Mommy Wars

I just got back from taking my now 4 year old to the doctor. It was nice to hear that she is healthy and doing well developmentally. And yes, she had her 4 year old vaccinations. I also had a nice chat with the doctor about food and nutrition, exercise and growth charts. I love my daughter. And I want her to grow up healthy.

But I read so many blogs, listen to other homeschool mothers, go to homeschool conferences, listen to podcasts, and I can’t help but think at times that I’m failing my kids. I don’t cook fancy nutritious meals every night. I don’t even know what some of those ingredients are in a “healthy” cook book. I’m not Martha Stewart with a super clean house and making awesome crafts with my children each week. I allow my kids to eat high-fructose corn syrup and sugar. We all drink out of plastic cups. I put my babies in the nursery as soon as I could. (I even did it while still in the hospital!)

Shhhhh – Surrender is a Bad Word!

My Lord has been teaching me a lot about myself. He has proven to be my All-Consuming Fire burning off the unneeded qualities in my being that do not measure up to the character of Christ. I have had to come to the end of myself. I surrender.

No one likes to surrender. I picture the soldier tying the white handkerchief onto the end of his rifle and waving it. I picture hands lifted up into the air. I picture heads hung in shame.

No one likes to surrender.

The problem is, transformation occurs only when we surrender everything to the Lord. Everything. Not just the parts of life we want to give over. Not just the easy things in life. But everything. Every little inch of our being.

No one likes to surrender.

For me, it’s pride and arrogance. Maybe there’s a little bit of a control-issue. Oh, selfishness probably should be added to the list as well. And the fire burns hot…

Words…Powerful Words

At a church social, as I was picking up a yummy cinnamon roll off the table, a former pastor and his wife spoke to me. He is an older gentleman of whom I have great respect. These were his words to me: “I want you to know that I watch your children, and you are to be commended.”

I looked down, stunned, and then looked over to him, “Thank you, sir. It’s very hard sometimes.”

“Yes, it is hard to be a parent, but you are doing fine.”

I stared at him as he walked away.

He didn’t realize I’d had a really hard week. I mean, all four of us in the house had been dealing with sickness which brings out the grumpies, which causes school to be delayed and focus to be nonexistent. I’d driven to town 3 times to go to doctor visits. I had lost my temper once or twice and I am finishing up a wonderfully hard and convicting Bible study on Raising Kids. I ended last week almost in tears with thoughts of “Why am I doing this?” swirling in my head.

The power of words. Never underestimated the power of your words.

I will never forget that man.

I need to find someone to encourage today. Who can you encourage?

Please, Cover the Kids!

The kids have had swimming lessons for the past 3 weeks. The program has been wonderful and geared right to the individual abilities of each child. There have only been 4 children in their class, with mine being half the class. There are 2 lessons before the one my kids take, so at times there are a few extra kids and parents around.

Once the lesson is over, the instructors send the kids back to the parents to get ready to go home. When my kids are finished, I dry them off, put their shirts or covers on and we leave the pool area. This, to me, seems to be a proper way to end a marvelous time of swimming.

However, the other day I looked up from my book to watch my daughter kick and blow bubbles and got an eye full

There is Fluff in Homeschooling, too

When I was in the classroom, a complaint I’d get from parents was that there was too much “busy work” given to kids as homework. I had to agree at times. But what they didn’t know was all of the stuff I DID NOT assign to the kids! I’d try to mostly assign practice work for new objectives, or we’d have projects to do, which I always thought were fun. But looking back on it, if doing projects wasn’t a kid’s learning style, the project was drudgery.

Homeschooling is no different.

Blog Readers R.O.C.K.!!!

Hello Readers!!!

I have thoroughly enjoyed entering into the blogging world!  My blog is about to hit a new goal of 5,000 hits!

It is my hope that God is glorified in all I do and say. And whether you joined to follow this blog because of Awana lessons, or Bible study thoughts, or silly things my kids do, or homeschool ideas, or because you personally know me, please know that I value you and I value your time that you spend reading this blog.

