We all know that classic January 1st feeling. The “New Year, New Me” rush where we vow to completely overhaul our diets, our fitness, or our lifestyles. Especially as moms, we come from such a good-intentioned place - we want to be the absolute best version of ourselves so we can give our best to our children.

But we also know how frustrating it is when those massive changes don’t stick. You start making a few positive tweaks, and right on cue, a curveball hits. The kids get sick, someone loses a job, or the unexpected chaos of life completely derails your momentum.

Here is the truth we often ignore: whether you are trying to change your physical health or your screen time, it is never as simple as just “eating less and moving more” or “just putting the phone down.”

To create lasting change, you have to get down to the psychological and spiritual roots. You have to look at why we depend on certain habits for comfort or escape in the first place.

And right now, trying to manage your screen time in a world where everything is an app feels incredibly defeating. You log on only to see guilt-tripping videos reminding you of “how little time you have left with your kids,” which just breeds shame. Then, the internet tells you that to stop using one app, you need to download and pay for another app.

I’ve been there. When I first started trying to get a handle on my screen time while still trying to show up online as a writer, I felt so overwhelmed. I found myself spending hours online researching how to use a basic flip phone and trying to learn from other people’s digital detox journeys. The irony wasn’t lost on me: I was spending massive amounts of time online just trying to learn how to be offline.

I have a lot of deep-dive articles in the pipeline tackling the heavy psychological and spiritual roots of app addiction and digital boundaries. But while I work on those deeper pieces, I want to protect you from that exact online overwhelm.

Welcome to Motherhood Unplugged: a simple, weekly newsletter you can read or listen to in a few minutes or less.

The premise is straightforward: Technology was meant for us to use, and not to be used by.

We aren’t just about restricting one thing without romanticizing another. If you are going to put down your phone, you shouldn’t be left staring at a boring room or a mountain of chores. We want to minimize our digital usage while maximizing our real-life delight. We want to add friction to our digital lives, cultivate frivolity in our offline lives, and seek wisdom from God in every step.

With that, let’s get started with three small shifts you can try this week.

1. Add One Layer of Friction

Our phones are designed to be entirely frictionless. To break the cycle, you have to intentionally build speed bumps into your digital routine.

Pick just one layer of friction to implement today:

Use a hardware blocker: Tools like the Brick can physically lock you out of specific apps until you tap a physical device left in another room.

The App Purge: Delete your primary scrolling apps for a few days, forcing yourself to only check them on a laptop.

Deactivate for a week: Give yourself permission to go completely dark on social media from Monday to Friday.

When scrolling requires actual effort, your brain has time to pause and ask: “Do I actually want to look at this, or am I just bored?”

2. Schedule Your Scroll Time

In may sound counterintuitive, but often carry around an exhausting “all-or-nothing” pressure when it comes to…well everything. We think we have to be perfectly offline mothers who never look at a screen and never have our children look at a screen which only breeds guilt.

Let’s release the pressure of perfection this week. Instead of going full-send on not scrolling, simply schedule it for during a time where you don’t have to be “on” with other things. Maybe 15 minutes right after bed time or while walking on the treadmill. Knowing that a small, dedicated time block is waiting for you later completely changes your relationship with your phone during the day. It allows you to put the device down without the fear of missing out, freeing up your mental bandwidth to be fully present in the current season.

3. Focus On One Tactile, Offline Hobby

Now for the best part: filling the void with a little offline frivolity.

Find one offline hobby to focus on intentionally this week. It is even better if it involves a tactile, hands-on experience that makes it physically impossible to hold a phone at the same time:

Pick up a pair of knitting needles and make a few stitches if the kids are playing together nicely for once

Keep coloring on hand to do with your kids if you need to find something to do with them but also need a mental break

Open a book and pair it with your favorite drink for a deeper sensory experience

When your hands are busy creating, resting, or working with tangible things, the urge to check notifications may not subside but hopefully it can he a little quieter.

The Unplugged Challenge This Week

Don’t try to overhaul your entire life by tomorrow morning. Seek wisdom for just this week, picking one boundary and one offline joy from the list above.

Drop a comment below: Which layer of friction are you adding to your phone this week, and what tactile hobby are you choosing to look forward to instead?

See you next week, unplugged.

Love,

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*If you have been encouraged by this and want to support my journey as a writer and creator, here are 3 simple ways you can invest 🫶🏼:

* Donation: Drop a one-time donation through my Buy Me a Coffee link to directly support the time and resources that go into creating this gentle, faith-filled content.

* Grab My Digital Product: Access my Made for Mom Digital Resource Library for lifetime access to my complete guide of faith frameworks, whimsical parenting ideas, and family rhythms.

* Shop My Favorites: Check out my Amazon Storefront for my favorite tools, decor, and activities we use to build an intentional, cozy home life.

Your presence here is the greatest gift, and I am so deeply grateful to learn alongside you!

I am also a writer and creative who uses tech & social media to create as both a hobby and side hustle.

Trying to find that balance has not been easy, and I’m still not there, but I want to start sharing more in-depth about the things I’ve done and learned as I navigate being a Christian, wife, mom, and writer both on and offline.

Welcome to the digital minimalist mom journey 🫶🏼

Read more at bysarahsmith.com 💌

Welcome to the July edit of Magical Motherhood Monthly! This is a new, light-hearted listicle I’m so excited about. This month, I am curating little analog ways to reclaim and romanticize your time with low-cost, low-effort, screen-free ideas to help you step away from the digital noise, and actively make magic in ordinary days.

Whether you are looking for solo ways to fill your own cup or easy activities to do with your kids, these ideas are designed to help you lower your screen time and raise your creativity!

hobby ideas just for mom 🤗

🎨 Joy Journaling

If you’re anything like me, you probably hate tossing out the mountain of artwork that comes home from school or gets created on rainy afternoons. I love using those front-opening picture frame displays, but once they get full and it’s time to switch them out, what do you do?

Enter the Joy Journal. Take your kids’ old masterpieces down, cut out your favorite vibrant shapes or scribbles, and glue them into a blank notebook. Write a few little scrapbook notes next to them to capture the memory. It honors their creativity, clears the visual clutter, and gives you a beautiful, zero-guilt keepsake to flip through.

🧶 Mini-Knits

I have a few friends who have recently had babies (or have them on the way!), so I’ve been wanting to knit some handmade gifts. To skip the overwhelming pressure of knitting a massive baby blanket in the summer heat, I’m opting for monogrammed burp cloths instead.

Keep your yarn and needles in a small canvas pouch right by your favorite chair. They are quick to knit, highly portable, and you can finish them off by embroidering a sweet little monogram or patch. It’s a deeply thoughtful, low-stress baby shower gift you can chip away at while resting your eyes from the little screen.

🖍️ Monochrome Coloring Pages

You don’t need an expensive or complicated art setup to unwind. Grab a cheap, soothing monochrome coloring book and exactly one colored pencil or marker. By using a single color and varying your pressure to shade in the designated areas, you get a deeply relaxing, meditative activity for your hands with a gorgeous, high-contrast final result.

Low-prep, high-engagement activities to keep little hands busy inside.

🖌️ No-Mess Water Painting

A few weeks ago, I visited a Japanese peace garden attached to a WWII museum and spotted a Buddha Board (a specialized board you paint on with water that fades as it dries) in the gift shop. I thought it was such a genius idea for kids!

You can recreate this magic at home on a budget. Simply lay out some old flattened cardboard boxes on the floor then hand your kids a small bowl of water and a wet paintbrush, and let them paint mess-free designs!

Pro-Tip: On cooler mornings, you can take this exact same activity outside and let them “paint” the wooden fence or the concrete patio with water!

🌱 Windowsill Propagation

Don’t throw out your kitchen scraps just yet! Before your groceries go bad, turn your kitchen into a science lab. Take the cut bases of things like celery stalks, green onions, potatoes, or bell pepper seeds and pop them into small glass jars of water on a sunny windowsill.

Kids love checking the jars every morning to see if any new green shoots or roots have sprouted. If you don’t have veggie scraps on hand, you can do the exact same thing with clippings from your favorite houseplants!

💐 Grocery Store Flower Arranging

This is an absolute family-favorite activity in our house. On your next grocery run, let your kids pick out a few inexpensive bouquets (ask them what colors they think would look beautiful together!) and round it out with a filler like baby’s breath or extra greenery.

When you get home, put on some music, trim the stems, and work together to build tiny bouquets for their bedrooms or the dining table.

For Toddlers: If your little ones are too young for real stems and water, swap this for a trip to the dollar store! Let them pick out colorful faux blooms and a plastic vase. It’s a fantastic sensory learning activity they can do over and over again!

What’s making it into your July routine?

Do you have a favorite way to keep your hands busy and your phone tucked away during the summer months? I’d love to hear how you’re romanticizing these midsummer days in the comments below!

Love always,

Sarah

*If you have been encouraged by this and want to support my journey as a writer and creator, here are 3 simple ways you can

• Donation: Drop a one-time donation through my Buy Me a Coffee link to directly support the time and resources that go into creating this gentle, faith-filled content.

• Grab My Digital Product: Access my Made for Mom Digital Resource Library for lifetime access to my complete guide of faith frameworks, whimsical parenting ideas, and family rhythms.

• Shop My Favorites: Check out my Amazon Storefront for my favorite tools, decor, and activities we use to build an intentional, cozy home life.

Your presence here is the greatest gift, and I am so deeply grateful to learn alongside you!

