Archives for May 2007

Today will be a busy day. I have a number of errands to run before we fly out tomorrow, and I still need to finish cleaning my house.

I’ve noticed during these fairly high stress times that my own kids can mirror my own tension. I need to remember that sometimes instead of pushing them off while I try to get work done isn’t nearly as helpful for me or them as taking a few minutes of undivided attention for them. We’ll see how I do.

We have some swallows building a nest on our roof, and David is keen to identify and draw birds right now. I think we’ll talk about Matthew 10:29-31 at breakfast this morning, instead of me dashing around like a chicken with its head cut off. (I’ll dash around after breakfast!)

She was a mom who had every hair in place, her seven children were immaculately groomed and well behaved, and her house sparkled. She was organized, beautiful, and loved the Lord. One of the older children informed me “I love our home because it is always happy.” But this beautiful woman told us as a young mother she struggled with her role as a mother.

Particularly, she said, she found that even when her husband was home, she kept control of the children. She didn’t want him bothered after a hard day at work, so she ran interference when the children misbehaved. If he was in the other room feeding or bathing a child, and the child was crying, she would rush into the room and take over. She made all of the home school decisions (even though she dutifully allowed her husband to have the “final say.” What stopped her was the realization that her actions were preventing her husband from developing relationships with the children, and that as they grew older, they were more obviously needing their dad’s input.

This talk was given years ago, but I remember it well. I’ve been thinking about ways that I can help Lee make the most of the time that he spends with the children. I don’t want to hinder his interactions with them. Since I’m with the children all day, I can share knowledge with him that will be helpful as he talks with them. I can deny myself the pleasure of cleaning up the dinner dishes with him so he can play with the kids before bed. Life is full of challenges, isn’t it? Cleaning up by myself is one of the hardest choices I can make, but I think it’s a good one for now.

https://www.as4me.net/308/

We went out hiking yesterday. Of course, the children were just as excited to see the cows as the deer. Driving through big mud puddles was as much fun as seeing the mountain waterfall, and watching Daddy change the flat tire was the biggest excitement of all.

On these kinds of trips, Lee and I go into teacher mode. We point out the strawberry blossoms, the rings in a giant tree stump, the difference between aspen and Douglas fir, and so on. We’ll stop the car for a yellow swallowtail butterfly, or some bright pink flowers. And as we do these things, I am challenged when I consider how much I enjoy this kind of teaching, how alert I am in finding interesting jewels I know will fascinate my kids, and how often these “teaching opportunities” come up.

Compare that with how I talk about God’s Word. Big difference. But we did talk about something that got me brainstorming about how I talk about spiritual things. We found the head of a mountain spring, with enough bubbles to convince me to drink from it. I told David he could get water with his hands, or just drink it like a dog. And that reminded us about Gideon. Then I started thinking through all of the object lessons in the Bible– there are quite a lot that we encounter in our modern existence every day– yeast, milk, plants, games, and so on. Perhaps I just need to do a better job at being sensitive to pointing out the connections already in the Bible for me. And beyond object lessons, what about watching out for biblical principles in action as we watch people around us? The nice man helping mommy with the shopping cart, the children fighting over a swing, and the car who stops to help a hurting animal can all illustrate biblical principles. I should be pointing these things out. And what about when I simply find a Bible passage that is beautiful in meaning and expression? Shouldn’t I be sharing these too?

And you can probably guess where this train of thought is going to lead us. If I am going to be sharing God’s Word and ways to our children, I need to be thinking about God’s Word and ways throughout the day. “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”

We worked on our Sunday school song all week, so I was eager to see what would happen during the song service.

Do you really want to know what happened? It didn’t seem to make a difference. Bethel did sing more words than she typically does, but David was silent as usual.

I’m sure it did make a difference, though. Surely they knew the song more than if we hadn’t practiced it. I still want to teach them the Sunday school song a week ahead of time, but it will have to wait for two weeks while we’re out of town. In the meantime, maybe we’ll talk about some “Sing to the Lord” psalms at breakfast.