Prayers For My First Grader

August 11, 2015June 22, 2016Leave a comment

It was supposed to be rest time in our home at 1:30 this afternoon. I put my baby down in her crib, closed the door and walked down the stairs to call the boys in for rest time just the way I normally do.

I sing to the tune of Mary Had A Little Lamb: ” It’s time to find your resting place, resting place, resting place, time to find your resting place, it is time to rest.”

But as I went to open the door and sing my song I saw three boys laughing and playing and I just could not make them stop.

So I watched them play from the bay window. The older two were on the swings and the younger was whacking them with a pool noodle. They were all laughing hysterically but I started to cry as I watched them.

Today was the last day that all three of them will run around in the backyard after lunch time most days of the week. Tomorrow our biggest boy goes off to first grade and seventy one percent of his lunches and after lunch play times will now be spent outside of our home. (Mathematicians don’t hate on me here… I did not configure school and summer vacations into that one.)

So as I watched them I prayed. As I have gotten in the habit of praying for my kids when I spy on their play times.

I prayed for my son’s first days in his new classroom.

Lord, you are faithful and good. Please give my son good relationships with his new teachers and help him make new and long lasting friendships with his classmates.

Lord, help him find others to run around on the playground with the same way he runs around our backyard at home.

Lord, give him friends to sit at the lunch table with and joke and laugh… but also in the appropriate ratio of socializing and food eating.

Lord, help me remember your faithfulness to us last year. Give me hope and trust for a school year which will grow us and stretch us in ways we weren’t expecting.

Lord, give my son confidence in his work. Help him know in his heart that he is always loved by The Most High God. Help my son remember that he is kind, smart and important, uniquely knit together, wonderfully made.

Lord, help my son stand up for himself and others. Help him be strong and courageous because You are with him wherever he goes.

And Lord, help me be strong and courageous too because You have written that You are with my son wherever he goes and You are faithful.

And as I watch these boys play, help the youngers left behind miss their brother well. Help them miss him enough to long to play around him but not enough to forget the fun they have when they are all together.

Lord, we need you in transition and the unknowns. Help us trust You more and love one another better in the days to come.

Amen.

And now the hardest thing to do is to leave my prayers and trust. To walk in the faith that calls us to believe in God’s faithfulness, even when we can’t see His faithfulness coming. To let the tears come with peace. The peace of God which transcends all understanding and guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

First grade, here we come.

You can pray for me too.

When The Days Are Long And The Years Are Short

July 16, 2015January 2, 20161 Comment

Gretchen Rubin says it best in her book, The Happiness Project.

“The days are long but the years are short.”

Now, I know for some of my friends that have grown children (you know) I do not and cannot even comprehend the weight of what this phrase encompasses and I am not pretending to.

But I feel the longness of the days and just this week I am beginning to see glimpses of the shortness of the years.

My oldest son is in fact one-third gone. Saying that aloud and writing it down does not make that statement anymore believable to me. My son is one-third of his way out my front door and off into the world.

In the last year he has had some adult teeth creep up into those youthful holes in his smile and his feet have crossed over from little kid sizes and into real man sizes. (He wears a 1 to my husband’s 10.5.)

It was on his sixth birthday last January that I began to think of the weight of the truth: my time with him and I in this home, when I can still hold the grown-up card is one-third gone.

I cannot speak to having all the thirds gone but I can tell you the one-third crept up on me the same as those adult teeth did growing into my son’s smile.

There are parts about the years being short that I love.

Now, I love my children and I am not wishing them away but today I can be totally honest with you when I say- I loved my four children playing independently in the basement all morning with my oldest two steering the cruise ship instead of me.

In the shortness of the years I don’t know when my older sons began making up the games or getting out the toys for the day, I just woke up one day this summer and my children started making memories all on their own.

I love in the shortness of the years how I have quickly embarked upon a feeding time when I feel like I can eat a meal and have a conversation with my family.

I love the shortness of the years bringing us to a place where my kids can pump their own legs on the swings and play ant tag while I watch them interact from the window without my refereeing and whistle blowing.

And I grieve the shortness of the years too.

