What’s new on Christian Momlogic?
What can you find on Christian Momlogic this week? Just some great, uplifting teaching and content for moms.
Posted by Suzie @
6:44 am |
my new favorite thing to do
I just talked with Denise. She’s hosting a Bible study for women in her home, going through the tough work of pushing past the past and moving forward as moms and women of faith. They have chosen my book, The Mom I Want to Be.
“Will you mind calling in and talking with the women?” she asked.
Are you kidding me? I love that. In fact, it’s my new favorite thing to do.
I love speaking. I feel privileged to write. But having time in a small group of women to connect, to listen, to talk about issues in a smaller group of friends is amazing.
I don’t have all the answers. But I love the dialogue as we find them together. I love prayer. I love encouraging each other.
If you are reading The Mom I Want to Be and are in a small group, please let’s set a date for a phone call. If I’m in your area speaking, let’s set a date for lunch or a get-together with your small group.
I’d love that.
Posted by Suzie @
11:36 am |
Sweet Elle
It was a beautiful moment. I had slipped upstairs at my BIL’s house to take a short rest while everyone was outside. I had foolishly forgot to pack jeans and tennis shoes so I was unable to hike with the others because of my pointy-toed heels and dress pants.
I felt someone slip in beside me and I turned. It was Leslie.
She had surprised us all with her 6-month baby belly. The last time I saw her it was hard to tell she was pregnant. When she walked through the door this weekend Leslie looked healthy, beautiful. Her stomach protruded, her long blue flowing dress draping little Elle.
I snuggled close to my daughter.
“Do you think I could hear her?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you try?”
I gently laid my head on Leslie’s stomach. And I heard her. My sweet Elle moving inside her momma.
It was surreal. And then suddenly Elle kicked me right in my ear–hard! And I started laughing.
My MIL affectionally says that I’m a “mess”, so in love with this granddaughter-to-be, but I choose to believe that I’m in awe of life. In awe of what God has created, and what it means as my daughter becomes a mother.
Easter was all about life. Worship drew me close to my Savior. The message on Easter Sunday was all about how Jesus is relentless, pursuing us when we not feel worth pursuing, and how it brings new direction.
Somehow it all tied in together for me this week. I know I say it alot and perhaps you are tired of it, but I can’t help but be grateful for all of it. Elle. Leslie. Easter. Jesus.
Life.
Posted by Suzie @
12:07 pm |
looking back, why?
Houses crowded together. Small patches of brown grass sported mattresses and bags of trash instead of the flowers I once remembered. I snaked between parked cars lining both sides of the street. I braked, pausing to look at 7856 E. Latimer Place, the home I grew up in.
Was it really that small?
The red brick had been painted a pastel blue. A metal awning arched over the driveway. The grand Mimosa that once towered over the house from the back yard was absent.
There was Ms. King’s house. Just across the street. The house that once housed the grand dame of the neighborhood. The Kings even had a pop-up pool in the backyard. We staged plays on the patio, charging neighbors a nickel. I always obeyed Mrs. King, who could raise an arched eyebrow from her throne, a wheelchair that graced her thin body.
There was the Hill’s home. Strict Mrs. Hill whose kids seemed perfect, except for that time Tony threw a lawn dart in the air and it came down and pierced him in the face.
I passed Sheila Shay’s house, my funny rebellious friend who died in a car accident.
Funny, looking at your past as an adult. How different it all seems.
It’s why it’s so important, I believe, to cruise down the streets of your childhood as an adult, seeing things that loom so large, and were at one time, through a different perspective.
As I shared the topic of forgiveness two weeks ago at Hearts at Home, I walked with nearly 500 women over the two days through their past. Tears fell. Sometimes they braked, looking at an incident, an event, a person, fully. Seeing it for what it was, and where it fit now in their life. How it affected their relationships. How it kept them in prison, or perhaps kept the offender there though they had changed.
How sometimes it was so very wrong, wrong, wrong and yet how tragic if it is still holding us tightly to the past, though we live among those who love us best.
Why is it important to cruise past the events that you just can’t quite let go? Because looking at it from a new perspective puts in its place, and allows you to move in a new direction.
Posted by Suzie @
6:40 pm |
some mom time
I came home from Hearts at Home tired, ready for a break. But more than a physical break, an Internet break. I know it’s been quiet on my blog, but I turned everything off for a week. . .
and had some mom time.
We didn’t do much. I drove to Tulsa and watched TV with her and dad, then tucked her in my Doo-Rango and sped for home. We took walks down Main Street, got a manicure and pedicure, and read books side by side on the couch.
We ate Sam and Ella’s pizza, went to the Kettle for breakfast, and I made her my super-delicious fruit smoothies.
It didn’t seem like a lot, but she loved it.
And that makes me happy.
A good friend of mine on the P31 team is losing her mom, perhaps even this week. I read her Caring Bridge site the other night and cried for my friend.
Somehow down time with my own mom suddenly seemed priceless. And blogging, tweeting, facebooking, and email took a very distant place in my priorities.
Love your mom today, if you can. Send her a note. Give her a hug. Call her.
And to the ladies at Hearts at Home, you were amazing.
Remember when I told you that my mom would be upset that her daughter was in Illinois and not wearing a coat? True to form she made me wear a coat the moment I showed up at her house without one.
Something that used to drive me crazy, and suddenly it’s endearing.
Posted by Suzie @
9:20 pm |
Moms, you matter
I’m sitting in my “cave” at the library, the lights down low as the fluorescent lights shine brightly just a few feet away. I’m listening to a little country music on Pandora, not usually my style but it fits the rainy day outside.
My weekend was full. Speaking. A wedding. Friends and family.
Now I’m turning my focus to preparing for Hearts at Home. It’s an amazing conference for moms. Thousands of moms across the nation attend, but it was started by a mom who needed other people. A mom who hoped that her small Bible study might be successful. A mom that didn’t try to make her home perfect or even her life perfect before she opened her home to the women who were seeking the same thing she was — encouragement, friendship, support.
And now it’s an Intl. conference that pulls in women from all over the world, and it reaches outside of Normal, IL to Minnesota, California, Michigan women, but also to women in Budapest, Hungary, in Vienna, Austria, in Weisbaden, Germany.
How in the world does that happen? (more…)
Posted by Suzie @
12:12 pm |
