Today I’m going to take a little different route with my letter.

It’s nearly Christmas time, and during this season we remember all kinds of stories that have made it special for us, not just stories of this season, but the relationships that have made us who we are. Those relationships often come together again at Christmas, like a tapestry—threads returning, crossing over and under, making the fabric of our lives complete.

Today I’m thinking of one that shaped me, and I want to share one with you.

The fair was over, and a blasting cold front charged through Texas with the zeal and strength of a soldier. The last pecan leaves shook free from the limbs shading our yard, leaving us exposed to the low winter sun and the strong northern wind. You older children tumbled and played in the yard.

This fair had been different than some of the previous ones. Some of you came down with the flu during the fair, and I rushed back and forth between music, my booth, and tending to you over at Grandma’s house next door to the fairgrounds, where you lay shivering and feverish.

One of you cried, “Mommy, I can’t be here. I’ve got to be at the fair!”

I cried with you. After months of waiting, of sanding wooden spoons and preparing, you were missing your favorite time of year—and worse, you weren’t getting to sing in the choir.

Music was the highlight of our family life. Singing together, especially with Daddy, was a joy. Daddy and I first got to know each other through music, singing together on my parents’ front porch or gathered around his parents’ living room piano. Josiah, Uncle Philip, Daddy, and I began singing together when I was sixteen. We never knew where that journey would take us, but I loved to sing.

I had never been more honored than the day Josiah asked me to join his little band. It had been him, Daddy, and Philip, and he wanted Philip to play the piano and me to be part of the vocal group. We sang in various places—first just for fun, then for relatives, friends, nursing homes, senior groups. It grew and grew.

We all ended up getting married. More joined the group. Life moved on. I married your dad, and that common ground of music grew into a shared life of love, relationships, and children.

As the years went by, Regina joined our music group. I knew right away that she was more gifted than I was. I marveled at her voice, but clung fiercely to my own place as well. She was an alto; I was a soprano. That should have worked. I didn’t need to be jealous.

But voices aren’t that neatly divided. There was overlap.

I loved Regina, so it was hard to feel anything but admiration for her. When she sang, it melted my heart. Still, over time, some of the songs I sang became songs Regina sang. No one could deny it—she did them better. And yet, in my heart, I always thought, With a little more practice, a little more time, I could have gotten it right. It wouldn’t have sounded like her, but it would have had its own touch.

Those silent battles went on in my mind more often than I like to admit.

You see, while I had a nice voice, I had a problem: I did not have natural rhythm. While Regina could throw herself into the feeling of a song, I was counting measures. Tapping my toe. Watching for cues. I did fine in orchestra and choir where there was direction, but solos often filled me with tension.

So I worked harder. Practiced more. Labored over music, trying to overcome what didn’t come naturally, hoping there wouldn’t be a need for someone else to take my place.

But the one place music was always...

As we rolled out the tubs, trunks, and boxes of holiday decorations this year, my thoughts returned, as they usually do, to the days when all of my children were little. The day fell, as it always does, on the Monday after our Homestead Fair. We come home tired and happy, the children all a little disappointed that the fair is over, yet filled with great anticipation—because now it is time to set up Christmas.

This year, a real cold front blew in on that very day, and suddenly it all felt wonderfully authentic. Four-year-old Ari warmed the softest places in my heart with his jubilation as we opened each box. Out came the nativity set, the manger, the wise men, a simple bell, a box full of pinecones—and with every piece he squealed with delight, leaped up and down, and recounted an entire story connected to that object from the year before, a story I had long forgotten.

But I remembered, too—only my memories traveled much farther back than last year.

I remembered you, Helen, setting up the tiny people in the Christmas village. I remembered Blair helping me untangle the cords of lights. With every decoration in my hands, I felt so close to each of you, held together by a day that has stayed nearly the same, year after year (except for one Christmas lost to the flu—but that was a memory, too). Each piece stitched us back together again.

I have been thinking a great deal about memory these past months, and I feel as though the Lord has been speaking to me about it. I want to share these thoughts with you, because I believe they matter—not only for this holiday season, but for every season of life.

Making memories with your children is not an insignificant thing. It is a shaping force—of their development, their identity, the trajectory of their lives, and the soul of your family as a whole. I have come to see this more clearly with every year I mother.