If I had really cool things to give away to you, I would.

I like to think that in my brokenness God is playing out Psalm 1 in my life. I’m far from doing anything perfectly, but I do try to live Psalm 1.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, not stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His Law he meditates day and night…And whatever he does shall prosper.”  ~ Psalm 1: 1, parts of 2 and 3.

I am not good. The only good in me comes from the Lord. He is the One who makes things prosper.

So may the God of the universe continue to bless you through anything that comes from my fingers.

Have an AWESOME day!!

No. W.O.R.D.S.

This is a sad note. Unfortunately life isn’t fair. It isn’t all groovy and happy every moment of the day.

The kids are in bed and I sat down to read my email. It was flooded with prayer requests from friends and my church’s prayer request emails. A few every day or so is fine, but 5 within 3-4 hours? Yikes.

We live in such a fallen world.

And we need prayer. Prayer for our families. Prayer for our children. Prayer for our Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Prayer for our country. Prayer for unbelievers. Prayer for missionaries. Prayer for ourselves.

For in prayer there is power.

There is even power in the prayers when I have no words.

Let’s be real a minute.

There are times when “canned” praying just needs to take a back seat. And I have to be on my knees before the Lord telling Him that I don’t know the words to pray.

And that’s when Jesus calls out to our hearts and says, “It’s ok. I hear the groaning of the Holy Spirit and I will intercede for you. I know your heart and I know it’s breaking for the person you are praying for.”

I want so much to be a prayer warrior. I don’t know if that’s a spiritual gift or not, but I want it. Which probably means I have to practice it. And I fail at that a lot.

I’m so grateful I serve a God who is strong when I am weak.

May He be ever praised. He is the everlasting God and He hears my voice even when it has no words.

Related articles

• Value of Prayer (thoughtfulbeliever.wordpress.com)
• Be Faithful in Prayer (faithfulpromises.wordpress.com)

The Fireworks of Life

I have observed that everything seems to go wrong and explode when I make the decision to focus more on Jesus. Right now I am being led by the promptings of the Holy Spirit to be a better wife and mother, to be a more skilled Bible teacher, to mentor a college student, to be a true friend, and to rein in my lack of self-control.

And let’s look over the past 3-4 weeks of my life: my kids have had CRAZY behavior problems at home and in public; I’ve not been able to put as much time into studying the Word as I want to; I just finished reading the chapter I’m working through with this young lady 5 minutes ago and she’s about to pull into the driveway; I haven’t had a good conversation with a friend in weeks; and I ate 2 muffins for lunch instead of fruit and a sandwich.

Great. Success. Right.

But this is when my loving God brings to mind some other things that have happened…

1. I got a huge hug from my son yesterday after a really hard day. That hug meant a lot.

2. I get to spend some time with a young lady who inspires me to do better.

3. I have the best husband in the world who takes time out of his busy day to stick up for me and even offers to come home early if needed.

4. I have a daughter who prays the sweetest prayers to Jesus.

5. I have the best Small Group friends a person could ask for.

6. I serve a mighty God who loves me and died on the cross for me. AND He holds power over death!

Jesus told his disciples that there WILL be trials and tribulations in this life. Life as a sold-out, surrendered Christian is not easy.

But it is worth the cost to hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant!”

So, I will pull up my boot straps, hitch up my britches, pick up my feet, and continue down the path of the Narrow Way no matter how many fireworks are going off.

STOP!!! Screech!! Halt!

Ok. This is why I love homeschooling. I can have a crisis of teaching philosophy and it’s OK.

I’m fine with our math curriculum. I’m fine with reading and science. What I have not been satisfied with is Bible and History. So I’m going to try something new. Yea!

