Welcome to my blog! My name is Amanda and I live in small-town Southwestern Ohio with my husband Jon and our three young daughters.

I grew up here — homeschooled, bookish, awkward, and ardent. My family went to Baptist churches and I attended a Baptist(ish) undergrad. I spent a year and a half as a piano major, but ended up switching to “Preseminary Bible” after a series of revival experiences, which I still don’t know what to do with. I realize there are worse things to regret from college than being part of a group called the Puritans, but there are regrets there, too. A good aspect is it commenced our all-consuming quest to answer questions about the church.

We married right out of college and went to seminary for my husband to get his Masters of Divinity. We ended up at a Southern Baptist institution in North Carolina, where, through various means, we were able to be part of a mentorship group with the Anglo-Catholic cultural journalist Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio. Our first encounter with Ken came when he gave a lecture on Music and Discipleship, introducing us to the vocabulary of “form and content” which finally gave us a way to start articulating our discomfort with evangelical adoption of pop culture forms. We eventually were able to move to Virginia for a summer to be Mars Hill Audio fellows; we’ll always be grateful for that experience and it solidified our decision to become Anglicans (I wrote more about it here).

In 2012, we moved back to Ohio to be rooted in a place close to my family and to be able to go to our church. My husband, through the grace of God, is now a software developer with an M.Div. These years have been full with the tumultuous shifts involved in becoming parents while attempting to learn faithfulness and joy in humdrum life. I’m now beginning to homeschool my oldest, something I’ve been looking forward to for years as I’ve always been interested in educational philosophy (and very much struggle with the early years).

Back in 2015, several of my dear friends and I started the Homely Hours, a resource for Anglican liturgical living. While that has been an incredibly helpful project for me, I’ve started this blog because I’d like a place to write a bit more personally and prolifically — without overthinking. Here, you’ll find my in-process thoughts on the topics that meet my whimsy. But, with that said, I think and write most about ascetical theology, educational philosophy, and pursuing the “good life” against the pressures of modernity (and that normally comes out in discussing folk music and the out-of-doors life). Most often, you’ll find me referencing C.S. Lewis, Charlotte Mason, Wendell Berry, T.S. Eliot, George Eliot (Middlemarch!), and Jane Austen.