My niece and nephew are spending the week with my parents, and with Daniel’s Gotcha Day, soccer practice, and other excitement, the week has been getting away from us without any solid cousin time. So yesterday I took our boys over to play.

As we prepared for our first practice of the year, I may not have been the most excited member of the family. Soccer is a great sport, but I’m just not a fan of extracurricular activities that throw our lives into a tailspin for months.

Having the opportunity to be this little boy’s mother is an amazing blessing. It’s also an astonishing gift for me, especially since I wasn’t sure I would ever be a mother—never mind a mother of two sons who were born on the other side of the world.

We have to accept that even with the suffering and challenges life can bring, God is writing a more wonderful story than we could imagine.

How do you prepare to host your first sleepover? I made sure we had popcorn and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on hand.

The beach is a place full of wonder. The ocean is magnificent, powerful, and moving with a rhythm all its own.

It forced me to recognize that racism is real, not just under hoods, but in so many large structural ways and in small daily encounters we take for granted. And I realized that I do not know how to respond to racism, even when I am confronted by it.

We are just back from an amazing trip to the beach, where we saw some beautiful sunsets. You might think I would have more time to write while on vacation, but every night we sort of forgot about putting our children to bed until it was so late that all I wanted to do was fall into bed myself.

Our older son decided to start calling us Mom and Dad. Part of me isn’t surprised. I knew this would probably come—at least for Mama to transition to Mom.

Some weeks are both long and short. This was one of those for me. Thank goodness it’s Friday. But I can’t believe it’s already time for quick takes!