May 15, 2012

1 Timothy 6:20 (message translation)

“Guard the treasure you were given! Guard it with your life.”

Our children are indeed a God given treasure and we need to protect them at any cost. I’m not an “over-protective” nutty mom but I do try to shelter my kids without keeping them in a bubble. I’ve been striving to find a balanced way to protect them in a way that won’t produce self-righteousness or rebellion later. Mom’s we need to wake up and open our eyes to what’s going on in the culture we live in. It’s time we take a stand and fight for our children’s innocence. If you think for one second there’s not an intentional attack on our children, then I pray God opens your eyes. Have you walked down a costume isle at Halloween and seen how provocative little girls costumes have gotten?? Costumes for little girls as young as 3 and 4!! Have you watched the commercials that come on during cartoons your children watch?? I can go on and on. We’ve become somewhat desensitized to what’s going on. No one else will fight for our children but us!! How do we do this? We limit what they watch. We don’t have to be fanatics. But we do need to realize every time we turn our TV on we are letting things into our home and into our children’s thought life. Introduce Christian based movies and shows. To name a few, veggie tales, bible man, and there’s more. We start praying for our children daily. We start reading them bible stories. We don’t let these formative years pass by and sit back idly waiting for our church to teach our children. We need to take full advantage of the teachable moments that present themselves daily. We live the biblical principals we are trying to teach them. They are always watching us, even when we don’t realize their watching. This can seem like a daunting task but with God’s guidance our children don’t have to conform to the culture we live in. It’s not a lost cause! It’s a daily battle that we moms need to stand up and fight. Romans 12:2 (message trans) “ Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention to God. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to it’s level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” Dear Lord, I pray you give us the wisdom and strength to stand up and fight for our children daily. You’ve entrusted them to us to protect and to show them the way they should go and we will not sit back idly as the culture would like us to.

May 11, 2012

Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

“I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives. And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God.”

What better time than Mother’s day to celebrate the work of our hands? Being a mother is definitely a gift from God and it is most definitely work. This Mother’s Day, I encourage all moms out there to celebrate yourself. Even if no one else in your life celebrates you. Put the laundry aside, the yard work, the house cleaning, and just enjoy your babies! We can get so busy that we don’t sit down and enjoy our children. Get down on their level and soak them in. Our children are a reflection of what we pour into them. And we pour quite a bit into them day in and day out. So celebrate that!! Enjoy the little people that they are. Rowdy and rambunctious, full of life and joy, curiosity and hunger for learning the world around them. It’s a grueling day to day job but ohh how blessed we truly are. “Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? The fruit of the womb his generous legacy? Like a warrior’s fistful of arrows are the children of a vigorous youth. Oh, how blessed are the parents, with your quivers full of children!” Psalms 127:3-4(message translation). Mom’s, we are blessed and one day when our children are grown they will rise up and call us blessed! Proverbs 31:28. Happy Mother’s Day! Lord, We thank you for giving us the best gift of all, motherhood. Help us celebrate this precious gift you given us this weekend not with arrogant pride but with a grateful heart.

May 7, 2012

2Corinthians 5:14-15 (message translation)

“Christ’s love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in everything we do. Our firm decision to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in His life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”

I attended our “Beautiful” women’s conference over the weekend. It was amazing. Isn’t it funny how we don’t realize as mothers how distant we allow ourselves to get from God until we go to a conference or open our bibles, for the first time in months or even years, and read a scripture that tugs at our heart strings. We get so busy we stop seeking God. The distance becomes somewhat of the norm. We give him the occasional nod of thanks or prayer request out of an impending need. We lose that first love feeling we had with him before we had our children. We let ourselves get to “E”. The way we procrastinate stopping for gas. I push my car to it’s limits. Thinking how far can I go on “E” until I have to stop for gas. We tend to do that in our relationship with God too. We think, “oh they’ll be plenty of time once the kids get past this tiring, no sleep, newborn stage, or the terrible 2’s, 3’s, and 4’s toddlers stage.” But the truth is if we distance ourselves from God by not cultivating an intimate relationship with him daily we become not so great mothers. God is the author of unconditional love, which we all strive to give our children. But we aren’t super moms, we’re human and we run out. That’s why we have to allow him to fill us with his love so that we can pour into our children. I encourage all moms in all stages of motherhood to seek out a personal relationship with Jesus. It’s not a religious duty it’s a relationship. It’s personal and He beckons us like only He can. He knows how to tug at our hearts to get our attention and I believe He’s doing that now. Lord, help us to daily come to you and seek you in a new way. Tug at our hearts the way only you can, love on us the way only you can. We don’t want to continue on “E” fill us with your unending love to overflowing.

May 1, 2012

Psalms 27:13

“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord and He shall strengthen your heart; Wait I say, on the Lord!”

“Greatness is released when you seek God to make you effective. Seeking new heights is not as important as mastering your current challenge. As you master what has been given you, He offers more challenging ways to extend your dominion and grants you more to subdue. Trudge forward if you can. Move forward, sometimes clumsily, sometimes gracefully, but always forward. Remember that it is not the speed of the runner but the relentless pacing of her well-timed rhythm that enables her to reach her goal. Sometimes it is the stumbling forward that breaks the ribbon at the finish line. Just don’t quit.”

