Author: Kelly Keller

Other months are showy, demanding us to celebrate holidays, decorate loudly, and fill our calendars. January is quiet, slowly allowing the light to grow longer and easing the daffodils up from their sleep.

I usually try to have this meeting during the week between Christmas and New Years, which is quite possibly my favorite week of the year. I think we should call it The Week of Appropriately Low Expectations.

I once sat next to a keeper’s mom while her son went through a penalty shootout on the field in front of us. She said “I’m going to throw up” a lot of times.

How are pride and patience opposed to one another, and how can we kill foolish pride to awaken patience in our hearts?

She was happier in her muck boots in the farmyard than at state dinners with a tiara on her head.

(Republished. Originally shared in January, 2016) The other day I was listening to a podcast about home education, a decision in life which requires more than a little long-term perspective. The guest, who had herself raised and educated six children at home, attributed much of her success to being a “plodder.” She said one of … Continue reading Be a Plodder

I spent most of the last summer with the Trasks and the Hamiltons. East of Eden, John Steinbeck’s masterwork of four-hundred-plus pages had long been on my to-read list, and with the help of my book club, I finally got through it. Steinbeck himself considered it his finest novel; after finishing it, he said “I … Continue reading Imagining for Others: Steinbeck’s East of Eden

We act surprised when we reach the end of the day and there’s still so much undone. Yet there lies the boundary line. We must rest and go about our work the next day, in a limited, human way, to the glory of God.

(This was originally published ten years ago on my "mommy blog" -- remember those? I thought I'd revive it in honor of the child in question's eighteenth birthday.) Today is my third son's eighth birthday. He would have been an April baby if everything had gone according to plan. But, as these things often do, … Continue reading Cosmo Kramer, Nine Months Along

(Heads up: this essay contains major spoilers on some super old things and light spoilers on season two of Ted Lasso.) Spring has landed in Charlotte. Maybe it hasn’t happened where you are, but here we’ve had blooms for about a month. Camellia blooms kick off the year in January. Then the daffodils make their … Continue reading A Word for the Redbuds Among Us