I recently shared my delightfully complicated Christmas shopping habits with a toddler-mom friend. She was baffled as I foreshadowed what shopping for teenagers is really like. But she’ll be there one day, too. Picking out Christmas gifts for teens has its fair share of challenges. For one, it becomes increasingly complex to guess their preferences—oh, […]
Devotional Recommendations for Every Age Every year, I spend hours scouring the internet and Christian book catalogs for the best books for my children’s Easter baskets. Devotionals and other Christian reading materials have strengthened my faith over the years, and I want to afford my children the same faith-forming opportunities. So, even though I’ll […]
Plus, Why It Matters Getting lost in a good book played a crucial role in my childhood. I was a highly sensitive child who got in a lot of trouble at home. When I was sent to my room, reading de-escalated my anger. By immersing myself in the world of a fictional character for […]
Disney’s Masterful Exposé of Riley’s Brain on Puberty Reminds Me that Emotional Regulation Can Be Hard for Adults, Too by Jenna Kruse It would be easy to chalk up Disney’s newest Pixar hit, Inside Out 2, as cinema therapy for those whose hormone siren just went off—it certainly normalizes teeth that haven’t yet […]
I recently shared in my monthly newsletter that parenting teens and parenting toddlers may not be as different as we think. When your kids were little and struggled to fall asleep, you grabbed the keys and drove around town to lure them into dreamland. Recently, when one of my older kids was struggling with […]
You don’t have to have it all figured out to have a rich conversation with your kids We’ve all seen what is happening in Israel and Gaza on the news. It’s heart-wrenching and brings up some big questions in our own adult minds. Anytime Israel is involved, we wonder about its greater significance in […]
Like the “gadgets and gizmos” adorning Ariel’s underwater grotto, the moral and spiritual implications of Disney’s The Little Mermaid are equally plentiful. Whenever Disney remakes a classic, we wonder if the entertainment giant will be able to do it justice. Will 2023’s The Little Mermaid have us falling in love with the story all […]
How Investing in Others Creates Family *This foster care journey was originally published in Becky Bereford’s Brave Women Series. You can access the full story on her website at beckyberesford.com. Stay. That’s the word I got from God after receiving the publishing company acceptance letter—my first potential job in my field of study. […]
The Quirky Star Wars Robot Teaches Us to Keep the Faith My neighbor knows I love to find the gospel in a good movie. When she invited me to speak at her student ministry’s winter retreat, it wasn’t long before a text came through, “Hey do you think you could incorporate R2-D2 into one […]
If you’re like me, you’ve already begun to sense that creeping-in feeling of those bittersweet holidays. Like an eight-legged arachnid that crawls its way onto the leg of your new fall jeans while you’re trying to enjoy a moment in nature, the holidays creep in, threatening to steal your joy, sanity, and what little you […]
