I spent a lot of my early years in Africa trying to create a home for my family. When packing, I agonized over how much of America to stuff into Ziplock baggies. I packed shoes in five sizes for the kids to grow into and rolled packets of taco seasoning inside the toes to save space. I thought about holidays and recipes and music and toys and books.

But then we left. Evacuated in 30 minutes with one suitcase and a backpack. Three months and two countries later, we tried to establish a home again. Now we are ending a year in the States while my husband pursued a doctorate degree and where we tried, again, to establish a home —a home we will leave in two months.

Home keeps slipping through m…

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I have spent 10 of my nearly 12 mommying years in Africa, so when an American friend mentioned the “Mommy Wars,” I had to ask her what that was.

Apparently, as she informed me, there is a perceived “mothering battleground” where moms pit themselves against each other over topics like feeding babies, choosing schools, eating healthy, disciplining children, and more.

Are You Mom Enough?

Time Magazine recently joined the fray with the provocative cover of a beautiful young mother visibly breastfeeding her four-year old son next to the title, “Are You Mom Enough?”

The message screamed at moms from this issue of Time, from television, Facebook, blogs, and Pinterest is: unless you are fit …

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Sometimes I like to think of myself as a refuge for my kids, a safe place they can run to from the storm of the world. I can hold them while they cry for friends back in Africa, or back in Minnesota, depending. I can kiss skinned knees and pray when the words of bullies sting. I hold the soothing power of band-aids and hot chocolate and tickles at the tips of fingers.

But I am not, ultimately, the safe place they need.

Sometimes it is also easy to seek refuge in my kids, a safe place where I can find hope and meaning and love. They snuggle in the crook of my neck, warm and damp after a bath, and I think everything is right in the world. They run to me so I will be the first to hear their…

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Some people tell me it is brave to raise my kids in Africa. They could get malaria or be bitten by a poisonous snake. They don’t have a Sunday School class. They can’t eat gluten-free foods. Their friends are Muslims. They live far away from cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.

My initial reaction is to be tempted to say, “Well, I think it is brave to raise kids in America.” I know my heart, my soul-shriveling tendency to love the world. I know my kids, how quickly they could be sucked into the idolatry of a nation whose church is the shopping mall and whose God is the latest iPhone.

But this kneejerk reaction is wrong because it assumes brave is the right word to use to describe…

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I took Henry and Maggie to the pediatrician for their one-month appointment. Maggie wore pink pajamas and Henry wore blue pajamas. Yes, they wore their pajamas to the doctor; changing clothes wasn’t a priority. I don’t remember if I even changed my own.

The doctor looked at their charts. “Twins,” he said. “A boy and a girl.”

I nodded.

“Are they identical?”

“Um…boys and girls have different parts,” I said.

He laughed. “Of course. Stupid question.”

It was, but that wasn’t the only time people asked.

Henry and Maggie, and later Lucy, were all unique, not one of them identical in parts or personality.

Their individuality never ceases to amaze me. Not only do they have different p…

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I don’t know about other moms, but something happens to my brain when I am pregnant or breastfeeding. It seems the larger my belly grows, the emptier my head becomes. Or that with each day of nursing, those brain cells are flowing out with the milk. I become forgetful and unable to concentrate.

It seems that now, six years after my last pregnancy, some of the cells are returning, but I don’t know that I will ever be full-steam again.

I remember the loss with particular poignancy while I was pregnant with my oldest — twins. During my third trimester and the first few weeks of new motherhood, our pastor was preaching through Romans 7.

Yikes.

Romans 7 is thick, heady stuff, and I didn’t…

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