(God's Leading Lady, T.D. Jakes)

Ahhh yes our current challenge…. That would be motherhood. It’s not the most glamorous job or calling. Most days we are at the bottom of the totem pole. Cleaning up poop, vomit, dirty dishes, scrubbing marker and crayon off walls. Every day presents a new gag-worthy mess to clean up. What gets me through each toddler scream filled day is knowing God is at work and it’s all in a much grander scale than I can even wrap my brain around. I sometimes like to look at my kids and dream of the big calling and purpose God has on there lives. It humbles me to think of all God has for them. However, last week, was one of those weeks that I wanted to pull every hair out of my head. The fighting, and refereeing and potty training had taken it’s toll on me. I thought for sure God had left our house and taken with him every last drop of spirituality with him. I was definitely down from the mountaintop last week. This morning I pleaded with Him to please come back because I wasn’t sure I could take another week face down in the ditch. In the gentle quiet of the house I felt his presence and the beautiful scripture not to lose heart came to mind. He’s always here, he never really leaves. We just stop seeking him. I was flooded with peace and confidence to run this race he has set before me as a mother, a wife, and a woman of God. This daunting task of motherhood is just preparing us and our children for something so much bigger than we realize. We aren’t just mothers, we are women after God’s heart. He longs for us to seek him daily, not just for our children but also for ourselves. Lord, we need you, strengthen us each day to run this race even if we have to stumble through the finish line, we run to you and we wait on you.

April 24, 2012

Isaiah 58:7 (message translation)

“What I’m interested in seeing you do is: 

Sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless into your homes, putting clothes on the ill-clad, being available to your own families.”

Time is that precious commodity that once it’s lost you can‘t get it back and this is especially true with raising our children. I remember being pregnant with my first child and how many people would approach me and tell me, “Enjoy this time, it goes so fast.” My first born is only 4 but my gosh, how very true that statement is. I blinked and he was walking, talking, and now about to start school in the fall. Where did all this time go? Although it’s not college, K-4 is a huge milestone to a mother and her child. I ask myself a very scary question: Did I use this very short window of time wisely? As a stay at home mom I can admit that I haven’t always taken full advantage of the blessing it is to be home with my kids. I’ve been guilty of taking it for granted. Yes I’m home with them but what am I doing with this time? About 2 years ago, God opened my eyes to how precious this time is in my children’s life and what it means to be a mother. In almost every parenting book out there, secular and Christian, they all agree that the most impressionable time for a child is in the first five years of their life. That would be us City Moms. Now is the time to love, protect, nurture, and lay the foundation of morals that they will live by the rest of their lives. Everything else can wait. This is for all of us moms, working and stay at home moms. We need to learn to sit still and say no once in a while to extra stuff and activities. We can take on a million projects, join five thousand social organizations, volunteer in every area needed, throw parties, and blaze trails later. Right now our children need us. I will never forget something my mother in law told me when my son was an infant. I was so upset and felt a little left out because I had missed a big event at church. She said to me, “God will bless you at home. Right now your ministry is first at home. Your time will come.”

Lord open our eyes to the bigger picture of your purpose for us as mothers. Remind us daily how important this time is in our children’s lives and let us never take it for granted.

April 17, 2012

Colossians 1:19-21 (message trans)

“So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe, people and things, animals and atoms, get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death”

As women, we have this struggle within ourselves to be content with who God created us to be individually. We constantly compare ourselves to each other. She’s a better mother, she’s a better cook, she’s prettier, she’s smarter, she’s this, she’s that. We pick ourselves apart. The thought that constantly plagues my mind is, “There are a million other women that could do what I do and do it better than me. So why me Lord?” We limit God’s creativity. He formed the heavens and the earth and we think he ran out of ideas when he created us. All the while God smiles and says “On the contrary.” He’s an artist. God knew exactly what he was doing when he created us women. Every trial, triumph, and failure he used to shape and mold us into who he purposed us to be . We are all so beautifully complex and slightly flawed but when we come together make up this awe inspiring piece of artwork. It’s when we stop competing with one another and start forming an unshakable bond that God can use us to connect and reach other women who so desperately need him and need to feel acceptance and love. The culture we live in pushes us women to strive for this unrealistic place of perfection that God never intended for us. There’s beauty in our flaws! Psalm 139:16 (message trans)“You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you. The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.” Thank you Father that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Help us not to get caught up in societies definition of beauty. Remind us to celebrate our uniqueness and build each other up.

April 13, 2012

Hebrews 10:25 (message translation)

“Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out. Not avoiding worshipping together as some do, but spurring each other on”

When our children are little it is so easy to become isolated and forget that there is life outside of our children‘s nursery or room. We lose touch with friends, stop being involved in church, other than attending on an occasional Sunday morning, and we even sometimes put our spouses on the back burner. It’s such a demanding time as a mother that we hardly have energy for much else. Although, it is important that we shift priorities and make changes to our schedules during these crucial formative years, we can let ourselves become to isolated. God created us to desire connection and love. Not just the love of our spouse and children, but love we share with friends. This is especially true with us women. We thrive on communication and camaraderie. Don’t get me wrong we love our men but let’s be honest they don’t fully comprehend what we go through on a daily basis like other moms do. I think it’s so important for us to connect with each other and share and laugh about our struggles as moms. There is something so therapeutic about picking up the phone after a long grueling day and laughing with a girlfriend about something completely ridiculous and probably wouldn’t be funny if we weren’t deliriously exhausted. I want to encourage all the moms out there to get involved in a moms group. If it’s not city moms, then find one that you feel comfortable in. It’s so good for us to stay connected with other mothers. Philippians 2:2 (message translation) “Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends.” Lord I ask that you help us not to become to isolated during this time of motherhood and that you would help us cultivate the deep-spirited friendships that you created us to desire.