I recently asked over 1,000 women: “What things keep you from getting the soul and body rest you know you need?” Here’s a selection of the answers: Laundry, dirty bottles, teething babies and an injured hubby.  🙂 I constantly put high expectations on myself and convince myself that I can do all things. It’s a battleground… […]

When our children are little– still young and immature– the discipline and structure we give them is for their good, because they do not yet possess the guardrails that will help them, for example, to get the rest they need. But note: they do not often see these things as “good.” They want to do […]

{NOTE: For those readers who don’t know our family, we’re the Connells. Doug’s my husband and I’m Jess. At the time of this trip, we had 7 kids (Ethan-14, Baxter-12, MeiMei-10, Silas-8, Moses-6, Theo-3.5, Luke-18 months), and I was 6 months pregnant with our 8th child. Over the next 3 weeks, I’m publishing journal entries, pictures, […]

Virtually everywhere we have lived, I’ve heard it– younger women lamenting the lack of wise women who can give them solid biblical teaching, & biblical encouragement. Titus 2 describes an older woman who is: reverent in behavior (appropriate, respectful, respectable, godly) not slanderers (gossipy) not slaves to too much wine (drunks) able to train/teach younger […]

In life, we’ve been in limbo a number of times, and it’s where we currently sit. The waiting rooms of life happen to us all, and often without warning. Waiting for the tests to reveal, “What is this illness ravaging my body?” Waiting for the right employer to offer a position. Waiting for a proposal from […]

For many years of my life, I was a slave to potty training with the little kiddy chairs. We’d tote them around the house, dutifully emptying out the little chamber underneath the plastic seat multiple times a day, even for the tiniest drops of pee (for which we’d clapped and cheered, like the good potty-training…

Lately I’ve been on a gardening kick, seeing the good outcome of building our compost pile last year, and multiplying the fashions and forms of botanical life in our patch of earth. Spring offers such a profuse picture of hope! Last week I found myself, feet atop cinder blocks, stooping and carefully examining long trenches […]

Let me start out by saying this: I am pretty sure I have done it all. I’ve slept with a baby on my chest or in the crook of my arm– on the first night, in the hospital, in my bed at home after home births, and (accidentally) in a chair when I was trying to stay… […]

People say crazy things to pregnant ladies. But it doesn’t mean we have to take those comments in to the deep places of our heart. We talked about one of those, last week: “Your Daughter Needs a Sister!” (an Acceptable Christian Lie). One commenter shared how the classic comment, “it doesn’t matter what it is…

So, I just had our 8th baby. Which means… I don’t know everything, but I know some stuff.  There was this time, 14 or so years ago, when my first baby was just two months old, that I went to a birthday/blessing party for a young lady in our church. Right when it was time for each of… […]

One of the things I love most about home education is this:  You can wait for understanding and move through material with MASTERY as the goal.  There is no need to “plow onward” to keep on pace with the rest of the class. You look at what your child is grasping and retaining, and assess what […]

One of the surprising things, to me, about the Christmas story, is the way Joseph & Mary’s hearts yield themselves to God. Mary submits… despite her age despite her singleness despite the challenges it would mean for her despite the judgment of her community Joseph submits… despite the way things would look despite the “cost”… […]

Due to the Josh Duggar sex abuse revelation, there is a lot of talk. Everyone has their opinions, but we don’t know all the facts, and even if we did, there’s nothing we can do at this point to affect real change in THAT situation. So I don’t want to get into an in-depth conversation where we… […]

I’ve had 7 different birth experiences in 7 different places, with 7 different care providers. Yes, you read that right! 5 different hospitals (in VA, TX, Thailand, and Turkey) on 3 continents + 2 home births in different states I’ve never had the same hospital, or the same doctor or midwife, twice. Lord willing, this […]