encouragement for every season of life
I run around our dining-living-kitchen room like I do before company comes over, making sure there isn’t too much dog hair on the sofa or too little water in the garage sale pitcher with sunflowers. I peek into the oven and see the peach crisp is finished baking. I turn off the oven, but I leave the dessert inside. I…
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I can still remember the exciting summer of ’91 before my senior year of high school, when educator Marva Collins came to my Oklahoma hometown. While I hadn’t heard of Marva Collins before that time, I learned she was a big deal in the education field who’d been featured in Time, Life, and Newsweek magazines. Ms. Collins and her good…
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If you’ve been around this watering hole a while, I hope you’re receiving regular(ish!) fresh air encouragement that helps you see your life and circumstances through the filter of God’s care and provision. I hope you find a story or two here that helps make sense of your own and helps you see your season with more hope and less worry. …
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I know we all have a lot of topsy-turvy crazy in our life right now, but I couldn’t let this month–Month of the Military Child–fade into the rearview mirror without lifting up and celebrating the youngest of those serving our country. In these current times, I can’t help thinking of our military families all the more. As I wrote before,…
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When we were stationed in Hawaii, I homeschooled for one very, very, very long year. Let’s just say it wasn’t a raving success because I let distractions interfere as much as my kids. This proved especially true with those subjects I didn’t really like — namely, anything involving the left side of my brain. One thing said more than once by…
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Today, I turned the calendar page in our kitchen from March to April with all the grandeur and flourish of the queen of England completing an important ceremonial role. We must get our fun where we can, folks. Recently, Aimée brought a chai latte to my porch, keeping herself socially-distant in the appropriate way even as her heart stayed close….
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I first met Kristen Welch in 2011 when we roomed together at a retreat in South Carolina. (I still find it crazy that these are the days of meeting people on the internet before meeting them in real life.) I liked Kristen right off the bat–she was warm, welcoming, and hilarious. As a bonus, she also spelled her name the…
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During my son’s senior year of high school, he and a few of his friends had a rather telling conversation with their choir teacher, one my son later relayed to me. In the course of their chat after class, someone asked this teacher – who is young, smart, and beloved by students and parents alike – what she thought was…
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It’s our sons’ last couple days of Christmas vacation, and we are spending them in the mountain towns of Keystone and nearby Dillon, Colorado. The drive to Keystone should only take two and a half hours, but three accidents and a white-out snowstorm along I-70 dictate otherwise. After no small amount of travel drama, we finally make it into town,…
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Before the USAF moved our family to the Rocky Mountain town of Colorado Springs, we were stationed in the tropical islands of Hawaii. I still remember landing at the small island airport for the first time, walking hand-in-hand with my four-year-old daughter towards baggage claim. I was exhausted after the long flight and terribly nervous about finding my place and…
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A couple months ago, I made my way north to Ft. Collins, CO, home of Colorado State University. My twin sons, both excited and nervous to be driving toward their freshman year of college, followed behind me in their granddad’s 2003 silver Honda. We arrived alongside a sea of other wide-eyed kids and teary-eyed parents and spent the whole day…
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This is a post based on an instagram story I gave concerning unfollows on social media. If you’d like to watch this porch chat on instagram, just visit the saved stories on my Instagram profile page and tap the circle titled “unfollows.” Watch other #porchchatswithkristen on instagram, too. So, I did something recently against my better judgement. There is this…
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