Teach Them To Pray

March 3, 2015March 3, 2015Leave a comment

I am currently reading Timothy Keller’s book, Prayer. I am the kind of reader who reads the last chapter when I am about halfway through a book, the anticipation of the last words is the kind of anticipation that causes me to read the end before the middle. I cave. Every book, every time.

Keller’s last words on Prayer say, “Why are we settling for water when we could have wine?”

This question rips through me. Prayer can be something that we as human beings just spin around on the circle of what we have always known. We know to pray when we are in trouble and need help or we pray and ask God to give us what we want. That is what I have always done and this kind of prayer is right and biblical, “give us this day our daily bread” simply means give us what we need, help us Lord.

When I get stuck on the wheel of the “I want” and “help me” prayers, also known in the church as supplication prayers, I find myself settling for water instead of wine. Prayer becomes very much about me and what I want and less about God. The relationship of prayer is one-sided and I become the main event. When I make prayer about me, I am settling for water.

I can have access to wine when I seek to have a two-sided relationship with the God of The Universe. When my prayer requests for everything that is wrong around me become only a part of my prayer life instead of the only thing I pray for is when I will break the hamster wheel of spinning around what I have always known about prayer.

This is hard to do. In the world of weight lifting it is recorded that “It takes 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions to burn a movement into your body’s muscle memory.” a minimum of 3,000 times at the generous amount of praying three times a day (Keller’s book suggests two) would take you 1,000 days to change the muscle memory of your prayers. This is three years! Three years of forcing yourself to step outside of your comfort zone and feel the soreness and pains of a new workout.

As adults it is much harder for us to change our ways. Most of us are already set in the way we do things. Especially when we do not live in community with others who are committed to the process of walking in this life as Christians and committed to growth and change in their watery prayer lives.

As I read Keller’s book all I can think about is, “What if my kids just always knew how to have a vibrant prayer life?” What if my kids just always heard prayer as a two-sided relationship, a conversation of the peeling back of our hearts and praise to the One who desperately wants them?

At night I pray with my sons and around 18 months I will begin to pray with my daughter at night time by their beds. Sometimes I am tired and I settle for the watery prayers of safety while they sleep and protection over their thoughts and their dreams. But I never forget to say, “Lord, please change the hearts of my kids so they know you and love you with all their heart and give them friends and spouses that love you with their whole hearts too.”

I say this so often that while talking to my youngest son (3) about the gospel just the other day, I went through the normal questions…

1. What did Jesus do? (He died on the cross)

2. Why did Jesus die on the cross? (For our sins)

3. Did Jesus stay on the cross? (No, He rose again and He lives forever in heaven)

4. What does it mean if you believe Jesus died on the cross for you sins? (We can live forever with Him in heaven where there is no more crying and no more bad guys)

Instead of the answer I normally get from our children to question two, Jesus died for my sins, my three year old confidently said, “Jesus died for my heart.”

My three year old basically smacked me in the face with the same words I have been praying over his bed since he was 18 months old. “Jesus died for my heart.” What a beautiful picture of the gospel to see in that moment. Jesus wants our whole hearts, not just the pieces we offer to give Him when we feel like we need Him. We need him all the time, the chaos of our hearts just prevents us of seeing that clearly.

What if we could teach our kids to pray so we could break the “settling for water” cycle and our kids just always knew how to have access to the wine: the rich, full-bodied relationship that you can find in prayer if you choose to train your muscles differently.

What if our children just always knew that Jesus wants our hearts in prayer?

Here are a few suggestions. I am not an expert so I know there are more legitimate resources out there for teaching children how to pray. I am just a mom, not a theologian or a parenting expert, these are the tools that are working for me to teach my kids to pray.

1. Pray so often that it isn’t something they feel like they have to do but they feel like prayer is something they can’t live without.

2. Pray when you discipline them before they leave time out. Ask for forgiveness and thank Jesus for paying the penalty of sin on the cross.

3. Pray for them on the way to school. Turn the radio off and ask what they need Jesus to give them for that day. On the way home, ask if Jesus helped them and if He did pray in praise to God so they can see the tangible work of God in their lives.

