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The Aftermath of a Movie

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

conversation-about-teenagersMy family usually doesn’t go to the movies unless it’s the dollar movies. Well, the last movie we saw as a family was “Brave.” It’s a cartoon about a woman who liked to shoot arrows and ride horses. She was rebellious against her parents because she didn’t want an arranged marriage, so much so that she accidentally turned her mother into a bear. The mother nearly died several times in the movie, and it was the daughter’s fault. When the mother was lying (apparently) lifeless on the ground, my 7-year-old daughter burst into tears, turned to me in the dark theater, and said she was sorry. She apparently identified with the main character so much that she thought her rebellion had killed me, and she was sorry. Of course, the mother ended up not being dead after all, and they lived happily ever after.

When we walked out of the theater and into the bright sunshine, my family had a conversation about teenagers. My 12-year-old son said, “She was so rebellious toward her parents.” I explained to him that when he becomes a teenager, he will be overly emotional, and he will think that we as parents are against him. “Why would I think that?” he asked. “Hormones,” I replied.

All four of my children insisted that they would never be that rebellious. I said, “But it was legitimate that the girl in the movie shouldn’t have to marry a man she didn’t love. It seems like the parents weren’t listening to her. And that is how you will feel as teenagers. You will feel that we as parents don’t listen to you. But you need to understand that your dad and I will always listen to you. We can change our mind based on what you say. We are responsible before God for the decisions that we make for you. Because we have more life experience, we usually see things more clearly than you do. We want you to have the best life possible, and we will always try to do the right thing. But we sometimes make mistakes because we’re not perfect. All we can do is the best that we can.”

My kids said that they knew that we would always try to do the right thing and they trusted us. They insisted that they would never go through teenage rebellion. I said, “Just wait… When the time comes, remember this conversation.”

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Multitasking Burns Your Dinner

Saturday, June 30th, 2012

multitaskingAs I was cooking dinner one night, I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss the buzz of the dryer, because the load contained shirts that I didn’t want to wrinkle. Meanwhile my husband called and said he was going to be home late because of traffic. I hung up the phone, and my 11-year-old son started talking to me while I said, “Just a second. Rachel! Set the table please!” and I heard a “Yes, Mommy.” Meanwhile my son was talking, but I have no idea what he was saying because I heard the dryer buzz. I set down my spatula from the stir fry to go to the dryer. I quickly and efficiently folded all the shirts as fast as was humanly possible. My head felt thick as my son continued to jabber on and on. I still wasn’t listening to him because… oh, no! Dinner was burnt! I lifted the pan and turned off the burner, looking toward the dining room to make sure that my daughter had obeyed me about setting the table. She had. I set the pan down. I decided to serve the dinner burnt.

We have come to think of multitasking as being efficient with our time. Especially as mothers, we tend to be doing between three to five things all day long. We try to juggle to get everything done, but the truth is that we have forgotten to focus. And we have forgotten how to live in the moment. The saddest part of all this was that the only thing of eternal value in this scenario was my son’s open heart to me, wanting to share something with me. He is soon going to be a teenager, and if I don’t listen to him now, he won’t bother to tell me things in the future, the things that matter. Because what’s important enough for him to say to me, I ought to be able to listen to. But it seems like I don’t have time or brain space. My brain is juggling six things and can’t input more information without dropping something; in this case, burning dinner.

Actually, whenever I focus on only one thing, I get a lot more done. This includes being with people. When I am in my room, sitting on a chair, and my son wants to talk, I can focus great, and we have the most wonderful, deep spiritual conversations. Like the other day he was telling me how frustrated he was with his brother, who would over-react. This would infuriate him, but he had enough self-control not to show his anger. I told him he didn’t need to give in to the temptation to become angry; that God always provides a way out so that we don’t have to sin. “Look for the way out,” I said. We brainstormed ways to do this. Then we prayed that God would transform all of our hearts to help us to overcome sin. You see, I was paying attention to him because I wasn’t multitasking.

Being scatterbrained is no way to live. I was never scatterbrained until I became a mother, and I felt like there was no choice. But we do have a choice. We can choose to do laundry at the beginning of each day so that it doesn’t interfere with dinner. We can ask God how to eliminate action clutter, things that don’t matter that we happen to be doing. And we can learn to be present, to live and breathe, and to do one thing at a time.

