Category: family
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Literally Literary: The Snow Goose
In the early 1940s, the world was at war—and not only on the battlefield. Children were losing fathers, brothers, uncles, and friends. Homes were quieter. Chairs sat empty. Questions went unanswered because the answers were too heavy to carry in plain words. Some authors understood that children did not need explanations, but rather they needed…
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Help and Hope: Weariness
There are seasons when strength feels completely gone. Not because we have failed, but because life has required more than we have left to give. Weariness is one of the most common human experiences, and yet it is one of the least honestly discussed in the Church. Many believers quietly carry exhaustion with a sense…
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Life’s Lessons: Assume Nothing, Know Everything
I have always lived by a simple phrase: “Assume nothing. Know everything.” Not because I believe it is possible—or even wise to know everything. Scripture warns us plainly against becoming arrogant in knowledge. But because the prideful assumptions of mankind have always been man’s greatest folly. Time and again, it is not ignorance that wounds…
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Caregivers Cozy Corner: Why Hot Matters
There are days when the road feels endless. Doctor to doctor. State to state. Waiting rooms, parking lots, hotel nights, and restaurants squeezed in between appointments. Caregiving has a way of stretching time thin, leaving very little room to tend to yourself in between tending to everyone else. One of the strangest discoveries I’ve made…
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Peace in the Storm: When the World Feels Too Loud to Choose
There is a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from doing too much, but from holding too much inside. It lives in the chest, tight and unmoving, formed by thoughts that never quite find words and decisions that never feel safe enough to make. For many young adults today, the world does not feel short…
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Peace in the Storm: Afraid to Choose
By the time Mara turned twenty-three, she had become very good at disappearing without leaving. She showed up online every day. Her face appeared in group photos, her name lit up in story views, her phone chimed with notifications from people who assumed proximity meant connection. But when it came time to speak or to…
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Tea Time with Mandy: Five Loaves, Two Fish, and a Midnight Knock
I didn’t write Peace in the Storm last week, and I want to tell you why. It wasn’t because the storm passed. Nor because the message no longer mattered. But because sometimes peace looks less like stillness and more like obedience that costs you sleep. Christmas morning found my family and I tired in a…
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Tea Time with Mandy: When Avoidance Looks Like Strength
Elizabeth Hunt had learned that grief did not always arrive with warning. At times it settled into her body before she had time to prepare, like those moments in the driver’s seat when the door was closed and the world waited just beyond reach. Her hands would rest on the steering wheel, fingers tightening just…
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Peace in the Storm: When Feeling Again Feels Like Drowning
The first thing I noticed was my breath or rather, the absence of it. I came back into myself gasping, lungs aching as though I had been underwater far longer than I realized. Fear followed immediately, sharp and disorienting, because with breath came awareness, and with awareness came feeling. I did not know how long…
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Tea Time with Mandy: A Pause in the Middle of the City
There are places in New York City where the noise does not disappear, but it changes character. Where urgency loosens its grip just enough to remind you that you are allowed to pause. Sant Ambroeus is one of those places. Outside, the city presses forward—crowds folding into one another beneath towering buildings, voices rising and…
Country Girl Gone City 