Christianity Archives - Page 28 of 41

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Prayer {Day 29}

Thank you for joining us! You can find Day 1 here.

The lush green rainforest seemed to go on and on without end. Two Philippine eagles were the only things soaring with the airplane in the cloudless blue sky. I peered out the windows at the river that cut through the jungle and wondered what lay beneath the canopy.

Suddenly, the airstrip came into view. I could see a cluster of small huts with woven sides and roofs. The sound of the plane brought children running barefoot out of the houses and down dirt paths to greet the plane.

I was flying into the village to help administer some academic tests to the children of one of the missionary couples who lived and worked among the tribal people. I had to cross the river, cut through a crowd of people who had never seen such a tall woman, and sneak past a guard monkey in order to make it into the house.

The woman who opened the door smiled warmly and hugged me fiercely with willowy brown arms. She tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and welcomed me into her home in an easy manner that made me comfortable at once.

I talked to the children and got the tour of the house and met the monkey properly. I learned that the children were allowed to nail things into their plank walls whenever they wanted. From the looks of things, they did so with great frequency. They often took breaks from school to swim in a river that had been known to harbor crocodiles and venomous snakes.

Their mother kept a hymn book propped up in the kitchen had a reputation for burning dinner because she often got distracted praying. It was a necessary distraction, I learned, because life in the jungle had come with an uncommon cost.

Over dinner, I heard the stories of how God had worked mightily through prayer. Deep in the jungle, with only sporadic contact with an airplane to connect them to civilization, this family had to rely on the power of prayer more than anyone I had ever met. There had been emergency flights and near-death experiences and miraculous answers to panicked prayers.

Prayer was not optional there. It was essential.

This mother had woven it into the fabric of her day to the point that it was nearly impossible to tell when she was praying and when she wasn’t. I got the impression that her heart was always offering intercession because her home was filled with the fragrance of it. She looked at her children like one who had known the joy of standing in for them in the throne room of the King.

I do not know of any other thing that binds a mother’s heart to her children like prayer. When life is challenging and children are difficult, prayer resets the priority and connects with the eternal.

Yet I must confess I have not been so faithful in prayer as that missionary mother. I know it is powerful. I know it will transform my home, and yet I do not do it as often as I ought. It is discouraging to me that I still struggle so much with being still with my God.

Then I am reminded that most of us were not born with a natural desire to pray. It is something that must be learned. If this were not the case, the disciples would not have had to ask how to do it. The fact that I am not yet the woman of prayer I want to be speaks to the fact that I have not taken the time to learn.

Prayer is a discipline. If it is not born out of adversity, it must be born out of obedience.

Sometimes, I feel compelled to pray. I have seen the adversary and I know I am not fit for the fight. Those are times of blessings, in a sense, because then I am happy to draw near to God and to cling to Him for strength and comfort.

Other times, I pray simply because I have been commanded to. I do not always feel like it. I do not always understand that I need it. Sometimes, it feels tedious, like waiting up in the garden with my Lord when I do not realize what is happening and I cannot be bothered to stay awake for it. Sometimes, I sleep in the most critical moments and do not pray at all.

It is a good thing that prayer is not a work of the flesh and the efficacy of my petitions does not depend on my feelings or my abilities.

Prayer is the active work of the slain Christ on my behalf, and that work is always effectual. It is the a power of the Holy Spirit who intercedes for me when my deceived heart and stuttering lips cannot even begin to pray as I should, and that power always transforms. It is the assurance that the One who receives my prayers always wills and works for my best and somehow, simultaneously, for the best of my children.

When I pray for my children, I invite a response from heaven, and I have never known heaven to speak without causing earth to tremble. It is a simple conversation in which I do not speak as I should and am answered in a way I do not deserve from a God who loves me too much to just “fix things.” Prayer is a conversation with a God who reveals, regenerates, redeems, reconciles, and restores the hearts of my family!

