Family Exercise

On Saturday night, it rained hard and we awakened Sunday morning to puddles, mud and cloudy skies. It was a perfect morning for a bike ride!

We rode down to the beach with two main objectives. The first was to pray for people as we passed them and as we saw and talked to people along the way and at the beach. So often we go about our day without even thinking about praying for the people around us. The idea this morning was to spend some time in specific, focused prayer for the people we passed.

For myself, it was really good exercise. Not just the bike ride, which was good physical exercise, but the prayer was very good spiritual exercise. I used to be in the habit of praying for people spontaneously, but I have fallen out of that habit. I found myself able to really spend some quality time with God as I began to talk to Him about the people around me – instead of just praying about my personal struggles and trials and shortcomings, which I definitely do!!!

The other objective for the bike ride was to connect with some of our neighbors we hadn’t talked to in a while. It’s crazy that we can live within 3 or 4 blocks of people and almost never talk to them!

How can we be that busy? Well, my answer is that I’m really not that busy. I’m just comfy. It’s a little time-consuming and sometimes a little awkward to stop in for a visit. The weather is hot and the bugs are fierce, I should be washing laundry or making dinner or writing that update letter or any other of a dozen things which are pressing, but not of any eternal value.

Why do I get so caught up in the “tyranny of the urgent”? I would venture to guess that the enemy would rather me be busy-busy with household stuff so that I didn’t have time to stop in and encourage my neighbor whose father just passed away. It would be better, in the enemy’s eyes, if my house was spotless and ready for company than if I was at my elderly neighbor’s house cleaning for her.

So, our family bike ride was a success – at least for me! God used the time to really speak to my heart and to remind me what is of lasting importance.

The little kids got to swim in the ocean, too, so they were happy! I think this could become a family tradition – Church on the Beach!

Feeding Time at the Zoo

Had to share this...

I tried to post it on Facebook, but couldn't get the animation to work, so I'm posting it here. Adorable? Want one??? :^)

Parenting 101: The Golden Rule

"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"

And Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."
-- Matthew 22:37-40

This week’s parenting focus is how we should treat others – and why.

The “how” is generally the easy part. I mean, really. We know how we want our kids to act: be nice, share, say the magic word, don’t hit/pinch/bite/scream/yell/flush your brother’s Legos down the toilet. The “how” is easy.

“Don't act out of selfish ambition or be conceited. Instead, humbly think of others as being better than yourselves. Don't be concerned only about your own interests, but also be concerned about the interests of others.” -- Philippians 2:3-4

But WHY???
• Because Dad and Mom said so? Well, that’s a good start, but what if Dad and Mom aren’t around? Do I still have to? What if they didn’t exactly say so?
• Because the Bible tells me to? That’s good, too, but it’s a little abstract for most kids. Plus, isn’t the Bible more than just the 10 commandments?
• Because I’m going to be punished if I don’t? What if I don’t get caught?

A child who is taught to behave correctly, but is never taught why they should behave correctly, becomes a moral puppet – and they’ll have no backbone. They will be at the mercy of the one who holds the strings.

A child who is taught to think correctly will become morally strong and free to make his or her own choices.

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. – Proverbs 22:6

So, the trick is to train our children to think correctly. How do we do that? First of all, we need to model right behavior. It’s hard to teach your children to be honest with you when you tell lies in front of them.

Second of all, we need to have on our minds the reason behind our desire for their right behavior.

Let me explain that better.

I need to know why it’s important for my child to not lie/hit/steal/scream/run out into the middle of the street. If I don’t know, how can I explain it to him?

Does that mean that I always need to answer every “WHY?” my son comes up with? Absolutely not! Especially if he’s four! You could go on forever about where salt comes from! :^) It means that I train my kids to think things through. One day, they'll arrive at their own moral conclusions because they've been trained to think about the outcome of their actions -- not just whether a specific action is permissible! I pray that I've trained them so their conclusions are Godly.

You know one interesting way this principle helped me in my parenting? I used to say NO a lot. I like being in charge of things, and I really enjoy things being “in order”. When I began to apply the principle of moral training to my kids (who were then 5 and under), I realized that I didn’t have a good reason for a lot of the things I did or said. I eased up. I did get firmer on the important things, but I eased up a lot on the more “fun” stuff.

“Mom, can we eat on the back porch?” No. Why? ‘Cause I’d have to move all the food out there, and it’s all set up here. Lame reason. If I have to actually think through and explain my reasons, I’m more likely to be reasonable!

“Mom, can we eat in the living room?” No. Why? Because the carpet is new and white and this is a rental. Valid reason. Let’s eat on the back porch!!!