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A Rebuttal to the Courtship Movement

Friday, April 20th, 2012

courtship-movementI’ve listened to many, many hours of workshops about the courtship movement in homeschool Christian circles. The premise is that young people should not date. When they are ready to get married, they “court” a pre-approved person (that the parents have checked out thoroughly), and the young people are never alone together. They never kiss until their wedding day. The parents of the young people seem to be orchestrating the entire thing from beginning to end, to avoid any emotional pain on the part of the daughter or son.

At first I just soaked it all in, having no opinion. I highly value purity before marriage, so the topic appealed to me. But the more I listened, the more uneasy I became. I couldn’t put my finger on why I was disturbed. I talked to my husband about it, and he basically said that he trusted our kids, and that he didn’t want to micromanage who they were going to marry. My husband and I did not court. We dated. We kissed. We were alone together. I wouldn’t trade those days for the world. I was walking on air in anticipation of becoming his bride. Those pre-marriage kisses were absolutely fantastic. We both remained pure before marriage.

Scripture only gives two commands concerning future marriage: no fornication and not being unequally yoked. To add lots of rules to what God has written is sin, especially when you are putting those rules on other people. It causes people to feel like they have an anvil too hard to carry. That’s because God never intended compounding rules to weigh down His commands. Young people who can’t stand the suffocation of the situation end up breaking a real command of God, which has been lumped in with the artificial rules. This is a recipe for disaster.

A better thing to do as a parent is to have a deep, rich relationship with your kids, where you trust them. Realize that the Bible says to leave father and mother in this process. The person should pray about his or her spouse and feel peace from God that this is their soul mate. The man should lead the woman in the relationship; the parents should not be leading the man like a puppet. Otherwise the woman is submitting to the man’s parents, and this horrible, unbiblical interference in marriage is established as a habit.

People who court still break up and have emotional pain. That is not avoided unless you’ve not involved your heart.

No, people need to be accountable under God. Presumably if they’re Christians they care about purity. Other than that, they’re free. If they want to sit down and have a 3-hour conversation about God without having anyone else in the room, they should be able to do that.

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How to Overcome Temptation

Monday, March 5th, 2012

I was sitting one morning with my coffee, looking out the window, praying, when my daughter came and sat beside me in the dark.

She blurted out, “I’m glad you put the nutcracker away. When I saw it in the living room, I wanted to play with it. When you weren’t looking, I played with it until it broke.”

“You should learn how to overcome temptation. Just because you see something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Just think of something else, and you will take your mind off it,” I replied.

“What if I can’t think of anything else?”

“There are millions of things to think about. I’m sure you can think of something, like oceans or monkeys.” My daughter giggled at the thought of monkeys.

Whenever I recognize a temptation, I just throw out the thought and replace it with another thought. Better yet, put your mind on Christ. This is how you take every thought captive.

Later I talked to my husband about my conversation with my daughter, and he said, “Another good way to resist temptation is to go away from the temptation.” He then proceeded to tell me about a study that was done, where children were put into a room with a large present, and they were told that what was inside was wonderful. Then the adult left the room, and the child was alone with the present. In almost every case, the child couldn’t resist temptation and ripped open the present to see what was inside. But there were the few, the one or two percent, who were able to resist temptation. What did they do? One of the children started singing to distract herself. Another little girl got her chair and turned it around so that the present was behind her, so she wouldn’t have to look at the temptation. I found this study very interesting.

There is always a way out of temptation, so that we don’t have to sin: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (I Corinthians 10:13) This has nothing to do with horrible things that happen to us that are beyond our ability to endure: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.” (II Corinthians 1:8) If the apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that God gives us trials that are beyond our ability to endure, then he’s not talking about temptation.

Don’t ever feel that you have to give in to temptation. You don’t. Or if you start to sin, you can stop abruptly. You don’t have to continue sinning once you realize you’re sinning.

“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7

“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” II Corinthians 10:5

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Saturday: A Day in the Life

Saturday, January 21st, 2012

a-day-in-the-lifeThis morning my husband took the boys to the Men’s prayer breakfast. After breakfast, they all went on a factory tour of Goodrich, which apparently doesn’t sell tires any more; they make the brakes of large aircraft. The tour lasted an hour, and apparently it was fascinating.

