Tag: Faith

Parenting in The Pew: The Journey And The Destination

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In my short five years of parenting multiple children in the pew I have had some successes and many failures.

The magic formula for getting all my kids to sit still in worship must have missed my mailbox somehow. I’ve struggled.

I have read the books, been to the seminars and searched the blogs but my kids are as unique as snowflakes and no one book is one size fits all.

Nothing is a one size fits every child so I have learned up on my kids, prayed for wisdom, watch other families and taken pieces from the books, blogs and seminars.

Parenting in the pew will be a twenty some year journey for us. We only have five years under our belt so we are really just beginning.

Parenting in the pew

This journey is different for everyone because we are different parents raising different children. What your children need in the pew will look differently from what it has looked like for my family.

You should know that although my husband may be present next to me, my husband is at work on Sunday morning so this makes our parenting in the pew journey a little unique and challenging for me as I try to parent without my greatest and favorite partner in life.

You should also know I am fairly new at church. I’ve been a Christian for almost ten years now and a parent for five of those years.

I joke that something in the worship service always seems new to me. Songs, scriptures, liturgy. So just because I am married to a man involved in the service does not make me any more equipped to handle those surprise curve balls.

Both the newness of church and my husband being at work bring uniqueness to my parenting in the pew story.

I just want to share with you in hopes to encourage you and see that I too am walking alongside you in this journey.

First, you should know and it helps to remember: This is a journey.

Once I think I have it figured out, something changes. A curve ball is always being thrown. As soon as I figure out the pitching pattern the curve ball comes. For me, it is important to expect the curve ball.

And then…when I swing and miss the curve ball I remind myself: This is a journey and next week I’ll have another at bat.

Training Worshippers

 

 

It also helps to think of this journey as a journey of training worshippers. For me the main objective is not to have quiet and still children. The objective is to train worshippers.

Every journey has a destination. My objectives for training worshippers simply function as the destination. The objectives function as the “where we are headed” on this journey of parenting in the pew.

I have two main objectives for training my children to be worshippers and like any good teacher I use the objectives to shape how I teach them on each and every Sunday morning.

When I started thinking about my objectives and this journey of parenting in the pew I simply thought about what I want my children to do in worship five years from now, ten years from now and even twenty plus years from now.

What do I want to see my children doing independently at the end of the journey?

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I can’t wait to share my objectives with you tomorrow. I have written over two thousand words about this journey so I have broken everything up into three pieces.

Come back tomorrow for Part Two: What Helps

It’s Not Like A Quick Wardrobe Change

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Almost ten years ago I came to know Jesus. This was not an effort to clean up my life nor has it been what some have referred to as a “spiritual awakening.” What happened to me took no effort at all. I wasn’t even looking for Jesus. The only thing that happened to me was I went to coffee with a friend and he challenged me to read the book of John and consider the teachings of Christ.

I had never read the Bible. Never. But at the age of twenty-one when I opened a real Bible for the first time something in me just could not put The Book down. I couldn’t even sleep without thinking about the verses written in it.

In the next few weeks something in me changed. The God of the Universe changed me for real.

I don’t know why.

God changed me when I wasn’t even seeking Him.

Adapted from Ephesians 2

In the past I was spiritually dead because of my sins. Yes, in the past my life was full of those sins. I lived the way the world lives. That same spirit is now working in those who refuse to follow God. In the past all of us lived like that, trying to please ourselves. We did all the things our bodies and minds wanted. Like everyone else in the world, we deserved to suffer God’s anger just because of the way we were. But God is rich in mercy, and he loved me very much He gave me new life together with Christ.
it is because I am a part of Christ Jesus that God raised me from death and seated me together with him in the heavenly places. God did this so that his kindness to me and my belonging to Christ Jesus would clearly show for all time to come the amazing richness of his grace. I mean that I have been saved by grace because I believed. I did not save yourselves; it was a gift from God. I am not saved by the things you have done, so there is nothing to boast about. God has made me what I am. In Christ Jesus, God made me new  so that I would spend my life doing the good things he had already planned for me to do.

As I was changing in the back of our car in Atlanta traffic out of my yucky road trip clothes and into my cute party dress I thought about how quickly and easily you can switch from one outfit to another.

It’s easy to put on the Christian look and even talk the Christian talk however, the Christian life is not at all like a quick wardrobe change.

