National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Every reasonable effort has been made to determine copyright holders of excerpted materials and to secure permissions as needed. If any copyrighted materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Our Sunday Visitor in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.
Copyright © 2018 by Heather Anderson Renshaw. Published 2018.
23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission from the publisher. For more information, visit: www.osv.com/permissions.
Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
200 Noll Plaza
Huntington, IN 46750
1-800-348-2440
ISBN: 978-1-68192-268-3 (Inventory No. T1958)
eISBN: 978-1-68192-269-0
LCCN: 2018949469
Cover and interior design: Lindsey Riesen
Cover art: Christy Stephens
Interior art: Christy Stephens
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To Ava Madeleine, Elise Gabrielle, Noah James, Gianna Christine, and Kolbe Joseph —
I thank God for each of you—beautifully and wonderfully made. Stay close to Jesus and Mary and watch what God will do! I’m so incredibly blessed to be your mother. Love all y’all to infinity and beyond.
To David —
What a long, strange trip it’s been! Let’s keep going all the way to heaven, okay? I love you.
Table of Contents
Foreword (( by Mary Lenaburg ))
Mamas, Start Your Engines (( author’s note ))
Buckle Up, Buttercup (( prologue ))
Windows Rolled Down, Music Cranked Up (( joy ))
Caution: Merge Ahead (( humility ))
Are We there Yet?? (( patience ))
Foot Off the Gas (( gentleness ))
Is it Supposed to be Making that Sound? (( humor ))
For the Love of God, Use Your Turn Signal! (( kindness ))
Don’t Make Me Turn this Car Around!! (( self–control ))
U-Turns Encouraged (( forgiveness ))
Thank God, We Made it! (( gratitude ))
It’s What’s Under the Hood that Counts (( goodness ))
Keep on Truckin’ (( faithfulness ))
Eucharisteo (( with thanksgiving ))
“How good God is to give me his Holy Spirit to supply what I need to strive for holiness. I must not stray to the right or left, but keep to the middle of the road—straight as an arrow—to arrive at a humble detachment from myself. This will keep me from despair and from presumption.”
Mother Angelica
“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”
Milton Berle
Foreword
Heather Renshaw and I share a love for cold Long Island iced teas and bad karaoke. As a matter of fact, it’s how we met in the summer of 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina. We were both attending the Edel Gathering hosted by the phenomenal Jennifer Fulwiler and Hallie Lord, and a karaoke dance party with two hundred of our closest girlfriends was the highlight of the event. Two things you need to know: I was a high school choir dropout, and one of Heather’s love languages is musical theater.
I sang “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor and sounded like a drowned cat. Heather took the stage and belted out, in perfect pitch mind you, “RESPECT” by Aretha Franklin. She took us to church, and it was glorious. It takes quite a bit of chutzpah to get two hundred women to sing along, but Heather, she’s got chutzpah in spades. She is sassy, funny, a tad snarky, but full of the Holy Spirit. We became immediate friends, and my life has been forever changed in the very best of ways.
Over the last three years we have walked through many challenges together, as God has stretched our faith and grown our friendship. Heather’s encouraging words always land gently, even when they reveal a hidden truth about something that may need rooting out or changing. We’re both
