Spots

I just had to share with you this little testimony of the power of the Holy Spirit.

Last night after the kids were in bed, my husband and I sat down to watch a sermon on parenting that we had missed.  After it was over and we were discussing it, my husband told me that he needs to read his bible, so that we are making sure to use it in our daily life with our kids, so that word centered reasoning becomes our automatic response, and we aren't missing teachable moments.

It brought me back to what seems like not long ago when I felt the Holy Spirit working in my life, and I asked him if he thought it would impact our marriage negatively if I were to become a Christian, and he said, "I don't care what you believe, as long as it doesn't change you, or our life."

Hahahahaha!

That's right, I don't mind if you are a leopard, as long as you don't have any spots, or fur, and as long as you don't eat meat! But, he came to church with me a few times, and then more; he tried small group, and liked it.....and look who's a leopard now my friends, spots and all.

Worthless

So here it is. Underneath all of the busyness and preoccupation with home buying/selling, I have this nagging feeling that I am not doing anything for the Kingdom of God. Now I could blame my husband, because all of this is so new to him that he doesn't feel convicted in the way that I do, and because I have felt pulled to adopt and he isn't open to that, or my kids, because raising them is such a demanding task, but the reality is, it's just me.  I am having trouble leaving the comfort of my own routine to find a meaningful way to serve, and I wonder when the day comes, will my Father deny knowing me because I have failed to help all of the homeless, Christless, disenfranchised orphans and widows that are just outside my comfortable sphere of Christian friends?  Am I not a true disciple because I have a nice warm home, and have not sold anything to follow Him?  Even with what he has entrusted to me, my children, I fail on an epic scale constantly; loosing my patience, or not engaging them the way I should, and I fear that I can never produce good fruit, because I am a BAD TREE.  That thing which I do not wish to do, it is that which I keep doing.

Am I just a waste of the Savior's blood?

I know I mustn't let Satan paralyze me here in this headspace, but this blog is about being honest about where I am in the moment, and this is what's on my heart.  I feel alone among friends selfless enough to stretch themselves, while all I seem to manage is delivering a meal once in a while to one of my very prolific friends, and after all, even sinners can be kind to those who love them.

Alas, this post has no snappy ending where it all comes together.  It just ends with me, praying for a chance to be used, and you, praying that I will take it when it comes.

I will backhand you, with love

Discipline.  It's such a tricky issue to navigate as parents.  So many times, our Heavenly Father gives us mercy when we deserve punishment.  Other times, He lets the consequences of our mistakes hit us until we learn.  Sometimes it's the same lesson over and over again until it sinks in.  He knows the outcome, our hearts, our needs, but with our kids, so much is guesswork.  How do we know when to model Christ's mercy? How do we balance that with enough discipline to create responsible adults.  What form should that discipline take?

I'm sure this post is going to offend some people, and I'm okay with that, because it seems like not that long ago I was on the receiving end of many of the afore mentioned backhands, and without them, I fear I would have gone irreconcilably astray.  Let me also say that the person who should have administered said backhand, abdicated his role as parent, and opted instead for the role of fun guy, where he figured loosely in and out, until for healthy boundary reasons, I severed communication.  I learned from the stark contrast of these two men, the the parent who loves, is the parent who disciplines.

As you may have gathered from my previous posts, my oldest child is a bundle of will. As she tries to find her place in this world, and her role in our family, she tests boundaries, manipulates emotions, and has bouts of open defiance.  Lately, we have been reexamining our disciplinary arsenal to deal with back-talk, dirty looks, bad attitude, feigned ignorance, and intentional disobedience (it's like a mini teenager!).  Frankly, these things scare me, because I think that left unchecked they are the things that have led to a generation with a gigantic sense of entitlement and no personal accountability.  They scare me because often all of our efforts seem to have no impact.  She will say things like, "I'm never going to learn anything from this.", or (when I told her I was done messing around and it was time to get serious, " This isn't very serious!." They scare me because the line between too much and not enough is so thin, and peril lies on both sides.

So, one night after a trying day in the discipline arena, I prayed for fortitude and patience, and to be able to always discipline with love.  Afterword, we told her we love her, and explained that we would find a way to help her learn, and because we love her we will never give up.  We will keep providing consistent discipline again and again as long as it takes, and then I said to her, " Do you know you can backhand someone with love?"

