Once when my kids were younger, back in that season I was covered in toddlers and preschoolers, we met my husband at Chick-fil-A (always a win) after work one night.
When they’d slayed the nuggets and the playground and it was time to go home, I asked our four kids who’d like to ride with Dad, and who wanted to ride home with me.
Okay, yes, I am this big Enneagram 2, and I am frequently caught “two-ing” in my family—overfunctioning like a crazy person, sublimating any needs of my own, etc.
But I also have this monstrous, flapping-larger-than-my-triceps 3-wing. Which means, for all of you unfamiliar with enneagram-speak, that I am an achiever. Goal-setting can fill my sails (…to the point of what we’ll call “Christian workaholism”).
So I don’t know what your kids’ morning routine is like at your house.
Maybe you picture me lovingly folding lunchbox notes and sandwiches built from the sprouts on my windowsill, sitting down to a full breakfast with devotional book in hand.
Confession: My heavenly intentions for Thanksgiving are often clobbered by my oh-so-real life.
I would love to be preparing our hearts all month for gratitude, but I find myself picking up someone else’s rank gym socks. I would love to be stuffing a jar with slips of paper declaring our thankfulness, but can tend to stave off a little more teenage complaining instead…?
So there’s this chance raising teenagers could kill me.
I’m (again) in one of these parenting seasons where hope feels like a mind game. There is indeed a battlefield in my brain, in my soul.
Question: Where did you get your mental/emotional/spiritual/social blueprints on how to build a Christian home?
A friend of mine is a first-generation Christian. Aside from a few moments in college, a week of VBS was about the extent of Christian education–there were stickers and crafts, she remembers.
When I first got married, it was not long after an intense “mean girls” period in my life.
You know, there are some hard ways to socially learn what not to do. Here are some of the lessons–of varying legitimacy–in which I had been viciously ardently instructed during this period of my life. (Maybe you can relate.)
Last week, I rubbed shoulders with an old friend:
Guilt.
As part of the premise of this blog, I commit to uncomfortable conversations worth having. And the onus of that falls on me—toward authenticity in the midst of my own doubt and weirdness.
So today, I’m opening the convo with something I regret.
Genevieve’s voice poured through the phone to me. She’s a former pastor’s wife still wading through court proceedings following a horrific, jarring divorce. That’s not to mention the affair, the pregnant mistress, the mental disorders and gaslighting. Her descriptions called to mind a life upturned, shaken violently, spilled. How do you help a friend grieving after divorce?
Some pieces of her former life had temporarily skittered beyond vision: Her ally in the world’s onslaught. Financial security. A co-parent and advocate for their boys. Her helper to pick up the kids or fix the washing machine. A calm presence after a nightmare. Someone to process the day with. A lover of her body.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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