Our friend and psychotherapist, Rita Jreijiri, once said that memory is not a camera—it is an editor. Memory is fed by emotion. If our emotions are bitter, we will carry bitter memories, edited and replayed through those same lenses. But if our emotions are loving, joyful, and steady, those memories will expand and multiply, like the loaves and fishes in Jesus’ hands.

That realization is both humbling and weighty. Our children will carry what we build.

A shared experience becomes a memory because it is bound to meaning and relationship, and what is bound that way tends to endure.

I have not done this perfectly, but I have tried, intentionally, to anchor our lives in shared rhythms. Daily story time from the very beginning. Scripture memory. Prayer. Always family meals. And the longer I have mothered, the more intentional I have become. I even laugh sometimes and say reading aloud has become my near-religion—morning school reading, toddler reading, and nightly story reading. Again and again and again.

Family dinner has always been paramount. We gather around the table for shared food and shared joy: fresh warm bread, a set table, napkins and silverware, sometimes a candle or a sprig from the garden. A meal served as a gift of love, prepared with intention, offered with a prayer that this, too, will become a memory that shapes my child’s future.

As your father and I have grown older, our appetites have grown smaller, and for a season I let breakfast, for myself, fade. But after hearing Ruth Ann Zimmerman speak about the sacredness of family meals, I felt called to bring family breakfast back as a regular feature that included me. And so we did. The children now wake to warm smells, to a set table, to music in the kitchen, and I see again how deeply these simple things matter.

Another memory-anchor you know well is family devotion time—gathered

There is a kind of weariness that comes not from work, but from striving. Striving is what a soul does when she’s not yet sure who she is or where she belongs. A woman who knows she’s loved and placed—rooted, named, and claimed—can work very hard without becoming overwhelmed. But the woman who has not yet accepted her God-given identity keeps grasping for it, trying to prove her worth through achievement, performance, or admiration. Striving is often the sign of a heart that doesn’t feel at rest in fully embracing the definitions and parameters of her place.

Where do we belong? In our culture, people are proud to say,

“I’m a doctor, and I belong to Ascension Medical Group,” or,

“I’m an attorney, and I belong to this law firm.”

And there is nothing wrong with that. God calls men and women into many vocations—to heal, to teach, to build. These callings can be holy when they are received as a service and stewardship of the kingdom of God.

But to say with the same confidence,

“I am a wife, and I belong to my family”—that often feels improper. Too simple. Too dependent. Too unaccomplished.

Why?

I believe it is because the human heart, broken by the Fall, has a tendency to seek identity in what it can achieve rather than who it belongs to and the gifts it has been given. We are much more comfortable belonging to institutions we choose than to relationships that choose us. We are tempted to anchor our worth in titles we earn instead of in covenants we keep.

And that is where the deeper danger lies—not in vocation itself, but in locating our identity outside of relationships ordered according to God’s transcendent design.

The ancient temptation is not merely to work—it is to self-define. The quest to define oneself apart from God-given belonging is, at its root, a quest for godhood. It is the same sin that caused Lucifer to fall. He was created with perfect beauty and wisdom—yet the place he was given was not large enough for him. Coveting the place of God, he fell, and became the driving force behind every human attempt to author identity apart from submission to God’s design.

Without me realizing it, that same impulse once lived in me.

The moment I came to see it, years ago, was perhaps the most liberating experience of my life, a moment that freed me from aimless striving and frustration. After the birth of my third child, I felt I had reached the breaking point. Three children three and under—and two hands. Before that, I prided myself in being put-together, punctual, scheduled, and organized. Suddenly there was chaos everywhere, and I was embarrassed. I tried to hide from your daddy that things were falling apart.

One evening he left the house to take care of something. All three babies ended up screaming in my lap, and I was crying with them. And then Dad walked back in; he’d forgotten something. He took one look and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I blurted out, “I’m failing in everything, and everybody is unhappy about it!”

He was in a hurry. He grabbed what he came for and opened the door to leave. But then he paused, turned around, and said:

“Honey, there’s a big difference between doing ‘the mothering thing’ and being a mother.”

And he left.

But God stayed, and in that moment, I felt Him speak to my heart:

“There’s a big difference between doing ‘the Christian thing’ and being a Christian. You have to be owned by this—possessed by it. You cannot live in a capsule of self, full of your own ambitions, and serve from there with joy. This is where I test how much the kingdom matters to you: right here with these little ones who are yours but really Mine.”

I looked at my children crying in my arms and suddenly felt that Helen,...