Finding joy in the trenches, together.
Encouragement, perspective shifts & practical ideas.
That’s what I hope you find here on the blog, friend. I am praying this becomes a place where you feel like you’re cozied up with a cinnamon roll and a good conversation, where your spirit is lifted and you are welcomed into collaboration. There is a place for you here.
The only three things you need to make your home welcoming
My husband and I have been married and making a home together for almost eight years, but I still feel new to the world of hosting. We’ve lived in a few different places and welcoming friends in has looked different in each home. However, there has been one common enemy each time I’ve put on my hostess hat.
It’s not our home’s limited square footage. It’s not my time constraints as a mom. And it’s not even my un-fancy cooking skills.
It’s the internet.
Slightly unhinged ways to expand your capacity in challenging seasons
The year: 2023. The location: The beach, a one-mile walk from the cottage. The situation: One toddler. One stinky diaper. One heavily pregnant mom with no diaper bag. The resolution: Dumpster located. Diaper emptied. Napkins applied to inside of diaper. Diaper reattached to toddler. So. Yeah.
Beyond Lasagna: caring for postpartum friends
Ahh, postpartum. If you are a mama yourself then you know the wonder of this time. You’re snuggling a brand-new baby, getting to memorize their face for the first time and drink in that perfect newborn smell. And, you’re healing, trying to figure out how to feed this new little person, processing your birth experience, and more tired than you ever have been. Postpartum is blessing and grit all mixed together.
Just make the Dang Sourdough: How to find time for creativity as a mom
I see you there, remembering the years when you had all the time in the world to be creative. You used to journal or dance or serve in your church. Then you had babies. Slowly and all at once, your time to be creative slipped away from you. When you have the desire to make something or even just dream something up, the impending task list of meals to be made, messes to be cleaned and diapers to be changed drowns out even the possibility of spending your time doing the creative things you used to do. What if I told you that I bet, just maybe, you really do still have the time?
How to find your home style (in any space!)
Let me paint you a picture. It’s 2021. My husband and I have been living in our sweet little rental house on the hill by the lake for three years. It was built in 1850, and there are sweet little antique moments everywhere. Wide trim. Beautiful detailing around the kitchen window. Two front doors. High ceilings. But to my 2021 eyes, there is one detail that makes my skin crawl.
The home where we are (poem)
I don’t think what makes a house beautiful
is only curation of items that fill space,
textures and colors arranged just right
or height of the ceiling or
the shininess of the kitchen stove.
The beauty of a house
is in the love shown to the souls within.
The Shepherd’s Dinner
Last year and this year (it’s a tradition now!), Cameron and I have hosted something we call a “shepherd’s dinner” at Christmastime. We invite friends and family to sing Christmas carols and read scripture passages in my in-law’s barn. Everyone is crowded together, sitting on hay bales with light mostly just from battery-lit candles. We sing acapella and no one ever knows who’s supposed to sing out the first note at the beginning of each song. Everyone pulls their coats a little tighter when the wind blows in. This is our small way to step out of the busyness, for one night, and let the truth of what happened over 2,000 years of cold nights ago wash over us all over again.
The trenches (poem)
Three under five, yes, all mine.
I do have my hands full, I suppose.
there are lots of ways to describe this particular patch
I’m living in. some days my mind is
trained on beauty, laughter glimmers that
melt my heart and bits of
learning and life that send me spinning
but then there are the days when
the same phrases run through my head over and over:
days long, years short.
running low on sleep.
just a season that will pass, but
I’m in the trenches.
Nicknames (poem)
I’ve always loved names.
“Your name means strong,” my mom said
to both me (Megan) and my brother (Michael, after the archangel)
and I thought, we must be strong.
I have never added a name to my mental list of
future baby names, never once since I was
twelve years old, without first asking Google what it means.
Maybe it started with the library shelves of teenage dystopia
that I ripped through, which always seemed to be
filled with names that packed rebel romance into
one single smack of a syllable.
I can remember the names of badly voweled fiction characters
but have to ask actual humans
to remind me at least three times after we first meet
before their names will stick.
Oh well.
Fire keeper (poem)
there you go, in your slippers,
changing the first diaper of the day
with your eyes still half closed.
you make some breakfast. you think
about reading them a book. you’re
slipping sweaters over little mops of
bedhead, then singing the
silliest song you can think of while you
battle the tangles.
Lord-willing (poem)
I clean the kitchen floor and think that I will
scrub away these same footprints off this
sweet patch of life for years. Lord-willing.
he’ll come home tonight and I will
make him his favorite dinner and I will
kiss him goodnight. Lord-willing.
she’ll be in kindergarten this fall and I will
teach her how to read. Lord-willing.
joy simmers over now and again and I
keep a Lord-willing there ready
to tamp down whatever it is that might just
disappoint after all
words intended to open my hands instead
tightening my grip on some kind of shield.
There’s a place for your work on the blog!
