Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: The Good {Day 12}

New here? Click here to start at the beginning of the series.

Based on the roar coming up from the downstairs bedroom, someone had to be dying.  Except that I was pretty sure people die more quietly than that.  Someone was being torn limb from limb or was being eaten by a wild beast.

Or.

Or, one of my twins had a toy the other twin wanted.  Sure enough, a peek downstairs revealed Paul flailing on the floor while Micah played nearby, contentedly pushing a “weally, weally cool” Matchbox car, oblivious to his brother’s agony.

“MI-CAHhhhHHhhhhHHHHhhhhh!”  Paul wailed.  “I WANT THAT CAR!”

“Hum,” Micah said.

Great.  Here we go, I thought.  We have a million Matchbox cars and they have to fight over the same one?

Paul gritted his teeth, making the little dimple under his eye stand out.  “Arrrrrrrrrrgh!” he said through clenched jaw.  His frustration was palpable, probably because he was biting his tongue.

Micah looked at the prized car in his hand.  “Hum,” he said again.  Then, he shrugged his shoulders and handed the car to Paul.  What. Just.  Happened?

“Micah!” I said, stunned.  Even Paul looked stunned.  “Micah, you shared!”  Micah grinned sheepishly.

I had practically given up on the fact that those boys would ever share anything but flu germs.  It seems to me that I spend an unthinkable amount of time breaking up arguments and reminding them how not to act like savages.

Then God gave me that moment.  It stood out in the middle of our mess like a giant orange construction sign that read “God at Work.”

God was at work in my children!  Who would’ve thought.  Sometimes, I think the construction project has stalled out and we’re not making any progress.  Haven’t we been over the sharing thing a bazillion times?  And why do you still pick your nose?  Can’t we be done with that nasty habit already?

There are days when I feel a little bit like an Israelite, wandering around in the same sand pit year after year after year.  For forty years, Israel didn’t seem to be getting anywhere either.  They weren’t, as a matter of fact.  And even though God provided for all their needs in the most astonishing ways, they didn’t really notice.  Most of the time, they just grumbled and complained about all the things that weren’t going right.

But God was at work that entire time.  When they finally reached the Promised Land, a big, nasty river stood in their way.  So God parted the waters of the Jordan just like He had parted the waters of the Red Sea, and Israel walked over on dry ground.

I bet the Israelites noticed that.  They had seen that before, far away in Egypt when God redeemed them out of slavery.  It was like a great exclamation point on the end of forty years of discouragement.  He had been working all along.  He had been faithful all along.

Before they could even go about collecting some of that much longed-for milk and honey and enjoy the fruit of the promise, God told them to get back into the mud of that riverbed and dig up 12 stones.  Why?  Because God wanted them to set up the stones as a reminder.  He wanted them to remember not how relieved they were when they finally got there, but how the mighty hand of God had been at work the entire time.

There will be times with your children when it seems like you’re wandering around in circles.  But God is at work.  The problem is that we tend to focus on what our kids do wrong rather than what God is doing right.  We get discouraged because they are so far from where they need to be.  We forget to notice how far they’ve come.

When Jonathan was little, he had an issue with lying.  Everything that child said was a lie, even if the lie didn’t benefit him at all.  If you asked him, “Jonathan, is your name Jonathan?”  he would answer “No.”  It was that bad.

My husband and I worked and worked and worked with him on it for years.  Years.  We couldn’t understand why he did it, and we couldn’t get him to stop.  Every time Jonathan told a lie, I felt like I had just taken another lap around the desert.  Here we are again, fighting the same old losing battle.

Then one day, Jonathan told me the truth.  But I didn’t notice it that day.  He told me the truth again, and I still didn’t notice.  Finally, one day, Jonathan looked at me and said, “Mom!  I’m telling you the truth!”

Sure enough, he was.  I hadn’t noticed because it was gone, out of my sight.  God had taken it away, and I had already moved on to some other habit to break him of.

“Jonathan,” I said, “do you know what this means?”

He shook his head.

“This means God has been working in your heart!”

His eyes got big, and mine got teary.

“That is a good thing!  He has been working in your heart to help you not to lie.  Isn’t that awesome?”

God was at work.  Behind the scenes, where I didn’t always notice, God was doing what God does: changing hearts, convicting of sin, drawing my children near to Himself and bestowing grace upon them as members of His covenant family.  That is a work I cannot do, and when I see it happening, I need to grab onto it like a big old rock and set it up in my mind so I don’t forget, so I am not like Israel, grumbling under the blessings.

If you want to enjoy your children more, notice the good that God is doing.  Rejoice when you see the hand of God in the lives of your children.  Dig up some stones, even if you have to look long and hard for them, so you are always reminding yourself of the good.  Even when you can’t see it, the truth remains: God is at work. 