4. Pray scripture with your kids. Teach them to access God through His words, not just our human words. Let the words from the Bible saturate your words when you pray with them. Recently, my six year old was struggling with seeing scary images from a television show at night time. He was working on memorizing Philippians 4:8 (Finally brothers, 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.) We just prayed those scriptures at night and then I followed up to see if God answered His prayers.

5. Use the Lord’s Prayer as a framework to teach them to pray:

Adoration prayers: prayers about how awesome God is. (Our Father Who Art In Heaven, Hallowed Be Your Name)

Confession prayers: specific ways about how we fall short of the glory and holiness of God. (Forgive us our debts)

Thankfulness prayers: thankfulness for things but also salvation and the rescuing of our hearts (This gives us the recognition of the Giver of all things, 1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Supplication prayers: prayers asking God to help us, heal us, protect us (Give us this day our daily bread and deliver us from evil, )

6. Model going to God in prayer and praying full bodied prayers rich with relationship.

7. This may be a harsh one but when I find my kids asking for material things or wanting things in the store that they don’t need, I ask them to think of the things God has already given to them and pray with thanksgiving for what they already have.

As I read Tim Keller’s Book on Prayer, I can only dream and hope that my sons and my daughter will one day pick the same book up twenty years from now and think, yeah, my parents taught me to pray like this.

The next generation of believers could be so great and full of faith if we simply changed our water for wine and taught our sons and daughters to grow more deeply in their prayer life.

May my kids, your kids and the kids of every tribe, tongue and nation never know a day without giving God their hearts in full-bodied prayer.

Because A Mother Is Beautiful All By Herself

November 18, 2014November 18, 20141 Comment

There was a time not too long ago when I didn’t want to have my picture taken. Sometimes I was the one taking the pictures but other times I just didn’t want to see myself photographed. I was unhappy with the way I looked and I did not want my children to remember the time when mommy’s hips were more rounded and her face was a little fuller.

Specifically I remember being at a baseball game and I was gathering my boys close for a picture of them with their rally caps on. A young guy in the row in front of us sweetly turned around and offered to take the photo for us. He immediately looked puzzled when I quickly declined and told him I wasn’t planning on seeing myself in pictures for at least ten more years.

That was really true and there it was: Out of my mouth my heart spoke the words: I am not beautiful enough to be remembered for who I am, right now, just this way.

I have heard this story before. My mom rarely wanted to be photographed while she was battling cancer while I was a child. I hear my grandmother tell me, she did not want you all to remember her that way. I love my mother and that was her wish but now here I am left without her and I barely have any pictures with her and me in them. I cannot think of more than five photos I have of her and me together from the age of five until she passed away when I was fourteen.

To me she was beautiful.

As a child, I didn’t see a bald woman or a woman with only one breast. I saw my mother. And a mother is beautiful all by herself.

To my children, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

There will be a time when I am no longer here on this earth and my sweet children will be longing for memories of me. My children will not be concerned about my chin, my dark circles, or my roots that should have been touched up last week. My children will just want to see me. And them. They will want to hold something more tangible than a memory that puts me with them in that place at that time.

Our children don’t care how we look for the camera, because to them, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

You can see I have some unraveling to do when it comes to this whole idea of being beautiful. Just the way I am. Right now. In this time. In this place.

I will tell you I know what the Bible says about being beautiful. I will even tell you I have those verses memorized. But even though I know what the Bible teaches on a cognitive level about beauty – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the attitude of my heart and my unwillingness to be photographed show a tangled up mess of belief and unbelief when it comes to my appearance. What I believe and what I actually do just don’t match up.

As God has been faithful to work on my unbelieving heart I can see the places where I have the “beliefs of the world” tangled up in what is true about beauty from the passages of Scripture.

I’ve realized that to the people who matter, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

God speaks to beauty in His words to us in the Bible and according to Him our beauty has nothing to do with the amounts of hairs on our head, the clothes that we wear or what the scale is saying about us on any given day.

“Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised.” Proverbs 31:30

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.” (1 Peter 3:3)

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on appearance. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

“Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful.” Song of Solomon 1:15

God’s words in the Bible do not say the same things the world is screaming to us about beauty. It is challenging to unravel the untruth from the truth. Mostly because as a mom, I am constantly surrounded by a world telling me to be thinner, to wear the latest trendiest boots, to be a hot mommy, to make sure my thighs aren’t touching. I could go on for days. Days.

God is telling us from His word that beauty comes from the blatant opposite or what our world tells us is beautiful.

Beauty comes from giving up of yourself. And chasing after Good.

Beauty does from bravely enduring hardship. Like my mother. She is a heroine and I just won’t stop saying that.

Beauty is a mother. Giving up herself.

A mother is beautiful all by herself. A mother doesn’t need to hit that weight loss goal, make her hair the right color or wear the trendiest clothes. To God, your husband, you children, none of that matters. They want you in those photos. I know. And I am telling you.

“Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful.” Song of Solomon 1:15

Go and be photographed. Hang those photos on the wall and post them to Facebook. Because a mother is beautiful all by herself.

The Ugly Moments Of Parenting

November 12, 2014April 6, 2016Leave a comment

I am not above ugly moments.

I do not believe any of us are.

I get angry. I even yell. I sometimes blame my kids for the times when I lose my temper.

There are ugly moments in parenting. There is yelling in parenting. Boundaries are pushed in parenting. It happens to everyone.

It is not the yelling that is the problem.

The world will tell you that. The world will tell you to live in peace in harmony. The world will tell you to shove your angry feelings aside and “understand your children” in a calm and patient way.

The problem isn’t anger or the yelling in parenting. The problem is us. As human beings we are wired to mess up. We are wired as humans to lose our cool. If you yell at your children you are in fact only human. Just like the rest of us.

The solution is what happens after the anger and the yelling.

Just yesterday I was talking to my sweet kindergarten boy about girls and what girls are like. He told me, with his big brown, compassionate eyes, “girls like to tell us boys what to do.”

I mean. This is deep truth from my kindergarten boy. As a girl telling boys what to do all the time I know his words are true.

He went on to tell me about the times I tell him to pick up his toys and how I say if they are not picked up, whatever is left on the ground is being thrown in the trash. These are my ugly moments. The moments when I tell my children I will throw their toys in the trash, Toy Story’s worst nightmare coming alive in my own home, on my watch.

There is also a time when I told my sweet Asher boy that I would pop his balloon if he cried about it one more time. And I did. I popped it. With scissors. Right in front of his big beautiful blue eyes. I am not proud of this moment. This is another one of my ugly moments in parenting.

The dagger really went deep into my heart when that night, during our prayers to Jesus, he called me out during the confession time, “mom, aren’t you sorry for popping my balloon?” Right there in front of Jesus. Ugly, ugly moments.

Popping balloons and threatening to throw toys into the garbage. These are my ugly moments.

I believe as parents the power comes not from preventing the yelling or the threatening. I believe the power is in what we do after the ugliness has already happened.

Some people will tell us just never to yell in the first place. But you know, I believe it shows our children much more character when we make a mistake, or show emotion, and then appropriately be responsible for our crap rather than to act comatose and all Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood about things.

Are we brave enough to show our kids we make mistakes?

Are we brave enough to show our kids the moments when we need forgiveness before the Lord?

Are we brave enough to say I’m sorry? Or I was wrong?

Are we brave enough to live out a life of I’m sorrys and faith before them, right before their eyes, so they can experience first hand this so called power of the gospel we’ve been reading to them about from their Storybook Bibles?

Yes. I have ugly places.

Yes. I pop balloons like Gru from Despicable Me.

Yes. I threaten to put toys in trash bags and send them to the dump just like the ugly moments that haunt the very worst nightmares of Pixar’s Woody and Buzz.

But…

The thing about the ugly moments of parenting is always that there is a much more significant moment to show your children the gospel.

A much more beautiful moment follows the ugly one if you are brave enough to embrace it.

We are beautifully created people that find ourselves in ugly moments and we need a Savior to rescue us when we are angry, popping balloons like a villain and out of control.

I believe that in gospel believing homes, it is more powerful to our kids when we yell and repent than to never have yelled in the first place.