The Christian life is more like an unraveling of yourself. Little by little your life gets turned upside-down and inside out.

I’m still the same Rachel I have always been. Kinda awkwardly funny, super bossy, intense, first on the dance floor and last to leave. But as I continue to walk with Christ all of the parts of me are constantly being unraveled as I recognize old patterns of responding to life without any thought of what God thinks and pursue new patterns as I seek to please a merciful God who changed me when I was not even looking for Him at all.

Marriage becomes unraveled. Being in Christ is not a one time magic formula for becoming the best supportive wife in the world. Constantly I am working to identify old patterns of responding to situations and praying God would redeem them.

Parenting becomes unraveled. As you seek The Lord in His Word, the Christian life helps turn past hurts and harmful patterns into redeeming, new, life giving ways to grow up a new family heritage in Christ.

Friendship becomes unraveled. For me little by little I unravel and discover how to be a better listener, question asker and more thankful for the friends God has given me.

My sisterhood unravels. I have decades under my belt of responding to my siblings in a way that does not honor Christ and slowly… very slowly… those previous patterns are unraveling and becoming new.

You don’t run to the altar on Sunday morning after a nice sermon and walk back up the aisle with a magic formula to now be perfect.

God’s Word does not say, just as you received Christ now be absolutely perfect in Him.

The Word says, now walk in Him. (Colossians 2:6)

It’s not a quick clean up or a wardrobe change.

Knowing Jesus and walking with Him is a lifetime of unraveling.

Ephesians 4
assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

So ten years later I am committed to this constant upside-down and inside out way of unlearning and relearning.

I know I didn’t get quick clean up when The God of the Universe called me into relationship with Him.

I get to walk in Him and unravel as I go.

I’d love to write more about this unraveling story and share personal stories of unraveled patterns. Please leave feedback if you’d like to hear more about this.

Here is a link to that first study I did ten years ago when my friend asked me to just consider the teachings of Christ.

Click to access libook1xpress1.pdf

Why Gerber Is A Fine Choice

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I sat there in the restaurant with my husband and four children praying for the sweet mercy of Jesus to rain down on us so we could enjoy a nice lunch out sans meltdowns.

When the server came to take our order I knew my five year old was going to order some kind of seafood.

He asked for the shrimp.

The waitress asked if he wanted them fried or grilled.

He wanted grilled.

The server then asked if he would like fries or vegetables.

He wanted vegetables.

I sat there amazed. My other two sons only want to eat fries and chicken nuggets and cookies. And dip. Lots of dip. I even saw one of them slurp their dip up the straw from across the table.

I wrinkle my nose when I hear someone saying that homemade baby food makes better eaters.

My first born child is the one who ate only gerber baby food. The non organic kind. I fed him fruits first, not vegetables.

This was exactly what you weren’t supposed to do! But I was a new mom and trying to figure this new little baby out. I did not have time to make homemade baby food.

Everything your supposed to do to create a “good eater” I skipped or did backwards and here he is making great independent choices despite what was on his spoon when he was six months old.

I used to feel tremendous guilt over the store bought baby food. I was ashamed of my mothering and I had visions of my first born growing up to only eat donuts and happy meals.

Eating store bought baby food didn’t mess him up too bad at all. My first born is a great eater. He has been known to go into a panic at bedtime if he realizes I failed to let him have fresh fruit that day and has also been known to request a salad in the drive thru at Wendy’s.

My other two sons, the ones who love fries, chicken nuggets and cookies were fed all organic homemade baby food. Yep. All that hard work of grinding and blending and freezing to start them off on the right foot and they’re the ones slurping the barbecue sauce up their straws.

 

Same with the diapers. I’ve heard it rumored that cloth diapered children are easier to potty train.

My oldest son wore pampers for every single diaper change until he was twenty-five months. He was potty trained in about two weeks. Even overnight he rarely needed a pull up. He was completely diaper free well before two and a half.

My other two have both worn fuzzi bunz cloth diapers. (Which I love.) However, my three and a half year old still loves to poop in his diaper. He really does. Loves it. He tells me he loves it too.

So I am here to testify that I think our kids are going to be themselves no matter what efforts we go to when they are little.

There are myths that say homemade baby food produces better eaters and cloth diapering makes potty training easier.