For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
Philippians 2:13

Please join us on Monday for Day 13: Affirmation.  This post goes hand-in-hand with today’s post, so don’t miss it! 

For further thought:

1)      Philippians 4:8 says, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”  What happens when you take that Scripture to heart and put it into practice in your parenting?

2)      Make a list of all the ways you’ve seen God work in your family in the past week.  Name each child and give specific instances of how God has been faithful to work in his or her heart.  Remind yourself of it throughout the day.

3)      Read the account of Israel crossing the Jordan in Joshua 3:5-4:24.  Why did God tell them to go back into the river and pick up 12 stones?  What were the stones supposed to remind them of?

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Freedom {Day 8}

The beginning is a great place to start! Click here for Day 1.

 

Nothing on this earth scares me more than the mother who has it all figured out.  You know the type.  She lurks in church nurseries, grocery store aisles, and chat rooms and tells everyone how it is.  She looks for opportunities to educate you from her limitless vault of parenting knowledge.  Her expertise includes everything from the benefits of baby Mozart to the dangers of Santa Claus.

The mom who has it all figured out thinks of herself as a superhero, a heroine of safety and a child advocate par excellence.  If she hears your child crying, she will assume it is because you are doing something wrong.  Fear not, incompetent mother!  She will tell you exactly how to fix it.

Have you lived up to my standard today?

This woman asks no questions and takes no prisoners.  In less time than it takes you to diaper a baby the wrong way, she will turn your confidence into self-doubt and guilt, with an extra shot of shame.

The mother who has it all figured out, as well-meaning as she may be, is a prison warden dressed up in high heels and pearls.  The checklist she uses to measure you by is a snare.  It holds you captive to a false gospel that says if you just do everything right, you will be good enough.  She readily provides a formula that doesn’t require any faith or very much love.  It reduces parenting to an external standard by which you can measure yourself and judge others.

Even though you know better, you’ll be tempted to listen to her because you really do want to be a better mother and she sounds like she knows what she’s talking about.  In between all the rules, she has some pretty good advice.  She’s got the books to prove it and all those lists make everything sounds so…safe.

The trouble is, there is no formula.  There is no standard.  Even if you could find one, you’d never be able to measure up to it.  External standards cannot help us because they are based on the every-changing ideas of fickle and faulty humans.  Just as soon as you get one standard under control, someone comes along and changes it.

What’s worse, you will find yourself struggling to stuff yourself into a standard that just doesn’t fit.  It’s worse than trying on swimsuits right after Christmas dinner.  No standard takes into account the uniqueness of individual parents, children, and circumstances.  If you try to measure yourself by it, you will be weighed down with insecurity, guilt, and failure because the only thing an external standard does is make you aware of your need. 

There has to be a better way!

Thankfully, there is.  Not only is it better, it’s much simpler.  It is so astonishingly simple that you will be tempted to think there must be more to it.  You will be tempted to add more to it.  Because you’d think that for all the arguing we do over the rights and wrongs of raising kids, and the viciousness with which we proclaim our opinions or judge other parents, the Bible would have a lot to say on the topic.  But it doesn’t.

In fact, it says very little.  It’s kind of shocking how quiet God is on the whole subject of parenting, especially since raising godly kids is kind of a big deal.  In fact, the whole of God’s parenting advice can be summed up as follows: love God, then love them.

That.  Is.  It.

It is shockingly simple, a little scary, and altogether delightful.

In between those two greatest commandments is a whole bunch of free space to live and move and have your being in your home.  You are free to be you in your parenting and to let your kids be free in their kid-ness.  There is nothing in there about schooling options, organic food, or music choices.  There isn’t!  God figures that if we take care of the love part, and I mean really take care of the love part, everything else will fall into place.

That means that what is in the best eternal interest for your child might not be the same thing that is in the best eternal interest of my child.  In fact, they might be the complete opposites!  What works for my family as far as scheduling and activities might be the very death of your family so we can all come together and stop holding each other to standards that just don’t fit.

We are free! 

The only thing that binds us is love, and that is an altogether freeing thing to be bound by.  Love always seeks to please God.  Love always desires to serve the interests of others before ourselves.  Love asks “What is the very best thing?” not “What is the easiest thing?”  Love is the best and only parenting formula because it is the only one that always fits.  Always.

When love rules, we can appreciate the different methods and ideas of other mothers without being obligated to do them ourselves.  We can figure out what works for our family without making it a standard for everyone else.

Do you feel the joy in that?  This means you can stop parenting for someone else!  You can stop parenting someone else’s way!