It seems today there is so much fear of invalidating a child's feelings, that we negotiate with children as though they could reason like adults.  Our culture is afraid to parent, to expect obedience, to provide discipline, to teach our kids that our choices have consequences, before those consequences get too big and irreversible, and we are doing those kids a lifelong disservice. So, while I don't believe we should spank in anger, or for every circumstance, I do believe that when rewards don't work, and the " consequence jar" fails, when what my child needs is a good old fashioned smackdown, that's my job.  Sometimes the most loving thing you can give a child is a good swat.

Homemaker

 Once upon a time, in a far away place, when I was a young girl of 21, someone once told me, "It is the woman's job to set the tone of the home." She was a beautiful and classy lady in her 50's, and I thought her words profound indeed, though at the time I thought she meant that the woman's choices in furniture and decor created the nature of the space in which the family would live.  Due to my ever advancing age, I now realize there was much more to it than that.The woman herself, her moods, her being impacts her family in ways both obvious and subtle.  Her priorities and sensibilities will influence the way her children will think, how they will remember their childhood, will constantly affect the happiness of her husband.  She will literally, intentionally or inadvertently, "set the tone of the home."
Homemaker is, therefore, a verb; with my actions and choices I am, for good or ill, making my home.

When I was a teenager, I mocked these women, these homemakers.  I did not understand their motives, their subservience.  I did not know they had a secret that was beyond me: love. A love that makes you want to work as hard at home as your husband does away from it, not because women are less, but to strive to be equal: equally giving your all to those you love.

When I sang, that was my identity.  It was all about me, and when I gave it up, I didn't know who I was, but God gave me a new identity, and each day he tries to teach me to serve like Christ.
One day, I may have a job again, I may even sing again, but those things will not define me.  Learning to honor God with my life and my family is the process that will.

Many intelligent, wonderful women belittle their own worth and contribution.  They get bogged down in feeling like"just a housewife", but you and I, we are not just housewives, we are homemakers.  Let us make them with intention.

Heavenly Father, help us each day to make our homes with intelligence and humor, with grace and wisdom, with love.

The Bedraggled Mother

Something new has happened to me since the birth of my second child.  I, who got up at 5:30 am to curl my hair every day in high school (after chores), who lived with a family as an au pair and never emmerged from my room without being fully dressed with hair done and makeup on, who only wore my glasses in front of my husband three times before we lived together, have become the bedraggled mother.  Not that I looked like a poster for Ann Taylor Loft before, but I tried to do the best I could with what I had; but now, nothing.  I can walk out of the house in my glasses with wet hair, and crocs, oh hideous crocs, on and not even flinch. I allow people to stop by knowing full well I will be in sweats.  I have friends who have seen me without makeup.

I can, I suppose, chalk some of this up to the shedding of my adolescent insecurities, but mostly, friends, I just don't have the time or residual energy to care.  My children look well cared for, or at least not orphaned, and that's all can muster concern for on most days.  I tell myself this surely happens to some extent with all mothers: your priorities shift, you get busier, but the evidence in the preschool drop-off line is to the contrary.  Mothers with outfits that look as though they were coordinated on pintrest abound, sporting salon worthy, and certainly dry hair.  I am momentarily glad that these women do not know me.  I, the bedraggled mother, do not fit in among them.

But really, it's a trick of the light, isn't it, an illusion.  Catch me on the right day, when I have become sick of feeling like a a frump, and I have probably made someone else feel just this way.  Catch the parade of drop off moms on a Wednesday....and who knows,  maybe they haven't had a chance to shower, or their socks don't match, just maybe, heaven forbid, they go to Albertson's in their crocs!  Or, maybe they are in a season, which I hope lies ahead when the kids are a little older and some thought into one's personal appearance isn't so rare.

In the meanwhile, I am practicing being a little less vain. I'm trying to get to the things that matter, and bizzarely, it transpires that my husband thinks I'm hot without makeup, loathes ballet flats, doesn't care at all about fashion, and doesn't mind my glasses one bit.  One day, I'll wear only clothes that flatter and inspire me, and I will practice all those lovely updos I have pinned, but today I will keep perspective on my season of motherhood, I will praise God if I get a shower, and I will be thankful that when the people who love me look at me, bedraggled is not what they see.

Congratulations!

