Godly Parenting
Parenting as an extension of my redemption in Christ, of who I am as a Godly woman, who I am as a saved sinner and how that truth impacts my life and parenting.
-
Spinning Top Mom: I can’t do it all
It’s time to come clean. I can’t do it all. When I try, I feel like a spinning top, twirling out of control. I can’t do it all, and I quit trying. Are you a Spinning Top Mom? Trying to “do it all”? Over mugs of coffee, we’ll all nod in agreement, “of course, we can’t do it all.” But secretly, I always think, ‘but I could be doing this better, why can’t I do what that mom does? I’m a total failure at this.’ And, even though we know Pinterest is a liar, we’ll still use that measuring stick to beat ourselves over all the things we can’t do.…
-
Love Goggles – my daughter is the most beautiful girl in the world
Do you have Love Goggles? I bet you do. I have whispered a shocking secret to my daughter many times since she was born. “You are the most beautiful girl in the world,” I would say, gently kissing her cheek or forehead. Then add, “to me,” lest she wake up one day completely surprised that she isn’t. That day came sooner than I could have ever imagined. My daughter had a wonderful playdate with a friend that turned emotional quickly. Hangry is a real thing. It was such a dramatic meltdown, from perfect harmony to disaster in less than a minute, that it was almost comical. Our emotional center of…
-
Ice Cream Messages
Tonight I was searching for God’s answers to some big prayers. As I wrote about our day, I realized this evening’s events are a perfect example of the way I experience God’s answers in my everyday mom moments. Earlier, my daughter ran inside shrieking. The ice cream truck was driving past our house! Mommy, mommy, mommy. She jumped up and down. “The ice cream truck!” Last time we saw him was a night we weren’t planning a big meal, so we chased the converted school bus down the road, but couldn’t catch him to get any ice cream. I had promised we would try again another day. But here was…
-
Tomato Plant Children
We eat a lot of tomatoes. I think my husband lives on pico de gallo. I can’t tell you the number of last-minute shopping trips that involve needing a tomato. So, in my infinite wisdom, I, who cannot keep any potted plants alive and do only marginally better with a flower garden, decided we should buy a trellised potted tomato plant last summer so we would have at least a small supply on hand. We carefully picked just the right place for it, watered it diligently, watched excitedly as it bloomed. When the first tomatoes began to grow, my daughter stood over them everyday waiting to pick the first one.…
-
Let Him be Her Dad
Let him be her dad. It is a lesson I have to relearn often because dads are imperfect. It’s really easy from the outside to see how I might have handled things differently, but he needs the freedom to be who God made him to be. God gave each of us the perfectly imperfect parents we were meant to have. To let him be her dad, I had to learn humility and my Heavenly Father’s perspective. On this Father’s Day, I spent a lot of time thinking about my dad, my step-father-in-law, my father-in-law and my daughter’s father. Each of these men did things differently, wonderfully, imperfectly. But each were…