History: I started out doing the whole time line beginning with creation and we got up to Egypt. I was only doing a “survey” type thing. We read a lot of books on the different cultures and figured out main people or landmarks (think pyramids). But I felt that it was SO abstract for my kids’ minds. My son is almost 5. He doesn’t really know about the state he lives in or about this country. Why should he be learning about really old cultures that don’t exist anymore?

Whoa. Before you criticize me, I understand the whole “you gotta know the culture so you can understand the Bible better.” I get that. I don’t have a problem with that. But I don’t want to waste my time. Hence my Bible curriculum.

Bible: I haven’t really done much with this except devotions with the kids up to now. They have their Awana verses and we also have Family Bible Time when we can fit it in. (I know. SHOCK! A homeschooling family that doesn’t read the Bible together EVERY night!) …I’m keeping it real people.

When I taught in Christian School, I taught Bible using Positive Action Bible Curriculum. And I knew I would use it one day with my own kids. Now is the time. They have a new Preschool curriculum just off the presses and I bought the Kindergarten book for RB. They came in the mail today and I am SO excited!! So they will be taking a survey of the Bible with the main stories. And then I found this really neat website where I can download coloring pictures that were made by kids for kids called the Kids Color Me Bible. So my thought is, we’ll do the Positive Action books (to teach Bible Study) and then I’ll have each child make one of the keepsake coloring Bible books to enforce the story. The website also has memory verse cards I can pull in. Awesome.

History/Bible: SO…my conclusion is this. I’m going to focus my kids on the Word of God. As we go through it, then I can show them places on the map, we can research countries such as Egypt, and we can learn about Bible Heroes. I plan on teaching character traits as we learn about them in scripture. I have most of the ValueTales series on my bookshelf. I’ll pull those biographies out as we talk about the character traits, and that brings in more history and heroes.

Bible…History…and Heroes.

We’ll see how this works!

Related Articles:

Character Development

Homeschool Conference Top 13 List (or Convictions, whichever)

I went to a homeschool convention this past Thursday and Friday. It was so wonderful to sit, listen, and learn from people who are experts in their fields. I’m still processing through my brain all of the information I soaked in. I think I have 4 new books to read. And it was interesting because I would go and listen to one person speak about one subject and then go to a different person speaking on a similar topic and they would recommend two different things. So the question is…who is right? How do you know?

Over the next few days as I process information, I’ll be sharing some of the stuff I learned. I’m hoping to put some of this into practice soon. Other tips, theories, or philosophies I may need to chew on for a while before I decide anything. I’m also planning on hashing all of this out with my husband. He’s pretty smart.

I will say I learned some Truth, or was reminded of Truth, while there. It’s funny how God prepares us to hear from Him. He’s been preparing me for the past 3 weeks for some of the lessons I needed to learn. Here’s my Top 13 Things I Picked Up From the Homeschool Conference.

13) On average, people watch 7.5-10 hours of TV a day. (This includes computer screens, ipad games, phone games, video games, etc.) For an average lifespan this equals 10 years of life in front of a screen. For the average lifespan, people will have watched 1.5 million acts of violence and 360,000 murders. How are we any more civilized than the Romans who sat in the Colosseum and watched Christians be ripped apart by lions???

12) What would happen if that 10 years was spent in the Word of God?

11) Don’t let distractions rule your life.

10) Get serious about God.

9) Teach the pursuit of excellence, not perfection. There was only 1 perfect Person in this world and it wasn’t me or my children.

8) Am I willing to break mediocrity even if it means getting “dirty” and involved in the lives of others?

7) Use more mercy than judgement. God does.

6) I need to trust God to govern my kids and my husband. I don’t run the show.

5) We cannot see our true selves without the help of others and scripture.

4) EVERYTHING is used by God to teach me about Who He is and who I am in Him.

3) When disciplining children, don’t get rid of the spiderweb, get rid of the spider.

2) Don’t be too arrogant to apologize and ask for forgiveness.

1) You’ll be the same in 5 years as you are now except for the people you meet and the books you read.

I have a lot to think through. What do you think about these statements or questions?