If you have been online at all the past few weeks, you have no doubt seen that “90’s mom summer” is trending. I have seen sentiments and discourse all over the map from people (digitally) rolling their eyes at its ridiculousness to others fully embracing the romanticization of simpler times and how to bring that into the modern day. Heck, I even wrote an article here about how I took the trend to the next level and got a flip phone for a month to experiment with it over the summer.

Whatever you may feel about trends/movements online, it’s clear that modern-day moms seem to be yearning for their summers to feel less chaotic and more calm. And what is wrong with a little whimsy and nostalgia?

However, while I encourage everyone to take inspiration from online trends, adapt them to their lives, and leave what doesn’t work, why don’t we switch it up and create our own summer theme as moms?

Internet, I see your “90’s mom summer,” and I raise you my “Anne of Green Gables summer.”

I too long for simplicity and sentimentality, not just in my summer but in my motherhood. But I want to take it a little further back.

(I know Anne of Green Gables was written in 1905 but, hey, close enough lol!)

The Set Up

So what does it mean to have an “Anne of Green Gables summer”?

Well, sweet friend, I am so glad you asked.

I am drawing inspiration both from my own life and my favorite childhood book for this.

1. Write down summer patterns and preferences

   1. Are y’all traveling a lot? Do you spend a ton of time outdoors, or do you prefer to relax in the air conditioning? What rhythms are important to you and your family during this time? Notice the patterns of activity and rhythms and take note of that.

2. Draw from literary or cinematic inspiration

   1. Once you have found common themes in the activities you do and the rhythms you keep over the summer, see if you can find a book, movie, or concept that encompasses those patterns to provide a fun little aesthetic or theme to lean into for the summer! If you travel a lot, maybe your summer theme can draw inspiration from books like Around the World in 80 Days. If you find yourself at home more as a family, a Little Women summer might be your speed. The great thing about it is that you can make it YOURS, depending on which books, movies, or activities bring you and your children joy.

3. Embellish your current rhythms and activities with inspiration from your new theme

   1. Once you have a theme for your summer, you can find little ways to add flair to your activities. Forget trying to buy things or plan activities to have the “perfect” 90’s mom summer based on what you see online (that you and/or your kids may not enjoy) when you can instead make your own little trending summer theme.

The point is to have fun, be creative, take inspiration from what you can, and then make it your own!

How This Looks For My Family

While I was born in the nineties, I was 7 by the year 2000, so most of my summer memories, while probably still very 90’s-esque, actually occurred in the 2000s. And they were very magical! We did a lot of outdoor projects and play: chalk and basketball on the driveway, bubbles and pretend play outside, gardening, Blockbuster movie nights, public pool visits, and road trips.

While my family and I do some of those things naturally now, if I were to really try to lean into the full ’90s mom summer theme, my kids and I would be miserable.

It’s 90 degrees by 9 am where we are with 90% humidity. My girls inherited their father’s delicate, fair skin that no amount of sunscreen can protect from a burn, and no amount of bug spray can keep bugs away. My oldest literally just got over a staph infection on her ankle because she had so many bug bites that she scratched them and bacteria got in (which meant no pool or water submersion for 2 weeks). We don’t have a neighborhood pool. I get hot flashes just being in my house. Heck, even our dog has escaped out the front door only to do a lap and come running back in because it’s so hot! No kid wants to wear long sleeves just to go outside to play, and, honestly, by the time I lather everyone up with everything I need to go outside, no one wants to go anymore, and my arms are sore. We did all our nature-based outdoor activities in spring, so summer is more of a scavenger hunt for budget-friendly, air-conditioned activities at this point.

So what are we doing?

• Picnics! I love to turn our regular meals, like breakfast and lunch, into picnics with a YouTube ambiance video in the background; it makes staying inside way more fun and elevates the eating experience for my kids, encouraging them to eat. And can we forget Anne’s first picnic in Avonlea when she met Diana? That is one of my favorite parts of the book because it is so heartwarming!

• Pretend Play! As a mom of 2 girls, pretend play and dress-up are ever-present in my house lol (even pretend homeschool, as I am doing “trial homeschool” with my oldest; you can read more on that here). My oldest in particular has developed a wonderful imagination, so I try to encourage their dress up/tea parties/play cafe endeavors when possible. Pretend play has also encouraged independent play and the sisterly relationship between my daughters much more recently, so I am hoping they will be bosom friends forever and not just sisters haha. It reminds me of another favorite scene where Anne and the other Avonlea girls play “Elaine” and she drifts off in the canoe and has to be saved by Gilbert Blythe (the horror!).

• Pen and Paper everything! My girls may enjoy coloring, but their favorite activity is writing (well, the toddler scribbles, but it is VERY purposeful lol). My oldest has actually been helping me write my second children’s book and loves to steal my journals to write and illustrate her own stories, which she later retells to me. I don’t think there is anything more Anne-like than that! They also love to write notes and birthday cards, to the point that I even made them their own “mailboxes” to exchange them.

What’s Next

If you're feeling uninspired or scattered this summer because of boredom, busyness, or a lack of rhythm, I totally feel you. Or maybe you feel like you’re somehow failing because your summer as a mom feels less like the “playing outside with bubbles and chalk/catching fireflies/drinking from the hose" 90’s summer and more like the “endless cartoons and computer games and Cosmic brownies while waiting for your parents to get off work” kind of 90’s summer. If that is the case, I want to challenge you to draw inspiration from your own life and your family’s interests to create your own themed summer. Doing this for my family in this last week has been so helpful to me, as we had an extremely busy month, and all the plans I had for summer homeschool and my own personal curriculum have not gone as expected. Add to that the pressure I was putting on myself to have a present-and-perfect '90s mom summer, and I realized it was time for a creative reset. And from that, my Anne of Green Gables summer was born! If you do come up with your own theme to romanticize the rhythms of your current summer, please drop it in a comment or restack this and share it with me and others!

A Parting Word

One final word before we part, sweet friend. I want to firmly declare that I am not against the 90’s mom summer trend. In fact, out of everything that can be trending, I’m so glad that things like slow living/soft living/analog living/90’s nostalgia are what we see being popularized. Do you want to know why?

Because it is inspiring people to a slower, simpler way of life.

And I firmly believe that as people realize that the high-tech, fast-paced life that so many of us chased with promises to get more/do more/be more, they will see how empty that life is. But people can’t hear the echo of emptiness if things are moving too fast and loud in and around them.

But you know what? God often moves in the silence, in the stillness

Ps. 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God…”

Zech. 2:13: “Be still before the LORD, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.”

1 Samuel 12:16: “Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes.”

See a theme here?

So, sure, there will be tons of people and companies capitalizing on the 90’s mom trend and turning it into something performative or product-based.

But God can use anything for His glory, including but not limited to a social media trend.

So if you are feeling judgmental of the trend or self-critical because of it, I encourage you to try to see it through this lens (and even have some fun with it!).

Take what works and leave the rest :)

Until next time, you beautiful kindred spirits!

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. This resource includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming.

My goal for the future is to create more long-form videos, but since I don’t currently have the bandwidth for that, I hope to build genuine connections in my digital community through audio and video alongside the written word. Because of that, I have started a short audio essay series in which I will read my past and current personal Substack essays for those who are not familiar with Substack or prefer an audio-based experience.

Today, we are diving into my 6/12/26 article, where I’m opening up about a hard confession: I think I am addicted to my phone. We will be talking about what helped me come to that realization and what I want to do about it next.

As I enter a slower summer season with my kids, I’m stepping away from the video screens to protect my time with my family, but I still want to encourage you and yours. So pour your favorite beverage, leave the apps behind for a few minutes, and listen in. Let’s learn how to make our faith feel more sacred, our life feel slower, our wellness feel softer, and our motherhood feel completely savored. I am so glad you are here!

Since January, I’ve been trying to live a more analog life as an experiment (see here for my original post on that) after seeing “analog living" trending on social media and approaching it with a very cynical skepticism (I write more on my heart change towards that here).

At that time, I was coming off an intense yearlong content-creation journey. What started as my wanting to replace content consumption with content creation and keep my dusty marketing resume up to date as a stay-at-home mom turned into a borderline obsession with analytics, growth, and monetizing everything to justify the time I spent online. It was a slippery slope, albeit a little slow.

So when analog living came across my feeds, I was intrigued. I loved what I saw and knew it was worth trending, but I also knew how things could be chopped and stitched together to create a false narrative of a certain lifestyle on short-form content platforms, so I was skeptical about how authentically the people I saw on Instagram and TikTok were actually living. Then God did a big heart check on me, and I decided to just try to live more analog myself.

So, Christmas 2025, I took a break from constant posting online as much and trying to 1) turn my phone back into more of a tool and 2) build a life I love offline.

And while I always generally posted about living intentionally, this is where true Intentional Motherhood was born for me.

I honestly didn’t know how addicted to social media and my phone I was, and the last 6 months have been a very slow and rocky road in detangling myself from the grip of my addiction while also replacing it with things that bring me joy in my offline life (something I do want to write more in depth on soon).

I feel like I have hit a limit last week, though, where the things I was doing to decrease the noise and addiction just weren’t enough, so I fully deleted everything (more on that here).

And honestly, I feel like deleting everything last week and reaching that point of being plain FED UP with myself and the noise kick-started something in me.

I’ve been reading Digital Minimalism. I’ve been reading other people’s experiences with decreasing tech/social media use.

I GOT A FLIPPIN’ FLIP PHONE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Could this just be my new ADHD hyper fixation? Sure.

