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,...

Especially in the early years, we teach our children not just by what we say, but by who we are. Children are mirrors. But they do not simply imitate—they absorb. Their earliest sense of safety, identity, and worth comes from reflection—how we reflect love, how we carry ourselves, how we live. Your child will reflect your love, imitate your surrender, and mirror your nurture. He will be joyful if you are joyful. She will be secure if you are grounded. They will be strong if you are strong—or fearful if you are anxious.

And they will not only mirror our strengths—they will mirror our weaknesses. A cynical tone toward your husband will become the tone they later use toward you. A sigh of overwhelm at the duties of life will teach them that life is “too much,” instead of a privilege to be embraced with gratitude. A distracted heart—always half-present, half-elsewhere—will teach them to disconnect from you, from their father, and from God.

Children do not only copy what we hope they’ll remember; they absorb what we never intended to teach. But take heart—because the power of repentance, tenderness, and beginning again shapes them just as deeply as our failures do. Even our imperfections can become teachers when grace finishes the lesson.

Just as we are made in the image of God, our children pour themselves into the mold of our example.

If your child is to understand the church—the Bride of Christ—let them first see it in you. When you demonstrate what it means to be a bride to your husband, your children begin to understand what it means for the church to belong to Christ. The attentiveness with which you listen to your spouse becomes the attentiveness they’ll learn to offer others—and to God.

The beauty with which you prepare a meal shows them how to prepare their hearts for the Lord.

The surrender with which you lay down your own agenda to come under your husband’s mission teaches them what it means to yield to Christ.

The transparency with which you speak in love shows them how we relate to God—with honesty, reverence, and trust.

Your willingness to offer yourself as a living sacrifice—holding nothing back, without reluctance—makes Christ’s sacrifice real to them.

I saw this growing up.

At night, I would lie in bed and hear my father pray. He would walk the floor, whispering, rejoicing, at times groaning or weeping—words I couldn’t always understand, but a presence I could feel. The Spirit of God passed through the wall and into my room, and I knew—without anyone explaining—that God was real. He was near.

And I learned how to listen by watching my mother, in the way she paused. The way she answered. The way she touched the hearts of those who reached out. She didn’t dismiss or rush. She leaned in. And because she listened, I learned how to reach out.

Then came a time in my own mothering when I had to learn all this again.

Your brother, still small, had already been diagnosed with autism. For many years, it felt nearly impossible to find even a square inch of common ground—to understand how he thought, what frightened him, or how he made sense of the world. His responses baffled me. His silence sometimes broke me. But through that long, humbling journey, I began to learn a deeper dimension of love.

In our efforts to connect with him, I began looking for even the smallest thread that could bind us together. I had once read that mirroring your child—literally copying their actions—might draw their attention. So when he sorted blocks, I sorted blocks. When he crawled on the floor, I crawled too, hoping for even a glance.

One of the few things that brought him comfort was crawling inside a pillow sham—pillow and all—and...

If we are called to be our children’s first windows to God, reflections of His love, then how do we mother in a way that shows them His face?

If God is love, and we are made in His image, then we, too, must become love. Not a vague feeling, but a living, breathing presence in our children’s daily lives. They must not only be loved by us; they must see that love radiating through us in how we speak, how we serve, how we forgive, and how we endure.

If they are to understand the comfort of God, they must first feel it rocking in our arms.

In Isaiah 66, the Lord says, “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” God Himself compares His tenderness to the way a mother carries her baby on her hip and bounces him on her knees (Isa. 66:12-13).

If our children are to experience God’s attentiveness, they must see it in how we listen. The Psalms say the Lord bends low to hear our cries (Ps. 116:2). Do they see us do the same?

We must be His hands—clothing, feeding, holding, comforting.

If God is holy, then holiness must be more than rules or rituals. It must shape how we live: how we carry ourselves in unnoticed places, how we speak when no one is listening, how we repent when God deals with us, how we show reverence in the hidden parts of the day.

If God is powerful, let our children see His strength most clearly in our weakness. In how we keep showing up. In how we rise with joy even when we’re tired. In how we lift our heads after He reproves us. A mother who leans on God allows His strength to become visible. Anointing takes the place of exhaustion. Faith steadies fear. Grace rises again after failure.

