I’ve written before about how helpful mottos can be to our attitude about our work and life. Yes, mottos are great parenting tools, but they work for parenting ourselves as well. That’s why choosing and repeating mottos is a part of what we do regularly inside Convivial Circle. There are portions of the courses that guide us in choosing and copying mottos for different areas of our life, but also inside our small group accountability posts each week, we’re supposed to share not only our top 3 tasks for the week, but also our focus or motto for the week. A few weeks ago with my stand-up post ..read more

We don’t want to be the nagging, harping mom. But, it happens. What other options are there when the kids won’t keep their stuff picked up? We’re working so hard for a more clean and orderly home, yet every time we look around, we feel sabotaged. No one else seems to notice or care. We’re the only ones cleaning up and everyone else is just generating more work for us without pitching in. How do we get the kids to do their chores and pick up their stuff? What chore system will make it so they finally help out instead of just undo? What if we’re asking the wrong questions and looking at the who ..read more

Or, avoiding the boom and bust cycle of housework. How many times have you scoured the internet, browsed Pinterest, binged YouTube, looking for the next best cleaning routine that will actually work for you and your house? Now that I’m in my 40s and not 20s, I know the important question to ask here: Have you spent as much working any of those routines as researching them? Ouch. I know. I’ve been there, done that and am simply now adding my older-mom voice to the chorus: Almost any routine will work if you do. However, there’s a huge temptation we absolutely must resist. It is a plague for th ..read more

Or, working with what you’ve got – It’s hard to keep track of how fast life, seasons, and stages pass when you’re managing a large family, homeschooling, and ministry. Lindsey runs the Reformed Faith and Family website and podcast alongside her husband Caleb. Together they have seven children ranging in ages from three to fifteen years old. Caleb is a bi-vocational pastor, and Lindsey is a long-time homeschooling mom who enjoys reading to her children, dabbling in homestead hobbies, and being a doula for friends when she gets the chance. Their work on Reformed Faith and Family was born out of ..read more

Or, what we really want out of social media Although Americans want to believe it, and manipulate to contrive it, there actually is no such thing as “too big to fail.” History shows us rather the opposite. At a certain point, human entities and institutions can become too big not to fail.  Human institutions with Babel-like aspirations are doomed to bring more confusion, not more unity, to human relationships.  Even were there not idolatry and overweening pride involved, the nature of technology and innovation is to become obsolete as capabilities increase and as users adopt and ada ..read more

Or, being a creative homemaker It’s so easy to feel worn down and exhausted by life, mothering, and all the things – especially when you have six kids like Lexy Sauvé.  Lexy has learned a surprising thing, though – it’s not cutting back that helps her enjoy her life; it’s adding hobbies and creativity to her already-full life that adds joy and satisfaction. How is that possible? That’s what we chat about in this interview. Lexy is happily married to her high school sweetheart. They have six children together and live in Northern Utah. Lexy co-hosts Bright Hearth with her husband. Find Le ..read more

Or, homemaking habits to turn the table on overwhelm Being happy as homemakers is actually a matter of habit more than anything. The habits that rule our actions as well as those that rule our thought patterns determine whether or not we are satisfied and joyful in our work at home as homemakers. So let’s explore the different elements of habits and several habit-changes you can make to be happier at home as a homemaker. 1 5 habits of a Christian homemaker There is so much to do as a mom at home – the more kids, the more there is to do. Homeschool? Work? Hospitality? Sports – we all have ..read more

Or, kingdom adventures at home. Last week, I was walking and contemplating life, musing that it’s not just life that changes, but people also change. Neither are actually necessarily bad. Change is a part of life – life as in the opposite of death.  As I was walking, one side of the sidewalk was full of shrubs. Some of the shrubbery is all gangly, a mass of twigs just starting to show buds. Other parts are bare sticks – no twigs, no leaves, no greenery, no movement – just dead branches sticking out, crying out to be pruned off to make room for the new growth. Status-quo is not a goal A p ..read more

Is self-help any real help at all? A few months ago when I published Simplified Organization: Learn to Love What Must Be Done, it started showing up as a highlighted new release in the “Christian self-help” category.  That was not one of the categories I had selected when completing the publishing process. I believe I had selected “Christian living,” and Amazon helpfully moved it to a more specific subcategory. I made several jokes with my friends and husband and the oxymoron of the category. We’re Christians because we realize self-help ain’t gonna cut it.  Stepping back for persp ..read more

Life is complicated. Families are complicated. Nothing runs on autopilot – not us, not meals, not laundry, not housework, not schoolwork. Someone has to be responsible, managing all the moving parts so that an unlikely entity – a family – hums into life. Each of us as mothers focuses on our particular assignment: our particular family. We learn what we must learn to help our particular people thrive and grow. In the process, we, too, thrive and grow. Service is a good anchor word to meditate on, using it as a personal prompt or litmus test to determine why we are focused on what we’re focusin ..read more