But I’ve stared at the little bright screen of my phone for so long, for so many years, and it feels like a mirror. And I don’t like what I see in its reflection.

So for the next month, I am trying to see how far I can push the boundaries of my developing digital detox. My loose plan is to reframe my phone in my mind as more of an iPad/landline that stays at home, and my flip phone is my travel phone. When I think back to how my parents used cell phones when I was in middle school, this was it. We had a home computer in the living room, a landline, and then my parents had simple phones for calling and texting. It worked for them, so why not try it on for size? That sounds like a legitimate 90’s summer to me, don’t you think?

I still rely on my phone for synced calendars and lists with my husband as well as features and communications from my gym, church, and kids’ preschool. I use Siri heavily to add reminders to my lists and the Notes app to log ideas and information. I know I can use paper and pen, but how much does that actually make sense for my particular situation of being an ADHD mom of 2 sweet girls who love to confiscate any journal or notepad I have to write and make art?

I think that is a balance we all have to find and make for ourselves and our families. While I try to tell my kids what I’m using my phone for in the moment (“Mommy is trying to text Daddy about dinner plans/Mommy is looking up if the play place is open,” etc.), they still see my face on the phone.

On the other hand, I’ve noticed that even with the increased separation from my phone, there is always something my kids see me doing instead of giving them my full attention, whether it’s laundry, dishes, packing for us to go somewhere, or getting their sibling a snack. Even when I am giving them my undivided attention and uninterrupted eye contact, it can sometimes feel like it’s not enough, even as I am actually being as present as Iong as I can be before life has to be for as long as I can do the next thing. So, how can I teach that time spent together with intention does not always equate to constant, undivided attention?

I don’t have the answers, but I am enjoying the process of figuring it out! These were not things I was necessarily pondering 6 months ago.

Please also note this, sweet friend: I am sharing my journey. I am not advocating for anyone to get a flip phone, delete social media, or anything like that. I’ve been inspired by others’ journeys, and if I can inspire anyone to be more intentional and biblical in their motherhood, that’s all I hope to achieve. My addiction to my phone and social media has also been extreme, and so I am taking more extreme measures for myself with the hopes of determining a more moderate, sustainable, long-term approach as I not only handle things on a surface level but also on a soul level.

We have been so conditioned that this is just how the world is, that it is impossible not to have smartphones or social media. That’s what I have told myself. But I am starting to wonder if I’m using “impossible” and “inconvenient” interchangeably. There are people who need tech and platforms for their jobs or for accessibility. I am not one of those people. I have also started to notice just how much we are trying to bring God online instead of bringing people offline to talk about God (myself included).

These are all questions I am mulling over now that I am finally gaining the bandwidth to do so. I also want to document my experience because, in my search to hear other people’s stories, I haven’t heard from many who are moms.

Thank you for being on this journey towards intentional motherhood with me. I am so appreciative of everyone who reads, connects with me, encourages me, and advises me.

I leave you with this question, sweet friend: what is one thing you have done or can do this week to be more intentional with either making your phone into a tool again or creating a life you love offline?

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. This resource includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming.

Hi, I am Sarah, and I’m an addict.

At least, that’s how I need to start treating it.

I am not generally an extremist about much; “everything in moderation” is a favorite motto of mine as someone with an addictive personality and low impulse control. But I have always been able to have just enough control of things so my life isn’t completely falling apart. In my teens and twenties, it was alcohol and attention. In my 30’s, I guess it’s virality and validation.

But a functioning addiction is still an addiction, no matter how socially acceptable it is.

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We have seen this with “mommy wine” culture (something I also fell victim to in the midst of my worst motherhood burnout). More and more people have been calling out the dangers of normalizing things like “mommy just needs her juice” commentary and sneaking alcohol to kids’ sporting events or birthday parties. While I love a good glass of wine, this social callout was convicting to me a few years ago.

But what about our phones? Mommy’s not sipping her glass of wine on the toilet or holding it in one hand while driving to school drop off with the other.

And, sweet friend, I know it is SO much more deeply nuanced than what I am presenting. Please know that my job is not to convict; that is God’s domain, and praise Him for that! As someone who has struggled with social media and alcohol, this commentary is aimed at myself as I wrestle with my own shortcomings and work to determine what my own personal boundaries need to be. What I am finding myself asking, though, is this:

Navigating The Normalization of Digital Narcotics

Both are not only more socially prevalent but also socially acceptable than, say, cocaine. Both allow you to have some performative level of functionality if you’re careful enough.

With digital addiction, you also have people with entire platforms (myself included) dedicated to how not addicted they are or how not addicted they are trying to be. The irony isn’t lost on me.

I wasn’t even planning on posting this article this week, but things came to a head yesterday when I was feeling so mentally burnt out, and while trying to get things done, I just felt bombarded. My nerves were fried from constantly regulating myself and my kids, as yesterday we all were more dysregulated than usual. I finally got some time to myself in the evening to catch up on some family administrative things, and as someone with ADHD married to someone with ADHD, my iPhone is a very helpful tool in home/family management, not only as an individual but as a couple. I have tried to switch to physical resources like notebooks and planners, but having MORE stuff to keep up with instead of one all-in-one tool has been crippling and unproductive. However, when the one thing that is my helpful tool is almost the most hindering tyrant, the dynamic feels so incredibly toxic. As I was navigating my to-do list, I became so keenly aware that every step of the process was hit with an ad for this, an AI for that, and distractions galore. It was so loud in my head that it felt like physical torture.

So I did what I usually do when this happens: I went to deactivate everything.

Since January, I’ve been in a constant cycle of deactivating social media for a stint for the sake of a break. Like any struggle against active addiction, it’s almost never a clean and easy break. In my efforts towards a more intentional, Christ-centered motherhood while also being a writer and creative, it’s been a battle finding what the “right level” of my particular poison I can have in my life. I mean, I’m a millennial who grew up being a part of the first wave of social media users. My whole career background started in social media marketing. How do you quit something that is not only so ingrained in you but also in everything around you and designed to entrap you?

You can’t even simply delete profiles anymore. You have the option to deactivate and always return (very useful but also a slippery slope). You can delete your profiles, but you now also have 30 days to recover from deletion before it’s permanent by simply logging back in ( your account, at least, from what I’ve seen on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok).

That’s like if I moved all my alcohol from an inside fridge to a garage fridge. Sure, it’s a little inconvenient, but it’s still accessible.

So What Next?

I don’t know. I don’t think we will ever have a solution this side of heaven.

If you’re reading this and you want to be offline more but are basically finding it impossible, trust me, I feel you.

I’ve looked like a crazy person, constantly reactivating and deactivating my social media accounts.

Every time I try to delete, I get sucked into the “what abouts”:

•What about all the branding and content work I poured into my pages?

•What about all the posts and memories? I mean, I’ve had all the pages since high school/college!

•What about my HOA group, local events, and grandparents in another state?

Again, I don’t have the answer. I think the best that I can do, and maybe that we all can do, is continue to prayerfully seek wisdom on social and digital usage as it pertains to the glory of God and the betterment of others in and through our lives.

I currently have my social media pages deleted, and in 30 days, they will be permanently removed from my access, so long as I don’t log back in. Chat GPT is gone. Pinterest is no more.

I don’t know if I’m going to go through with it for real this time, but honestly, I’m really hoping I can, at least for a significant amount of time. I have a lot of counseling I honestly need to do and creativity I want to tap into, and both of those scenes are extremely hard to do when you are inundated with a million voices every day. I have already backed up all my photos and exported data, so what am I really going to lose that is worth time, peace, and mental space? I can always start over. And in an age where everyone is posting content and sharing thoughts, how important is it, actually, for me to post as if content creation were my job? I would love to get paid for writing and content creation, but is it worth it for me to join the grinding masses to try and build something that may never take off? Last year, I would have said yes. But this year, I’m answering no.

Nothing is set in stone. Things can change for me and for you depending on where we are at spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and relationally. Regarding myself, I’m not sure if “moderation” is in the cards for me in this season.

For now, I’m gonna leave you (and myself) the same parting wisdom that we receive at the end of alcohol commercials:

Enjoy Responsibly.

Love,

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*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. This resource includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming.

I used to love learning.

As I am sure a lot of my Substack peers can relate, my favorite Disney princess growing up was Belle (we both had brown hair and loved reading, so it just made sense, obviously!), I stayed up way too late reading books, and I spent HOURS building out character profiles and plots for the million story ideas I had in stacks of journals.

I gathered bits of trivia and knowledge from things I read, fiction and non-fiction alike, and a lot of my vocabulary was built on learning about the meaning of words through context clues in stories vs. classroom learning.

As I got older, though, reading became something I HAD to do for school, in subjects I deemed uninteresting, and in volumes that felt overwhelming. Tragically, my declining interest and ability in leisure reading coincided with the rising availability and prevalence of technology and social media, until not only was my love of reading replaced, but my desire to write and learn was snuffed out as well.

But as my oldest has finished kindergarten this last week and I see how hungry she is to continue learning, paired with my desire to eventually homeschool, I have noticed the fire of learning being rekindled in my own spirit. Not only do I want her to love learning, but I want to learn alongside her and my youngest and let them see me love learning. It’s so sweet how our kids can inspire the child within us!

So, I made myself a mom syllabus!