It is impossible to come away from a conversation like that without being changed. It changes how I parent, how I feel about my children, and how much I enjoy the process of walking this earth with them. When I do not pray, I do not allow God to work in me in the ways He has ordained. I hang up the phone and prevent His healing words from breaking into the chaos.

If you are struggling to enjoy your children, look at your prayer life. Have you developed the discipline of prayer or are you asleep in the garden? Perhaps it is time to rekindle a conversation with God.

Prayer is where earth and heaven meet

Join us tomorrow for the final day in the series!

For further thought:

1) Someone once said that some things are so important, they’re worth doing poorly. When it comes to prayer, this is true. You may not be disciplined to pray the way you should. Do not let this keep you from praying at all! Even a very short conversation with God is better than silence.

2) The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray and he responded with the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6:9 and Luke 11:2. If you are overwhelmed with the idea of finding time to pray, you will find it encouraging that this model prayer is so simple and brief. Take the time to pray simply and briefly and trust the Holy Spirit to fill up what is lacking.

3) Prayer is a conversation with God. After you pray, listen. Wait. Watch. How is heaven responding to you?

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Teach {Day 28}

Thank you for joining us! You can find Day 1 here.

One of my earliest memories is of watching my dad weave a heavy nylon cord, the kind he used to tie down planes at the hangar. He had one end of the yellow rope tied to his big red Craftsman toolbox, and with his free hands, he worked the smaller strands into one very strong cable.

As he worked, he talked to me, explaining what he was doing and why. He taught me the pattern and let me have a turn. My three-year-old hands were too small and the weaving was complicated, but I liked being near him and watching him work. He smelled like metal and grease and bit of Old Spice, and I thought he was very handsome.

He was always teaching, always explaining, and always demonstrating something to me. When he took me up in the airplane by myself, and I got to sit in the co-pilot’s seat, he made sure I knew exactly what he was doing. He taught me how to make cookies and how to play Risk and showed me how to remove stamps from envelopes so I could start a collection just like his. Teaching was just something he did, like breathing.

My dad died only three days after Christmas the year I turned eleven. He pulled out onto a snowy Ohio road and never came back. They said he died instantly in the crash, that he never felt a thing. But we felt it.

The wake was held just a few days later, and then the funeral, when everything was hazy but real enough to be horrible. People came up and said things to me that seemed to make them feel better, about how it was all so tragic and how there hadn’t been enough time.

It seemed the right thing to say. His death was unexpected and heartbreaking. He was so young. We were so young. There was a gaping wound where once he had been.

But in another sense, it was not tragic, and it was not too soon. Many other people had lived much longer lives and done much less with them. It seemed that was a greater tragedy.

In the years that followed, I have known many friends and family members who have died, but no one has ever said there was enough time. Death always comes too soon. I remember talking to my grandpa the summer before he died from prostate cancer. He had lived over eighty full, fruitful years, but even he was struggling with the idea that life was closing in. There was still so much he wanted to do, so much he wanted to say, and the living part of him could not help but grieve the fact that the dying part of him was winning.

Life is a precious thing. Even a full, long life is over in a blink.

The tragedy comes when life is over before it ever really began, when a person fills his life with nothing but small stuff and never gets around to the things that really matter. For parents, the tragedy comes when they save for tomorrow what should have been started today, when they bother over enjoying their children today with little regard to whether or not they will enjoy them for eternity.

That is a tragic.

But in my home, teaching us about faith was the priority. I do not remember a time when my family did not pray around the dinner table. I don’t remember when we started reading a chapter from the thick children’s story Bible after dinner. I don’t remember when we started going to church or memorizing Scripture or reading missionary biographies. I don’t remember because it always was.

My parents took seriously the charge to care for our eternal well-being by teaching us God’s Word and demonstrating real-life faith in flesh and blood right before our very eyes. From a very young age, I understood that all of eternity hinges on matters of faith.