The mother who has it all figured out might tell you differently, but this is truth: As long as you put love first, you are free to parent in the way that allows you to enjoy your children the most. 

That is freedom.

 

 

Please join us on Monday for Day 9: Avoidance

 

For further thought

1) If external standards cause us to feel guilty and insecure, why are we so tempted to accept them and put them on others?

2) Not all parenting advice is bad.  In fact, much of it is good.  The problem comes when we take good advice and make it a rule or a standard by which we measure our worth as a parent.  If we don’t measure up, we despair.  Are you trying to live up to a standard set by someone else?  How does the freedom you have in Christ change the way you’ve been trying to parent?

3) Take some time to ask God for wisdom and strength to parent out of love, not external standards.  He promises to give wisdom to those who ask, and He desires that we abound in love!  When you pray to God for the things He desires you to have, He always answers .

 

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Constancy {Day 7}

Click here to begin at Day 1

It was a cool fall night in Massachusetts.  The northern lights danced as my husband and I sprawled out on an old quilt on a dewy hillside and looked up at the deep night sky.  We had set the alarm and crawled out of bed to look up at the stars.  They hung in the sky the way they had for all the years since the universe was born, brilliant like jewels in the dark of the night.

Suddenly, a star fell out of the sky, like a wish.  Then another, and another.  We watched as one of the most brilliant meteor showers of our lifetime unfolded before our eyes.

It was breathtaking.  The constancy of the stars stood in direct contrast to the spontaneous streaks of the meteors.  It seemed as if the very heavens were coming down to play.

How different the experience would have been without the order and dependability of the stars!  If the entire universe was nothing more than a spinning mass of erratic suns and planets, the meteors would go unnoticed.  Without its constancy, we could not enjoy the spectacular creativity of God and the wonderful diversity of His creation.

Constancy gives us the security we need to enjoy our world.

Even as infants, we cry out for it.  We long to know that we when we are in pain, we will be comforted, when we are hungry, we will be fed.  We feel most secure when we are surrounded by a certain level of sameness.  Order.  Predictability.  It is as if God instilled in us a need for His very character.

And He is the one who fills that need perfectly.  The sculptor of the universe does not change.  He is not unpredictable like meteors but is constant like the stars.  He is a refuge, a rock, and the only place of strength in this world.  Even though the mountains tremble and fall into the sea, He is there.  Constant.

What a comfort that is to me when it seems like everything is falling apart.  I cannot be certain of health, employment, or even the very ground beneath my feet.  But when everything else fails, His love endures.  I never wake up and wonder if God is going to love me today.

I want my children to be able to say the same thing of me.  I want them to feel like this is the one place in the world where they will always be loved, nurtured, and accepted.  This is a place built on a rock, and it will not be blown about by the storms that come.  Inside these four walls, my children are secure in the knowledge that some things will always remain the same: faith, hope and love.

They know that when they wake up in the morning, I will be holding fast to the One constant in this world.  I will look to God to set the standard for my conduct in our home, and I will look to Him to set the standard by which their needs will be met.  When I do this, security and joy fill my home.

From this place of strength, creativity and spontaneity can shine.  Order sets the stage for the beautiful and unexpected.  If my children are secure in my love for them, they will be free to exhibit their own unique personalities without fear of rejection.  As parents, my husband and I will be free to be impulsive or imaginative without fear of degenerating into complete disorder.

But constancy must come first.  If we reverse the order and put creativity first, as I am so tempted to do, it doesn’t work.  Creativity before constancy is chaos.  God ordered the universe before His imagination filled it.  His eternal attributes gave birth to the temporal stuff of this world.  There is something to be learned from that.  Constancy is not the opposite of spontaneity.  It is the basis of it.

Constancy is the foundation of our relationship with God, and it must be the foundation of our relationship with our children.  God planned it that way.  In showing our children constancy, we show them something of God.  We build trust and security in them from which they are able to take on the uncertainties of the world.  I do not do it perfectly, but I do it better the more I keep my eyes fixed on the One who does not change.

And the more focused I am on the constancy of God, the more my children feel secure in my love, and the more I can enjoy their wonderful diversity.

 


Photo credit: NASA

 

Please join us tomorrow for Day 8: Freedom

 

For further thought:

1) Countless times throughout the Bible, God is called our refuge and strength.  Psalm 46:1-3 is one of those places.  How does it help you to know that God is unchangeable?
2) Sometimes, it helps to do a little self-evaluation.  Do you think your children feel secure in your sameness?  Have you created a pattern of trust in your home, or is this something you need to address?  Ask God to help you be more constant in your relationship with your children.

3) If you are creative like I am, you might feel claustrophobic by the words constancy and order.  How does it help to think of constancy as the starting point of creativity?