The Set Up

Quick side note: I love aesthetically pleasing, beautifully organized things. However, this workbook is not one of them. The binder is cute, and that is about it lol. I love having things that are pretty and purposeful, but my goal is to always showcase what's realistic for my journey as a mom.)

As this is just the beginning of what I hope will be an evolving journey, I have kept it simple. Over the last few weeks, I made a list of things I want to research or practice (things that would normally keep me on my phone for chunks of time and divide my attention) and grouped them into “subjects”. I also made it as low-stakes as I could by printing things out or putting them into binder sleeves. I have tried to knit with my kids around or read a physical book, but my yarn got tangled beyond repair when my oldest tried to help me knit, and my toddler likes to aggressively turn pages or YEET my books at her sister, so printed paper articles or worksheets are a safer bet for the time being lol.

The Subjects

To prevent myself from cramming my binder with anything and everything that has ever interested me, I thought up the “subjects” I wanted to go deeper into and organized my interests into said subjects. It was easier to do as well because I had just done the same for my oldest when thinking of what areas I wanted to focus on with her over the summer and I plan on doing the same in a week or two with my youngest as we find a good summer rhythm!

My June personal curriculum subjects are as follows:

Bible class (theology/apologetics)

Math

Science

English

Elective

Bible Class

For this section, I wanted to go deeper into theology and apologetics. When I was homeschooled, my mom had me go through some apologetics books, and I definitely didn’t appreciate it as much as I would now! With my oldest making the decision to follow Jesus this year, it seemed like an appropriate time to learn how to “always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15)”. And what better way to do that than to include some reading from Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ?

I also included some Bible verse coloring pages to weave in my hobby of coloring but with verses I am trying to memorize!

Math/Science

This section was a little bit harder as I am trying to put things in the binder that doesn’t require a lot of supplies or focused attention. Because of that, I’m starting with a “Cooking from Scratch for Moms” article and a deep dive into sustainable gardening. While not technically math/science in terms of how it academics, they are both things I want to venture into in the future. And it is kind of funny how much learning happens when doing daily activities like measuring ingredients for a recipe or figuring out the best way to nourish the soil in our garden beds. This mindset shift takes things from being just facts and turns them into experience and one thing my parents always taught me is that knowledge + experience = wisdom. Now how is that for math?

English

This section is where I am really letting my inner writer come out to play. I’ve incorporated some creative writing prompts to keep my gears turning on days when writing inspiration is low, specifically to help me finally get the pages of my second children’s book out of my head and onto paper. I also saving it as a place to print out articles from my favorite Substack writer! There is something so much more intentional about reading their words on a physical page rather than scrolling through them on a screen while hiding in the closet for a five-minute break lol!

Elective

Last but certainly not least, I included some watercolor workbook pages for my “art” elective this month. I recently got a “on the go” water color kit and I wanted a way to practice being creative that didn’t feel high pressure.Since they’re just printed pages in my binder, I can do this at a time when I break out the paints for my own kids or even just for a 10 minute creative burst at quiet time!

A Gentle Encouragement

I am so excited to see how this little binder evolves over the coming weeks. The whole point of this project isn’t to create a perfect, rigid curriculum for myself, but to have something actually tangible that is ready for those little “nooks and crannies” of the day.

As my kids and I do “trial homeschool” this summer, I hope this binder ensures that when my girls see me, they see a mother who is learning right alongside them.

It may seem incredibly simple, but that is entirely by design. If a page gets ripped, crumpled, or covered in stray crayon marks from an enthusiastic toddler, it doesn’t matter. It is a low-stakes, high-reward tool that lets me step away from the glowing screen of my phone and reclaim a bit of my own mental space.

If you are a mom who feels like there is never enough time in the day to pursue your own hobbies and interests outside of caring for your family, I want to encourage you to try this! I hope it can feel like a way to give yourself permission to pour into yourself mentally and spiritually all while remaining present with your kids.

Sometimes motherhood can feel both incredibly overwhelming and painfully understimualting. I wish I had thought about something like this in my early days of motherhood.

It turns out, we don’t have to choose between nourishing our children’s minds and nourishing our own.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in doing, please send to a mom friend and make a night of creating your mom syllabus binders together! And be sure to let me know what you would put in yours!

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. This resource includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming.

Hi, I’m Sarah, and I’m an aspiring homeschool mom.

I know, that’s kind of a weird introduction.

You see, my whole story up to this point has essentially been a narrative of getting engaged, and then watching my life fall apart. At least, that is how it felt at the time. I share more of that backstory here, but since making the decision to follow Jesus in 2016 and becoming a mom in 2020, God has been beautifully rebuilding my life after a heavy period of burnout, placing Himself right at the center of it all.

The desire to homeschool has actually been tugging at my heart since my oldest was around two years old. (She is soon to be six and finishing kindergarten this week, which is an absolute “eek!” moment for me.) However, I never felt confident enough to actually do it. For most of my motherhood journey up to this point, I have just been trying to survive. Whenever I did attempt any kind of organized learning activity, it usually ended with both of us feeling incredibly frustrated. Back then, she seemed to do best with guided learning in a social setting, like her Mother’s Day Out program or Sunday school.

So, when it came time for kindergarten, we found a wonderful charter school that taught a structured, classical curriculum. Many of our friends with older kids attended, and it felt like the right move.

Honestly, I never thought I would be the person to seriously consider homeschooling. Even though I enjoyed my own time being homeschooled as a kid, I distinctly remember feeling a lot of resistance toward it because I was a preteen and felt like it wasn’t my choice. In retrospect, though, I had a lot of fun, received a great education, and made wonderful friends—one of whom is still my best friend to this day.

Initially, my desire to homeschool stemmed from a rigid belief that it was just something “good Christian moms” did. I assumed that if God ever brought us to that choice, it would be way further down the road. My oldest also has some sleep issues that we are still trying to get to the bottom of. It has gotten much better over the last year and a half, but in the beginning, the decision to put her in full-time school for kindergarten was heavily built upon the fact that I was still in such a delicate place mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

She also has a summer birthday. While we could have held her back and delayed her entrance into school, we thought kindergarten would be a good way to see how she handled the environment, and to discover if she needed any extra academic support, especially since both my husband and I have ADHD and my husband has dyslexia.

With so many of our friends at this particular charter school, combined with its structure and classical framework, it felt like a truly safe place for her first official year of school.

Reflecting on the Kindergarten Year

As we wrap up her last week of school with a celebration, I have been reflecting deeply on what went well this past year and what I would change if given the choice. Preparing our summer rhythms has me thinking about how far she has come, how far I have come, and how far my youngest has come. It has me dreaming about what it could look like to pursue homeschooling, not just for my oldest, but as a family lifestyle.

There is so much we enjoyed about this year. My oldest has developed a genuine love for learning, and her school was a wonderful incubator for that. She thrived in the structure, and I loved that it was completely screen-free. Between the classical curriculum and the expectations for discipline and conduct, she really rose to the occasion. Her teachers constantly praised her for being a kind friend and for always doing her best, even when she was struggling or feeling a little scared. It was incredibly sweet to see that, despite having 27 kids and two teachers in her class, she developed a good bond with both of them. The friendships she made were beautiful, and I even got to become friends with one of the other moms in her class.

The school shared many of the foundational values we hold as a family. While it isn’t a Christian school, their emphasis on character, discipline, and camaraderie meant the world to us. We care about so much more than just academic success.

The Hidden Hard Parts

At the same time, this year highlighted some major struggles for me, which became glaringly clear when I compared this year to the one before. The previous year, I had my oldest home with me, my youngest was in her first year of life, and the three of us had a beautiful, solid daily rhythm.

Looking back, I realize I just really missed my oldest. She was five when the school year started, and my youngest was a year and a half. This past year, it felt like we were constantly juggling conflicting rhythms between drop-offs, pick-ups, and the toddler’s nap time. We were desperately trying to squeeze in family time between the moment she got home and her bedtime. Because she worked so hard during the school day, she was going to bed much earlier as well. I missed her presence, and honestly, my youngest was much more restless without her big sister around. For some reason, when my oldest was at school, having one child felt like having two. When she was home, having both of them felt somehow easier.

I also struggled with the disconnect of not knowing exactly what was happening in her day. She would tell me snippets, but because she was so young, she had a hard time articulating the details. Sometimes I would talk to her teacher and realize my daughter had completely misunderstood an event from the week prior. It was hard not being a part of it. I would see pictures here and there, but I wasn’t *there*. At Mother’s Day Out, the hours were short and the communication was constant, which makes sense for preschool. But for someone as sentimental and sensitive as I am, it felt like she had this entire alternative life that I wasn’t a part of, and I didn’t handle that well lol.

Finding connection at the school was tough, too. I couldn’t volunteer the way I wanted to because I had a toddler who was no longer a portable baby. On top of that, my oldest didn’t even want me to visit for lunch or volunteer because it made her too sad to see me and not be able to go home with me. I loved her emotional awareness, but it absolutely gutted me.

I tried to use that time to take my youngest to mom’s groups and playdates, but it was an unexpected chance. I was trying to connect with moms but many had older kids to manage, or families with multiple kids who were heavily involved in extracurriculars and so were on different schedules. When I did find Bible studies that allowed children but didn’t provide childcare, my youngest, who is very sweet but also stubborn and sensory-seeking, would wander off to do her own thing. It ended up being more stressful than life-giving. I thought having my oldest in school would give me more time to connect and be a part of things, but it didn’t turn out that way.

