Singing familiar hymns and carols together during the Advent season can invite us into more regular rhythms of family worship throughout the rest of the year.

Losing a beloved pet can introduce death to our children earlier than we might like. But it also provides an opportunity to talk to our kids about the gospel.

It’s easy to think what we need to survive as mothers is that group of other moms in the trenches.

Mommy blogs and parenting sites offer advice about finding that ‘Mom Tribe,’ and you can download apps for meeting mom friends near you. You can join Facebook groups or follow Instagram tags of mothers with similar philosophies or life circumstances from the safety of your phone. With these dynamics, the shared experience of motherhood seems like the key to really belonging and understanding each other.

It started less than an hour after she was born. Still exhausted and overjoyed after delivery, when the long-awaited newborn daughter I cradled began rooting for her first meal, I fed her. Three years (and a baby brother) later, feeding these children remains my primary task in life.

When so much of my brain space is occupied with thoughts of my children’s meals, it’s no surprise that it comes up in conversation with fellow moms. A new friend at a playground exclaimed that watching my toddler son devour a hardboiled egg made her feel guilty about her kids’ chips...
I guess even I feel some guilt about feeding my family sometimes.

...if you can’t shake your longing for guilt-free eating, the gospel reminds us we are in good company. We’re all groaning for the redemption of our bodies at that marvelous feast, but we miss the mark when we assume food choices can provide us a bit of moral superiority on the way. It’s not that caring about food or farming is bad, or that God doesn’t care about it himself. It’s that dividing food into categories that signal our success as a parent, maybe thinking that a “clean” or “natural” menu is a way to uphold our virtue or that feeding our kids more vegetables than crackers can ease our guilt, can go too far...

The Christian life is not about what we’re putting in our mouths, but what has come out of God’s. Our food choices are of some value, but not eternal value; God’s word stands firm forever.
 

October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month and we at Risen Motherhood want to recognize all of you who have lost a child too soon. Below you'll find a selection of articles, posts, music and podcasts that we pray encourages a mom in the midst of grief. Just click on the links at the bottom of each quote to go to the original source.