I grieve the shortness of the years when I think about my son who is one-third gone going off to first grade in a few weeks. I grieve because I know he will not be present around my lunch table five days a week.

I grieve because I know getting into the busyness of the long days at school will make the years seem even more shortened than they already do.

But I love where we are in our long days and our short years. I am so thankful for this time with these babes no matter how short the years may seem. I fight to live them big because I know some mommas don’t get to live all the years they want to with their babies.

In the long days and the short years I have a choice between sadness over the one-third gone or I can just love where we are today.

Because no matter what is gone or what is to come, today is what I have with my kids.

I think this is part of the journey. Not reminiscing and missing the days one-third gone and not trying to live too much in the grief of the hard loss which lies two-thirds ahead.

We can appreciate where we have been and anticipate with great hope what is ahead but most of all I am coming to a place where I feel it is so important to enjoy the todays.

When you realize the days are long and the years are short, you don’t start counting them and measuring them, you wouldn’t start counting your days if your doctor told you you only had a short time to live. You would enjoy the long days you have, where you are: one-tenth, one-third or one-half gone because you know the moments of making memories are precious.

So I’m fighting to enjoy me one-third gones and adult teeth creeping ins. Not seeing what is gone or what is about to be gone but seeing the six year old in my lap.

This is where God has me as a mom.

These are the long days He has given me in the years that seem to be so short.

Unraveling Kindness

June 23, 2015June 23, 2015Leave a comment

I never knew it but for a long time I never understood the real reason of why it was important to be kind to others.

I can remember being taught the saying “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” from Matthew 7:12 and I believed what this verse was communicating was that if you gave kindness to others, others will give kindness in return. We treat people as we want to be treated in hope of someone giving back kindness to us in return.

I interpreted this teaching from the Bible as a young girl, just one verse, which is a good verse in itself but without proper teaching and my own ability to turn a verse into what I want it to mean, I led a life giving kindness and expecting kindness in return.

This way of living gave me many years of giving kindness and receiving disappointment.

Living a life giving out kindness and expecting kindness in return is not a great way to live. Everyone out there is fighting battles I can’t even begin to know about. People are lost, insecure, hurting, scared and jealous. All on their own levels. But everyone is fighting a some kind of battle in the same way I am fighting mine to put off the lostness, the insecurities, the hurts, the fears and learning to love yourself enough to not compare your life to the lives of others.

I have lived enough years now to know that giving kindness does not always return kindness. You can smile at that runner on your route every week and they may never smile back.

You can like someone’s photos on Facebook, wish them a Happy Birthday, take interest in their life and family and they may never take interest in you back. They may never wish you a Happy Birthday and they may even unfollow you.

And this is life. Living life is raw with real hurts to your heart and life lessons beneath the surface. It has taken me ten years of following Jesus to unravel my thoughts about kindness. Ten years of undoing the things I thought were true and letting God weave truth within me from His Word. What is true about kindness is we do not give kindness to receive kindness.

We give kindness to others only because God is kind.

It has taken ten years of reading the Bible as an entire story and ten years to learn how to unravel what is untrue about kindness. To take that one good verse and place it in the midst of all the other verses that God speaks to us about kindness. To synthesize them all together under teachings from Sunday mornings and participation in Bible studies.

Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Psalms 36:7 How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.

Psalms 63:3 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You.

Acts 20:35b – It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Galatians 6:9a – Let us not lose heart in doing good.

I John 3:19 – We love, because He first loved us.

Hebrews 13:1-2 – Let love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.

James 3:17-18 – For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

It has taken me ten years to learn that giving kindness is not about receiving kindness in return. Kindness should be given to show others the love of God. I can only be responsible for my part and I cannot control how others respond to me. I do not know their battles. I can only know mine. And it is a fight for me to give kindness when kindness is not returned.

So that is my battle for now.

I will be kind because God is kind, giving kindness freely and expecting nothing in return. I believe this is where the root of true kindness begins. When we give and expect nothing in return. Just as God has given us Himself, in our messes, and He abundantly bestows his lovingkindness on us even when sometimes we are too blinded by ourselves to give him anything in return.