And then, there were the car lines. I simply cannot do the car lines 😂. Her school manages them better than most, but the back-and-forth, combined with a toddler who hated being in the car for most of the year, was utterly overwhelming. By the time we got home, everyone was overstimulated and deregulated. It took an hour just to come down from the stress of the commute, and by then, it was practically bedtime. Those afternoon hours took so much more out of me than a regular day with both kids at home.

The Gift of the Past Year

Through it all, there was a beautiful silver lining: I got to enjoy so much focused time with my youngest. When I was pregnant with her, I felt immense guilt that I wouldn’t be able to give her the same one-on-one quality time I gave her sister. This year was a sweet remedy for that. I got to watch her grow, explore, and unfold her little personality.

It was also a season where I was given the grace to heal, be creative, and plug into this wonderful Substack community. Having that extra mental bandwidth because I wasn’t constantly regulating two children or mediating sisterly fights was a gift. When the youngest napped, I had more space to rest, pour into myself and my faith, and explore who I am in this current season. In many ways, this past year felt like the final step in the deep healing journey God started after my burnout eight years ago.

Now, I notice a shifting desire within myself. I want to have a direct hand not just in her education, but in her day-to-day life. She is in such a precious spot right now, possessing a fierce desire to learn and a fresh, tender faith in God. I want to steward that. I want to pour into it directly and watch her grow. She has a massive heart for helping, and she is becoming so wonderful at describing her feelings. While she truly loves her school and her friends, she has gently whispered to me that she would love to be home more, too.

As this chapter closes, I am holding both the gratitude for where we have been and the quiet excitement for where we might be going, trusting the One who is putting the pieces together 🫶🏼

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. This resource includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming.

Here I will be starting a little audio essay series. This will be a space where I read my personal Substack essays, honest reflections, and devotionals for those who are not familiar with Substack or just prefer an audible experience.

My goal for the future is to create more long-form videos, but since I don’t currently have the bandwidth for that, I hope to build genuine connections in my digital community through audio and video alongside the written word.

Today, we are taking it back to one of my first articles, where we will talk about navigating deep burnout, managing ADHD and PCOS in motherhood, and the intersection of faith and mental health.

As I enter a slower summer season with my kids, I’m stepping away from the video screens to protect my time with my family, but I still want to encourage yours. So pour a cup of tea, leave the apps behind for a few minutes, and listen in. Let’s learn how to make our faith feel more sacred, our life feel slower, our wellness feel softer, and our motherhood feel completely savored. Pull up a chair; I’m so glad you’re here.

I started this year with an Analog Living experiment, and it’s evolved into more of a lifestyle now.

If you’re new here, I wrote an article on how I initially was an analog living trend skeptic but decided to lean into it by trying to 1) turn my phone back into a tool instead of a digital tyrant monopolizing my life and 2) build a life I loved so much OFFLINE that I didn’t feel the need to be ONLINE as much.

I was doing monthly updates, but now this experiment has become my current life journey of living intentionally and whimsically in a way that glorifies God!

At the start of my Analog Living experiment, I tried to actually have analog versions of the things I did on my phone (camera, books, planner, journals). While some things stuck (I have a magnetized note pad on my fridge now for jotting down quick thoughts or reminders and journals for different types of brain dumps), I found that for home and family management, it was crippling for me and my ADHD to have everything decentralized.

So if you are in the same boat, you’re not alone, sweet friend.

Here are 10 things you can do on your phone to make motherhood better that aren’t doomscrolling:

1. Show old pictures and videos OF your kids TO your kids! My kids love doing this, and it’s so sweet to relive those memories with them and explain why you love the memory so much.

2. FaceTime a long-distance friend or family member, or have long-distance family members record videos of themselves reading books to your kids; this is a personal favorite of ours since we have lots of out-of-state/out-of-country family.

3. Find a website that can turn a picture of your kids into their own coloring pages, or bring their silly ideas and caricatures to life

4. Record voice memos to compile for them (I want to do this to later put in a stuffed animal for them!)

5. Create a list of local events you want to attend as a family (I do so much of this in the fall and winter for Fall Fest and Christmas parties, but it’s also good for finding garage/estate sales to hunt through together!)

6. Look up local open houses (my kids love to explore homes for sale and dream up which room would be theirs, and it’s actually helpful for my husband and I to get a feel of what sort of things we would want in a new home or ways we can switch up our current home)

7. Use Canva or Pinterest to make a collage or carousel of all your favorite things about being a mom!

8. Have you and your kids make a video to send to another friend to ask for a playdate (it’s a little more whimsical than sending a plain ol’ text!)

9. Build a personal curriculum! I am working on creating a workbook of things I can learn or do instead of being on my phone when I’m with my kids (article coming soon!)

10. Curate a playlist using input from your kids to play in the car or during certain activities (I have one called Daughter Dance Party on Spotify that my girls and I love to rock out to in the car, and it helps keep everyone happy without constantly switching songs lol).

None of these things is necessarily groundbreaking, and you probably already do some of them anyway.

But I want to use this list to help us reframe how we view our phones.

I’ve been using a lot of things to create friction between me and my phone:

But it is still a very helpful tool I rely on, and I often think that moms in the past would love to have some of the tools we have now. I’m working on building out a family management tool in Notion to better help me care for my family, and I often use vocal shortcuts with Siri to add items to lists, set reminders and timers, or add items to my calendar. I want to do whatever I can do to reduce mental load so I can create and connect with my kids and family more.

What sorts of ways do you use your phone for the betterment of your family? I’d love to know!

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. This resource includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming.

Hi sweet friends!

I have the smallest amount of free time to write right now (big thanks to my husband!), and I had this idea on my heart I wanted to share.

As a mom (and just an adult in general), I often feel frustrated that I have so many creative ideas and goals but never enough time to do it all. 8 hours of sleep, time with God/husband/kids, cooking good meals, being involved in family/church/community, working out, having hobbies, keeping the house clean, etc., etc. I have echoed this sentiment before and was met with many people who felt the same.

That is why I love a good habit stack! I am not the kind of person who has my hand in several things; I like to do a few things well. What I lack in breadth, I try to make up for in depth. So when I consider what I’m going to integrate into my life and where my time and energy go, I like to find things that can serve multiple goals or areas of my life instead of just one.

I love Substack for this reason: it has been a hobby that has fed my soul; it has brought friendship in a time when community was sparser; it has drawn me closer to God through its content; and so on.

So, for this little article, I wanted to offer a reframe for you to consider!

I’ve been really trying to pursue hobbies over the last 2 years so I could find things I like as an individual, and things to do with my husband, my kids, and as a family.

The world often pushes for moms to have hobbies as a means of self-care, which is important, yes, but I want to offer the reframe of hobbies as soul-care.

Lately, I've been trying to find ways to connect more with friends, church, and community, and to model that for my kids, while also making time to invest in the things I like after years of putting a little too much focus on being ‘mom’.

So I looked at what I was currently doing and how I could make my hobbies more relational.

I am currently loving knitting. I have made one or two things for my kids, but I have a few friends who are pregnant, so why not use that time to knit them a baby blanket?

I’ve been loving watercolor and letter writing (a hobby my oldest is developing alongside me!). Why not use the time together with my oldest when the toddler naps to paint watercolor cards that can be used to make birthday cards, thank-you cards, or encouraging notes for neighbors and friends?

I have been loving plants and growing zinnias; why not propagate some of my plants to give as small gifts, or use the zinnias as decor for our house instead of buying bouquets at the store and letting my kids make arrangements to drop off at a nursing home or give to neighbors?

These are all ideas I have had buzzing around in my mind for some time. It actually started with the zinnias! I knew a few months ago that, given how much my kids and I love flowers, it would be cheaper to grow some for our home, and what fun it would be to give them to others (but they are still growing, and I’m so impatient, haha).

This little reframe has made it so much sweeter to engage in hobbies. While it does feed my soul, having a purpose behind some of my hobbies (but not all) has made it easier to rest.

While some hobbies have more outward benefits, like Pilates for my physical health or listening to books and sermons while on a walk for my spiritual health, I have felt it harder to do other hobbies that turn my brain off because they feel frivolous. Reframing it as a means of soul care that brings me closer to Christ and community has been key to making room for what matters most.

While the world focuses more on pushing us to do what WE think best serves US, rooting things back in Jesus and reframing things through a biblical lens makes everything click so much more.

God had a perfect design for us and for the world. A perfect design for purposeful work and peaceful rest.

And the beautiful thing is this:

If you have found it hard to rest in your hobbies, what are some ways you can reframe them as a means of soul-care this week? I’d love to know!

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming. This resource is optional, offered with pay-what-you-want pricing starting at $10, and includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time.

I am like this fiddle leaf fig tree of mine

She was dying when I got her, too much passage of time

Her previous owner was done, she was just too much to do

So I uprooted her from her home, maybe the only one she knew

I rinsed off her roots of the soil she was in

Did she think I was starving her? That soil had sustained her til then

I cut away the rotting roots, did she feel any pain?

All I knew was that I just couldn’t leave her the same

I put her in a new home and even new soil too

Put she still didn’t thrive…so I did the hard thing to do

I sterilized my shears and cut her down bare

And I did it all because of the love that was there

Then I started to cry because I knew it was true

God had done the same to me because He knew He had to

When I first came to Him, I was just trying to survive

But He cared for me like this tree so I could flourish and thrive

He uprooted me from the comforts that felt like my home

He did it with care but I felt so alone!

He washed away everything that sustained me before

He cut and He cut til I said

“Lord, I can’t take this anymore!”

