How you define success can guide how you live every day and the decisions you make. So...
Some of us have happy memories of good fathers who taught us lessons about work. Others may have had to learn those...
Jesus honored his mother. Let us never forget that, even as the “mommy wars” drag women into debates over various definitions of...
In this video, Janet Wilde shares about how her faith informs her work as a homemaker. This video was shown in corporate...
Mark Roberts poses a question about family and work.
On Father’s Day, some of us lovingly rack our brains to come up with a creative present for Dad. Others, who have no dads or whose dads have not done very well at...
Blogger Lisa-Jo Baker writes, “They tell you that motherhood is a high and noble calling. But they don't tell you you'll clean...
Good old Dad. He’ll be happy this Sunday for Father’s Day even if you buy him another tie and a pair of...
Mother’s Day: that Sunday once a year when we honor moms with flowers and chocolates and maybe even chip in with the...
I am still getting used to the fact that my two daughters are now full-fledged teenagers.
It was Harry Sparks who first told me the love between a father and mother was like a misshaped tree, and therefore different and better than all other love. Boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and...
My daughter Shelby turns 17 this month. We have been through some hard times with her over the last few years. Shelby has read this and is fine with me telling you about...
Part two in a series. Click here to read part one. ...
Almost every parent can tell stories about the things they have learned from their children. Sure, kids are messy and loud and try our patience. But children also clearly have the gift of innocent...
There is an old song we used to sing in church - "Count Your Blessings." I used to think it was a bit sugary and sweet. In real life, telling someone to count...
In the fellowship of parenting, we often sit in the family room, literal or virtual, laughing and swapping stories. We discuss bedtime routines and college savings plans. We share laundry advice...
Let's call them moments of grace - moments of unexpected blessing. We've all had them. Your car runs out of gas just as you pull into the station. You leave your wallet behind...
Last week Rowan went for his pre-kindergarten check-up at the pediatrician. After he undressed and snapped himself into the soft, tiger-paw-print gown and been weighed and measured, the nurse...
My son turned six last week. That’s him beside me and us beside the creek that runs by our house. The nearly identical clothing isn’t intentional, it just sort of happened. If you...
Two Sundays ago, I took Communion with my almost-six-year-old son. It was his first experience with the bread and the cup. And it’s something I’ll never forget. ...
Simplicity is not a new concept. Henry David Thoreau dreamed of keeping his accounts on his thumbnail. For centuries people have known that simple solutions are often the best solutions. What about...
My daughter’s letter to Santa. A little fuzzy, I know, but appropriate since I’m feeling a little fuzzy at the moment myself. The fairy charms and jewels and the Guess Who? game are...
About 10 years ago, I had the most amazing job. I was the Director of Adult Ministries at a large suburban church...
Jennifer Dukes Lee has written a piece about her daughter helping her to see the world in new ways. Having three children, I would say that is one of the greatest joys children...
I have always thought that parenting is an art form. There are no hard and fast rules. Something that is true in one situation might not be true in another. A reaction that...
My five-year-old, Rowan, and I had enjoyed a full day together: a morning at the zoo, followed by a picnic in the park and a stop at Target, where I'd picked up two...
My oldest daughter turned 20 this week. If parenting were military service, I could retire with full benefits right now. But as you know, there isn't retirement from parenting. Your role gets...
Blundering, bungling, fumbling... ...
One morning I spied my son sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, his toes easily touching the floor. I stopped and stared. Something about his posture and those long, lean legs …...
Parenting is a balancing act, is it not? And it's a hard balancing act. It's not like walking a wire where you have to keep from falling to the right or to the...
One day when my kids were much younger, I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see one of my daughters sucking in her cheeks. ...
The most recent of my daughter’s many career incarnations is an astronaut, courtesy of a thirty-second newscast of the most recent space shuttle launch that somehow made it onto our DVR. I would...
Jennifer at Getting Down With Jesus welcomes the tough questions that arise when she and her seven-year-old daughter turn the pages of their Bibles. ...
There's not many things more frightening than losing your job. A few years ago my wife was laid off from a job that she had held for 12 years. There was no problem...
“THERE! THERE IT IS! I SEE IT I SEE IT!” ...
That Christmas should be a time of joy and peace is a given. That it’s often instead a time of stress and disagreement is also a given. No matter how much we try...
At five, my son is quickly learning the ways of the world when it comes to dealing with others. It’s a necessary skill. Maybe the most necessary. ...
Frankie kept talking but still refused to look at me, making his words seem more a soliloquy—a prayer, even—than a conversation. ...
I’ve never been a math guy. Numbers scare me in the same way zombies do; both seem so foreign and lack even...
When we explore the topic of family here at High Calling Blogs—the work of family—we don’t want to limit the discussion to parenting. “Family” includes brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles,...