It is true both save money. It’s true both are better for our environment. But I wouldn’t give homemade baby food or cloth diapers any more credit than that.

image

As parents we sometimes hold on too tightly to the latest trend and work ourselves to death grinding out that organic baby food or washing mountains of poopy diapers because we’ve heard the myths.

Our kids are going to be who God made them to be no matter what. One choice is not better than the other. They are just different choices. My gerber baby just ordered a healthier lunch than I did at a restaurant and frequently requests salads at the drive thru at Wendy’s. (I’m thirty and I never go to Wendy’s for their salads.)

Nothing I have done has taught him to eat the way he does. It’s who he is.

If your fretting about the cloth diapers and homemade baby food, forget about it. It is great for saving some money but your child will not be a horrible eater or a delayed potty trainer if you opt for gerber and pampers on your registry instead of the homemade baby food maker and cloth diapering starter kit.

Give yourself grace.

Pampers and gerber are great, healthy, normal choices for babies.

My gerber baby is doing just fine.

My other two, I’m afraid. We need to work on slurping the condiments up the straws thing.

And who knows what my fourth child will be like. She’s been eating gerber thus far because I am just too tired to add one more extra thing to my agenda.

The difference this time around is, she can eat the gerber and I have freedom from my guilt because I know she will be just fine no matter what her first foods might be.

I am praying for the sweet mercy of Jesus she will be potty trained before three and a half. I’m about to lose my mind with potty training my second child.

This post is just based on my experience with my four kids five and under. Your story may be different and that’s okay. Neither choice is better or worse. Just different.

The Tremor Of Her

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I miss her.

Every day.

Every moment.

When I see my sons holding my baby daughter’s face in their little toddler hands – When I am holding a grudge against my husband and digging my heels in the sand because I am right about where that couch should go and he is wrong- I miss her.

mom

Recently I have noticed little ways of how I seem to be becoming more and more like her. How even though she is gone I can feel the tremor of her in my moments. Every day.

Lately I have found myself saying and doing things the same way she used to. When you are younger you never think you will become your mother. But you do.

Her voice tremors through mine even when I least expect it.

Even though I miss her, I believe she lives on in me and I am thankful to be able to share her wise and crazy quirks with my sons and my daughter with hopes they will someday feel the tremor of her in their stories as well.

mom2

That secret stash of chocolates I have in my pantry reminds me of her. She used to hide snickers bars in the freezer.

She used to sing “another one bites the dust” when one of my siblings fell asleep. When I was a child I thought this was a cruel way to respond to your babes falling asleep but now I find myself bom-bom-bomming along to that same tune as my children nod off in the evening.

The words, “I’ll give you something to cry about” have come out of my mouth when my children are crying because they can’t find their eyebrows or their bath time is too wet. Again, cruel words I swore I would never say now make a completely acceptable and appropriate phrase to pass on to my children.

I have dinner on the table almost every night at 6pm on the dot. This annoyed me as a child but now it is a part of the rhythm and routine of my daily life.

I feel the tremor of her when I make her poppyseed bread at Christmas.

I feel the tremor of her when I huddle all my kids and my husband together for a “hunga bunga” which is a completely embarrassing group hug where the whole family jumps up and down while chanting “hunga bunga.”

I play rummy like her and taught my husband. I despise cooking and do anything I can to make it as easy as possible.

Every birthday party is special for my kids just like she made birthdays special for me.

I am grateful for a season where I can move beyond the feelings of sadness and anger that go along with my grief. In the seasons of sadness and anger it is too hard to find the simple and joyful ways how the fourteen years I had with her have impacted me for a lifetime.

I know through the years the Lord will continue to reveal more ways of how she is a significant part of my story.

mom3

I am thankful my children can experience their grandmother through the simple ways she lives on through me and I pray even though they never knew her my kids will feel the tremor of her in their stories for years to come and maybe years from now they will bom bom bom along as their own children “bite the dust” for the evening.

BreastCancerRibbon

My mom lost her seven year battle with breast cancer sixteen years ago this week. If you have a memory of her please share it here in the comments. I know it would bless my siblings and I greatly to hear about more joyful memories of her and you might help us discover more ways we can feel the tremor of her in our lives as adults.

 

I Hope You Don’t Find Perfect Love…

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As a young woman I saw perfect loves in the movies and heard of perfect love stories in ballads on my radio in my hatchback manual Saab.

