What’s the best way to teach our children important life lessons? I’m not a teacher and I have no formal training whatsoever, but if I were to guess, I would probably say a lot depends on the child’s personality, where they are in their development, and whether they learn best by seeing, hearing, or doing. However, I was listening to this Brant and Sherri Oddcast episode the other day, and they pointed out how Jesus taught: he asks questions, tells stories, and lets people wrestle with the meaning. And he didn’t have set “classroom times” and “office hours.” He taught
How often do you feel like you don’t measure up? For me, it happens pretty regularly. I feel like I’m not a great mom when I snap at my kids. Or when my focus shifts from trying to keep up on the housework to something else, and I look around and feel surrounded by mess. Or when what I intended to say to my husband came out wrong and led to division rather than connection. And that doesn’t even get into what the world tells me about what sort of woman I should be. It’s so, so easy to get
Kids should have time to go outside and play. To sit in a pile of dirt and not care how messy they get. To let their imaginations wild as they pretend they’re exploring a jungle, hiding from pirates, or discovering a new species of life. I want my kids to go outside and play. Being Content with Reality But the reality is they have two parents that work full time, and while the older two could go play in the backyard by themselves, they have a little brother that’s just a little too young to have no supervision in that
Here’s a shock: I’m impatient. I want what I want when I want it, on my time table. I hear myself telling my kids that waiting is part of life, and I know it is both intellectually and experientially, but sometimes I catch myself thinking ahead to what I’m looking forward to, that I don’t see what’s right in front of me. This is especially true with my kids. At ages 3, 5, and 8, it’s not uncommon for me to think ahead to how much “easier” or “more fun” life will be when they’re older. Looking forward to milestones
How connected is your family? Do you regularly spend time focusing on each other? As cell phones have helped us stay in touch with those not physically with us, it’s distanced us from those we’re sitting next to (see Eric Pickersgill’s Removed series for a powerful visual of our attachment to mobile devices). How do you make the most of the time you have with your kids? As a working mom, I only have about 3 hours between when I get off work and I tuck them into bed–that includes traveling to and from the office, the time it takes
I’m not a farmer. I’m not a gardener. I tried being a plant mom, but after my plants hobbled along for a couple of years, I decided to focus on other things. Despite my thumb being far from green, there are important lessons all of us can learn from plants. Sowing good seeds Twin Lakes Church shared a devotional for mothers this past May, and I really liked what one of them wrote based on Galatians 6:7b : “You will always harvest what you plant.” As it began to dawn on me that I would never have children of my
What do you do when you hit your breaking point? We all do it. Running on less sleep than we should, feeling overwhelmed by everything we need to get done, and then the kids act like, well, kids. They’re incapable of seeing that you’re approaching critical mass and are about to snap. So what do you do? Time to Take a Break I love how Karen O’Connor put it in this downloadable Mother’s Day devotional from Twin Lakes Church . After telling a very relatable story about how challenging parenting is, she wrote: “[Matthew 11:28] reminds us that the Lord