As I mentioned in a previous post, our eight-year-old son’s gift list has remained short. ...
Lying across the “big bed," an open window invites a breeze to tickle my spine. Stretching out like this feels good for...
I grew up on "Little House on the Prairie" reruns and flannel board Sunday school lessons. Good and wholesome. But somewhere between...
There are so many things they don't tell you when you become a mom. ...
Before I gave birth, I had children—a different crew of kids every night, assigned to me by the nurse in charge. I had a few favorites. We all did, although we liked to...
Here at The High Calling, we often say that vocation is about more than just a job. This means, for better or...
An excerpt follows from Grace for the Race: Meditations for Busy Moms. ...
Though I am extremely grateful to work part-time from home, instead of full-time at an office, these last few weeks have been challenging.
I have had many friends who struggled with faith because they saw their parents put on a show of Christianity but fail...
Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene...
“Mommy, I know what I want to be when I grow up,” my daughter announces as she props her elbows on the...
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Transcript Susanna Wesley bore 19 children—including John, who founded the Methodist Church. Her husband was often absent—and at times her only means to pray privately was to cover her head with her apron...
I hate it when people make assumptions about me. ...
We sat down at my kitchen table for lunch, my dad and I, just like we have dozens of times since I bought this fixer-upper four years ago. This house has been a...
I’ve been a father for eight years now, but it was only last weekend when I finally figured out what exactly being a father meant.
Conversational parenting is both spontaneous and purposeful. Life and connection do happen in the margins of life, where little planning occurs, but being purposeful also helps communication immensely. Consider these two scenarios: Scenario...
Communication is such a complicated thing. Mostly because we often don't say what we mean. We say what we think others want to hear. We say one thing and hope people hear something...
My father had a work plan that Benjamin Franklin would have approved of. Somehow it never seemed to work out that way for me.
Memories are fleeting things. They are notoriously inexact, and yet they ...
Maybe you haven't seen the wonderful interviews over at Spaghettipie yet. But her recent interview with Brenda Nixon takes things to a...
In the Dailies - Discovering the extraordinary God in ordinary life. ...
Simple pencil sketches became charcoal drawings. From charcoal, the media evolved to pastels. But watercolor emerged as her true love. While juggling time with her kids, full-time work, widowhood,...
Most research scientists follow the academic track. Not Dr. John Medina. This graphics designer and animator turned teacher, scientist, and consultant says...
Today, 50 percent of law school graduates and 60 percent of accounting graduates are women. Twenty-five years ago, the glass ceiling was...
I was fuming. A 30-minute task was well into an hour-and-a-half, and I still hadn’t worked through all the piles. ...
Motherhood is not an achievement, it is a calling—though many of us were probably answering a different call when we became pregnant. The point is that by the time a woman trades sweet...
I lost my daughter in Barnes & Noble. ...
I sit on the floor, lean against the couch, and listen to a house wrapped in the unmistakable quiet of a child asleep. The refrigerator hum blurs into the muffled drone of rush-hour...
In the end, it is not the sails and the wind that matter most, but showing a son how to handle the world with dreams of grace and love.
The hour was late, the moon was full, and the snow out our back window glistened like a Thomas Kinkade painting. That’s when the tears began. She was a woman-child, adolescence in full...
Although we are focusing on God’s call to work, work is only one element of life. God calls us to belong to Christ in every element of our lives. Colossians 3:17 Whatever you...
In the midst of harsh treatment, the Israelites remained faithful to God’s command to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28). That entailed...
The fifth commandment says that we must respect the most basic authority among human beings, that of parents for children. To put...
In Ruth 4:13, we encounter only the second instance in the book (in addition to Ruth 1:6) where an event is expressly...
Even the most dedicated parents may face the heartbreak of wayward children.
The final section of Job contains a storybook ending in which many of Job’s fortunes are restored. Many, but not all. He...
Book 4 begins with the somber Psalm 90. “You turn us back to dust…our years come to an end like a sigh”...
Psalm 113 informs us “From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised”...
The work of marriage, childbearing and caring for parents comes to the fore again in Psalms 127...
Breast-feeding is the most cost-effective and health-promoting activity mothers can undertake during their children’s early years of life.
When a sperm and ovum unite, usually as the result of a loving embrace, they become “one flesh” literally as a unique conceptus “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14 KJV; see Psalm 139:13-16; Eccles. 11:5).
Contraception, unlike many everyday matters, has been a matter of theological and ethical debate, largely among Christians.
An expression that pinpoints the moment when grown children are out of the home and the parents face a new lifestyle, empty nesting is the time in a marriage between launching the children...
12 lessons that help kids develop a biblical framework for work, with group activities and take-home sheets.
Parents and Kids: Go on a God hunt!
This week we learned that human beings were made by God in his image. As human beings, we reflect who God is...
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