Religion Archives - Page 4 of 7 - Kristen Anne Glover

100 Beautiful Days {of motherhood}

Micah

When the busyness of the day has ended and the last charging footstep has quieted into the night, I find myself compelled to look in on my children, still and softly breathing, while they sleep.

I have been with them all day. I have been pursued into the very corners of my home, I have served all the needs and all the wants until I have nothing left, so why should I seek them out for one more look, one more glance at the faces I know so well?

Because when the stillness comes, I am able to see my life like a picture. Every detail is captured in a single snapshot and I am able, finally, to pause and consider. I am able to see that my life is beautiful.

Even in the chaos, in rooms littered with Legos and laundry, I am overcome. I stare at the beauty captured by the quiet and I am compelled to worship.

Sometimes it takes the darkness to see.

The light brings the hurry, the motion, the stream of images that cloud my vision like a movie playing out on a big screen. It moves at such a pace, I do not know where to look. I am unable to comprehend it all. I am surrounded by beauty, even overwhelmed by it. But I am rarely overcome because the urgency of this world hurries me out of worship. It keeps my feet in the clay when it’s my knees that should be on the ground.

It is hard enough to slow down and consider the beauty of these days, to find and reflect on the things that keep our hearts soft and our eyes drawn up in worship. For there is mud and mire all around us, but in every day God gives us a glimpse of glory, a rainbow over a muck-brown world or a crumb of manna in the desert.

The trick is to notice.

Every day, God gives us a glimpse of glory

Because it’s easy to notice everything but the beauty. We notice the bills that need to be paid and the hair that needs brushing, the chores that need to be done and the dinners that need to be cooked. We notice which child is wet and which child is sleepy and how the baby is out of diapers.

And all that noticing gets us nowhere because it keeps our eyes fixed to the stuff of earth, to the mud and the dust and the dreariness that we never seem to overcome because we are made of it.

But all around in this earth grow bushes afire with God, their roots sinking down into the same dirt that muddies our kitchen floors and stains the Sunday clothes. Can you see them? Lift up your eyes. Bend your knees.

When we begin to notice—to see—the flaming beauty of these days, we are changed. It’s hard to be concerned about that pebble in your shoe when you’re standing on holy ground. But it is a joy to stand in the mud when there’s a rainbow overhead.

Here in our homes, children of Abraham, children of God, we are standing on holy ground. We are raising eternity. We are impacting forever. We are reflecting in actions and words the very image of God. In our daily work and daily bread we find shadows and pictures of glory, simple still-life portraits of the hand of God.

Can you see them?

This series is about taking the time to see, really see, the beauty in the everyday moments of life and motherhood. It is about finding that little piece of holy ground in the middle of the mess and fixing our knees to it.

You can expect, over the next 100 days, to hopscotch across the holy ground with me, to find joy and delight in the beauty of the every day, and to pause there to worship. My hope and prayer is that you will respond, first to God and then to me, with snapshots of your own.

Come mothers and fathers, come friends, and notice with me. Take off your shoes, forget about the blisters, and delight in these days.

They are beautiful.

Paul

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Variety {Day 22}

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

The first winter we lived in the Pacific Northwest, we broke a record for the wettest winter in the history of man. The clouds dripped cold, wet rain until it felt like it might even rain in the house. One day, I lifted the shades in the bedroom and found moss growing up the insides of the windows.

Starbucks enjoyed a nice boost of business that year. So did the library and the McDonald’s that had the indoor playground. So did the doctor’s offices, because all those places were filled with drippy-nosed children who hadn’t seen the light of day in months. The germs went wild.

Meanwhile, my mommy friends and I plotted to hijack a plane and force it to deposit the frizzy-haired, fleece-clad lot of us in Hawaii. Or Arizona. Actually, we’d be happy if the plane simply flew up over the cloud cover so we see that the sun was still there. Beautiful sun.

We were all suffocating under the monotony of endless sameness. Every day, the same gray clouds pressed down. Every day, the same icy rain kept us inside. Every day, our waking hours exceeded our creativity by at least six times. We were grumpy.

What was lacking that winter was anything new. We all felt like we were shriveling up even in the midst of all that rain.

It became painfully obvious that we needed some variety.

Most of us already knew that. “Variety is the spice of life,” right? But that winter, we felt it.

Mothers need variety. Children need variety. Without it, life becomes exceedingly boring, even wearisome. Children often respond to that boredom by acting out. Mothers often respond to that boredom by becoming depressed, short-tempered, or withdrawn. It’s a bad combination.

But change, even a little bit of change, can breathe new life into a dreary day. It helps us to enjoy our children more because change is restorative. It awakens a part of our soul that was created by an infinitely creative God. With abandon, He filled the darkest corners of the earth and the deepest depths of the ocean with strange and beautiful things. The universe is so full of the treasures of His Creation we will never come to the end of them. Man has tramped all over this world, and yet he has only begun to discover the inventions of a God who did not limit Himself when creating this home for us.

Remarkably, the God who ordered everything so perfectly also made everything so perfectly unique. Every blade of grass is the same in its composition, yet each one differs in its form. Each snowflake is just as much a snowflake as the next, yet no two are alike. Each day, the sun rises and sets in the same way, yet every day is new.

Bringing variety into our homes is one of the ways we reflect the image of God. God is creative, and when we are creative, we are like Him. None of us is creative to the same degree as God, of course, and we do not all reflect this aspect of His character to the same degree. I am often humbled when I see the creativity of others that is much more like the creativity of God than my own.

But to be creative does not mean I have to come up with the ideas myself. It means to create, using whatever resources are available, even the ideas and inspiration of others. That’s why God made Pinterest.

If you find yourself getting into a rut with your children, and each day seems mundane and uninspiring, and you find yourself lacking enjoyment of them, it might be time to get creative. Look for ways you can bring some newness and change into your home.

Not everyone thrives on the same amount of change or even the same types of change, but even very simple things like a fresh haircut or getting new books at the library can make you and your child feel renewed. It can spark fresh excitement and enjoyment in your relationship.

Here are some ideas:

*Do a toy swap with a friend. What could be more fun than having some new toys or puzzles to play with for the week?

*Have a picnic lunch on the living room floor, complete with blankets and lemonade.

*Help your child decorate her room.

*Take the kids out of school for the day and go do something special as a family.

*Take a different way home, or follow a road and see where it goes.

*Eat at an ethnic restaurant you’ve never tried before, or research a country and make your own ethnic cuisine. Don’t forget to decorate appropriately!

*Try a new craft! Have your kids ever used pastels? Clay? Beads? Check out Pinterest for an endless supply of ideas. Pick one and surprise the kids.

*Rearrange the furniture.

*Eat by candlelight.

*Get out your old CDs and educate your children on “good music.” Don’t forget to dance!

*Throw a tea party.

*Play a physical game with your kids, like tag or Twister.

*Slip love notes to your kids under their doors.

*Plan a day trip! Don’t tell your kids where you’re going. Just load them up in the car and let them writhe with anticipation.

*Create a scavenger hunt in the house or yard.

*Visit the elderly. Bring a list of questions and try to learn more about what life was like many years ago.

*Hide Easter eggs…in January.

*Get new coloring books and crayons. Don’t skimp on the new crayons. It’s fun.

*Make a new dessert. Let the kids pick!

*Choose a family to bless. Make up a basket of goodies, personal products, or food items and drop it off on their doorstep. If you live in the city, create gift bags full of sample products, non-perishable food items, and other necessities and hand-deliver them to a panhandler.

*Make and send cards to a deployed soldier.

*Make pretzels. Let the kids shape their own!

*See how big of a blanket fort you can make.

*Put everyone’s name in a bowl and let each person draw a name. Spend the day doing special things for the person you picked.

These are just ideas to get you started. The possibilities are endless, just like the creativity of God. Why not pick one thing to do this weekend to breathe some newness and creativity into your home. You will find that you and your children enjoy the change.

Need variety ? Throw a toga party.

Please join us on Monday for Day 23. Only eight days left!

For further thought:

1) Some children struggle with change. If you have a child who does not like most types of change, you may need to focus on making the changes less dramatic, like changing your own bedroom or simply putting fresh flowers on the table. Don’t let your child’s uncertainty keep you from doing anything at all. Simply do things more slowly.

2) We learned in our post on constancy that creativity without constancy is chaos. Even though creativity is one aspect of God’s character, so is order. If you are a very creative person, you may need to learn to balance your creativity with some structure so your children don’t feel like they’re living in a state of chaos. Read the creation account of Genesis 1. Notice how God ordered His creation to reflect both aspects of His character. Does your home reflect both order and creativity?

3) What are some of the ways you have introduced variety into your home? How do you keep things interesting and new? Please share in the comments!

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?

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