PoLo_fomo

“Children are not a distraction from work. They are the most important work.”. C.S. Lewis.

[FrSteveGrunow @FrSteveGrunow]

This is a great reminder, and not just for the sinner, but especially for the righteous. The gracious possibility of redemption and restoration is actually the point and we should desire it for others as much as Christ desired it for us.

[Homeschool Connections TM @homeschoolcnnct]

Parents are the primary educators of their children. Not because they know everything, but because they love their children best and are the ones responsible for their formation.

[Homeschool Connections TM @homeschoolcnnct]

Clear, concise instructions reduce friction. Children often lose focus, not because they’re lazy, but because they are unclear about what to do next.

[Melissa the Hopeful🏠Homemaker @BiblicalBeauty]

In a recent forum, popular neuroscientist and health guru, Andrew Huberman, revealed his secret for falling asleep in those anxious mid-morning hours when he says you shouldn't believe any thought that fills your mind. He said, "I'm being completely direct with you when I say it's worked every single time."

Huberman: "What I do is I get out of bed, and I pray. And these days, you know, again, I'm just being completely direct with my practice, I just pray to God. I pray, I just ask Jesus, 'Would you please hold me and bring me some peace so I can rest, so I can be my best self tomorrow, so I can serve the world better. And I'm hurting right now, and I can't seem to do it for myself.'

He also referenced techniques for calming the body in this discussion, but he emphasized the relief he has found through prayer:

"It's a great time to pray. I'm serious, many a night, many a night, you will find me on my knees praying in the hours between 3 and 5:00 a.m. simply for peace, simply to get to morning without additional stress, simply just trying to listen for something other than my own anxious thoughts."

As a woman in her late 40s, I found it comforting to know that even big, strong health gurus know what it's like to struggle with sleep, but also to be reminded that ultimately it's the Lord who gives peace and rest to those who cast their anxious cares on Him. 💤

[Homeschool Connections TM @homeschoolcnnct]

If you want learning to stick, connect it to real life. Erosion on a hike. Measurements in the kitchen. History at a battlefield. Stories in family conversation.

[Dr. Arthur Brooks @arthurbrooks]

I give my students exercises in being more bored.

I assign them to work out without headphones and without devices. I tell them to get on a train, put their hands in their lap, turn off their iPhone, and look out the window.

There’s a reason you have some of your best ideas in the shower: your phone isn’t in there. Your mind has a chance to wander.

The problem is that we’ve become very good at distracting ourselves from that state.

You’re sitting at a red light and it’s going on too long, so you pull out your phone. You’re in a supermarket checkout line and it’s moving slowly, so you pull out your phone. Even picking up a book can become another way of filling the space.

At some point, all of that input starts distracting us from the hard work of thinking about ideas.

Don’t always distract yourself.

You need more white space in your life. You need a flight where you sit and think and pray and let your mind wander. You need moments when nothing else is coming in.

That kind of space is really important cognitively, especially if you want to understand the bigger questions and the meaning of your life.

[L. David Fairchild @David_Fairchild]

This is very personal for me to share.

My biological mother was a stripper working at a club in downtown Seattle. My biological father was one of her clients. She became pregnant with me while struggling with addiction and used drugs throughout her pregnancy. When I was born, I was immediately taken to the ICU to detox and was eventually placed for adoption.

By God’s grace, I was adopted by two wonderful parents who loved me deeply. I was four months old when they picked me up from the orphanage, and they are the only parents I’ve ever known. I never grew up feeling like something was missing. I never felt some deep longing to find my biological parents. I had a mom and dad who loved me, cared for me, sacrificed for me, and gave me a wonderful home.

Years later, after I got married and we had our first child, my wife encouraged me to learn more about my biological history. If for no other reason, she thought it might be good for the sake of our daughter to know whether there was anything medically or genetically significant in my family history.

So I eventually submitted my DNA to Ancestry. Through that, I discovered a half brother, aunts, cousins, and eventually was put in contact with my biological mother.

We were able to meet.

And when I met her, I got to tell her something I’d wanted to tell her for as long as I could remember: thank you.

Thank you for giving me life.

I got to tell her about the wonderful parents who adopted me. I got to tell her that I’d had a good life. I got to tell her about my wife and my children. I wanted her to know that the baby she carried in the middle of all that chaos became a man with a family, a calling, people he loves, people who love him, and a life for which he is profoundly grateful.

I’ve never been angry with her. Never. Not once.

For years I told my wife and children that if my biological mother ever found me, I knew exactly what I would say. I wouldn’t condemn her. I wouldn’t demand explanations. I’d simply thank her for allowing me to live.

Because without that decision, I wouldn’t have the extraordinary wife I have today. I wouldn’t know the indescribable joy of my children. I wouldn’t have experienced the friendships, ministry, laughter, sorrow, beauty, failures, victories, and ordinary moments that have made up my life. There are people I love who wouldn’t know me, children who wouldn’t exist, and a story that never would’ve been written.

She gave me the chance to live it.

We still stay in contact. We speak every few months, and I genuinely enjoy hearing her stories and learning about her life. Since the day I met her, I’ve prayed that the Lord would bring her to Himself. I still pray that.

I share all of this because lately I’ve been thinking a great deal about the choices parents make. About life and death. About how much hangs in the balance of decisions made in moments of fear, desperation, darkness, or confusion.

And yes, I’ve been thinking about those three little children whose lives were taken by the very person entrusted with protecting them. It’s difficult for me not to think about my own story alongside theirs. Their lives mattered. Their futures mattered. Everything they might’ve become, everyone they might’ve loved, every ordinary Tuesday morning and Christmas morning and wedding and child and friendship that might’ve filled the decades ahead of them mattered.

