Jessica Donar

“Redemptive history teaches us that distinctly Christian nurturing is by grace through faith. This is no mere lifestyle; this is resurrection life. We mother others in a way that is consistent with the fact that Easter really happened. So our missional motherhood is not all about what we do or don’t put into our bodies or homes, but by living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and bearing spiritual fruit that testifies to the reality of the gospel.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Only what slips through one's fingers, only what is never expressed in words, has no thoughts, exists completely. That is the price of proximity: you don't see it. Don't know that it's there. Then it is over, then you see it.

The yellow-red leaves lying wet and smooth on the flagstones between the houses. How the stone darkens when it rains, lightens as it dries.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn

“There is only one thing children find harder to hold back than tears, and that is joy.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, A Time for Everything

“Even if i'm setting myself up for failure, I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obseessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn't fret over failings and slights, who realizes her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgement of a too busy mind. A mother who doesn't worry so much about being bad or good but just recognizes that she's both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad. ”
― Ayelet Waldman, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace