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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: Stuff {Day 27}

Welcome to our series! Find Day 1 here.

This past week, a friend of mine dropped off a carload full of toys her son had outgrown. She wondered if we’d like to look through them. It was perfect timing since the kids were finding it difficult to wait through the last few days before their daddy came home from his many months away. A few bags of new-to-them toys were just the thing to keep them occupied.

It was magical. For an entire day, my five kids hardly spoke to me at all, they were so transfixed with all the new stuff.

Less than a day later, things had changed. The toys had been picked over. There were the toys some of the kids liked and the toys nobody liked and the toys everyone liked and was fighting over. All of these toys were piled into the living room in one big jumble. There was no room to play. The animals from Noah’s ark were buried under a mountain of blocks and cars, the princess castle was missing the princess and two of my children were accusing each other of taking a toy neither of them could find.

All the new stuff, while fun for a moment, began to feel suffocating. We were all relieved when it was time to bag up the toys we were not going to keep. All those bright, shiny things could not keep us content for very long.

It is easy to believe that material things will make us happy. The TV ads tell us so. Our neighbors tell us so. The guy at the bank who tries to give us a bigger loan than we need tells us so.

Unfortunately, I find the reverse to be true. More often than not, the more stuff I acquire, the less happy I am.

Every single thing I bring into the house requires my time and energy to maintain, clean up and keep organized. The more things I get, the more the drain on my resources is increased—exponentially. Because the kids don’t take out just one toy and play with it. They take all the toys out. I give myself away day after day trying to put it all back and to keep it from exploding all over the driveway.

I also find that the more I have, the harder it is to find what I really need. How many hours of my life have I spent digging through closets and drawers looking for something I know I have around here somewhere? How many minutes have I wasted trying to keep all our things organized and put away? Too many.

Of course, some things are necessities. My children need socks and underwear. Other things are beneficial privileges, like special playthings and good books. But having enough is not my problem. Having too much is.

When I have too much, my time, attention, and financial resources are bound up in the stuff of earth. It crowds in and demands my affections. I begin to prioritize things that don’t matter and forget about things that do. My heart is not free. I am a slave to an insatiable master.

I may think I am generous and humble. But one trip to Target is all it takes to close my selfish fists. When I am reminded of all I do not have, I am less delighted to give, less concerned with humility, less inclined to do without excess so another can have enough. I begin to think it’s more important to have matching towels in my hall bathroom than it is to give to someone in need. I really believe it is vital to give my kids a “good Christmas” than it is to save money for their futures.

So I invite the stuff in. I do it out of envy. I do it out of greed. I do it out of guilt.

It is easy to buy into the lie that I need to provide a better childhood for my kids than the one I had. It’s a nice sentiment—we should all strive to learn from our parents and be better. But a materialistic childhood is not a happier childhood. You do not need to walk very far into a toy department to know that is true. There, you will hear children with more than enough stuff screaming, “Mommy! I want that! Mommy! Buy that for me! Mommy! You’re a mean mommy if you don’t get that for me now!”

It is more enjoyable to live with children who are content. It is more enjoyable to live with myself when I am content. But how do we get there, especially in this season of excess? Here are some ideas:

1) Turn off the TV, or at the least, turn off the commercials. The goal of television is to sell you something. Advertisers have worked very, very hard to figure out how to get you and your children to believe you need something you don’t have. Everyone on TV has more and better stuff than you do. Don’t give them the opportunity to give you their sale’s pitch because they will win.

2) Set a budget, and stick to it. Guilt is a powerful emotion, especially for mothers. If you do not have a budget you will likely spend more than you should on gifts for your children.

3) Downsize. Spend some time today going through closets and toy bins. You will be shocked at the stuff you have been hoarding that you do not need and that no one uses. Stop trading your time to maintain stuff that has no value. Get rid of it today.

4) Give! Charity is the best anecdote for materialism. It is important that your children sacrifice in order to give. Don’t just give them money to put in the offering. Give them age-appropriate jobs to do to earn money to give away. Then, find a charity your entire family can support. You can sponsor a needy child. Pack a shoebox. Save and buy an animal for a needy village. Give bracelets. Your children can even earn money and use it to purchase food for a food bank or items for a homeless shelter.

Are your children happy with little? Are you content with what you have? Make it a priority to break free from the bondage of materialism. When contentment fills your home, you will find it easy to enjoy your children. It is natural and easy to enjoy those who are at peace in a world filled with stuff.

The best anecdote to materialism is charity. Give. Photo credit: Give Jewelry

Please join us tomorrow for Day 28: Teach

For further thought:

1) If your children have a problem with materialism, check your own heart before trying to change theirs. If you struggle with these things, chances are your children will too. Confess your weakness to God and ask for help to overcome this sin. Then, set about to change your behaviors first. Let your children see your good example!

2) As a family, memorize Matthew 6: 19-21, which says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

3) Compare and contrast the attitudes of the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-22) and the faithful widow (Mark 12:41-44). Do you hold your treasures tightly in your fists, or do you give generously and sacrificially out of your abundance? Find one thing today that you can do to move toward becoming more like the faithful widow. Perhaps you can give up that morning latte or choose to make a gift instead of purchasing one. Whatever it is, begin to make steps in the right direction!

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