How much more can You take?

This was all a mistake!

Surely I hadn’t been all THAT bad,

Lord, did you not see all the leaves I’d had?? ”

And as He gently placed me in my new pot,

He said, “It was inside your soul that lay all the rot.

Man looks at the outside, but I see the heart.

And I did what I did so you can have a fresh start.”

Then I looked down and saw not a pot,

But grafted to Him was my actual new spot

Then He said “I am the vine and you are the branches,

Don’t you know that I AM a God of second chances?”

Suddenly I was filled with a love I never knew

So big it filled all the rotted holes anew

Where I once felt so empty, now I was made whole

Because my God is the gardener of my soul

💚🪴💚🪴

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming. This resource includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time 🫶🏼

As a younger millennial, I feel like it is well within my rights to call myself a pioneer of the social media space.

At 6 years old, I was bugging my uncles to let me chat with their friends on AOL (they are only 10 and 13 years older than me, so more like fun big brothers or cousins). At 12, I was spending hours on the family computer coding Myspace HTML backgrounds and fighting with my sister about whose turn it was to illegally download songs from Limewire to my iPod shuffle (sorry, Mom!). At 16, I made my debut on Facebook when status updates forced you to have the format of “Sarah is” so my statuses read something like “Sarah is ‘omg the new Twilight movie was soooooo good ;]]] team jacob 4 eva!’”. At 18, I fell into the black hole of Pinterest scrolling, which was a severe distraction from my college studies, and Instagram was a place where 5 likes on a picture of my froyo with a Valencia filter was “going viral”. At 21, I entered the workforce and was deemed the “social media coordinator” because I was the youngest in the office, and the rest was history.

Needless to say, as an almost 33-year-old mom of 2 in 2026, I feel like I’ve seen. it. all. The trends. The comparisons. The rebrands. The rise and fall of influencers. The overconsumption. The birth of the OG mommy bloggers. Nothing surprises me anymore, really.

I feel like I need an old tobacco pipe and rocking chair just thinking of the acceleration of social media and what it used to be like “back in my day” when a guy lip syncing to Numa Numa was peak internet comedy (still is for me but I digress.”

So, as someone who has not necessarily seen it all but has seen a lot, something that’s been on my heart is how Christians can reclaim some of the things we have seen online.

I swore I would never join TikTok until burnout, loneliness, and being a new mom in the pandemic drove me to seek out community there in the midst of isolation. It was nothing like I had ever seen before. I felt seen, understood, entertained, and like I was learning something new every day.

But as much as I loved (and still enjoy) the app, I was also learning of new lifestyles and parenting philosophies I should adhere to (clean girl, soft living, Pilates mom, gentle parenting, etc.)

For every new thing I learned that helped me in life, I also learned of something new to fear.

For every time I felt seen in one area, I found a new part of myself to critique.

Every time I felt like normal was finally being normalized, it felt like a new, unrealistic expectation was being set as the new normal.

I wasn’t sure how to handle the constant contradictions I felt as social media, TikTok in particular, seemed to make me both a better and worse wife, mom, and Christian person.

As I’ve spent the last few years processing things, I realized that a pattern was emerging: behind every trend or lifestyle or viral moment was a reflection of the needs and desires of the human heart.

I wrote a bit about this in my “psychology behind the 2026 analog living trend” article and how this specific trend “shouldn’t surprise us that, amid a striving, burnt-out, overly digital world, there is a rise in people seeking connection and greater purpose in things that feel safer and simpler” and how “it also shouldn’t surprise us that this world will never be able to give us things the way God intended, and so we will see God’s design butchered and repackaged in a lousy, lazy attempt at mimicry.”

As a mom who spent most of new motherhood as an avid TikTok consumer, the thing I have seen most often is “romanticizing life/romanticizing motherhood/whimsical parenting”. Videos of gentle moms in beautiful homes with flowy dresses and quietly playing kids with sunshine beaming through an open window overlooking a wildflower garden.

Yeah, I bet it’s easy to romanticize motherhood when it is portrayed like THAT.

“But but but Sarah, you post ALL the time about romanticizing life”.

I know, I know, that and “intentional living” are the primary things I post about. However, it is because of that kind of content that I am so passionate about reclaiming what romanticizing life as a biblical discipline. It’s easy to immediately hate on trends or prepackaged lifestyles, but what I want to do is go deeper and ask, “What is it that I’m seeing online making me feel? What is it that is inspiring me to do or not do? What need does this seek to fulfill? How does this line up with God’s design for life?”

So, in my journey to reclaim social media trends as a Christian mom, I have started with the trend of romanticizing life and how to do so through a biblical framework.

From what I have seen, it comes down to two things:

• Everything you see online and in life reflects the perfect design God had for the universe, and that design broke when sin entered the world.

• There’s always going to be a cheap imitation of God’s perfect design that overpromises and underdelivers.

The Framework: Contentment and Stewardship

So what can romanticizing life look like through the Christian framework? From my experience, it comes down to the disciplines of contentment and stewardship.

On Contentment

When you talk about romanticizing life, faith, and motherhood, I think people often get the misconception that it’s about an idealized version of a life you are aspiring to, rather than being inspired to see your life as ideal right now. “Romanticizing life” took on a whole new meaning when I made it a habit to find beauty where I was. And sometimes when there’s nothing beautiful around you, you find that beauty in God himself because he is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Philippians 4:11–12:

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

On Stewardship:

Contentment and stewardship are two sides of the same coin of discipline. When you learn to be content, you are a better steward of what you have. When you are faithful in stewarding the small and unremarkable things you have now, it can not only help you grow in your appreciation of what you DO have but also prepare you to care for and appreciate the greater things you WILL have.

When I first got married, I struggled so much with discontent in how my home looked. It got to the point where I forced myself to stop watching HGTV and going on Pinterest because I was not only discontented and envious of what I saw, but also grew not to care very much about what we did have.

Over time, though, I learned to love thrifting and finding things second-hand, and made it like a scavenger hunt to collect items that resonated with me and fell under a common theme/color scheme. It’s been so fun seeing how I can bring all these random items together to decorate our home, and now, 5 years into living in our current home, I am so in love with it, and I know younger me would have loved it too. Faithful stewardship not only changes your mindset; it also shifts your heart posture.

Matthew 25:23: "His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!

Reclaiming the Mundane

Ultimately, what I’ve learned is that as Christians, we don’t have to be against every single thing that we see on social media, and that ultimately, there is a human yearning for a heavenly satisfaction behind whatever trend we see.

So the next time you see a trend or lifestyle online, I want to challenge you to see how you can reclaim and reframe it through the words of Jesus. We can do this by embracing the trend of “romanticizing life” and finding beauty in the mundane, viewing it as a biblical discipline of contentment and stewardship. This is the biggest takeaway that I’ve learned in my journey to dwell and delight in the Lord and in my life.

If you have your own thoughts, opinions, or realizations, I would love to know! I think life becomes much sweeter when God starts connecting the dots on what life is supposed to look like when you walk with Him, and how everything we do echoes the glory of our eternal and ethereal Creator.

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming. This resource includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time 🫶🏼

“Moms need hobbies, moms need self-care!”

Blah blah blah.

I mean yes I agree. But finding hobbies to do when your entire being has changed from the gift of children is like going on a journey to Narnia: magical, mystical, fun, and with some bumps along the way.

But when you’re in the middle of burnout or a heavy season, and people try to encourage you to take time doing something you love, oftentimes going on that journey in that season can make you feel like Frodo barely making it to Mordor.

If this is how it feels to make yet another decision, I got you girl.

Here are some of my favorite hobbies I’ve taken up as a hobby collector with ADHD.

15-MINUTE HOBBIES

• Keep a small notepad or sketchpad in a place you are frequently. Do a few quick doodles or write a few lines when inspired

• Keep a puzzle out and do a few pieces at a time

• Put a jade roller in the fridge or freezer and gua sha your face when you go to the fridge for the 5th snack for a refreshing self-care moment

Hobbies With Kids

• If you are a gardener, involve your kids as much as possible! If you have younger kids like me, guide them to an area that they can dig or “pretend garden,” or ask them to make floral arrangements using weeds, leaves, or whatever they find.

• Coloring is always a safe bet. Get an adult coloring book to do side by side with your kids, or print off coloring pages related to something your kids are learning about.

• Elevate your walks. Find nature preserves, trails, or green belts to explore and enjoy nature together.

SOLO HOBBIES (WITHOUT KIDS)

• Get Class Pass! I have found workout classes I enjoy (Pilates and dance) and also use my credits to save up for facials or lash lifts.

• For the gamers, unwinding with a low-stakes game can be restful. If you don’t have a gaming console, there are lots of cozy game apps for your phone

• Fiber arts. It is too complex for toddler hands, making it the perfect “after-bedtime” ritual to keep your hands busy and your mind quiet. I like to do it while watching shows with my husband.

I could make this longer, but the point is to just give a starting base of ideas so as not to overwhelm you with a plethora of information.

None of these are super niche or unheard of, but sometimes hobbies can take on a fresh new feeling through the lens of motherhood.

Whether your mom journey has you feeling more like Frodo Baggins or Lucy Pevensie, I hope this little list can help you find a place to start if you are looking for something new to enjoy on your own or with your kids!

Love,

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming. This resource is optional, offered with pay-what-you-want pricing starting at $10, and includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time.

Hey sweet friend,

Welcome to the Dwell & Delight devotional!