If God is mighty to save, then we reflect that might when we stand firm, when we go to war against every thought, every attitude, every distraction that seeks to harm our children’s hearts. This is how they begin to know that God is a rescuer.

Even science confirms what Scripture has always said: a mother’s presence in the early years is not sentimental, it is essential. God created the brain as surely as He created the soul, and everything in its design echoes what we know in our spirit—that children need closeness, stability, and responsiveness in order to thrive.

During the first three years of life, the brain forms more than a million neural connections per second. Those early interactions shape not just emotion, but learning, language, resilience, even identity. A mother’s presence is not a luxury. It is how God made the human soul to grow.

This calling is sacred. It is not only spiritual, but physiological. And it begins with you.

I want to tell you a story I can’t forget.

Years ago, your dad and I were driving home late one night down Halbert Lane. Just ahead of us, the car in front hit a raccoon cub, one of three trailing behind their mother. It didn’t yet die, but it was wounded and immobilized, crying on the pavement.

We slammed the brakes, trying not to hit the others, and watched as the scene unfolded in our headlights.

The mother had already crossed the road with her two surviving babies. But when she saw our headlights, she paused.

Then she did something that moved me to tears.

She ran back into the oncoming traffic.

She darted into the road, grabbed the injured cub, still crying, still writhing, and dragged it to the side of the road where she huddled with all three little ones.

I lay awake that night thinking about her. Not because I’m sentimental about raccoons (they’ve raided our eggs enough times, as you well know), but because I couldn’t stop thinking about that mothering instinct, that single-minded, God-given drive to preserve life no matter the...

For most people, their first experience of God comes through their mother. If He is love, then a child’s first taste of that love comes through her arms.

God arranged the world with windows into eternity—prototypes and shadows scattered like signposts, drawing our eyes and hearts toward Him. We glimpse His majesty in creation, in mountains and oceans, stars and storms, but we encounter His nature in relationship.

Every bond on earth was designed to show us something of His shape, His form, His essence. And the very first of those bonds—the very first place a person comes to know His warmth, His nourishment, His comfort—is through a mother. Though not the only stage in a child’s journey, it is the first. And if they are ever to come to know the strength of fatherhood, and the love of the Father above, it begins with the embrace of a mother.

Helen, when I think of that truth, my heart returns to the day you were born. I wrote about that moment years later in my book, A Time to Be Born, because it marked the beginning of my understanding of what motherhood truly meant.

Excerpts from A Time to Be Born:

That night was the first time I realized that a mother is not merely raising children—she is shaping souls. She is building God’s kingdom.

Scripture tells us in 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” And if our children are to learn who God is, then they must experience that love—not only in word, but in form. In our hands. In our voices. In our presence. In our being present.

Until you have taken on the full identity of what

There is a lurking danger that sometimes tiptoes into a woman’s heart, so subtle we may not notice it at first. Suspicion and coveting were the first sins to enter the world. After conversing with the serpent, Eve allowed suspicion toward God to take root, and then she began to covet what did not belong to her. Suspicion always brings us into conversation with the accuser, and covetousness leads us away from trust in God and into idolatry, for “covetousness . . . is idolatry” (Eph. 5:5).

The tenth commandment tells us we must not covet anything belonging to our neighbor. Wherever coveting begins, Christ’s lordship in the heart begins to fade, and something else takes His place. Many don’t seem to recognize that for a woman to covet the place God has given to a man (or vice versa) is sin. But this coveting of another’s place puts us in the same posture as Eve—choosing for ourselves rather than trusting God, and therefore stepping away from His covering and His peace.

This same coveting can seep into other relationships as well, particularly between women. The thoughts sound harmless at first:

She only gets to sing a solo because she knows the right people.

She gets to function in that capacity because of family connections.

They were invited because of their wealth.

Everyone thinks she’s so intelligent—but if they knew . . .

