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Review of Mothering Many
By Holly Scheer Book Review of Mothering Many Compiled and Edited by Marie K. MacPherson Mothering Many takes the advice of 25 mothers with a more than 160 children between them and discusses common problems and themes in the lives of mothers. The book is in two main sections — the first is the advice and wisdom of the mothers in the context of various real life situation and the second is a lengthy series of appendices. The intended audience, according to the editor, is Christian women who stay home with their children, with a special emphasis on homeschooling mothers. The advice is particularly tailored to the needs of families…
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A Mom’s Ministry
By Allison Hull Recently I was in a discussion with an acquaintance. While our kids played, we hit the various “mom talking points”. Health, kids, their bodily functions, who gets the least amount of sleep, and guess-what-that-stain-is all the while being interrupted by a scream from a child or barking at them to stop whatever torture they were inflicting on a sibling. If you’re a mom to young children, you know this is just an average conversation. But towards the end it turned weird. She started asking me about my faith and what I was doing to further the kingdom. Caught off guard I half-smiled, turned and gestured to my…
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Conversation and Consolation of the Brethren
By Vanessa Rasanen I have a confession. I’m not the most patient person. Shocker, I know. I get easily frustrated with others — including (and perhaps especially) with those closest to me, my husband and my children. Even my dogs. I let the day-to-day irritations of life get under my skin more than I should, and I yell, fume, and even — sadly — stomp my feet. To make it all worse I will sometimes vent to friends, privately complaining about the mess the kids made, the struggle we’re having with the kids’ manners, or even the annoying habit of some stranger on the road or at the grocery store. My…
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Help Support the Stephens Family and Lutherans in Africa
Lutherans in Africa (LIA) is an organization which trains and educates Lutheran pastors in Africa, providing confessional Lutheran materials in the languages of the people so they can have access to wonderful resources such as hymnals, The Book of Concord, Luther’s Small Catechism, and more. The Lutheran church in Africa is growing so rapidly that in many cases one pastor serves 12 parishes and these pastors desire more training than they have received. Recently, LIA purchased a plot of land to build a seminary on to better serve these needs. Jason Stephens and his family learned about the work to build the seminary and soon realized he had the skills and…
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How Do I Handle My Guilt Over Choosing Public Schools?
By Mary Abrahamson “Dear Sisters of Katie Luther, We have made the difficult choice of having our children in public school rather than the local Lutheran school. Though we catechize regularly in our home, we feel inundated with warnings not to trust our children to secular teaching. Despite all the time, energy, and prayer we put into this decision, I am still wracked with incredible guilt. Help?” Dear sister, my most basic answer for almost any maternal guilt is this: think long term. Your primary vocation is to educate your children unto Salvation. This does not happen overnight, nor is there any one way that is more sanctified than others. There are…
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On This Veteran’s Day
By Ellie Corrow The Christian can walk a very dangerous pilgrim road, riddled with doubt, fear, complacency, and temptation that can easily lead a defenseless sheep astray. Our Lord did not desire that His sheep would be without defenders of their souls, so He gave to His church pastors who would feed His sheep His very body and blood, comfort and admonish them with His Word, direct them on the correct path, and defend them from Evil One with the keys to the Kingdom. Indeed, though the road seems perilous, Christ Himself intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father. He cares about our protection, and the security…
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Raising Our Daughters (and Sons) To Just Be
By Vanessa Rasanen Never, in all my years of growing up, did I doubt I would get married and have children. It was a given. It was part of my dream, my goals, my plan. Despite my liberal and feminist upbringing — which emphasized career over “just” being a housewife — I wanted a family and I wanted to stay home to care for that family. And no matter what it took, I was going to have it. And I do. I have three wonderful children, an amazing husband, two sweet dogs. I have a home filled with love and laughter, joy and hilarity. And though I’m no longer home…
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Call Week
By Holly Scheer This is “Call Week” for the LCMS. This is the week when Vicarage placements, Deaconess assignments, and first Calls for seminarians are issued. The services started Monday night and continue through the week. You can view them in real time or check out the lists after the fact — here and here. For anyone unfamiliar with the gravity of this week, here’s a bit of background. Most of the pastors and deaconesses in our Synod, after completing their bachelor’s degree, are trained at one of two seminaries — Ft. Wayne and St. Louis. This involves uprooting the family and moving. That’s move number one. After their second year of study,…
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Blocking Out the World
By Vanessa Rasanen The world sucks. Now, this is pessimistic and a bit debbie-downer-esque of me, but some days this is the thought running through my head – a thought I can’t seem to shake. I read story after story of evil and sin, tragedy and heartbreak. Babies being murdered every day. People fighting to dehumanize those babies. Children being hurt and killed. Women being sold into slavery. So many people dying, starving and suffering. Every day there’s another new story or two that has me with one breath cursing the world and all the evil within it, and with the next breath praying for Christ to return so it can all……
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Navigating Vocational Conflicts
By Vanessa Rasanen Most of us — perhaps all of us — serve in multiple roles and vocations. We are not merely neighbors, but rather we are neighbor to a varied group of people — our parents, our siblings, our friends, our spouse, our children, our friends’ children, our coworkers, our customers, our congregation and our community. We serve each differently — in different ways and with different skills. How we serve our spouse should be quite a bit different from how we serve our customer. I should hope so, anyway. As if it wasn’t perhaps difficult enough to determine the best way to serve in each individual vocation, there may be…
