he first time I met Durenda was at a conference for homeschool bloggers in 2013. My mom and I had been invited to speak together, and a couple months before the event, she passed away unexpectedly. I decided the best way to honor her memory was to keep the commitment and speak for both of us. I was so nervous and still very much grieving.

After my speaking session, Durenda encouraged me greatly. I really needed to hear her kind, reassuring words at the time. She was so honest and real that I knew right away I wanted to get to know her better. We stayed connected from that point on. She wrote a feature article for us, and eventually I asked her to become a columnist for the magazine. She began her column in 2018. It was titled after one of her books: Unhurried Homeschooling. A close friend of mine (who is also a homeschooling mom) told me how inspired she was by Durenda’s words. She said that as she read the first installment of the column, she realized it was her goal for their home. A few years later, we needed a new writer for the opening column in the magazine, Mom to Mom. To me, this is one of the most vital articles in the magazine. It sets the tone for the pages ahead, and I have always been very careful about who writes it, mainly because this is the place where we need encouragement the most. We don’t need a set of rules to check off or a list of tips to follow. We need the wisdom of someone who has already walked this road and will share from her heart. Durenda was a perfect fit. Her words, which always drip with authenticity and hope, have made an enormous impact on me personally, and I know they have on our readers, too.

 while back, the Lord gave me a scripture that I knew I was supposed to take special note of. Have you ever had that happen? You read a scripture or hear someone say one, and it just jumps out at you in a significant way? Like, He’s saying, don’t pass this by, I have something for you in this verse that I want you to pursue. So I wrote it down in my prayer journal and would go back to read it from time to time. Then, He put it on my heart that I was to speak this scripture out loud over myself in the morning. So for quite a few months during my devotional time, I would read it out with my name added in:

ove the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I think that strength may be the element of this verse that we take the least seriously. When we are busy, it’s okay to neglect the body, right? We don’t say it outloud, of course, but our actions truly speak louder than words. When we think we need to choose, the body tends to come last.

I recently read a book that talked about how Gnosticism crept into the early church. The Gnostics believed that “humans are souls trapped in fleshly, sensual, and sinful material bodies, existing in a corrupt and polluted material world. To be spiritual, we must escape from the impact of both our bodies and this imperfect world” (The Physical Nature of the Christian Life, 5). Paul wrote letters warning about this false teaching! And yet, even now we sometimes act as “practical Gnostics.”

How can we be “practical Gnostics”? We tend to associate the idea of flesh with our physical bodies, and the word flesh is used in the Bible to mean a body; however, many times it conveys the idea of living out of our sin nature. Knowing this, we unconsciously demote the body to being less important.

sn’t it exciting when your little one starts to move about all by themselves? That first time rolling over, crawling, and pulling up on the furniture is pure magic. However, if I’m being honest, when my babies took their first steps, I turned into a bit of a fanatic. I began cheering like I was watching the final seconds of a college football game, my team about to kick the winning field goal. There is just something breathtaking about seeing our children claim their independence for the first time.

Our children grow exponentially during those first five years. While we often focus on their social, emotional, and cognitive leaps, their physical growth is just as rapid and just as vital. Once they nail down walking, it isn’t long until they are running and climbing as if their life depended on it. As parents, we are constantly weighing the risks of these activities, making split-second decisions to either encourage or discourage the behavior. Let me encourage you: lean into that movement and embrace the power of physical play for our youngest learners. Why should we do that?

sk my son if he wants pizza or tacos for dinner. His answer? “Neither.” Offer him a choice between A or B, and he will immediately invent option C. His first response to almost everything is no.

And that’s just dinner. There are also the teeth-brushing standoffs, the math lesson that turns into a negotiation, and the simple request that somehow becomes a twenty-minute debate. It can be exhausting when everything feels like a battle.

If you’re homeschooling a strong-willed child, you may quietly wonder: If I can’t even get him to brush his teeth, how am I supposed to teach him algebra?

has taken me a long time to realize that my level of busyness and a packed calendar do not determine my worth. In my younger days, I believed that staying busy (often working two jobs), volunteering, planning field trips, teaching in a co-op, and so on meant I was living the time God gifted me to the fullest.

Resting used to be something I’d joke about. “Oh, I won’t truly rest until the kids are grown and out of the house. There’s always so much to do!” or “If I don’t step forward, it won’t get done.” Have you found yourself saying the same thing?

But they’re wrong. The views they share and write about are not based on Biblical truths but on some kind of macho Hollywood Marlboro Dad.

Yes, we need warrior-men who lead their families, love their children, and fight for their wives. In fact, that is our prime directive. But, we do not achieve that by watching Monday Night Football, shooting guns, using power tools, refusing to vacuum, and communicating in grunts.