I can’t believe it’s already basically halfway through May! My oldest is finishing up kindergarten, and with trying to keep up with school events, dance recitals, and prepping for summer, I feel like I can barely keep my head on straight!

If you’re feeling the same, let’s take a moment and slow down together. Grab your favorite beverage and get cozy, and let’s chat!

My hope is that these weekly letters will feel like receiving a sweet voice message or text from a friend who is letting you know about fun things she is doing with her family, what has been helping her improve her life in small and effective ways, and what God is teaching her. And just as you would listen to a message from your friend, I’m sure you would reply to her with messages of your own struggles, lessons, encouragement, and growth. As you read these letters, my desire is that you also share with me and others what God is doing in your life, whether you implemented an idea from a letter and how it went, or any advice you may be able to give if you have walked through a similar season.

Each week, I will share at least one way you can “dwell” or sit intentionally in your faith and motherhood based on things I have done or want to do, one way you can “delight” or find magic and beauty in your faith and motherhood, and one verse and application that God has shown me that week.

With that, let’s dive in!

If you aren’t familiar with Substack Notes, it is more of the “social media feed” aspect of Substack, similar to Threads or your Facebook newsfeed. The other day, I shared a tip in Notes on how I loosely structure time with my kids when I am solo parenting, and we don’t have any plans or outings on our schedule.

While my kids (5 and 2) play with each other more now and don’t need me to be the entertainment director of this crazy family cruise, I have found that acting as an entertainment facilitator and mediator.

I know people say to let your kids be bored, but if my kids are left to their own devices too much (even with plenty of toys, activities, and outdoor play readily accessible), it ends in chaos lol.

As Proverbs 16:27 says, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop…” I like to provide my kids with a map to help kick-start their playtime through the 3 A’s of Play.

Here is a snippet of this framework from my digital resource library, where I am consolidating resources for intentional living, whimsical parenting, and biblical motherhood (free for paid subscribers or for purchase at pay-what-you-want pricing starting at $10). If this resonates with you, check it out for more; I am always adding to it!

What I love is that it allows me to participate in their play without always having to come up with something or put something together, and gives them parameters to work within without being overwhelmed by options. I have noticed that my oldest really leans into the themes and comes up with other things to do as play time goes on, and my youngest will go off on her own to do something after a while, but with focused (not frantic) energy.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

This one I am so excited about!

I literally would not give a second thought to getting off Facebook if it weren’t for my amazing local Buy Nothing group.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of a Buy Nothing group, it’s an organization that operates in many cities and establishes groups of cities (e.g., Facebook groups for specific areas, such as Buy Nothing Northwest Chicago, Buy Nothing Southeast Nashville, etc.). The point is that everyone lives in a few-mile radius of each other, and when you are done with an item you no longer want or need, you can post it on the page, and someone can come pick it up from your porch, easy peasy! Or you can check there if someone has something you want, but maybe doesn’t want to drop money on it yet.

I try to thrift as much as possible, but in my area, there is basically only one Goodwill, and the quality of items there has drastically declined while their prices have only gone up.

It is so sweet to see how things circulate in my group, and you often recognize a lot of the names.

Anyway, I posted in the group that I was looking for a playroom TV with a DVD player because 1) I want to be able to have something for when friends are over or our community group that is easier to work with than a projector, and 2) I wanted to make movie watching an EXPERIENCE like when I was a kid.

I grew up in the Blockbuster days, when my sisters and I would browse for ages for the perfect sleepover rental, make forts, and eat way too many snacks. I want that to be the same for my kids.

So a sweet neighbor saw my post and gifted us this TV, and while we haven’t used it yet, I think it will be the perfect addition to our summer. With my oldest going to be home more often (I’m so excited!), I plan on taking my kids to the library a lot to pick out movies or go thrift some DVDs and make it a while thing.

What I’m learning is that if you have everything accessible at your fingertips, it loses some of its magic. I want to bring that magic back to movie time for my kids.

(Granted, I guess things are not actually as accessible because every movie and show is now stuck behind ridiculous streaming service paywalls or littered with long commercials, but I digress lol).

I was reading Isaiah 30 the other day, and this stuck out to me in verses 20-22:

“And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “‘Be gone!’”

God’s people were facing issues with Assyria and were trying to form an alliance with Egypt without asking God for direction, and this would ultimately be their shame.

I love how these verses indicate that though God doesn’t just “let” bad things happen but actually GIVES us the “bread of adversity”, He will not always hide Himself from us.

Verse 18 also says, “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”

As I read in Job last week, “though He slay me, I will hope in Him”.

I think that is beautiful.

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming. This resource is optional, offered with pay-what-you-want pricing starting at $10, and includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time.

Is “romanticizing your life” just a shallow social media trend, or is there a deeper, biblical way to find beauty in the mundane?

In this first video reflection for the Dwell & Delight community, I am diving into what it looks like to reclaim intentional living from a Christian perspective. We often see “slow living” or “cottage core” portrayed as a perfect, filtered lifestyle, but as believers, we know these are often just echoes of God’s original design for us.

Today, I am sharing how I moved from feeling defeated by social media standards to finding true joy through the biblical disciplines of Contentment and Stewardship.

Whether you are in a season of burnout or just trying to find God in the middle of a busy day, I hope this encourages you to dwell in delight right where you are.

✨ JOIN THE COMMUNITY

Read more weekly devotionals and join our intentional living journey at: bysarahsmith.com

Timestamps:

0:00 | Welcome to Dwell & Delight

0:45 | Reclaiming “Romanticizing Motherhood”

1:06 | God’s Design vs. Cheap Imitations

1:30 | The frustration with “Slow Living” trends

2:26 | Contentment: Finding beauty where you are

3:57 | Stewardship: Being faithful with the little

4:32 | My journey from social media defeat to joy

5:50 | Reclaiming the mundane as a biblical discipline

6:11 | Final thoughts: Connecting the dots with God

Resources:

• Dwell & Delight Newsletter: https://open.substack.com/pub/bysarahsmith

• Mom Burnout Digital Resource Library:

https://sarahelizsmith.gumroad.com/l/hvfxi

If this resonated with you, please leave a comment below!

How are you learning to steward the “small things” in your life today? 👇

#ChristianMotherhood #IntentionalLiving #Contentment #DwellAndDelight #FaithJourney #SlowLiving #BiblicalWomanhood #RomanticizeYourLife

Hey sweet friend,

Welcome to the Dwell & Delight devotional!

As a busy mom of 2 and an external processor, I love sending voice messages to my friends (especially my mom friends; sometimes it feels like a playdate without being a playdate!).

My hope is that these weekly letters will feel like receiving a sweet voice message or text from a friend who is letting you know about fun things she is doing with her family, what has been helping her improve her life in small and effective ways, and what God is teaching her. And just as you would listen to a message from your friend, I’m sure you would reply to her with messages of your own struggles, lessons, encouragement, and growth. As you read these letters, my desire is that you also share with me and others what God is doing in your life, whether you implemented an idea from a letter and how it went, or any advice you may be able to give if you have walked through a similar season.

Each week, I will share at least one way you can “dwell” or sit intentionally in your faith and motherhood based on things I have done or want to do, one way you can “delight” or find magic and beauty in your faith and motherhood, and one verse and application that God has shown me that week.

With that, let’s dive in!

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how AI is everywhere. I remember how cool I thought it was when I first got ChatGPT in December of 2024, right before I started working on creating content and writing. Initially, it was really helpful because, as an external processor with ADHD who loves to research, I enjoyed having an assistant to aggregate all the “word vomit” I would give it and turn it into a coherent flow of ideas I could build on. It was like having a little creative assistant.

But over time, I have seen how it is now everywhere; even my healthcare apps have AI summaries and assistants. It is on every social media platform, and honestly, it is getting exhausting.

When I was originally creating content online, I used AI a little too much as a crutch in my creative process. But as I figured out my voice, my message, and what I wanted to say, I realized I am a writer at heart. Now, I have started thinking of ways I can use AI to help me with the mundane, day-to-day processes instead, so that I can spend more time on what matters: marriage, ministry, motherhood, and writing.

This past week, I’ve been taking stock of the areas where I’ve been overwhelmed. My husband has been working a lot lately, and even though things have slowed down a bit, I am still trying to find good rhythms for managing my family. Summer is coming, and it will be my first summer not having my oldest in a Mother’s Day Out program, even though my toddler will still be in one.

After months of doing almost everything on my own while my husband worked, I am just burnt out. We’ve been eating out a lot more, and I want to take control back so I can focus on faith, family, and fun hobbies.

One of my goals is to get these management systems out of my phone. As someone with ADHD, it is helpful to tell Siri to put something on a shared to-do list or grocery list, but I am moving toward more analog solutions. I am putting together a master grocery list, tips for my husband on putting together meals for the kids when I’m not around, and laminated routines and checklists to put up in our hallway. That way, if I need to put something in my phone, I can, but everything is also out in front for the whole family to see.

I’ve been using Gemini to help me develop a family cleaning routine to make it less “on me” and more about our family as a whole. I want even the mundane stuff to have a “quality time” feel.

Inside this week’s devotional, you’ll find:

• Our Master Grocery List

• Our Simple Eating Plan for May

• Our current Family Cleaning Routine

Next, I will be working on a wellness and beauty maintenance routine. I love looking nice and doing at-home treatments, especially since we are on a budget, but I still like to feel fancy from time to time. If you have anything that works for you and your family, please drop it in the comments below! This is definitely going to be a new trial-and-error things for me this month.