Recently, at our small group meeting, during a lull in parenting war stories, one of the couples announced that they are expecting their first child.  As one of the last members of the group to embark on the journey of parenting, they accepted our congratulations with something of a shell-shocked expression, possessed no doubt by the vauge suspicion that their lives a being hurtled into a realm unknown.

Congratulations! I always, (or at leaste after I became a parent) thought this was an odd and inadaquate sentiment for the scope of the situation.  But then, what else do you say? Congratulations! You now get to push something the size of a watermelon out of a hole the size of a pea; though lucky for you it will stretch to the size of a grapefruit first, for the reward of....sleeping, and doing just about everything else, in windows of 2 hours or less.  You will develop new skill sets, such as clipping fingernails on someone who is flailing wildly, and expand your knowledge base to become an expert on things including but not limited to: poop frequency and consistancy, cry type distinguishment, and soothing methods, and just when you have it figured out, it will change and you will once again know nothing. Yet, with all this will come a love that you can not now fathom, that will make all this rewarding and interesting, and will prevent you from wanting to throttle the little sleep disturber the way you would anyone else who woke you up every 2 hours.

Congratulations!  You will be trading in your spontaneity, any semblance of abdominal musculature you now have, and many other parts of yourself, for things like a profound glimpse into God's love for us, the grace to endure things you never thought possible, and the discipline of selflessness.

Congratulations! It's true, right? But it's sort of like saying, "God is good." It just  totally misses the epic scope of the reality.

After I had Morgan, I remember thinking, "Congratulations? Of all the wealth of things you could have said to give me an incling of what was comming, you, ALL OF YOU, chose congratulations? Thanks a load."

Isn't there something we could come up with that would say more? Brace yourself, perhaps? But no, that fails to express the sheer wonder of it all. In the end, congratulations is, I suppose, as good as anything, because there are no words big enough to embrace motherhood.  If you've already been there, you know what I mean, and if you haven't, you wouldn't understand even if I told you... but you will, soon.  Congratulations, welcome to the club.

Of Eggplant and Will

This weekend, an intense battle was waged at the Taylor household; a battle over...eggplant.

Our church has been talking about our health and how it relates to who God wants us to be, so I thought I would introduce more vegis into the family meals.  I found a recipe for eggplant parmigiana that looked good (though it involved batter and frying, and turned out not to be all that healthy), and we tried it...that is except for one of us, who refused to try it.

Now my husband, who is usually the wishy washy half, looked this one of us in the eye and said, " You need to try this eggplant. Take a couple bites, and you can get down, BUT if you do not try it, you will eat this square of eggplant until it is gone.  You will be served it, and only it for every meal until you have eaten it all.  Do you understand?" After a sweet nod and a repetition of what would be expected of her, she got down and went on her merry way, no doubt feeling she was getting away with something.

The next day, my loving husband went to work, and left me to play enforcer.  Each mealtime, she was served the eggplant, sat in her booster and reguarded it will disgust for a while, and then opted to get down.  By the end of the day, she had totalled 3 bites.

Now, my daughter has many traits that I don't relate to, but stubborness, I get.  I must admit that I was surprised, and secretly a little proud of  how long she held out.  She would complain that her tummy hurt, and I would explain that when we make decisions, we have to live with their results. 

We took quite a bit of critisism for our choice to let her suffer through: my mother-in-law called us nazis (lovingly I'm sure), a friend said I was using my position to bully my daughter and show her who was in power, and my mother suggested we back down, because, after all, she tried it, right?  I suspect that these well meaning people think that this is about ....eggplant, but no.  I do want my daughter to know that we mean what we say and we will follow through.  In this house, mama doesn't bluff, and if I did, a four year old would be wearing the proverbial pants, but mostly, like I said before, this is a corner of my daughter's heart that I understand.  She has been gifted an intellegence and will that, if harnessed, can help her do great things for the Kingdom of God, but if left unchecked will be used to manipulate things into her own way.  Understanding the weight of her personal choices, and that sometimes we have to do things we would rather not, is paramount for her. It is a battle I know we will be guiding her through in many guises for a long time to come. I'm glad that we have the opportunity to start with eggplant where the stakes are small.

 She came to my bed the next morinng in tears because she had

thrown up in her bed because of her empty stomach. It wasn't easy to hold firm then, but we sat her down to the breakfast table with a cup of 7up, a saltine, and her many times reheated sqare of eggplant, and she ate it all gone, and then, do you know what she said?

"That wasn't really all that bad."