Saturday, June 26, 2010

Lessons Learned in the Garden

  • Prepare the soil ahead of time, hard work as it is! It is much easier to plant in well-tilled and tended soil. As I learned today, it is also much easier to pull weeds out of well-loosened soil! It made me stop to pray that God would make my heart soft so that it might not only produce much healthy fruit, but also so that it would be that much easier to attack and weed out sin.
  • Tending your garden in small daily amounts is a lot easier and much more effective than attacking it in marathon spurts here and there, which are tiresome and leave much too much time in between for weeds to grow! Slow and steady really does seem the best process. The more regular time I spend in the Word and in prayer, the more I will know the Lord and hopefully grow in delighting in Him. This, in turn, will keep my heart soft and help me identify and repent of sin much earlier in the process.
  • Good weed prevention is key - mulch, weed barriers, etc., because once seedlings pop up, unless you are very familiar with what you have planted, you won't know the difference between wanted and unwanted ones and will have to wait until they are more full-grown to distinguish between the two. Hence, more work later and more time for the weeds to steal food and sunlight from the plants you are cultivating. I need to be daily repenting of sin, laying my heart before the Lord and asking Him to open my eyes. I also need to be daily delighting in Him, which will serve to wean me from my sinful habits and desires. It is much easier to deal with sin in its infant stages than to wait until it has conceived and borne bad fruit.
Just some thoughts as I was weeding today. May the Lord give me grace to delight in dependence upon Him, to repent daily of my sinful heart, and to rejoice more and more in His amazing work on my behalf! May He be glorified by the fruit I bear!

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Is It OK for Mothers to Work Full-time Outside of the Home?

Here is an interview with John Piper, who was asked "Is it OK for mothers to work full-time outside of the home?"  Notwithstanding that there are always extreme circumstances, I encourage women to consider the blessing and great calling they have to motherhood and homemaking!  It is definitely the most fulfilling vocation I have ever had, using and developing all of my gifts and abilities to the extreme!  Everything I learned or developed in school or jobs is now put to the ultimate test! 
Having said it can be, I want to discourage it because mothering and homemaking are huge and glorious jobs. What children need at age one, five, six, fourteen, eighteen is simply amazing, and so is what those needs call forth from a woman's creativity and heart and mind, personally for each one of these little ones that are coming along.  Read the entire interview answer here. 

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Teaching Money Management to Kids (and yourself!)

I have begun going through several resources on money management with the girls.  One if from Larry Burkett and another is from Dave Ramsey.  We just began "commission" charts and will be making the first week's payouts later today.  It is all very challenging and exciting for them (and me!).  Here is another article I ran across this afternoon that encourages me to press on in this very important training work. 

Randy Alcorn gives 10 tips for training your children to manage money:
1. Give your children something greater than money - your time.
2. Use life's teachable moments to train your children.
3. Take a field trip to a junkyard.
4. Teach your children to link money with labor.
5. Teach your children how to save.
6. Get your children started on the lifetime adventure of giving. 
7. Provide your children with financial planning tools.
8. Teach your children how to say "no."
9. Show your children how family finances work.
10. Never underestimate the power of your example.
Read the article here.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Getting Messy

Here is a good post on something I struggle with as a parent (and a control-freak!) - involving the kids in my chores or daily household activities, when it seems like it would be so much easier just to do them myself.
Lesson learned…when you involve your kids, things can get messy really fast! Of course, I say that tongue in cheek. But if you are like me, there can be the ongoing temptation to just “do it yourself” with regard to the home. It’s much easier and more effective to cook, clean, do laundry and manage keeping the house running ourselves. Our sense of accomplishment can be easily tied to what we can check off our lists, and incorporating our children into the mix just isn’t very efficient. Read the rest here.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Learning to Pray

As I was driving home from the store today, with a slight headache (after a week of headaches) and thinking about everything I had to do when I got home (unload the groceries, feed the baby, prepare the meat to freeze it, clean the house, sew the girls' dresses, make lunch,...), I found myself going down my usual path of becoming more and more negative and worked up about "me" and my needs.   I could predict my attitude towards my family when I got home if I continued in this vein, and it would not be pretty or God-glorifying.  However, I also happened to be listening to our new Seeds Scripture Memory CD, and the song that was playing was Philippians 4:6-7 :
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
And there it was!  The solution to my growing anxiety.  You would think, after all of these years, that I would naturally flee to prayer all the time.  After all, Paul says to pray continually.  But, sad to say, I think I am just beginning to catch on.  I have no need to be anxious. About anything!  I can at any time go to the Lord of the universe, the Creator and Sustainer of all, my Redeemer, and lay my anxiety before Him.  And He gives peace!  He will guard my heart and my mind!  Novel idea, right? 
But it is a novel idea for me.  I don't need to confine my prayer times to my morning Bible reading time.  Or to church prayer meeting time.  Or to family devotion time.  I can pray all day long!  When I face a temptation to be anxious, I can pray right then!  I don't have to wait until I can get alone and make my prayer list and organize everything neatly.  I can cry out right now!  When I have a headache and know that I will be extra tempted to be exasperated and short with my children, I can confess my weakness and ask for a heart of mercy and patience towards them.  When my children disobey and I am tempted to respond in anger, I can confess my sin and ask for a heart of love for them.  When I am amazed at something He has done in our family - a new skill, a display of selflessness and sacrifice, a beautiful smile or unexpected love note - I can pray and thank Him for His goodness and wonderfully abundant gifts.  I can pray all day long
In the station of life that I am in right now - with a 3 month old and three other children needing me all day long - I don't always have the time or alertness to spend much time in prayer and reading in the mornings.  But I can pray all day long!  What a mercy that God is always available and that He loves to give good gifts to men!  And what mercy that He faithfully leads me along and continues to teach me such truths.  I just wanted to share this in the hopes that it might encourage someone else to not be anxious about anything.....

