Our words hold the power to transform our children’s’ lives. Here are 7 simple phrases you can say to be a fountain of life to your child. Try them this week, and watch as it transforms their hearts– and your own.

What if this year, for Christmas, we toned down on the things that tend to take us apart, and instead give gifts that encourage “Remember When” moments?

We fail so often to realize it–that those rough seasons are a part of a bigger picture. A bigger season. A season of age. Of days, weeks, months, years.

Mamas are meant to redeem the time. But how do we redeem something that hasn’t yet been spent? We are learning how to dog-ear time’s passing with life lived in such a way that the clock’s ticking will never erase it.

We redeem time by restoring its potential for beauty.

I keep waiting. And then after two hours I finally stop waiting.

And only then—when I give up waiting and lie back to stare into the indigo blue sky eclipsed by marshmallow clouds, do I stop wasting time. Because time severed by divided attention is atrophied time–starved of all its potential.

I rock the chair front to back. Your eyes remain locked on mine, blue orbs swaying left to right within pools of white, dancing in perfect cadence to our rocking. I can’t believe I almost missed this.