Elliott's Muses

  My daughter, Lindsay, is mother to four children - two sets of twins!  They are now ages 11 and 8.  She and her husband Peter are wonderful parents and yet we can all imagine what life would be like with two sets of twins still not yet teenage in years - for that matter, we can all wonder what it will be like when the two sets of twins are teenagers! Yikes.   As a grandparent, I'm incredibly proud of her, Pete, and my four grandchildren.  They are growing up and even though they live a long ways away, we get to see and participate in their lives in a very satisfying way... but, we don't have to raise them.   This is a blog Lindsay recently wrote for the National Parenting Initiative in the U.K.  I hope it encourages you, especially moms with young kids. Faith, Hope, and Motherhood Becoming a mum brings so many changes to your life: your time, priorities, expenses, energy, maybe even your work life, will change. My own children arrived in pairs: first one set of twins followed

  There are times when life's assaults seem relentless.  Perhaps this last year, now plus three months, has shown that things can go from bad to worse to bad to worse, and somehow it never seems to end. I've had a bit of that this last year in multiple, and I mean multiple assaults in difficult, painful circumstances, emotions, and faith.  Yes, faith always gets connected to our circumstances.  It is easy to find ourselves in a place of "why Lord?" over and over again, and after a while, it becomes hard to even ask "why Lord?"  Some of you know what I mean. The end result is that we come to many places in our days and nights where a sense of despair can become the commonplace of rest.  Then, self-pity can replace real faith as the first object of our living.  It isn't a good place to be in, but honestly, I've been there...several times in the recent past.  When we cry out for mercy and feel nothing is answering, what do we do.  The words of Elijah in