And it makes me profoundly grateful that my mother chose differently.

So if there’s a mother or father reading this who’s in a dark place and wondering whether your presence matters, whether your decisions matter, or whether the people who depend on you would somehow be better off without you, please hear me: your choices matter more than you can see from where you’re standing.

Choose life.

Don’t make an irreversible decision in the middle of a season that will pass. Don’t allow a moment of darkness to make a permanent decision about a future you can’t yet see.

Trust the Lord. Ask for help.

[FeelGoodThoughts @feelgoodtale]

I asked my mother a few days ago if, after almost sixty years of marriage, she was still in love with my father.
She looked at me for a moment, as if searching for words that don't fit into sentences. She didn't answer. She just smiled.
Later, when I got home, I found on my phone the answer that her silence had already conveyed:
“Sometimes you ask me if I’m still in love with him. I smile, not because the question is silly, but because the answer isn’t simple. How can I say yes—but not like before?”
It's no longer about butterflies in the stomach or fireworks. It's about roots.
Love, after so many years, is no longer a hurricane that sweeps you away. It's the firm ground that sustains you. It doesn't quicken your heart—it calms your soul. It doesn't make your hands tremble—it gives you the strength to raise them every day.
There are no more surprises, but there are rituals: coffee drunk at the same time, little arguments about towels, the blanket being pulled away when the other sneezes. They don't seem like big things... but they are.
Today, I don't expect grand gestures. I hope he notices when my back hurts, that he hugs me when I fall apart, that he doesn't leave me alone even when I don't know how to deal with myself.
Loving someone after a lifetime together isn't like in the books. It's like having a secret language that only we speak. It's understanding the weight of a tired gaze, the pause in silence, breathing at the same time.
So, yes. I'm still in love with him. But not with the initial charm. I'm in love with everything we've built. With the peace of knowing that, in any storm, he still is—and always will be—my refuge.

[Catholic Land Movement @CatholicLand]

A Catholic homestead of Northern Indiana.

“I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of the Creator.” ~St Basil

[Homeschool Connections TM @homeschoolcnnct]

Homeschooling becomes much easier when you stop trying to recreate a classroom. You don’t need separate lessons for every child all day long.
Teach history together.
Read aloud together.
Learn together.
Families have learned this way for centuries, and you can, too.

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Here's the cabin that Dolly Parton grew up in with 11 siblings. No electricity or water.

Dolly died worth $650+ million, after $500 million donated to charity!

This is America.

[Maureen Wittmann @maureenwittmann]

Perfection is too often the enemy of done.

[Homeschool Connections TM @homeschoolcnnct]

Comparison is the fastest way to lose your confidence. Don’t do it. Instead, stay focused on your unique children and how they learn best.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

After endless engineering calculations, the result is achieved

[Dr. Arthur Brooks @arthurbrooks]

The basis of a good romance is friendship.

The person you fall in love with should also be someone you genuinely like, respect, and want beside you for the long run. Beyond that, other things that matter are meeting through shared interests and values, and being careful with technology, which can sometimes feed anxiety and self-absorption instead of connection.

Romance requires the opposite of self-absorption. It requires looking outward and taking a genuine interest in another person.

[M.A. Franklin @FoundationDads]

A child who memorizes a psalm at age 7 might not understand it.

But at seventeen, in the middle of the night, when the world is pressing in and he doesn't know what to do, the words might surface at the precise moment he needs them. They will be there because you put them there.

This is the work of a parent. You are planting things for your children that might not bloom for a decade (or more). Scripture, poetry, the great speeches of greater men.

[Abbé Pierre Amar @abbeamar]

« L'univers m'embarrasse,
et je ne puis songer,
que cette horloge existe
et n'ait pas d'horloger » (Voltaire) #eclipse

[Cameron Riecker @riecker]

I’m Catholic.

I don’t pray to dead people.

I ask the living Saints in Heaven to pray for me.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Apparently, the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts has determined not to count letter grades toward its freshmen’s GPAs during their first semester, starting in 2027. The reason given is that this move will address the growing mental health crisis among young people. Nothing could be further from the truth. It will, in fact, exacerbate the crisis.

Across cultures, one can discern a common pattern in the initiation rituals of primal peoples. The elders of the tribe rip a young person from the comfort of his home during the night. He is then scarified or otherwise physically marked in some way—a tooth is knocked out or his face is cut—in order to impress upon him that life is difficult.

Then he is introduced to the lore and history of his people, and finally he is taken to the edge of the wilderness, given a few simple provisions, and told to make his way for an extended period of time.

The entire purpose of the exercise is to break him free from the dominance of his self-regarding feelings and to orient him to the achievement of objective goods.

Plato famously compared the soul to a horse-drawn chariot. The animals represent the passions, which provide energy for the vehicle, and the driver represents intelligence and refined moral consciousness. As long as the charioteer is in place, the chariot makes its way purposefully. But if the charioteer is kicked out, the horses will run amok.

Our “suicidally empathetic” culture, which consistently privileges feeling over objective value, has produced armies of dangerously uninitiated young people. In terms of Plato’s metaphor, it has given rise to lots and lots of chariots with no sense of direction, crashing into one another.

Electing not to count first-semester grades toward students’ GPAs in order to spare the delicate emotions of eighteen-year-olds is, spiritually speaking, about as dumb a move as a university could make.

[Catholic Arena @CatholicArena]

Mr. T is deep.