I am unsurprised that when we closed the door to babies a few years ago, desires grew beyond my home responsibilities.

I was out of survival mode.

Keeping six young kids fed, rested, and safe was easily a full-time job and a couple of part-time jobs combined in harder seasons.

While life is still full, this is mostly my choice and no longer filled up with meeting the most basic survival needs.

As emails arrived in my inbox at the start of this new year, it was amusing and a bit overwhelming that one after the other, they asked to steal the sacred time my family enjoys on Saturday mornings.

Four sacred Sabbath Saturday mornings in a row could be gone just like that!

I was relieved when I brought this concern to my husband, and we narrowed it down to one meeting that was mandatory and released the others from our calendar, typing “skip” beside each one in our Google calendar.

This past Saturday, we enjoyed our usual slow, extra special Saturday breakfast where Benj and the kids make some kind of delicious baking, usually topped with berries, syrup and whipped cream, and then piled into our minivan for one of our “experience” Christmas gifts.

We cross-country skid in the beautiful winter snow for the rest of the day.

Like never before, I am reminded that the Holy Spirit is drawing us into sacred rhythms of life if only we would listen.

A mantra or word to frame the next season or year is sometimes chosen haphazardly and other times with great intention.

After significant stress from a season of two parents battling and one dying from cancer in 2022, I thoughtfully chose resilient to depict my posture in 2023.

The demands of this modern world leave little opportunity to be still, let alone quiet.

It is comforting to know that throughout biblical and church history, in what may have been simpler times, practices of silence and solitude were as necessary as they are for busy individuals, especially Christian leaders, today.

Jesus pursued these spaces for himself and his disciples, leaving no question that Christ-followers must execute them.

For many years, my jogging stroller contraption was my ticket to any sense of “silence” and “solitude.”

Those words are in quotation marks because this setting is not the true definition of either. I had to keep my expectations low, so I didn't get frustrated by inevitable interruptions.

Hours were not flying by when I had six children eight years and under, but I had it pretty good.

My babies slept in a separate room within days of being born, and most of them consistently slept through the night within a few months, though my last one pushed the envelope here.

Still, there was always the possibility of an interruption (or more) on any given night—a reality of six young children.

There was no one to put me to bed while my husband was away on a backpacking trip this summer, so there I was at 11 PM eating the chocolate almonds he left under my pillow and scrolling through homeschool videos on YouTube:

Do I have enough planned for this next school year?

I could try this curriculum…

We really should learn another language…

Why not beautify our cursive writing?

Pause. Breathe. Remember, Charlene.

Be With Me

I'm leaving my wonderful husband and six kids at home in a few weeks and flying to join my mom and siblings at a cottage by a lake for several days.

I have been revisiting our home systems to ensure things go smoothly while I'm away, and this practical blog post will share some of my thoughts and practices on meals, chores and the big one, laundry!

I link to resources and previous posts on these topics as well.

When home systems flow, they facilitate physical, mental and emotional space for the more soulful parts of living, like relating and creating!

Here are my Top 3 Home Systems:

My older sister sent me a Marketplace link the night before my 15th wedding anniversary.

I happily sent an e-transfer and drove a 60-minute round trip to pick up a sizeable wood-framed wall sign from “the back porch with the Christmas lights.”

That same night my husband measured and nailed the sign into a spot that had been waiting for something meaningful for almost four years.

It showcases a bold statement ‘blessed’ in scrolly letters, and I didn't see the deeper meaning until weeks later.

Around the new year last year, I was on a video call with two lifelong friends, sharing that it felt depressing to look at 2022.

We sat with our tears, knowing that outside of a miracle for my dad, who was battling acute blood cancer, a funeral was inevitable in the next year.

Death became a brutal reality by Easter weekend.

Still, 2022 was a full year of living for the rest of us. It's what my dad would have wanted.

And now it is time again, for reflection and anticipation—in this space between celebrating the birth of Jesus and the beginning of a new year!

I've never left a funeral without more gratitude for my life and a desire to suck the marrow out of every day—to embrace all of humanity with affection and hope.

The veil between life and death is even thinner when you lose someone you never imagined your life without.

You become vigilant to accept the things you can't change, to change the things you can, and to pray for the wisdom to know the difference (from the Serenity Prayer).

Hidden away in our storage room is a massive bin of time capsules. These are my journals consisting of messy writing, desperate prayers, and useless details, along with my dated day planners holding menial tasks, including which days I washed my hair—thank you dry shampoo!

But they also chart a path through the terrain of a heart growing from a child to a woman and a wife to a mother.

These bound pages tucked away as keepsakes are intricate maps revealing struggles and successes.