Do you think giving your kids a moral reason for not fighting/being selfish/stealing/whining or whatever would cause a change in their behavior? Are you willing to give it a try? Let me know what happens!!! (Be sure it probably won’t change overnight, but you might be surprised!!!)

Know When to Walk Away

There's a certain point when you've had an unfinished project laying around for SO long that it's either time to DO IT or toss it. My kitchen curtains are one such project. Would you believe that I purchased fabric to make black-out curtains for our living room in Oregon almost 10 years ago...and never made them? Why? Lots of reasons, really. First I misplaced the backing fabric. Then I found that and misplaced the lining fabric. Then we moved. Grr.

I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

The "plan" was to make large quilts to cover the windows using a rubber-backed fabric as a lining to keep out the sun and the heat. Great idea, but it never happened.

I'm really not a quilter. The only quilt I ever made ended up as a parallelogram, rather than a rectangle. I love to sew and have made my own clothes since I was 7, so curtains aren't that difficult. The thought of how many different quilt blocks I would have to make scared me away, I guess.

So, I finally decided (10 years later) to finish those curtains. I have two huge windows and two small windows in the kitchen/dining area of the house. I thought that thick curtains would work great to block out the afternoon sun which blazes in those front windows. So, I gathered all my fabrics together and began to cut squares for my patchwork curtains.

Then, I sat down a couple of weeks ago on a Friday afternoon to begin to make my new patchwork curtains and worked for 6 hours straight. The next day, I worked another 4 hours. Here's what I had at the end of 10 hours of sewing:

I'm sorry. I'm just not that dedicated.

So, I scrapped that idea (no pun intended) and decided to make something else. Here's what I ended up with. How do you like my new patchwork curtains? :^)

Maybe next month I'll take a jaunt to the fabric store and just buy something cute to make kitchen curtains!

Parenting 101: Intro

Doug and I took some parenting classes decades ago (feels like!) and I think we really learned a lot. OK. I know we learned a lot. I’ll be honest: I was a ding-dong mom for at least the first year of Sarah’s life.

I was, in fact, such a ding-dong that I remember talking to Aunt Nancy on the phone one evening when Sarah was almost two and Caleb was bouncing away in his bouncy seat. During the course of our conversation, I bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t have the table set nicely for Doug when he came home from work. She asked me why not, and I told her it was because every time I got the table set for dinner, Sarah climbed up on the table and destroyed everything. She would pull the table cloth down, knock over candles (unlit, of course. I wasn’t that much of a ding-dong.) throw dishes on the floor and whatever else she could find to make me want to yank out my hair (or hers).

Nancy said something at that moment that I’ll never forget: “Tell her, ‘No.’”

It was like a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky.

Sometimes we just need a place to start. For me, the beginning of victory in my Mom-Journey was when I realized that I was indeed the Mom and my kids were, by definition, the kids. That meant that I out-ranked and out-voted them, even when there were 6 of them and only one of me. My battle cry became, “Let’s take a vote. Mom counts 10.” I still say that.

So here I am, 15+ years later and the student has become the teacher…sort of. We started parenting classes in Boca a year ago and had a really great time. We certainly learned a lot! We struggled a bit with the Spanish – lots of words we didn’t know! Now we’re starting our 3rd series and are really excited!

I’m so excited that I decided to make weekly blog posts about the classes and share the “theme” of the week – starting this week. I’ll call it “Parenting 101” and I hope that you’ll check back every week to see what I’m learning, er, I mean teaching.

Seriously, even in the introduction to the book we’re using I was reminded of important truths – things I hadn’t thought of in ages, and it did me good to be reminded of them. Here’s a “sneak-peak”.

Two points to consider:
1. We can’t teach our kids something that we ourselves don’t know or don’t put into practice. If we want our kids to be godly, respectful, honest, dependable, trustworthy, etc., we can’t just tell them to do it, we need to model that behavior for them.
2. Our childhood experiences affect our parenting. Duh. Yeah, I knew that, too. But here’s something you may not have known:
• If your parents were of the “my way or the highway” mindset, you will tend to be a more permissive parent.
• If your parents were very laid-back, wishy-washy or just plain negligent, you’ll tend to be more strict.

Yes, that’s a generalization. But we tend to swing to the opposite extreme of our parents. The goal is to be at neither extreme, neither permissive nor authoritarian, but to work toward balance and consistency.

Well, that was the intro. Whadaya think? Each class is over an hour of lecture with discussion questions and such, so this is a very, very small nutshell, but I don’t feel like typing four pages and you probably don’t feel like reading them! I pray that these sum-ups become an encouragement to you and maybe even a challenge to reevaluate your parenting strategies to see if you can improve in certain areas.

Do you have an “Aunt Nancy” in your life? Someone who has said what needed to be said or just stood alongside you when you needed her to? Why not send her a note telling her thanks!!!