Keeping the commitment to godly instruction was not always easy, I’m sure. I stomped my way into church more than once, and the busyness of life threatened the quite times with God. But absolutely no temporal sacrifice could compare with the eternal enjoyment of each other that was born out of that faithful work.

Because of the way my parents taught me, I was able to see the hand of God even in the sorrow of my dad’s untimely death. I remember opening my Bible on the night he died, seeking comfort in the Psalms. His legacy, shortened though it was, carried me through the early years without him, the firsts of college and marriage and children, the uncertainty of childhood transitions and adult decisions.

The things he taught me governed how I lived, helped to determine whom I married, and even today, gives me a pattern for how I raise my kids. My dad’s priority has had generational impact. Even though he has never met them, his grandchildren are following in his footsteps.

He had enough time because he did not take his time for granted.

I want to parent like that. Whether I die today or fifty years from now, I want my kids to say I had enough time, that I kept my priorities straight and I did not neglect the big things because the small things were more immediate and more demanding. I want them to know that I did the hard things, the less enjoyable things, so that we could enjoy each other forever.

What is life, but a breath? Yet all of eternity stretches out before us. May we make decisions today that will ensure we can enjoy it with all of our children and the many generations to come.

In happier times.

Please join us tomorrow for Day 29!

Start today…

1) Take time today to explain to your children why you believe what you do. Do they know your testimony?

2) If you have not been faithful to teach your children, confess it. Tell them that you have not done something you should and tell them that you are going to start today.

3) Pray with them today. Even a very short prayer at dinner or bedtime leaves a lasting impression.

4) If your children are small, get an age-appropriate children’s Bible and read a chapter a day. One Bible storybook we love for the littles is The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name. Older children can be read to from The New Living Translation (a very well-done modern paraphrase) or any Bible you have in the home.

5) Find a Bible-believing church and go!

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Boundaries {Day 26}

Welcome to our series! Find Day 1 here.

My roommate had beaten me to campus. That was obvious when I opened the door to my newly assigned dorm room and found someone else’s personal items strewn all about. Katie wasn’t there, but she had suitcases on both desks, clothes and bedding on the top and bottom bunks, and a random assortment of makeup and hair products filling up the sink.

A few hours later, Katie swept into the room. She was dressed like a gypsy and when she saw me, she squeezed me and told me all about herself in one big long gush. I liked her at once.

But we were not very much alike. Katie came from a home where the entire family often watched movies piled up together in one great heap on a tiny couch. In my home, that would have been considered torture. In Katie’s house, no one ever shut doors and no one ever asked to borrow anything because everything was up for grabs. They shared everything from clothes to water bottles to the latest information about everyone else’s business.

In my house, I had my own room with a door that I shut. Often.

When Katie used my lipstick and left her toothbrush on my desk or tried to fix me up with guys she knew, I did not know how to respond. I thought I would offend her if I told her that some of her behaviors bothered me.

So I did the least loving thing I could: I said nothing. I stayed away from the room and studied in the library and told myself I was sacrificing for her.

Of course, I wasn’t sacrificing at all. I was being selfish. I did not trust her to respond to my concerns in a loving way. I did not trust her to understand me, and I did not try harder to accommodate her. I simply avoided the situation by putting up one great big wall.

I was relieved when, after only one semester, I was able to get a single dorm room. My stint of living with an opposite personality was over.

But then I got married. Not long after, we began to have children. Lots of them. I found myself surrounded by six people who are not always like me. I also found myself tempted to put up walls when confronted with differences, instead of constructing healthy boundaries.

In fact, sometimes, I hold back from enjoying my children because I’m afraid of what might happen if I enjoy them. Will the entire house dissolve into chaos? Will they expect me to play with them all the time? Will they be able to get control of themselves when playtime is over? If I let them do this something this time, will they want to do it all the time?

Perhaps you’ve had some of those same thoughts, or resisted engaging with your children in certain ways because you know you can’t engage them that way all the time. That is where boundaries can be helpful.