As soon as I got up, I had my cup of coffee while posting a new YouTube video. I answered some e-mails and tried to find an archived e-mail that was important. I finally found it and answered it, since my husband had expressed interest in something I wasn’t willing to do again unless something changed. I prayed about it and sat there.

a-day-in-the-life-2Meanwhile Rachel and I were alone in the house. She asked if we could have a tea party, and I said yes. We made some fruit tea, and she poured it into thimble-small cups and stirred in a tiny spoon of sugar. She did this maybe a dozen times for each of us. “Can we have a truffle with it?” she asked. I set a truffle on each of our tiny plates, and we cut them with our tiny knives.

After tea, we did an art project with one of her Christmas presents. We mixed two different colors of paint and swooshed it onto a large piece of paper, with brushes that looked like mops. One of the three brushes broke, and I wasn’t impressed. She looked like she was about to cry, but I told her they were lame anyway, and let’s dance instead. So I put on some sappy Carpenters music, and we danced around and giggled.

After eating scrambled eggs, she went downstairs to play “Oregon Trail” on the computer. I spent some time in prayer and Bible reading. Apparently the entire Bible is full of commands to help the poor. It’s extremely clear, so I’m not exactly sure why I’ve never heard a sermon on it.

As soon as the boys got home, two of my sons started changing into their basketball uniforms. Then we all left to their basketball game. My youngest son scored his first basket today. He looked so short and little compared to the other players, and I burst out whooping when I saw him score, because I couldn’t believe my eyes.

My in-laws picked up donuts on the way to our house after the game, and we visited for a short time. As soon as they left, I yelled, “Everyone lie down for 45 minutes!” The house was suddenly quiet as we rested. I literally collapsed into bed and felt like a rock. I’ve been sick with a cold and was only pretending to be normal.

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“I’m So Sorry, Mommy…”

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

My daughter Rachel ran into my room and burst out crying, “I’m so sorry, Mommy…” This was the second time in one week she had confessed her sin before I found out what she did. The first time was a few days previous, when she told me that she had stuffed some math pages behind her bed so she wouldn’t have to do them.

“What did you do now?” I asked her through her tears.

“I cut the beaded doorway with the scissors.”

Walking to the kitchen, I saw two strands of the beaded doorway cut. I was visibly disappointed, because our entire family had enjoyed going in and out of the doorway, swishing the beads. I had found that at a yard sale over the summer, and the odds of finding another one for $3 were slim to none.

She wailed, because perhaps she had liked the doorway the most. She and I walked into my room, and I sat down with her. My daughter has a knack for getting into trouble.

“The reason you do bad things is because you don’t have Jesus living in you. You can’t help but sin,” I said. “Would you like to have Jesus in your life, helping you to do what’s right?”

“Yes,” she said. I could see that she understood her depravity for the first time. I presented the gospel, which she had heard before, but somehow never appropriated to herself. I said that Jesus died for her sin.

“But I wasn’t born back then,” said my daughter.

“Jesus died for your sin before you were born. He paid the price for the sin of everyone who would believe in Him. Your sin deserves death, and He died so that you could have a relationship with Him.”

She wanted to know how to ask Christ into her life. I was so excited, I called my husband. “Can I lead her to Christ without you? She’s ready.” My husband said to do whatever God was leading me to do. So I hung up the phone and led her to Christ.

Every year when Rachel gets her MRI for the lump on her back, I never know if she will need surgery and die. Every year I have to put her on the altar of my life and choose Christ above my daughter. And every year I wonder when the age of accountability is, and that if she were to die, would I know that I would see her again in heaven.

Now with tears streaming down my face, I don’t have to wonder any more. And for this I am truly grateful.

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Don’t Force Your Children to Be Grateful

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Thankfulness is choked out of our children by us trying to “make them grateful.” This happened to me. I grew up being thankful, but then I felt forced to be thankful, and suddenly I wasn’t thankful any more, because I felt that the only reason the other person gave me something was for me to be grateful to them. Forget it. Don’t give me a present. Can’t you see I loved it? Why do I have to chant stupid words for people not to be upset and angry and threaten to never give me anything again? It makes me want to dump the thing on the floor and walk away. I do not feel loved by a person who demands thankfulness. I don’t. I feel that they’re in it for what they can get out of it.

