Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Learning to Parent, More of Saturday

The Lord has me in a season of being humbled in the area of parenting. I will sheepishly admit that I kind of thought I had parenting somewhat figured out. When I say parenting, by the way, I mean all those things it encompasses: mothering, shepherding, training, disciplining, preparing...and so on. Seems that nearly every day I feel less "qualified" than ever to do this godly-mothering thing!

But it is still very much the desire of my heart to obey and please the Lord in all things, especially as a woman entrusted with 5 little hearts to point to Him (1 heart not yet out of the womb yet, of course!). Feeling unqualified and a bit clueless has a good side, though: I'm relishing God's mercy and grace like never before, asking Him more and more to help me be the mom He wants me to and pleading with Him to turn my children's hearts toward Himself...

...because more and more what I see, as God continues to adjust and refine and straighten my understanding of parenting, is that my part is to train them toward hearts of obedience and submission to our loving God. The Holy Spirit is the only one Who can actually change their hearts. My job is to teach, train, instruct, direct, love, discipline.

Slowly, and often painfully, I'm trying to modify the way I deal with the children's misbehavior (sin), so that I aim to discern (with many quick cries to the Lord in the moment!) what is going on in the heart of the child that would, for example, make her willing to speak disrespectfully to me. If God has called children to honor and obey parents, then my little one isn't obeying Jesus when she speaks to me in wrong tones and words. And I must help her see this reality and help her understand God's commands to us, then urge the child to admit to Him her sin, then move on in the sweet forgiveness of Christ.

This morning, I did part of my Shepherding a Child's Heart Handbook for Parents in my Bible study time. I loved this scripture portion that was highlighted - love it for its Truth, simplicity, and practicality: And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? (Deuteronomy 10:12-13) Oh, and obviously, the more I ponder these truths within and enforce them without (to the children), the more I must examine my own heart - is it driven by a desire to obey my Savior?

Father, help us all to parent for Your glory, regardless of what stage of mothering we are in or what age our children are. How we need Your help, wisdom, strength, grace and love!
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More of our Saturday Fun:

EG in that big gnarly live oak tree. She craves climbing trees, and we don't have any close to home. LC fell out of this tree, unfortunately, scratching up her back on the way down. She's fine now!


A really truly classic blue bluebonnet. Later, you'll see some variations on this. In the background is one of many enormous granite "hills" that protrude from the general flatness. This one's 400+ feet elevation, quite fun to climb, though I didn't try this time around.


She ran off and picked one as soon as we got out of the car!

We found a nice place in the shade. It was in the mid-70's and we actually got a bit cool with the breeze.


MK, LC, and EG with their fruit skewers. They weren't expecting fruit on sticks! I do not enjoy meticulous kitchen work, so I skewered as long as I had patience (10 sticks), then put the rest of the chopped fruit in bowls, knowing it would get eaten, too. It was one cantaloupe, one pound of strawberries and probably a pound and a half of grapes.

CA had to be in my lap. She was rather traumatized by the breeze, and kept crying that it was going to blow her food away. Kind of cute and pitiful at the same time.


Moving on to daddy's lap...still anxious about the breeze. She's also paranoid about birds right now...that they'll come get her food or other menacing behaviors. Not sure why...

That concludes the picnic-portion of our day...next up: surprises beyond the weeds!

Thanks for visiting and reading!

1 comment:

  1. And shouldn't we pray those very verses over our children, as well as for ourselves?!

    ReplyDelete