“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well,” (Psalm 139:13–14).
My four-year-old daughter thinks beef jerky is a delicacy. She kicks the dust off her shoes before swinging a bat. She loves to tinker at the basement tool table, working on “inventions.” This precocious preschooler begs to drive the car, mow the lawn, sweep the garage, and eat pretzels dipped in cream cheese. How many of these things did she learn from me? Not a one.
From the mirror view, it’s clear my genes have prevailed. Clara’s blues eyes, round face and red hair have earned her the nickname “mini-Mom.” But the tug-of-war for her personality is leaning heavily toward Dad.
I’m not sure when she made the shift from Momma’s little baby to Daddy’s girl. Maybe it was the first time she watched an episode of Monster Bucks and didn’t flinch when my husband prepped her for the impact shot.
Sure, she recites Spanish with Dora and checks her dolly’s heartbeat with a Playskool doctor’s kit and enjoys a host of other “girlie” activities. But something in the way she’s wired says my hopes for female bonding over shopping and manicures during my husband’s retreats to the hunting shack may be thwarted by Clara’s plans to join her dad in the tree stand.
My challenge as a mom is to nurture my daughter according to how God has made her, not who I expect her to be. Yes, I will instill discipline and Christian values in my children. But there’s a lot of room for personality within the boundaries of righteousness.
The truth is, I could take a lesson from my daughter. She admires her daddy and wants to be just like him. Am I seeking to reflect my own heavenly Father in character and actions? If I’m not, I should be.
Through the window I see Clara swinging in the back yard, begging her dad to push her higher and higher until her head touches the tree branches hanging near the tip of the play set. “Underduck, Daddy!” she shrieks.
My gut reaction is to yell, “Be careful!” But she’s in good hands—her dad’s and God’s, who in his infinite wisdom and sense of humor gave my daughter a daring streak. It may not have been my preference, but I’m trusting the Lord to work it all out for good.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Family First
“If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:5)
Monday did not go as planned. You know the kind of day. My agenda and God’s agenda played bumper cars, and God won. He always does.
I had a to-do list. Laundry, a play date, tacos for dinner. But around 11 o’clock, out of nowhere, my four-year-old sprouted a fever. By 3 o’clock, our house became Vomit Central Station. Toss the to-do list. Who wants tacos now, anyway? God had other plans.
See, Monday wasn’t just another sick day. It was also the day I launched this blog. The day I’d anticipated, planned, prayed for. It was the day I announced to a small slice of the world, “I’m yours, God! Use me!” And he did. He used my swift skill for catching upchuck in a bucket.
Coincidence? No such thing. I’ve never heard the audible voice of God, but last Monday, he spoke to me loud and clear.
You want to serve me? Great! Serve your family. You want to encourage other people to love me? Super! Love your family. Today that means you will drop your iPad and hold your daughter’s hair while she cries. You will forget about tracking followers and murmur in her ear, “Everything’s alright, sweetheart. Mommy’s here.” Yes, Becky, you are a writer. I made you that way. But first you are a mom. Be a mom.
Last month, I attended a Christian writer’s conference called She Speaks. Worship leader Michael O’Brien shared something simple yet so profound that it stuck to my heart like gum in a ponytail. “Music is my gift,” he said. “But my family is my calling.”
Wow. Could this be true? A gifting and a calling are not synonymous. We’re all gifted with something. Art, athletics, teaching, business sense, yodeling, you name it—it doesn’t really even matter what the gift is. God gave it and wants us to use it. But the point is that it’s not the most important thing.
I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the gifts—uncovering them, honing them, offering them up. I’ve cried out to God, asking, “What am I supposed to do with my life? What did you create me to do, Lord?”
Then in those ordinary, breathtaking moments—when a redhead falls asleep in my arms, or I’m trotting two steps behind training wheels, or the whole family dances in the living room to a Veggie Tales CD, laughing to tears at the baby’s goofy moves—that’s when I hear the Lord’s reply.
Open your eyes, child. You’re already doing it.
Honestly, I wish I were gifted at being a mom. Wouldn’t that be convenient? On a good day I give myself about a B+. Nobody is going to grant me a Pulitzer for potty training, carpooling, or wrestling a curious toddler away from her big sister’s barf pail.