The idea of a perfect love brainwashed me into thinking all my relationships would be saturated with whisk-me-away-romantic moments. I really at my core believed if I ever had a dispute with one of the men in my life it would only be moments before they would show up on my doorstep (in the rain of course) with an I’m-sorry-bouquet of flowers.

And that NEVER happened.

Darn love stories.

Darn love songs.

In a way I was disappointed.

My expectations gave me a twisted view of myself and others.

I was naive. My expectations for this so called perfect love ruined any relationship I ever had.

How could any of my boyfriends ever have competed with the image I had in my head-comparing them to a soaked and sexy Ryan Gosling  on my front doorstep with a drippy bouquet of flowers and begging of my forgiveness?

What I was seeing on the screen and hearing on the radio built up my expectations for perfect love and left me waiting in my home for ‘no one’ soaking wet with a bouquet of hydrangeas at my front door.

I was left questioning all the moves of my significant others. If my boyfriends couldn’t execute love like in the movies and the characters I compared them to I became suspicious of men…suspicious of perfect love… I became suspicious of myself.

I began to believe lies that I just wasn’t good enough for a perfect love and believed that maybe I didn’t deserve love at all.

The combination of all of the above became very dangerous for me and like a ticking time bomb my expectations literally blew up every relationship I had.

I would like to point the finger at culture and the misrepresentation of perfect love on the radio and displayed on the screens we hold in our hands.

However, I think the real person to blame is me and how I visualized love as being perfect right from the beginning.

flowers

Perfect:

: having no mistakes or flaws

: completely correct or accurate

: having all the qualities you want in that kind of person, situation, etc.

Anyone really in a loving and committed relationship knows that love is not perfect at all.

How can love be perfect when the two people in love are not perfect themselves?

As a Christian, I believe that on this side of heaven I will never be perfect. I believe that my self absorption, my bitterness with others, my desire to be righteous like God is all so bad that it requires the penalty of Jesus’ dying on the cross in order for me to be right with God.

I believe in a gospel, the good news, that on this earth I will never be perfect but I am loved by my God – even with

my imperfections.

I am in process.

I am perfectly imperfect.

Actually I am perfecting.

perfecting: in process of becoming perfect or coming to completion

What I know now is in real life love is not perfect. Love on earth between two people is full of mistakes and blemishes. Love on earth is two flawed people choosing to live and love all the imperfections of one another.

There is a misconception of love in our culture. The idea of perfect love is not only on our screens and radios but it breeds in our expectant minds it is spewing out of our lips.

 “Oh, he is perfect” or “You are the perfect couple”.

Sure the idea of perfect love is in the movies but we are perpetuating it with our words.

Loving relationships are not perfect. They are perfecting. Love is the perfect moments mixed in with the refining – imperfect ones. I can tell you with certainty I love my husband more now than I did when I met him. Sure he was charming back then and always on his best behavior but in perfecting love I get to be alongside him as he grows and changes into the better verison of who God is making him to be.

Perfecting love can be tough.

Perfecting love is a love that grows.

Perfecting love goes through seasons of giddiness, gladness, anger, sadness.

Perfecting love experiences disappointment.

Perfecting love dwells in the colder seasons knowing that a new season will come.

Perfecting love makes us better men and women as we walk alongside one another and experience a front row seat in the perfecting process of one another.

holding hands

Truth connection:

I want you to go back to that image of Ryan Gosling soaking wet at your front door with a bouquet of flowers. (Hard to go there I know)

I want you to know it is right to desire this kind of perfect love where from the beginning you are sought after and constantly pursued with a never giving up always and forever kind of love.

I want you to know this kind of love exists but we look for it in a man on earth when this never giving up always and forever kind of pursuing love is actually found in God.

Perfect love is only found when we find it nailed to a cross. Crazy I know but true. The idea of a man loving you so much that he would die for you originated with God. We are hard wired to long for perfect love. You just won’t find it in a boyfriend, fiancé or spouse.

I hope you never find perfect love in any earthly man. I wish you will find perfecting love. The kind of love committed to the process of you being made perfect over a lifetime of some of the coldest and warmest seasons.

And I hope you do not find perfect love anywhere else but on a cross – where a God that loves you so much He died for you. He pursued you. He is still pursing you. He is where you find the man soaking wet on your doorstep pursing you with a never giving up always and forever kind of love.

I hope you don’t find perfect love in anything else but Him.

Romans 5:8

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us.