There is power in the ugly moments of parenting when you tell your children, “Mommy was wrong and mommy needs Jesus just like you.”

Yes. I have ugly moments. I have ugly moments because I need a Savior.

I want to show my children my need in my ugly moments so later in life when they themselves are without me in this big world and they find that they themselves are in an ugly moment, they will remember a great Savior. A great Savior who wants to rescue them in their ugly moments.

Ugly moments are an opportunity to show our children great character because of a great Savior.

Show them how to respond in the ugly moments.

Be brave.

You are always LOVED, ACCEPTED and BEAUTIFUL to God. Even in those ugly moments.

Why I Have Been Politely Declining Your Dinner Invitation

September 9, 20145 Comments

For the last five years I have been politely declining dinner invitations to your home.

I know you have fabulous hospitality gifts and I want to eat your delicious dinners and scrape my fork on your gorgeous wedding dishes. I can picture your centerpiece, smell the candles and hear the hipster music playing in the background.

Then a loud, old-school record scratch wakes me up from the daydream of what I might think it would be like to come have dinner in your home.

I remember one large very important detail.

I have small kids. Four small kids.

I love them to pieces. I love the dirt under their nails at the dinner table, their loud burps followed by their giggles and their ‘scuse mes, I love their spilled chocolate milks and the food that seems to end up mostly on the floor instead of in their sweet little baby mouths.

I love them to pieces.

However, I have politely been declining your dinner invitation for five years because of them.

Most nights collectively, my children spend ten minutes sitting at the table before asking to be excused and swirling off like tasmanian devils (cute and very loved tasmanian devils). We send them outside or in the basement just so my husband and I can hurry and shovel dinner in our own faces before some else needs us.

Just two weeks ago I ventured out to your home with my kids for a church picnic. In the hour and a half we were there one of my children kept peeing in their pants. He went through three changes of pants. Three. I was in the bathroom changing pee pee pants three times in the ninety minutes I was in your home. One time while exiting the bathroom I found another one of my children playing your piano with his chocolate covered hands. Just as my panic attack was beginning to my make neck tense up and my head shake someone spilled water on your arcade basketball game and maybe tried to ride your dog.

That’s right. It was time to go. I shuffled my children out the door, thank youed and apologized several times while bringing my three pairs of pee pee pants home in my purse.

Just two nights later another you invited us over for dinner. I accepted thinking we may be able to have a decent time. Your family also has four kids so I thought we may be able to make it through the evening without the pee pee pants or my tense neck and shaking head.

We almost made it until my two year old began stripping all his clothes off down to his nude birthday suit on your back deck. My infant was crying and exhausted so I tried nursing her upstairs in your master bedroom but my baby kept screaming. She wanted her swaddle and she wanted her bed.

And lastly. We didn’t have pee pee pants but one of my boys was too scared to ask to go to the bathroom with the big crowd so he just pooped in his underwear instead. This evening’s consellation was poopy pants in my purse. My child pooped his pants at your house.

We had a great time but the drama. Oh the drama my kids certainly like to save it for their mama.

Last night, I invited you to my house for dinner instead. I thought in my own house I could control the poop and the pee and the chocolate covered fingers and faces. I thought while my kids played with their own toys I could look you in the eye and chat about your marriage, your job and ask you what God is teaching you. I thought maybe we could joke and laugh around my table of mismatched silverware and a bottle of red wine.

I love my kids to pieces but they brought slugs and caterpillars in from outside to show you at the table. I love them to pieces but two of them pooped in their pants together outside while playing in on the swing set. And then my oldest child barfed. Right in the middle of the kitchen, coating the hardwoods with the soup I just served everyone and reeking up the house so badly you couldn’t even smell that Yankee Candle I lit for you anymore.

I apologized again and thank youed you for coming as my kids blew kisses and chased your car down the road. They said, “See you soon” as they chased you.

Phew I thought. I don’t think I can do this again for a long time let alone soon the tension in my neck started to come as I thought about it.