In the mundane, exhausting hours of responsibility, it’s tempting to think I should be doing something else, something more. Something I’m good at. Motherhood is not glamorous. It is not lucrative. It is not always stimulating. But it is the highest calling we will ever know.
God has given us the tremendous opportunity of raising the next generation of loving, honorable, faith-centered people. And I want to answer from the rooftops – “I’ll do it, God! I’m yours! Use me!”
I’m happy to report the yuck has subsided, and my elder daughter is back to normal. Which means last night she begged for Capri Sun and pickles for dinner. And, being the B+ mother that I am, I told her she could have them—for dessert. Just as soon as she finished her taco.
Monday did not go as planned. You know the kind of day. My agenda and God’s agenda played bumper cars, and God won. He always does.
I had a to-do list. Laundry, a play date, tacos for dinner. But around 11 o’clock, out of nowhere, my four-year-old sprouted a fever. By 3 o’clock, our house became Vomit Central Station. Toss the to-do list. Who wants tacos now, anyway? God had other plans.
See, Monday wasn’t just another sick day. It was also the day I launched this blog. The day I’d anticipated, planned, prayed for. It was the day I announced to a small slice of the world, “I’m yours, God! Use me!” And he did. He used my swift skill for catching upchuck in a bucket.
Coincidence? No such thing. I’ve never heard the audible voice of God, but last Monday, he spoke to me loud and clear.
You want to serve me? Great! Serve your family. You want to encourage other people to love me? Super! Love your family. Today that means you will drop your iPad and hold your daughter’s hair while she cries. You will forget about tracking followers and murmur in her ear, “Everything’s alright, sweetheart. Mommy’s here.” Yes, Becky, you are a writer. I made you that way. But first you are a mom. Be a mom.
Last month, I attended a Christian writer’s conference called She Speaks. Worship leader Michael O’Brien shared something simple yet so profound that it stuck to my heart like gum in a ponytail. “Music is my gift,” he said. “But my family is my calling.”
Wow. Could this be true? A gifting and a calling are not synonymous. We’re all gifted with something. Art, athletics, teaching, business sense, yodeling, you name it—it doesn’t really even matter what the gift is. God gave it and wants us to use it. But the point is that it’s not the most important thing.
I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the gifts—uncovering them, honing them, offering them up. I’ve cried out to God, asking, “What am I supposed to do with my life? What did you create me to do, Lord?”
Then in those ordinary, breathtaking moments—when a redhead falls asleep in my arms, or I’m trotting two steps behind training wheels, or the whole family dances in the living room to a Veggie Tales CD, laughing to tears at the baby’s goofy moves—that’s when I hear the Lord’s reply.
Open your eyes, child. You’re already doing it.
Honestly, I wish I were gifted at being a mom. Wouldn’t that be convenient? On a good day I give myself about a B+. Nobody is going to grant me a Pulitzer for potty training, carpooling, or wrestling a curious toddler away from her big sister’s barf pail.
In the mundane, exhausting hours of responsibility, it’s tempting to think I should be doing something else, something more. Something I’m good at. Motherhood is not glamorous. It is not lucrative. It is not always stimulating. But it is the highest calling we will ever know.
God has given us the tremendous opportunity of raising the next generation of loving, honorable, faith-centered people. And I want to answer from the rooftops – “I’ll do it, God! I’m yours! Use me!”
I’m happy to report the yuck has subsided, and my elder daughter is back to normal. Which means last night she begged for Capri Sun and pickles for dinner. And, being the B+ mother that I am, I told her she could have them—for dessert. Just as soon as she finished her taco.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Sandy Grass
“My poor lawn,” my husband whimpered. Our daughters dug merrily in the sandbox, tossing heaps of grit overboard onto the grass. Or, what used to be grass. Now it’s more like a miniature shoreline in the middle of our back yard.
“They’re having fun,” I said. “A happy childhood is more important than an immaculate lawn.”
Since building our oh-my-goodness-the-girls-are-going-to-love-it play set last summer, we’ve witnessed a gradual deterioration of the once-lush grass surrounding this monstrosity. There’s a bare dirt patch beneath the swing—which my husband has repeatedly and futilely attempted to re-seed—and the whole 20-foot by 15-foot structure creates enough shade to prohibit one entire corner of our property from ever again catching a glimpse of summer sun. All of this causes recurring pangs of grief for my husband, who, like many good men, takes a certain degree of manly pride in his landscaping.
