Raising Real Men

I noticed an older journal of mine amongst the debris of an Eliza playtime around my bookshelf and sat down to leaf through it. Before the sickness and tiredness of pregnancy, in the days when I had time in abundance and thought I was ‘busy’,  my most focused and best devotional times were always when…
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Keith & Kristyn Getty are some of our favorite modern songwriters. Right up there with our son, Matt Henry Young (BTW, if you haven’t listened to this song of his, you need to!). They write songs of praise that aren’t merely choruses or full of mindless repetition, but instead are full of faith-building truth just like…
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We’re getting ready to fly out to California for the CHEA Bay Area Homeschool Convention this weekend. I’m still part time on crutches, but as I was thinking through the trip, I realized I’m not worried. See, we’re taking two of our teens with us and I know they’ll take great care of me. It’s…
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I know that God can, has, and will take care of us. I have seen the healing hand of God protecting and providing for us through every heartbeat, every breath, every moment, every day of the year. I know that God will be our strength, our fortress, our mighty rock – but do I believe it? My…
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Melanie has a recurring dream that she is back in college, final exams are approaching, and suddenly she realizes with horror that she’s been signed up for a class that she’s forgotten to attend all semester. Thankfully, that never actually happened to her, but that kind of panic feels pretty familiar sometimes. We’ve had a…
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When we were thinking about high school and preparing for college with our first, we were worried about academics, but now that we’re graduating our third, we’ve realized there are other things, sometimes even more important, that you need to pay attention to along the way. Teach your young adults to be responsibly independent. It’s…
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“I never ask my son to do housework! That’s a woman’s role, so the girls do that. He only does outside chores,” a friend once said. Uh oh! Melanie thought, I’m sunk. We didn’t have any girls back then, just a not-so-neat dad and a houseful of very active and thoroughly messy boys. Actually, though,…
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What does Raising Real Men have to do with abortion? Everything. Years ago we lived in a town with an abortion clinic and often stood outside offering to help the desperate women that came there. Although everyone had a different story, in many respects they boiled down to this: the baby’s father didn’t take responsibility….
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When we think about New Year’s, what comes to mind? Glitzy parties, fireworks, watching the ball drop, Auld Lang Syne, or perhaps if you love classical music, the Vienna Philharmonic playing The Redetsky March. Oh, and resolutions. I always liked the idea of starting new when I was younger, but I had an appallingly bad record…
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A reader asked: As a mother of 4 young boys, (oldest is 10), we have a lot of furniture, walls, toys, etc destroyed in their wake. Is this normal for boys??? I feel like I can’t have anything nice around. Dear Friend, I feel your pain! The frustrating part about raising girls is that they…
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