It’s time.

This blog was born in the basement office of our Minnesota home during the Fall of 2008. Matt was working full-time and going to law school at night. My children were 5, 4, and 1 years old. I felt inspired to follow Elder M. Russell Ballard’s call to use the internet for good and decided to focus on motherhood, since I was in the trenches myself. The title Diapers and Divinity was my attempt to juxtapose the daily with the divine and, like the tagline says, find faith in motherhood. In a world where motherhood is undervalued and not fully understood for the sacred role it is, the blog journey was an important one for me. I can’t say how much it inspired anyone else, but the process of looking for the moments of joy and meaning in all the routines of my life brought me a lot of personal insight and growth. It truly became a vehicle by which I began to see myself (and all mothers) the way God sees us, and that stirred up a testimony and determination in me to keep moving forward and approach my job with more reverence and more dependence on heavenly help. It has been great. I met so many wonderful people through blogging, many of which I can now count among my “real-life” friends.

When I started the blog, my children looked like this:

And now, almost 6 years later, they look like this:

No more sippy cups, no more car seats, and definitely no more diapers.

And I’ve grown up some, too. I’ve been able to write a little, I sometimes teach a religion class, and I occasionally have speaking opportunities. Even so, I still hold fast to the fact that my greatest responsibility and my greatest legacy are both wrapped up in those three faces in the photos. So, in part, that’s why I need to let some things go and constantly recalibrate my priorities. Bigger children demand my time in different ways–homework, activities, chore supervision, transportation, etc.–and that time always goes better when I don’t have too many other “obligations” fighting for space in my mind and attention. (I also feel like I need to return to writing in a personal journal.)

Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the friends and family and acquaintances and lurking strangers that have made my little cyberspace feel like a cozy chat in my family room. There are so many wonderful women sharing their voices for good on the Internet now, and I trust there will be no void left by my little collection of blog posts.

To keep up with any other happenings in my world, go like/subscribe/follow my Facebook page and go here to catch up on anything else you might have missed.

If you’re landing on the blog for the first time and want to browse a little, here are some of the more “popular” posts that we’ve shared here, plus the General Conference Book Club was really fun while it was up and running–learn how to do your own here.

Much love,

Stephanie