I can relate, of course. As much as I encourage my husband to value happy kids over green grass, I often feel the same way about my carpets. They didn’t always harbor chronic juice stains and blotches of mummified Play-Doh.
My sofa arrangement used to be fashionable, not functional. Our interior décor was once inspired by Pier One rather than the Target toy department. When did I trade my glass-top coffee table for an indoor trampoline? The answer is simple—when I realized my home is made of family, not furniture.
“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him,” (1 John 4:16, NASB).
I like that word, “abides.” To “abide in God” paints a picture of dwelling in God, making God my house, my sanctuary. And if God is where I live, and love is where I reside, then all the rest is incidental.
The lawn, the furniture, the paint on the walls—these are not the focus of a loving home, they’re just the backdrop. I am writing my storyline every day, choosing love as the starring role. The tufts of dead grass in our back yard simply make us more of a reality show than a polished Hollywood drama.
We are living through a season—the season of raising young children. In a few short years, our kids will be more interested in their iPods than in the toy kitchen inhabiting a quarter of our living room. Toys will shrink and space will expand again.
I’ll have the rest of my life to decorate my home. I have only these fleeting years to decorate my children’s memories—with time spent poring over coloring books strewn across the floor, playing hide and seek through a house stacked with library books and building blocks, bumping volleyballs in the living room and laughing when a foul thwacks the dinner table . . . because there hasn’t been a breakable centerpiece planted there for at least four years.
I know there will come a day when my girls are no longer interested in climbing their play set, when the pleas to “push me on the swing, Mommy!” will be fewer and farther between until they’ve silenced altogether. And a part of me will be sad.
The grass can grow back in due time. For now, I’m embracing our sandy lawn and all it represents. It’s far from a heartache. It’s a blessing.
“They’re having fun,” I said. “A happy childhood is more important than an immaculate lawn.”
Since building our oh-my-goodness-the-girls-are-going-to-love-it play set last summer, we’ve witnessed a gradual deterioration of the once-lush grass surrounding this monstrosity. There’s a bare dirt patch beneath the swing—which my husband has repeatedly and futilely attempted to re-seed—and the whole 20-foot by 15-foot structure creates enough shade to prohibit one entire corner of our property from ever again catching a glimpse of summer sun. All of this causes recurring pangs of grief for my husband, who, like many good men, takes a certain degree of manly pride in his landscaping.
I can relate, of course. As much as I encourage my husband to value happy kids over green grass, I often feel the same way about my carpets. They didn’t always harbor chronic juice stains and blotches of mummified Play-Doh.
My sofa arrangement used to be fashionable, not functional. Our interior décor was once inspired by Pier One rather than the Target toy department. When did I trade my glass-top coffee table for an indoor trampoline? The answer is simple—when I realized my home is made of family, not furniture.
“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him,” (1 John 4:16, NASB).
I like that word, “abides.” To “abide in God” paints a picture of dwelling in God, making God my house, my sanctuary. And if God is where I live, and love is where I reside, then all the rest is incidental.
The lawn, the furniture, the paint on the walls—these are not the focus of a loving home, they’re just the backdrop. I am writing my storyline every day, choosing love as the starring role. The tufts of dead grass in our back yard simply make us more of a reality show than a polished Hollywood drama.
We are living through a season—the season of raising young children. In a few short years, our kids will be more interested in their iPods than in the toy kitchen inhabiting a quarter of our living room. Toys will shrink and space will expand again.
I’ll have the rest of my life to decorate my home. I have only these fleeting years to decorate my children’s memories—with time spent poring over coloring books strewn across the floor, playing hide and seek through a house stacked with library books and building blocks, bumping volleyballs in the living room and laughing when a foul thwacks the dinner table . . . because there hasn’t been a breakable centerpiece planted there for at least four years.
I know there will come a day when my girls are no longer interested in climbing their play set, when the pleas to “push me on the swing, Mommy!” will be fewer and farther between until they’ve silenced altogether. And a part of me will be sad.
The grass can grow back in due time. For now, I’m embracing our sandy lawn and all it represents. It’s far from a heartache. It’s a blessing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)