One "whimsy" thing bringing me delight is this pack of little mini fridge vases I found. They are so cute! They come with flowers already, which I love, but my plan is to use them for the flowers we grow or the tiny treasures my kids pick. Often, what they end up picking is too small, even for the"tiny" vase I do have, so these are perfect. My oldest is constantly rearranging them!

As far as what God is showing me, I have been reading through the book of Job. I have been really interested in how his friends talk to him. I feel like everyone I know, to some degree, is going through a hard time right now, and it is interesting how Job’s friends try to hold him “accountable.” I understand that impulse, but it makes me think of the verse about how if you do all these things but do not have love, you are just making noise.

I’ve been praying for a way to love my friends who are struggling, when I am not sure how to help beyond prayer and giving what I can. I feel like God answered that prayer by showing me one simple way to love them: by not talking like Job’s friends.

Thank you for being on this journey with me. I absolutely love getting to share, friend-to-friend, mom-to-mom, and sister-in-Christ-to-sister-in-Christ, about the work God is doing in my life and the fun things He’s teaching me. Now tell me, what are you dwelling on and delighting in this week?

Love,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming. This resource is optional, offered with pay-what-you-want pricing starting at $10, and includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time.

Hey sweet friend,

Welcome to the latest installment of the Dwell & Delight devotional - a weekly newsletter where I share what God is teaching me and small ways you can bring more presence & playfulness into your life as a mom.

It has been raining a lot where I am, and while I enjoy the rain for a little bit, I am a sunshine girlie through and through. That, plus being in my luteal phase, has made me a little more down, irritable, and moving at a slower pace.

But that isn’t stopping me from trying to find small ways to dwell & delight in my current season and daily life!

With that, let’s dive in!

I’m a firm believer that doing little things well over time adds up to greater change down the road. I love how it says in Luke 16:10 that “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” It’s easier for me to dream up big plans, but I lose interest or get overwhelmed easily by doing too much, so I end up doing nothing at all.

I have started building on the small routines and soft goals that I put in place a few years ago when I was coming out of burnout (more here on my testimony and why I am so passionate about intentional living and romanticizing motherhood). For example, I wanted to be the girl with some form of skincare routine. But social media and consumerism overwhelmed me until I realized that any repeated set of daily actions is a routine.

So my challenge to you for living more intentionally and sustainably this week is to come up with one simple routine you know you can be faithful to in your current season of life and with your present-day capacity.

When I was in burnout, my morning routine was simply taking my meds, washing my face, and using a moisturizer with SPF. Now it has evolved to include eye cream, tretinoin, and lash/brow serum.

Start small and watch the habits compound.

Over the last few months, my husband has been abnormally busy and burnt out at work which means almost all home management has been on me (he is such a big help when he is off work so I greatly felt his absence).

With that, I have been doing a lot more rearranging and reorganizing of my home because, as a mom with severe ADHD, if I don’t have some sort of organization system, I can’t find things. And if I can’t find things, I can’t parent well. And if I can’t parent well, then ain’t nothing or nobody feeling good about things lol.

But after the rearranging and reorganizing, I got to have fun and redecorate as alot of the decorations I had before got displaced from their original home.

I have had a lot of fun finding things on my local Buy Nothing group, thrift stores, and budget stores to make my newly arranged and organized home feel cozy and pretty.

However, I was struggling with our playroom up until this week. We have a formal living/dining room that we use as our playroom, and this giant wall with a window was giving me a hard time.

Any artwork big enough to fit would be pricey and cumbersome to hang, and I wanted something simple, inexpensive, and unlikely to fall off the walls and onto our toys or kids.

Then I remembered how I used decal stickers in my oldest room and so decided to try it in our playroom and it turned into a fun activitiy for all of us to do this past weekend! My girls are so proud of their work helping decorate and the playroom feels so much brighter (and my husband is glad he didn’t have to hang or paint anything lol!).

So my challenge for you this week, sweet friend, is to pick somewhere in your house that you can liven up to bring you and your family joy. This can include:

• fresh flowers from Trader Joe’s or Costco

• upgrading your containers for prettier versions that you can find at the dollar store

• adding stained glass decals to your windows (check out this list here for what I used in my kids’ rooms!)

Whatever you do, have fun with it and be sure to send me whatever it is you do for the week!

I’ve been very slowly working through a Bible-In-A-Year plan (albeit very slowly), and I struggle with the Old Testament a lot. It feels less like stories of grace and more like dusty crusty history lessons.

But this week, God really made the story of Deborah and Jael come to life for me in a new way (isn’t it amazing when He allows us to re-read something with fresh eyes??).

I’ve heard it before but I got chills. Maybe Jael was Tolkien’s inspiration for Eowyn? Maybe not but that is who I thought of when reading Judges 4.

I am simply amazed at how God has cared for and used women in His greater story of grace.

Loud women. Shy women. Women leaders. Women disciples. Rich women. Sick women. Old women. Young girls.

This week in my readings I am reminded that I have a place in His story, even if it feels small.

Though I may feel insignificant in my offerings, nothing is small when used by a big God.

I have a place in His story and in His heart.

And so do you, sweet friend.

All glory and honor and power to God, forever and ever, amen!

Love always,

Subscribe now

*If you’ve been encouraged by this and want to support my writing, I have set up a “buy me a coffee” link to make a one-time donation. This honors the time and resources that go into me creating gentle, faith-filled content. While it is greatly appreciated, it is not expected. I am deeply thankful to simply have your presence here!

You can also support me by checking out my growing digital resource library. It’s designed to be a one-stop companion to the ideas I share here—something you can revisit whenever life feels heavy or overwhelming. This resource is optional, offered with pay-what-you-want pricing starting at $10, and includes lifetime access as new tools and reflections are added over time.

Hey sweet friend,

Welcome to the very first installation of the Dwell & Delight devotional!

As a busy mom of 2 and an external processor, I love sending voice messages to my friends (especially my mom friends; sometimes it feels like a playdate without being a playdate!).

My hope is that these weekly letters will feel like receiving a sweet voice message or text from a friend who is letting you know about fun things she is doing with her family, what has been helping her improve her life in small and effective ways, and what God is teaching her. And just as you would listen to a message from your friend, I’m sure you would reply to her with messages of your own struggles, lessons, encouragement, and growth. As you read these letters, my desire is that you also share with me and others what God is doing in your life, whether you implemented an idea from a letter and how it went, or any advice you may be able to give if you have walked through a similar season.

Each week, I will share at least one way you can “dwell” or sit intentionally in your faith and motherhood based on things I have done or want to do, one way you can “delight” or find magic and beauty in your faith and motherhood, and one verse and application that God has shown me that week.

With that, let’s dive in!

One thing I love about Substack moms is so many of us seem to share the same desire to live more intentionally and be more present and figuring that out in the constraints of a hectic external world and chaotic internal world (my mind feels like I am playing a game of dodgeball but they are all being thrown at once and and instead of dodging them, I am trying to catch and corral them all lol!).

So one way I have been trying to “dwell well” and be more present with God, with my family, and with myself is to look at the clouds. Yes, clouds.

I live in Texas, and one thing I have always loved is the big, open sky and how it can get decorated with fluffy white cotton-ball clouds.

Whenever I am driving my kids to and from school, I like to bring their attention to the clouds. Sometimes we try to guess what animals they remind us of, and sometimes we talk about how God made the clouds, and my oldest will usually make some dreamy comment about wanting to sleep on the clouds or something along those lines.

Something about fluffy white clouds brings me back to childhood and laying in the grass or on a friend’s trampoline and watching them roll slowly by.

Many people feel a sense of awe and peace when taking in a scene of mountains or the ocean. But for many of us, mountains and oceans are not accessible in daily life.

So this week, look at the clouds.

I became a mom in the middle of personal burnout and a brutal pandemic. So even though I wanted to have plants, I joked that was all I could do to keep myself and my kid alive, and there was no way I could also keep a plant alive. Thus, fake plants became a part of my interior design.

However, now my kids are 5 and 2, and we have much more stability, and my girls are kind and keen big helpers. We are spending a lot more time outdoors, so one way I am delighting in life more is by caring for and keeping plants.

Depending on your capacity, start small by displaying some cheap bouquets from Trader Joe’s or Costco. We also like to use the petals for crafts when they start wilting!

I recently picked up a few vegetable plants from Costco, and I have my kids help me water them. I have also replaced a few decorative plants with real ones from The Home Depot AND I even scored a beautiful fiddle tree from our local Buy Nothing Group. Basically, I am trying to make my home into a greenhouse lol.

We also have some very neglected garden beds filled with rocks and weeds that I have had my kids help me till and dig up so we can replace them with fresh soil, and since they have been spending so much time outside after school, it is has been a great bonding experience to work side by side with them and they have LOVED getting to dig.

So this week, try to find ways to bring nature indoors and allow your kids to take part in its care and keeping. Even if they die, the journey accounts for half the delight and opens great opportunities to talk about God’s power in creation and the responsibility of caring for something beyond ourselves.

And nature is just super pretty :)

I won’t always use a Substack note for the devotional section, but for this week, I think this note perfectly sums up my heart for this publication and the delight that God has for us and the subsequent delight He invites us to have with Him in return. I can’t think of anything more beautiful than that :).

Thank you for taking the time to be here for this first installation of the Dwell & Delight Devotional! May the Lord bless you and keep you and may His face shine upon you always, sweet friend.

Love,

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