As Christians we have to get off the hamster wheel of giving kindness to receive kindness. We have to give kindness only because God is kind and expect nothing in return. It is there that we can find true kindness, without selfish ambition. It is there that we can have that runner not smile back every week and remember how long God has bestowed his lovingkindness on us and we have looked the other way and not smiled back in return.

We can only give kindness because God was kind to us first. Over and over again.

That is the truth and that is what I have been missing all these years.

We can only be kind because God is kind.

Stick with me and follow this blog as I continue to write stories about what it is like to unravel and learn to be Christian in the front row at church. I am forever learning, growing and trusting that God has begun a good work in me and is bringing it to completion.

The WORST Mom Ever

June 9, 2015June 10, 2015Leave a comment

I am the WORST mom ever.

Sometimes I say this phrase to my kids when they are experiencing a disappointing circumstance. Truly. I can be fun but I am also tough. This combination leads to many disappointing circumstances.

When I say that I am the WORST mom ever to my kids I am only joking to add to the drama of their disappointed hearts. (When all my children are in counseling as adults they will talk to note taking men and women about how I used this phrase against them to feel guilty.)

I know I am causing damage when I joke with them about being the worst mother ever but I do find myself saying things like:

Oh, I’m sorry you didn’t get ice cream on the way home tonight but that is because I am the WORST mom ever.

Lately my oldest son has been saying something back to me and the more he responds to me the more I am taking his words seriously.

When I call myself the WORST mom ever he always says,

“Mom, why do you say you are the WORST mom ever when you are actually the BEST?”

The first time he said this I took his response lightly because this is the reaction I wanted to get out of my children. (The children crying while leaving Kings Island because I only treated them to Chick Fil A and a day filled with amusement park fun and I did not add ice cream on top of it all.)

These words from my oldest son have continued to stick with me even though it was the response I was expecting.

Even though I was expecting my son to respond in this way, I never expected his words to affect me the way they have.

How often do we all speak these words of untruth to all of our hearts when we find ourselves not measuring up to the moms whom we encounter at church, on the playground, in our schools and on social media.

How often are we speaking to our own hearts that we aren’t doing this mom thing as well as someone else?

I do this all the time.

Every time I fail throughout the day. Whether it comes down to feeling guilty over what I put on the table, the amount of activities I did or did not plan, the hours I spent away from them on a trip or on a run, the amount of minutes I fell short on a reading log or the homework folder.

However I fail, I sometimes and in someway speak this poisonous phrase to myself.

The WORST mom ever.

I think it and I really feel this phrase I speak jokingly to my children at times.

And the words of my oldest son are such a sweet gift to me:

“Mom, why do you always say you are the worst when you really are the best.”

I may not feel like I am always measuring up. But to the four kids who I feel like I am failing, currently I am the best mom ever to them. Currently, my kids see me doing this job of mom and through their lens they see me doing my best.

Why do I always say I am the worst? I don’t know. I wish I could see myself though the lenses of my children.

Maybe I wouldn’t be so hard on myself.

Maybe I would see myself the way they see me.

To our young children, we are the best. They can’t see what everyone else on social media is doing. They just see their moms waking up each day and loving them the best they can. Our kids don’t have the ability to measure us up against everyone else. They only measure us up against the happiness they find within the walls of their happy homes.

We may feel like the WORST but to the little people who matter, we are THE BEST.

I’m actually may be doing a decent job at this mom thing.

Those are the words I need to speak more kindly to my own heart.

The Things I Said I’d Never Do: An Unraveled Parent

April 25, 20151 Comment

There was a moment the weekend right before Christmas where I found myself cheering in a dark deserted parking lot on a chilly December night. I was cheering because my three year old was peeing in the bushes, outside and in the cold.

Really. I was rejoicing. This is something I’d never thought I’d be doing. Six years ago in my early parenting days, when my first son was about nine months old, my husband shared a story with me about a little boy peeing in the church parking lot and I said,

“I WILL NEVER let my son pee in a parking lot.” And I really believed myself. I was even reluctant to let my first son pee in the yard while we were potty training at two.

