When fear dresses up like help: Loads of parenting wisdom packed into this post from Stacy MacLaren, “He was not only trying to become his own person. He was also trying to do that without hurting me. And at some point, I think he realized that in order to do the next right thing, he was going to hurt me no matter what.”
Stop keeping score: Andrew Noble says, “Envy is at the root of modern comparison games. When someone does a good moral act toward us, such as paying our bill, driving our kids, or folding our laundry, we should receive and enjoy their good gifts. Acting this way is not surface-level politeness; it’s heart-rich participation in God’s work. For it is God who gifts people to do good works.”
God is your Father, not your Dad: Kirsten Sanders argues that “our therapy culture has made us too comfortable with God.” She argues, “But the more significant issue is that, by changing terms away from father, we are trying to do public relations for faith. By seeking to make God more accessible and emotionally warm, we have ended up with a picture of God that resembles a great man in the sky more than it does the God of the Bible.”
So much of parenting is just this simple, easy thing: Andrea Burke begins, “So much of parenting is paying attention. And mind you, paying attention to them and not yourself.”
This alkaline African lake turns animals into stone: These are some frightening images.
Photo by Dominique Hicks on Unsplash