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Successful Parenting

My friend posted a link to this article by Ed Welch of CCEF today, and I found it very helpful in thinking through my methods and goals in parenting. 
Everyone who has children thinks about the question: How can I be an effective or even successful parent? I have yet to meet a parent who simply wanted to pass children off into the next stage of life with basic physical health in tact but nothing more. Read the rest here. 

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

How the Gospel Works

Elyse Fitzpatrick gives an excellent explanation f the gospel and how it should work itself out in our mundane, daily lives (even in grocery shopping!). 
Let’s face it, no one reads a blog like this unless he (or she!) is deeply interested in and committed to growing in their own personal piety and helping others do the same. Because we love the Lord, we all want to grow into men and women who reflect His life more perfectly. For us, the question isn’t: “Should we seek to grow in holiness?” but rather, “How do we grow in holiness?” Further, most of us would answer the “How?”  question in this way, “We grow in holiness through the gospel.” And while that’s the right answer, the possibility exists that it’s not specific enough to be of real help. And so, we talk about the gospel, we want to point others to the gospel, but perhaps we’re not seeing how the specifics of the gospel connect to our daily struggles with unbelief and idolatry…our sin. So let’s take a moment to consider exactly how the individual truths of the gospel change us. Read the rest here. 

Time

Here is a good post on marriage, reminding us that we only have so much time and so had better be purposeful with it! 

Rich or poor, we are all allotted equal doses of time.  For each of us, we have 168 hours a week to spend.  That works out to 10,080 minutes.  There is no favoritism…no ways to earn more or deals to make that give us less.  We all stand on equal footing.  It seems like a lot, no?  No!
Remove about a third of them for sleep and you have about 112 hours left.  Take away about another 22 hours for eating and you’ve got just under 13 hours each day left.  Now, factor in driving to work, work, and driving home from work.  Add to that church events and Community Group.  Add to that baseball practice and dance lessons…you see where I’m going.  Time is precious and there are many, many things in our lives begging for more.  Yet, just like dollars, we have a limited supply.  And unlike dollars, we can’t even run into debt on our time.  There is a hard stop at 168 hours a week. Read the rest here

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Summer Ideas for Parents

Now that summer is upon us, here is a post from one of the pastors at Covenant Fellowship near us with some great thoughts on how to be purposeful with your kids this summer.
School is coming to an end and the summer awaits.  Without school, much of their daily schedule has become open.  How ought we fill that during a summer?  The answers to that question are endless and varied according to each family.  Here are just a few ideas on constructive and fun uses of time this summer:
He lists the following areas:
  • Relational education
  • Elective education
  • Home Projects
  • Bible study
  • Fun
Read here for the entire article and some great suggestions.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Just For Fun

And here's a video we have found to be very helpful in explaining men and women and the differences between us. 

Book Recommendations: Creative Counterpart by Linda Dillow

This book was one recommended to me 12 years ago when Matt and I were ready to be married in a few months.  It is one that I return to again and again every few years to "brush up" on what it means to be a godly woman and wife and to take inventory on how I am doing and where I need to grow.  Linda Dillow addresses what a woman's role really is to be and who we are created to be in Christ.

She defines a "creative counterpart" as
"...more than just a helper.  She is a woman who, having chosen (or having found herself in) the vocation of wife and mother, decides to learn and grow in all the areas of this role and to work as hard as if she were aiming for the presidency of a corporation.  Functioning as a professional in all areas of marriage is the essence of being a creative counterpart." (15, Nelson Publishers 1986)
She then goes on to describe how we can press on to function as a professional in all of these areas, including the areas of our relationship with God as primary, then secondarily as a wife to our husbands.  Dillow addresses common concerns and struggles that we, as women, face and goes on to exhort us to love our husbands while giving practical examples and applications.

Book Recommendations: Parenting

Here are several books that I have read or am in process of reading on parenting.  Again, I will add reviews and quotes when possible:

General Parenting Material:

Parenting Girls:

Parenting Boys:

Book Recommendations: Marriage and Womanhood

I am going to post books that I have found helpful as I have time.  I will try to go back and add brief reviews and quotes as I have time (which is limited at the moment), but I wanted to get these lists up as a start.

These are books that I have found helpful in encouraging me in my role as a wife and woman in general:
Here are biographical books that have also been an encouragement to me: