As of 12:01 a.m. the day after Valentine’s Day, the commercial Easter season has been upon us. The chocolate hearts turned into bunnies overnight, and the Peeps came out in force on grocery store shelves. Honestly though, after the last couple of years we’ve had, I kind of hope that in 2022 more of us are going to have a less commercial holiday, and really focus on spending Easter with Jesus.

Yep, I’m posting about Christmas. Not because I’m excited that the stores started in with the holiday ads already, but just because after you make that transition from plain old regular adult to parent, planning ahead becomes a much bigger deal. Christmas is coming, and as Christian mamas, we’ve got to be ready. I’m not telling you to write your shopping list now–that’s not the planning I mean. What you really need is a toolbox full of practical ways to keep Christ in Christmas this year while we celebrate with our children.

Keep reading, and I’ll help you out with that.

Earth Day 2022 is almost here, and this year I thought I’d write about it here because the older I get and the more time I spend outside with my family, the more I realize how important our job of stewarding the earth and its resources really is. This is a Christian parenting blog, not an environmental blog, so you might not think that Earth Day should have any play here, but the thing is that as Christians, we should know better than anyone else what a gift this beautiful planet is. Bottom line-Christians should be treating every day like earth day, but doing something special on April 22 is great, too!

Some of the links on this page are affiliate links, which means that I may receive a commission on products that you purchase if you click through (thanks!). You can read my whole disclosure here (if you’re into that kind of compelling literature).

Welcome to the third installment in my series on becoming a missional family. If you missed part 1: What is a Missional Family? or part 2: Missional Family: Bless, go back and read them now!

Now we’re ready to jump into the second part of the BREAD model for missional Christian living: Receive.

Receiving the Holy Spirit is an essential part of being a family on mission for Christ, there’s no way around it! But inviting and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in our lives is not always the easiest thing to do, so today we’re going to talk about what receiving the Holy Spirit means, how it helps, and I hope you’ll be inspired to put this piece of the BREAD model for missional Christian living into practice in your own family!

Welcome to the second part of my series on becoming a missional family. If you missed part 1: What is a Missional Family?, take a minute and check it out right now! I’ll wait.

Okay, now that you know what you’re getting into, let’s dive into the first part of the BREAD model for missional Christian living: Bless.

In my last post I promised that I would give you super simple and actionable tips about how to become a family on mission for Jesus that work for real families with busy and messy lives. Keep reading!

Toys. If you’re a parent, you probably have way too many of them in your home. At my house toys tend to take over the living areas if we let them. That’s why I like to be particular about which toys we choose for our boys. So, I’ve put together a list of the best toys for preschoolers to help you if you’re looking to buy toys for your own kids or other special children in your life!

A few months ago, my husband came upon the concept of missional communities. He’d heard of them before, but hadn’t really done a lot of research into the idea. He read a little bit about some of the underlying concepts, encouraged me to read about it too, and all of a sudden we were having a discussion about making our own family more mission-minded. It didn’t take long before we knew we had to commit to becoming a missional family.

Kids all over the country have headed back to school, and it’s hitting me really hard this year. It’s not all the COVID craziness, though I know children, parents, teachers, and administrators are all having a rough time with our current schooling reality. What’s making it feel real to me this year is that it’s the last year before my E goes off to school himself.

He just misses the age cutoff, and although I’m confident that he’s academically ready for kindergarten, as a teacher I just feel good about giving him one more trip around the sun to let him be a little boy with all day to play and learn on his own terms.

It’s got me thinking though. I have one year left of (relatively) unlimited time to nurture, lead, love, and teach my boy all of the foundational things that he MUST KNOW before he hits the school scene. And you guys, it’s not the 3 R’s (who named them that, anyway?!) that I’m worried about.

I’ve got less than 12 more months to teach him the foundational truths about who he is and where his awesome memory, curiosity, tenacity, oratory skills, kindness, and capacity to love come from.

After this, Disciple Dad and I will no longer be the sole contributors to E’s developing worldview. We’ll be letting teachers and kids from other families have a lot more sway in his life than anyone else has right now. No matter how much we trust his teachers (and we do), it’s definitely a bit scary to think about letting him go.

Mamas, have you had enough?

I have.

I’m not talking about the clutter or the toys underfoot, the bad attitudes or the never-ending requests for a drink at bedtime.

It’s not the usual mama stuff, but honestly it’s more usual than it should be.

I’ve had enough of listening to the news and hearing about another black man, woman, teen, or child harmed, harassed, and/or killed for no particular reason.

The list is never-ending, and every one of the names on it represents a child of God. And that child of God was also a child of a mama just like you and me.

Except maybe not.

National Screen-Free Week is a special time for Disciple Mama each spring, because here we’re passionate about the benefits of eliminating as much screen-time as possible for our kids. In the best of times, screen-free parenting, and even setting firm screen-time limits can be a daunting task. During a time of pandemic and self-isolation, stay home orders, and extreme social distancing; setting screen time limits is even harder.

In fact, setting these screen-time limits is so difficult right now that Screen-Free Week for 2020, which was supposed to be May 4-10, has officially been postponed. You can read more about it at ScreenFree.org.