully convinced we still had a week to go. I felt nowhere close to impending labor. Despite a weekend of good spirits, we had absolutely nothing on the agenda for Monday: a…
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A Letter to Luke
My dearest boy, Already, I feel the mom guilt that I whipped out a letter to your sister in no time and this one is coming together bit by bit a whole week later, my computer often opened just to watch the cursor blink. But if I pull back that…
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A Letter to Lainey
First things first, I hope you like mowers. Three to seven times a day, we’ll race outside to watch a neighbor mow. If it’s rainy, I’ll cave and put a mowing video up on the TV. You’re lucky to be born near the end of summer, or perhaps even in…
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God’s Will for My Life
It’s official. I’m off social media. It is far and away my most on-again-off-again relationship, middle school romances notwithstanding. And I’m not totally sure what was the breaking point: the callousness toward Lindsay Clancy’s murdered children, the emptiness of infinite scroll without actually seeing any updates from people I know,…
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Grappling with His Goodness
I woke up yesterday to bright sunshine streaming through our bedroom window. The Lukester slept soundly, the coffee was steaming, and I rolled over to do my ritual reading of a pregnancy app. Sundays mark my turnover from one week of pregnancy to the next, so I often wake up…
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Today’s To-Do List
We woke up Monday morning with an overwhelming weight on our shoulders. We had just come off a jam-packed weekend complete with a baby sprinkle that we hosted, a four-year anniversary of the church we helped plant, and so much energy expended that we didn’t know how we could possibly…
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A Psalm 139 Story
It’s no secret that I didn’t exactly have my dream delivery when Luke Thomas House came into this world. The 36-hour labor, no epidural, full Pitocin, massive-hemorrhage-birth wasn’t a part of my perfect plan. If you’ve read our birth story, you might even be surprised that we’d want another kid…
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If You Ever Watch My Son
If you ever watch my son, there are a few things you must know. I don’t mean simple scheduling / what to do / where to go. It’s not a list of screen time limits / feeding rules / nap routines. I’m talking about the important things you need to…
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If I Had a Blog
It’s not often that my very mathematically-minded, hyper-analytical husband starts a sentence with, “If I had a blog…” It was a Saturday night, our son sound asleep, and we cuddled up by the fire table, fun drinks in hand. He had just spent the entire day with Luke while I…
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A Day in the Life
“You still writing?” A dear friend asked innocently over a gluten-free grazing table. The question was not mean to invoke feelings of shame, yet I bowed my head guiltily and sighed. “Not for a while. Not much going on lately — every day is pretty much the same.” The mundanity…
