Guest post: What makes you remember?

Dec 31, 2015 | Africa

As we flick the page over to 2016 tonight, I’m posting on EverThineHome.com again: What Makes You Remember?

With grateful permission, I’ll post the beginning here.

In my dad’s garage are stashed a few items that would be of little significance to anyone else, but that mean the world to him: a charred license plate. An old mechanic’s shirt—the kind he wore daily in his farming years—with the back torn away entirely.

These, he’s told me, represent the days God saved me and my family.

 

The charred license plate was removed from a 1977 Cadillac Seville.  The driver? A slightly more youthful version of my mother, pregnant with me, her firstborn. Only a half mile from our farm house, she’d yielded at the intersection. But it was summer, and the field of corn stretched green and high. Another car was charging through somewhere around the posted 55 miles per hour.

Read more here.

 

Janel Breitenstein

Janel Breitenstein

Author | Speaker

I’m totally #thatmom–the one diving into all the weirdness with my kids, sidestepping a few eyerolls. Pull up a chair for practical ideas and discussions on the parenting, relationships, and spirituality we’re all army-crawling through every day.

I’m a speaker, freelance writer, and author of Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts (Harvest House, 2021); Deliver Us from Meltdowns: And Other Real-World Prayers for Parents (Andrews McMeel, September 2025); How to Stop Yelling Up the Stairs: Keeping Your Cool While Raising Your Kids(Kregel, April 2026), and Emotionally Strong(ish) Parenting: 7 Shifts for a Resilient and Jesus-Centered Home (NavPress, September 2026).

My work can be found on Christianity Today, Focus on the Family, and FamilyLife. After five and a half years in Uganda, my family and I returned to the U.S., where we continue to work on behalf of the poor.