And there in December, I found myself applauding my three year old in the dark. I was so proud of him. This was same kind of pride I feel when one of my children take their first steps. Peeing outdoors has actually become an important milestone for me and after three sons, this “will never” along with many others has given me the opportunity to see myself unravel my wound up strings, breathe and let go of all those things I thought I’d never do as a parent.

A dear friend told me once, “parenting is actually for the parents” and I could not agree more. I can see how these little humans that I’ve carried, nursed, fed and cleaned up after are actually changing me more than I ever thought they would back at the beginning of the all the “will nevers”.

Parenting is for us. The parents. It’s funny how such tiny people have helped me grow and change. How these tiny people have helped me conquer fears, push the boundaries of who I thought I was and help me learn to love in ways I never thought I could.

I also said I will never let my kids watch Spongebob but when your stuck in a hotel room at 4pm on a rainy day with no Disney Junior you learn to let go on the tiny things that you think will corrupt your children’s tiny hearts and minds and you trust that God is bigger than Spongebob.

I said I will never own a toy gun back in those early days of being a new mom. My intentions were to raise boys that were not violent miscreants shooting everything and everyone they see. But looking back now I can see those intentions were ruled by fear and not trust. We now have multiple storage containers for weapons and nerf darts lodged into every couch cushion in our home. And so far- no violent miscreants.

I believe I may have uttered the words…

I will never let my children jump on the beds or the couch. Clearly I did not understand boys or children when this sentence came out of my mouth. This was also tangled up with the fear of my children getting hurt. I now actually sometimes encourage jumping on the couch and the beds, rejoicing when I hear them jumping and laughing and playing together the same way I was rejoicing when that little three year old was brave enough to pee outside in the cold.

I will never let my kids have formula. I am pretty sure I cried like a madwoman when the pediatrician told me my first son had lost too much weight and we had to supplement formula. The doctor’s eyes even bulged out a little at my overreaction. He wasn’t suggesting poison. Just formula. For supplemental purposes. And I was hyperventilating in my hospital bed uttering words of defeat, fear and remorse. When my fourth child was born I actually asked the nurse to give her formula our last two nights in the hospital so I could rest after having my fourth c-section. For supplemental and sanity purposes. All my kids have been nursed and given formula and despite my fears none of them has grown a third eye or eleventh toe… yet.

I will never teach my children the word MINE. I found myself correcting a friend a few years back when he was playing keep away with my infant son and using the four letter word, mine. “I don’t want him to know what that word is” is what I think I said. I felt like the word mine was the root of all selfishness. The word that in four letters can turn a sweet child into a monster. My desire was to teach my son that everything was given by a Great Giver and therefore help him learn to not use words which represented a heart of selfishness. But again, my good intentions were tangled up in fear and the unknown that a word does not produce a heart of selfishness. A heart of selfishness is naturally in all of us and selfishness will work it’s way into a home with or without the word mine.

I will never be able to survive parenting four young children, who happen to be within four years of one another. Look. It is true. Having little humans is tough. Tears on the floor, will I make it to nap time tough. I do not like to live in the unexpected. But having four kids so close together has taught me to learn to swim in unexpected waters. I am slowly learning to survive in the unexpected and learning to be comfortable when I can’t control every little thing happening around me. So far I am surviving. I haven’t lost anyone yet and everyone is still all in one piece. Things almost never go the way I planned them to go but I am learning to trust that God’s plans are greater than my plans. God is growing me and changing me, unraveling threads of fear and weaving new stronger threads of trusting in Him.

I am thankful when I find myself doing things I thought I said I would never do. It is there where I see growth. It is there where I see God making me into a better version of myself.

I never thought about parenting being for the parents. But it is. It changes you.You may even find yourself cheering for your children when they are peeing outside in the dark.

Hi, I’m Rachel. I became a follower of Christ one year before I found myself married to a man pursuing a seminary degree and on the road to become a pastor. That was nine years ago. We now have four kids, he is the head pastor of a PCA church in Mason, Ohio and I am figuring out how to be a mom, how to love my husband and how to trust God in the every day, one day at a time. I write stuff here and I try to keep it honest and encouraging as I have accomplishments and set backs. Follow this page on Facebook or add your email to the follow box on the right so we can stay in touch.