Are You a Smothering Mother? | (S5 E23)

In this episode, author and Camperdown MFA Director Christine Cohen comes on to talk about story--writing it, watching it, and reading it. Tilly and Christine take a deep dive into story structure and some of the challenges of bringing a character to life. What are some of the differences between writing for the screen and writing for print? Does a basic knowledge of basic story structure help us to be more appreciative and aware as consumers of story?

Bringing order   Today, Abigail and Tilly talked about order vs chaos in homemaking. They jump off with a discussion on the "order" of a fir tree branch vs. the "chaos" of that branch deconstructed into neat little piles. What is the purpose of the items we use every day, and what does it look like to put those things into order, as a service to the people we live with? What does sloth look like when we are faced with homemaking tasks that are particularly difficult for us?

Jenni Naselli is back on Home Fires! After a brief update on her past year of life and the many changes it has brought, she and Abigail spend some time talking about the benefits of collaborative hospitality. How can you partner with others in order to accomplish more than you could alone? What resources can you bring to the table to share with others—whether your hard work, your support, your home, your expertise, your service? God has good work for us all and boy is it fun to work together!

Are you a smothering mother? Tilly and Abigail use an article by Michael Clary to jumpstart their conversation on overprotective mothers. What are the root causes of overprotectiveness? How does it look as your children grow older? How might overprotectiveness harm daughters, not just sons? The good news is, there is grace ready to help us walk by faith as moms and act toward our children as free women raising confident, free, Christian people.

This past month has put believers in contact with the death of several saints. Tilly and Abigail talk about how to respond to the news of these deaths, particularly Charlie Kirk's assassination. They discuss Erika Kirk's example of godly womanhood, why we're prone to grab at the arms of our men when they're entering the arena, and the mercy poured out on our country through God's word being proclaimed in the public square. How can we evaluate our lives in light of our mortality? What do we want to do differently as wives and mothers and Christian women? How is God humbling us through these events? And most importantly, if your life were to end soon, are you eager and ready to be in the presence of the Lord?

Secrets can be tasty, delicious, and enticing. Knowing other people's secrets can give us social standing and make us feel important. Spilling the tea can give us a form of exaltation in the moment. But how do we rightly discern when to keep a secret and when to bring something to the light? How do we grow as women of discretion? Are we good 'secret-aries' for our husband, our friends, our children? Tilly and Abigail talk all about secrets and the temptations that come with them.

Abigail and Tilly talk about immodesty, particularly the attitude of heart that is loud and shouts, "Look at me!" What is the connection between a sinful fearfulness and immodesty? In our current cultural moment, there is no opting out of battle over how women should dress and present ourselves. Our clothing, hair, and presentation has become a war of ideologies, so that even a discreet woman will be noticed because she is set against the zeitgeist of cross-dressing and gaudiness. Yet God still sees the quiet heart and regards it as very precious.

In this episode, Abigail and Tilly talk about the perverse desire--the desire for the impossible. Do women have a unique ability to desire and even demand things that are logically incompatible? What does this look like on the ground? How does it affect marriage, spiritual life, and vocation? What does Scripture have to say about desire?

Tilly Dillehay and Abigail Dodds, in this episode of Home Fires, answer Micheal Foster's question: Should women work outside of the home? The two give their thoughts on what true biblical and feminine work looks like inside the home and outside of the home. And what that means for women who are searching for careers.

Tilly and Abigail continue answering questions from listeners. First they talk about whether and how daughters should be raised with vocational training, particularly if it's similar to men's vocational training. What should an unmarried woman do in terms of a career (or not)? They touch on the invisible weights husbands carry and how learning to see these invisible weights can help a wife respect her husband and do her part. They also answer a question about how to build character into your children as they grow.