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Latte & Laundry Podcast
The Latte & Laundry Podcast was designed to provide my fellow sisters in Christ with encouragement and support for the beautiful and difficult journey of living out our vocations. The truth is that motherhood, marriage, and living out our feminine genius are incredibly hard endeavors. Yet, through the perseverance of pursuing all that is good, true and beautiful we are tenderly being transformed into vessels of God’s love, one tiny dish, meeting, or dirty diaper at a time. So, join me, Suzanne – homeschooling momma of 6 – every week as we journey together with a Mary & Martha mission towards “stilling our souls while moving our world!” Together, let’s…
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Loving the Hidden Enemy
Love your ENEMIES? I’ve often heard Luke 6:27-38 and brushed it off like, “Sure, sure Jesus, I’ve got you! I’ll love my enemies!” I have found it relatively easy to pray for and “love” those that I have deemed as enemies for years; tyrant leaders, the rude coffee barista, the loved one that betrayed, the colleague that ruled with harshness and fury, the relative that turned their back on us, or the CEO of a well known abortion provider. I was satisfied with my effort to pick up my cross, lift them in prayer, and stand with a posture of love. But what if I haven’t taken the time to…
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Selfishly Selfless
There is a door being slammed all around us. A door that the “take care of me” culture has slowly been using to keep IT out. They shove it in a closet, lock the door and throw away the key. What is IT that has become so hard to be an ever-part of our lives and homes? SELFLESSNESS. In fact, it is something I’ve seen take a back seat lately, and felt an explosion roaring up from the bottom of my soul. I’ve watched husbands, after 30 years of marriage, walk out with no plans of ever returning. I’ve witnessed mothers suddenly turn their hearts and time away from the…
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Inch by Inch
Some days are easier than others. We move about with a smoothness and ease that we can almost forget the difficulties of yesterday. In moments like these we can feel as though we can take on the world. Ten more loads of laundry? No problem. Need me to run 137 errands? No sweat. Double up my job responsibilities. Why not? Have five more kiddos? Sure, God BRING IT ON! Then there are days where simply getting through feels like rubbing your entire self against sandpaper. We feel the heavy weight of all there is left to be done and remaining on our never-ending checklists in the coming minutes, days, weeks…
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The Dangerous “D” word.
There are some words we use on a daily basis and toss around freely and carelessly in conversation without giving them any real intentional consideration. We frequently converse with such a cruising speed that we don’t put much thought into the 16,000 words that we speak on an average day. According to Wikipedia, some of the most commonly used words (other than the obvious small words such as “the”, “a”, and “is”) are “problem”, “have”, “want”, and “time”. Yet, there is one highly dangerous word that does not make the top 100 list, yet I have found myself not only hearing it but also saying it more and more over…
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You are the Best
Much of this message I wrote a year ago, yet it is so critical for my weak little heart that I needed to dive back into again this year. This message is a gentle reminder from our patient Lord, who never tires of reassuring a needy heart. “YOU ARE THE BEST” once just a plain sheet of old pink construction paper that has been carefully pruned and snipped by the dull edges of small scissors and eight-year-old hands. When I read these words that were strewn out in front of me on Mother’s Day last year, my heart skipped a beat. In a quiet room, I sat in bed sipping…
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Perfectly Mine
Okay, where are my fellow perfectionists at? The ones who feel an angst when your home isn’t clean enough, your kiddos aren’t behaving well enough, your marriage isn’t thriving enough, or your day wasn’t productive enough. “Be a better homemaker” you say. “Love them better” you cry. “Read more books on marriage” you conclude. “You better try harder and tomorrow you will get more done” you sigh. I’m not sure what drove this intense need to be perfect, but it was so incredibly consuming that there were days that it only left behind destruction in its wake. Sadly, competition was the driving force behind this need for perfection. Yet, the…
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“Because I Love You”
It is funny because I had already drafted up a blog post for this week. Being in the depths of our Lenten Series for our Latte and Laundry Podcast on Identity in Christ, I was inspired to do a write-up on who we are, which often includes debunking the lies of who we have falsely believed we are. I wanted to share with everyone the gift and beauty of realizing that first and foremost we are beloved children of God, known before we were even conceived, forgiven and redeemed by the price of His precious blood, and called to be light bearers of His ever-burning rays of love. But God…
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He Enters Through Our Cracks
Alright friends, I’m going to get pretty raw and real here. I had a soul stamping experience a few weeks ago that may be hard to articulate, explain or even resonate with. Yet I can feel the Lord literally pushing my fingers to type away, so here goes nothing: I was crumpled up in a ball on the kitchen floor. I felt like I had been run over by a big plow truck, which proceeded to throw itself in reverse and run right back over my pitiful little heart. My anxiety was high and my knees were weak. As I lay there feeling completely beaten down to my core, I…
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The New is Here!
Okay folks, here we are, it is 2021. I’m not sure about you but I was pretty confident that we weren’t going to make it out of 2020 unscathed. Sadly, it has been a hard year. People fell ill, financial struggles came roaring in, isolation became burdensome and we lost loved ones to that “darn Corona,” as my four year old daughter so frequently says. It has only been about a year, but it feels like a lifetime, as my almost two year old doesn’t know a world without face masks and buckets of hand sanitizer. When the enormity of this started last year, my heart found itself in a…