This affected my relationship with God. I felt that relationships were an exchange where you now had to be grateful. And even though I had always been grateful for Christ’s death on the cross, I now saw Christ’s death as something He did so that we would be grateful, and if we weren’t grateful, we weren’t allowed to have a relationship with Him. It suddenly felt selfish on God’s side, and I knew this was a warped and demonic view caused by being forced to be thankful to have a relationship with another person. This view, by the way, is completely wrong. Christ didn’t die to make us grateful; He died to free us from sin. It wasn’t for anything He could get out of us. Christ died for us expecting nothing in return. Anything good in us is because of Him anyway, and our deep love for Him includes gratefulness, but it was never demanded. It was spontaneous due to love.

I wish the person could have seen my eyes, that I was truly grateful with all my heart before she demanded it, and that after demanding it, it was suddenly gone. In its place was the wrong feeling that the other person was selfish and demanding, and I wanted no part of it.

It took me years to get over it. Then gradually God gave me back my gratefulness, but it took a painful process. Now I’m more grateful than I’ve ever been in my life, but it’s because of the grace of God, God directly teaching me about it and convicting me and transforming me. Because the way I had been acting toward this other person had been sinful.

So how did I teach my own children to be thankful? Anyone who has been invited to my children’s birthday parties can attest to the fact that I have the most thankful children on the face of the earth. Yes, in third world countries you see children who are so extremely grateful, and they’ve never been taught gratefulness. My children are identical to that. They are so excited at anything that is given to them, even if it’s a cheap toy from the dollar store. They even say thank you, though I didn’t force them to do that. In good conscience, the only thing I could do is to thank the people myself when they gave my child a toy. I quietly thanked them, not for the sake of the child to hear. But when my children heard my real thankfulness, they emulated it and actually said it.

My children burst with thankfulness, but it’s not because I forced them to say it. It’s because I myself said thank you to the giver for the sake of the giver not being offended. I didn’t care whether my children said it or not because their whole body already indicated that they were grateful. And in being genuine in my speaking directly to the giver, my children now say thank you continuously, and it bursts out of their soul.

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Feed My Sheep

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Many years ago I took an Old Testament class given by my pastor. We studied one book of the Old Testament per week, and it took a year to get through the Old Testament. I turned in Charlotte Mason summaries for each book of the Bible as it was presented. (Right before I took this class, I had read the six Charlotte Mason books and was enthralled with the idea of written narrations for personal Bible study.) I tried to think of every detail I could remember from each book, and I wrote it down in tiny print in pencil on blank sheets of paper.

Well, study for the class took between 2 to 10 hours a day. (Ten hours only happened once, the day I did Genesis.) I loved splashing into the Word of God and surrounding myself with it. It was my food and my breath. I felt like I was inside the stories.

When the class was over, I asked my pastor to please hand back my papers, because those were my only copies. He said the reason he kept them was so that his secretary would type them up for him, because the summaries gave him a fresh perspective on Scripture. I was honored that a pastor could actually learn anything from me.

After that last class was over, I heard a sermon on prayer. I realized that my prayer life was almost non-existent, and I committed to God that I would learn how to pray. Since I already had at least 2 hours for studying the Bible (usually during nap time for my tiny kids, or during an hour of outdoor play time where I would study my Bible outside on a swing or blanket), I decided that I would set aside one hour to pray before I would be allowed to read the Bible. (You can see how hard that was by reading “The Beginning of a Prayer Warrior.”)

After the month was over, I had no obligations, but I had built a new spiritual discipline into my life, and I considered it highly valuable. Well, my godly mentor rebuked me one day for spending too much time in the Word of God. I needed to spend more time being “present” with my children. She was right.

As I drove alone in the car one day to run an errand, I asked God, “So how much time do You want me to spend in Bible study?” I opened my heart to God and expected an answer. I heard (it was not audible, but an impression on my mind), “Do you love Me?” I said, “What the heck. That’s not an answer.” Then I heard it again, “Do you love Me?” “Of course I love You, Lord. What a ridiculous question.” Again I heard, “Do you love Me?” By this time I was nearly in tears. I was hurt. How on earth could He ask me if I loved Him? And then the words came, “Feed My sheep.” I sat there stunned. The Holy Spirit had confirmed what my godly mentor had said. What I needed to do was abide, and spend more time imparting to the children what I already knew. Yes, I would spend time in the Word, but that was no longer my focus. My focus was to pour the Word of God into my children.

At that point, when I studied the Word of God, it was to prepare to teach my children. (God taught me personally from what I was preparing for my children.) Many years passed this way before God gave me permission to study the Word of God for myself again.

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