I love my kids to pieces. But this is why I have politely been declining your dinner invitation for so long. It’s not how I feel about you, it’s how I feel about pee pee pants in your house. Maybe in a few years once we are beyond the pee pee pants and the strip shows can we look you and your husband in the eye and chat over dinner.

For now it will just have to be the hubs and I, shoveling the food in our mouths and living these crazy years with littles laughing together. We love them to pieces but we’ll keep them and their pee pee pants to ourselves at dinner time.

They Can Hear You

July 24, 2014June 22, 201612 Comments

We have kids. A few of them. Four to be exact and we had them all right in a row. Our three sons came first within three years of one another and then our daughter is our youngest. Our oldest will begin kindergarten in a few weeks which means for the last few months I have had the opportunity to take all four of my small children out into the world with me wherever I go.

If you have young kids, or have encountered anyone with young children, or even if you’ve read my blog before, you will not be surprised to hear the comments I have received when I venture out into the big world with my small family.

You have your hands full.

Do you know what causes that to happen?

Wow. Are they all yours?

Three boys, bless your heart.

You got your girl. (This is a new one.)

And recently my favorite, Wow, you are either crazy or very unlucky.

Now, I am not saying all of these comments are said with ill will or evil intent. Sometimes my four small children hanging off the Kroger shopping cart is quite a miraculous thing to see. Not everyone is out and about with all their children and I understand that when you see us you don’t know what to say. So one of the above comes out… (hopefully not the last one.)

For the last year I have processed these phrases I hear when I am out only thinking about how the words made me feel. It wasn’t until today that this has changed.

A kind man passed us by in the parking lot and said one of the above phrases. He was kind. He was applauding all my efforts. He was not intending evil but my four year old commented, “I heard that.”

He heard it.

For all these years it has slipped my mind that my children are hearing these phrases with their functioning ears and active minds.

They can hear the comments, see the looks and interpret the phrases. This has completely changed the way I think about hearing “you’ve got your hands full” when I am out in the world with my young family.

They can hear you. My kids can hear you.

What broke my heart in that moment was the sadness in my little one’s voice, “I heard that” was said with sorrow. He wanted me to know he can hear the words too. He is standing right there.

He is not a circus act. He is a person, a person created by the Most High God and perfectly placed in our young family at just the right time and that Most High God perfectly placed just the right amount of months…and days…and years in between all four of my young kids.

My children are not accessories in the stroller or shopping cart, they are people and they can hear you.

I began to imagine what it has been like for them to hear the uncomfortable phrases for all these years. Especially when someone calls me unlucky to have them or comments something implying that my boys were just unsuccessful attempts for my prize daughter. They probably have felt hurt, mistreated and unwanted when we are out in this big, big world.

I know my husband has his hands full with me but no one would say that aloud to him when I am standing right by his side. Any person would avoid saying, “is she yours?” It’s just bad manners.

Why in our culture have we deemed it acceptable to say things about children we would never say about adults?

My kids can hear what you are saying. I want you to know. You comment is ringing in their ears.

As a mom, I fight to teach my kids that they are important and loved by the Most High God. I fight to teach them they were brought into the world for a purpose, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I fight to teach them they are precious to me because they are precious to God. Their existence is not unimportant or invisible to God.

God sees my kids hanging off the cart. God always sees them and He knows my kids by their names. God sees them as important. God knows all four of my kids so intimately that He knows the numbers of hairs on each of their heads.

So if you know they can hear you and you know God does not think of them as a handful, or a curse, or an unsuccessful attempt to have a daughter does this change how you might respond to us when you see us in the aisles of your grocery store?

Knowing they can hear you changes the way I think about “this way we have learned to talk about children” in our culture that is just bad manners.

I would like to share some encouraging comments I have received in hopes that we can redress these awkward encounters with the truth about children. I hope we can fight to redress the awkward comments to reflect how God views having lots of young kids hanging off shopping carts.

Next time try one of these instead…

Look at all your beautiful children.

The Lord has truly blessed you.

I bet those boys love their little sister.

What nice boys and girls you have, I’m sure it’s not easy for them to tag along on errands with mom.

Pslam 127:3-5 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

They can hear you. I hope this might help you think about how you are talking about them.

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