Winter mornings ask something different of me. 

The light comes later. The house stays quiet longer. The world doesn’t rush me into my to-do lists and plans the way it does in the warmer months. And yet, I often feel the urge to fight it: to turn on every light, to hurry my body awake, to expect myself to move at summer speed.

But winter resists that kind of striving.

January has a way of telling us who we should be. Quiet and calm. Ambitious and ready. Rested or reinvented. Which way, exhausted mom?

Welcome back to The Quiet Cup. Each week this month, I’ve been slowing down to name a simple gift the Lord has placed in my life. Today, my heart turns to my church community: the brothers and sisters in Christ who worship, serve, learn, repent, feast, sing, and grow alongside us.

Welcome back to this month’s The Quiet Cup thankfulness series! Today, I’m thankful for my home. 

Recently, the Lord has been kind to remind me of something I so easily forget. On a Sunday sitting in church, and again during my women’s Bible study later that week, the same truths rose up from Scripture. First in 1 Thessalonians 4, then in Luke 17. The timing wasn’t lost on me, and I’m grateful for a Bible-teaching church, because His Word never returns void. The Spirit knew I needed to hear this truth twice: in the middle of a noisy, unsettled world, I am not called to control the chaos or know the future. I am called to be faithful.

It’s easy to focus on the undone things: what’s left on the to-do list, the dishes in the sink, the words that I should’ve said more kindly. It’s easy to forget, in the thick of child-rearing and chore-managing and meal-making and holiday-planning, that the man beside me is not just a partner in the work but a gift from the Lord Himself.

Sometimes, the Holy Spirit whispers not in our quiet time, but right in our mess: When you snap at your child and instantly feel that gentle tug: pray first, speak softer, apologize. When the baby cries at 2 a.m. and you want to grumble, but instead you're met with a reminder: this is holy, this is fleeting, this is love in the night.

Weekends can be strange little storms, can’t they? The pace of the week doesn’t slow, it shifts. The laundry pile grows. The schedule fills. The house, somehow, still needs cleaning. The nap and sleep schedules are more easily interrupted. And if we’re not careful, we can roll right into Monday with tired hands, a weary heart, and on top of it all, some mom-guilt because you forgot to wash your husband’s work pants.