Boundaries provide the parameters which ensure that the needs of every member of family are considered and respected. Boundaries validate the unique personalities present in a home and affirm the fact that it’s okay to need different things in order to be your best. They also ensure that each person’s needs are guarded by everyone else in the home, whether they share the same needs or not.

That creates an environment of trust. In a home with healthy boundaries, we can appreciate each other’s differences, enjoy unique or fun opportunities, and even venture outside of our comfort zones without being required to stay there. We can feel safe in expressing differing opinions without fear of rejection or giving offense because our boundaries can be adapted to include all types of people.
But establishing boundaries can be difficult, especially if you have not seen healthy boundaries demonstrated in your previous relationships. I have found the following things to be essential to the process.

First, boundaries must take into account the changing needs of every member of the family. That means that boundaries must be flexible. They are not laws or commandments or even rights. They change over time based on a variety of life circumstances. For instance, a family with a newborn will have far less boundaries than a family with a teenager. A family dealing with a disability or a traumatic event may have more boundaries than a family who is not facing those challenges.

Families change, so boundaries need to be flexible. Often, they require compromise. A family who is ruled by the boundaries of the dominant member of the household is not healthy. As you establish boundaries for your home, consider the fact that you may be living with someone whose needs are very different, yet just as important, as your own. It’s vital to consider the needs of others before yourself. If you don’t, your boundaries will quickly become walls which cut off intimate relationships instead of fostering them.

Second, boundaries must be communicated effectively and understood by all members of the family, particularly if the members of the family have different personalities. I do not need to tell my introvert daughter that she needs to knock before entering my room. She does that instinctively. But my social son needs me to explain to him that I shut my door because I need time to recharge, not because I don’t value his presence or desire to be with him. I tell him that by knocking on the door instead of charging through, he is showing me he loves me and cares about my needs.

It is tempting to fail to communicate our needs because we fear rejection. We have boundaries, but we don’t let anyone know what they are until it’s too late. Instead, we allow our loved ones to “discover” our boundaries when they cross them and we react in an unloving way. This does not create an environment of trust and security. Quite the opposite. It creates an environment of fear, like the feeling of living in a foreign country and being uncertain of the rules.

Be sure everyone understands the boundaries and why they are important. It is one thing to say, “Don’t come in my room without knocking.” But it is better to tell your children why you feel better when they respect that boundary, and how it helps you be a better parent. If you cannot think of any reasons why a particular boundary helps you to be a better person, then perhaps it is not a healthy boundary at all.

Third, boundaries need to be reinforced lovingly and consistently. Sometimes, I am lazy. I don’t reinforce a boundary until I am exasperated. I forget that the reason I have boundaries in the first place is so I do not become exasperated! It is crucial that I guard my boundaries before I become so emotionally involved that I cannot respond righteously toward my children.

It is not loving to allow my children to cross boundaries some of the time, but suffer the consequences other times. If I want to create an environment of trust, I must be consistent in upholding the boundaries our family has established. If I find that I cannot reinforce a boundary, or the boundary is no longer working to create a healthy home, then it needs to go.

Finally, boundaries need to be reciprocated. I cannot expect my children to respect my boundaries if I do not respect theirs. It’s as simple as that! But when every individual in a home feels safe to express his or her needs knowing they will be guarded by everyone else, it is easy to love and enjoy each other.

Do you find it difficult to allow yourself to enjoy your children? Perhaps it’s time to set some healthy boundaries.

Healthy boundaries create happy kids!

For further thought:

1) If you are living with a child or spouse who has opposite needs as yours, consider Philippians 2:3-4.

2) Did you have healthy boundaries in your home growing up? How did the effective or ineffective use of boundaries impact how you feel about yourself and the way you interact with others?

3) Evaluate how you’re doing in the four areas of creating healthy boundaries. Which area do you struggle with the most? What are some steps you can take to improve?

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