Andrea Randall's Blog

Since sometime in 2016 I’ve written vaguely—and sometimes less vaguely—about a church hurt our family experienced in 2015 that ultimately led to us leaving the very church upon which we had been building community for our family. I found myself just this summer considering things slightly deeper and more clearly than I have in a couple of years, and I wanted to write it down. Perhaps in years to come I’ll be able to go even deeper, and this essay will serve as a memorial guidepost on my jour...

Something about yesterday opened the fragile trapdoor behind which I was unknowingly storing my true feelings about my oldest child starting high school in a month. His impending matriculation didn’t take me by surprise, of course. I was cheerfully applauding at his 8th grade step-up ceremony in June, purchased his summer reading book a few weeks ago, and currently read weekly emails from the high school principal. But something about yesterday revealed the tender pit in my stomach like earl...

I wish I weren’t in my pajamas.

This is the second thought I had after my husband sat me down in our living room on our 5th anniversary to tell me that the MRI he’d had earlier in the week “accidentally” revealed a 2mm aneurysm crouching silently in an artery of his brain. 

My first thought had been a freefall of terror—a real “life flashing before my eyes” moment coupled with deeplybeggy prayers to God, but the second thought has come to make me chuckle because it seems so incongruous and...

Lent is a time for Christians to fast and repent, strengthening their relationship with God and strengthening their Christian walk. In the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke it is written that Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, led there by the Spirit, and fasted before being tempted by the devil before the start of his public ministry (see Matthew 4, for example). For Christians, this observational period culminates in Easter, the highest and holiest Christian holiday, marking the resurrect...

The anxiety is returning. Without even the decency to creep in, it’s more looming and roaring like a thunderstorm you can see coming from across the river.

COVID cases are exponentially increasing, the days are dramatically shorter and darker, and Emmanuel’s birth still feels so far away–that spark of light that comes in the darkest of December nights.

As we’re consistently warned through school, seminary students are especially susceptible to spiritual anorexia as we focus impossible am...

The time has indeed come. 

I could wax philosophical about the time I’ve spent away from discussing finances, financial goals, and financial freedom, and how it has been symbolic of the general chaos that has befallen much of our lives since the last time I posted in our Facebook group Common Cents, which was mid-February, but that would be dishonest. 

As I shared even before March 2020, I felt I had fallen off a path of chosen frugality and financial goals. Some of it was mindless, as we ...

On the 4th of July, I knew I was done. I’d had an impending sense of a pull to abstinence from alcohol for quite some time despite having no “real” consequences from my drinking. I knew this was on the horizon when I started the My Year of Less project but, at the time, I didn’t quite know how it would materialize. Now, I know. The “done-ness” was firm an clear.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your general outlook on life) my first week without alcohol for this undetermined amount...

I’d considered including this post in my “My Year of Less” series, because this homeschooling venture fits into “less public school” and will have the domino effect of less of a lot of things as the year goes on but, the fact is, this decision at this time was solely driven by COVID-19, and I want to offer what I hope is complete but non-laborious insight to my family’s decision.

From the get-go I want to honor the fact that all of the decisions around school and activities for the fall w...

In Chapter 2 of this series, I announced a personal shopping ban. Six weeks into it, I’m happy to report that things are going well.

I finally found sandals to replace my worn out Chacos (another pair of Chacos I hope last me the same 8-9 years these did—and they were on sale for $60!), and am still looking for a better sports bra, but the other clothing items on my approved list haven’t come up yet (either out of season and/ or not needed yet). 

However, when sorting through my wardr...

On behalf of COVID-19, were wrapping up nine weeks of social distancing/quarantine/isolation/whatever here in Massachusetts, with a tenth and likely many more before us. The first 8 weeks did not leave me a lot of time for contemplation, as I highlighted in Chapter One of this series, but I knew I must take stock of things. If not during a pandemic, then when? 

Ill admit that the first several weeks of this isolation brought on hundreds of online shipping packages. Maybe not hundreds, but...