These whisperings of the accuser tear down love, strain relationships, and weaken the witness of Christ’s body. But Scripture reminds us, “in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Rom. 12:5, NIV). We belong to each other, and we honor Christ by honoring His design and His placement.

In an orchestra, it would be foolish for the first-chair violinist to covet the drummer’s place, saying, “I could keep the rhythm better!” Or for the drummer to demand the delicate melodies of the violin. We would say, “Your part is beautiful. It was given to you for a reason.” Each instrument has its own role, and the harmony depends on differences working together, not competing.

And yet in family life, in church life, and in friendship, we sometimes lose sight of the larger “orchestra.” A narrow, individualistic view focuses on what we lack, while overlooking the privilege of being called into something larger than ourselves. To take our place is not confinement—it is belonging. It is stewardship. And it is peace.

Paul said, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” (Phil. 4:11). Contentment is not passive—it is a practiced trust. It sees that God, in His wisdom, has assigned each of us a part to play, and that His purposes for us are good.

Let us always guard our hearts from suspicion, refuse the quiet invitations to compare, and take joy in the place God has given each of His children. Rejoice also in the gifts and callings of others, knowing we are members of one body, each needed, each cherished, each placed by God’s own hand.

With all my love,

Mom

Making excuses padlocks the gate to true repentance and overcoming.

In the Bible, Aaron created a golden calf for the Israelites when they became impatient while waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain where he was speaking with God. But when Aaron saw how indignant Moses became upon seeing the idolatry, fear crept into his heart. Instead of owning his part in the sin that had just desecrated Israel’s covenant with God, he grasped for the nearest defense: “You know the people—that they are set on evil.” And then, almost absurdly, he claimed the golden calf had simply “come out” of the fire.

It’s uncomfortable to look at Aaron in this light, but it’s also familiar. That same instinct to defend ourselves, to shift blame, to soften guilt with an excuse, still whispers to each of us when the light of truth begins to pierce the shadows.

Blame shifting and excuse making are two of the most common ways that our sinful nature tries to preserve itself when God’s light begins to shine. Whenever His light reaches into the corners of our hearts, we face a question that determines everything:

Will I take full responsibility for my choices, for my sin, for the outcomes of my actions, in order to be free?

There are always reasons and rationalizations waiting at hand. We all have them. But even the faintest trace of an excuse blocks the door to repentance. And when repentance stops short, so does transformation. We remain trapped in the same habits, circling the same mountains, wondering why we can’t move forward.

Our modern world even encourages this bondage. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” it says. “You’re only human.” “It’s not your fault—you were wounded.” “You’re just reacting.” Of course, compassion has its place. But self-pity disguised as compassion can become the soft cushion that keeps us from the bedrock of truth—the only place where real freedom begins.

And because we live in an age that prizes comfort over correction, excuse-making often slips in unnoticed, wearing a sympathetic face. It doesn’t usually shout—it whispers. You’ve done enough. You deserve a break.

So what does this excuse-making look like? Where does it pop up? Its subtle influence and temptation are hiding around every corner and slinking behind each curtain.

Perhaps we haven’t spent adequate time tending to the needs—whether character or physical—in our children, and we excuse ourselves first in our own minds: Well, I’ve been so busy, and my husband has a demanding job, which also makes requirements of me, so I haven’t gotten to that.

Our schooling is falling behind, and we excuse it because of the garden. Our garden is weedy, and we excuse it because of the schooling. Our spouse comes home and questions us about the lateness of dinner, and we blame it on the children’s needs in school. A grandmother offers insight about a demanding toddler, and we excuse the toddler by saying they’ve been sick or missed a nap.

All these excuses keep us forever chained to our own habitual problems. We go round and round the same mountain, wondering why we can’t seem to move forward, when the truth is that every excuse we make becomes a link in the chain that binds us.

When we decide to face the whole truth about ourselves, without dilution, without justification, the power of God meets us there. His grace isn’t found in the self-protective shadows; it waits in the light, where we stand bare before Him.

Israel had lived as slaves for generations. Slaves do not take responsibility for the course of their actions; they simply obey commands. God wanted His people not just freed from Egypt, but freed from the slave mindset—the bondage of...