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Present (A Five Minute Friday post)

August 7, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 2 Comments

This week we’re on family vacation!! 🙂 So, I’m sharing an older Five Minute Friday post that never saw the light of day. As such, it is not a true 5 minute friday because I never finished it (for more information on FMF, see the end of the post). So, it has been editted. 🙂

Present is…

a campfire glowing on a warm summer evening,

lightning bugs captive in a glass jar,

faces sticky with marshmallow.

Present is choosing to look when my littlest son says, “Look, Mom! I caught budderfwy,”

and laughing when I see that it’s really another lightning bug.

But he’s so proud and his smile is so wide that I haven’t the heart to tell him differently.

Instead I exclaim over its beauty and his bravery.

And I choose to be present by putting the camera away.

Present is sometimes peace, sometimes chaos, but always worthwhile.

Present is a gift, not the kind that you open, but one that you give with your time, your attention,

your eye-contact, your helping hands and your listening heart.

It’s laughing at seven-year-old jokes that don’t make sense and listening to four-year-old speak you can’t understand.

It’s helping the teenager find a missing item and looking at your husband when he comes in the door, even if you’re busy.

Present is patient. Present is loving. Present is giving.

Let’s choose to be present.

Jen 🙂

What reminds you to be present?

On Five Minute Fridays, we all write furiously for 5 minutes on a word-prompt given to us by Lisa-Jo Baker. Come join us!

Much Ado about Missions: The Experience

July 22, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 11 Comments

Welcome to Week 2 of our Much Ado about Missions blog-hop series! If you’re joining us for the first time, in the first week we zeroed in on the need for emphasizing global missions and how we can accomplish that even within our homes. Be sure to stop by our Week 1 wrap-up for informative posts on the best resources for missional families, fun crafts on how to introduce your kids to missions, and the missional M&Ms.

While we discussed impacting our homes in week one, this week we’ll be discussing how to impact our communities and even our world through missions experiences and outreach opportunities for you and your family.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that my husband is a minister in a small country town. So, by nature of his job, our family experiences a lot of community outreach through our church and even aside from the church.

However, we also want our family to be involved in things that have an impact beyond our community.

As Christian parents, we want to be mindful of the needs in that great big world out there and have the Lord’s heart for the nations. I listened to a sermon recently given by a missionary who said that he drove a single mile to the church he was speaking at that morning and passed 3 churches on the way! Yet in an unreached people group in China that is 15 million strong, not a single church exists. Not. One.

So, I’m going to start out the week by challenging you to leave the comfort of your own home, your own city, your own state and try something as a family that could potentially change many lives.

My husband and I want our children to understand the importance of global missions as much as they understand community service and outreach, and that requires us to stretch beyond what is comfortable.

Experiencing firsthand is so much more powerful than just hearing about it from missionaries who come to speak at church or, for my family, from your former MK wife/mother. 🙂 So, we’ve put together a very brief list of experiences that could benefit the whole family.

4 Missions Experiences for Your Family

1. Church missions trips – If your church is offering a missions trip experience, this would be the perfect way for you, and possibly your family, to experience and serve alongside a missionary that your church is already connected with (whether in the states or abroad).

While heading into unfamiliar territory, you would at least have the comfort of travelling and experiencing right alongside other members of your church. This type of trip helps you to better understand the need as well as the missionaries you help support.

2. Wayumi – if leaving your home country to serve in a remote location scares the pants off of you, or just isn’t possible for medical reasons, etc., why not start with a missions experiences available right here in America through New Tribes Mission? (Update: New Tribes Mission has rebranded and is now Ethnos 360) You can spend anywhere from 1 day to a week at Wayumi, a center located in Pennsylvania, and be exposed to other cultures, the trials of language study, and so forth.

Although the experience offers very realistic replications of tribal huts, tribal foods, and so on, some modern conveniences are still available. It’s a way to learn about missions and perhaps even stretch yourself and your family a bit, but the cost is significantly less than an overseas trip.

3. Serve with New Tribes Mission (NTM) – http://usa.ntm.org/go – (Update: New Tribes Mission has rebranded and is now Ethnos 360) this non-denominational missions organization that focuses on church planting along with scripture translation offers a variety of opportunities for families and even college students. Short term, service-based trips last anywhere from 2-4 weeks, while longer stays of a year are necessary for associate workers who go to fill an immediate need.

College students can even earn credits through the Interface internship program in Papua New Guinea.

Most importantly, this organization is always searching for teachers who would be willing to serve for 1-2 years in their overseas schools! Many missionary children (such as myself as an MK) attend boarding school at a central base so that their parents can focus on language learning without the added responsibility of homeschooling (although many do homeschool through elementary grades). One way for those with teaching experience to help spread the gospel to the unreached is to serve by teaching missionary kids.

4. World Changers – http://www.lifeway.com/worldchangers/index.php/about/ – is a program for youth through college-age students. These trips usually take place in the summer months, when groups travel to specific cities to complete community service projects. In the past, some groups have gone to inner city ministries, disaster areas for restoration projects, etc.

This is not your everyday community service. Students complete bible study/training beforehand, including learning how to use evangelistic tools. If you have or know a youth, this program is an excellent way to teach them how to be someone who changes the world!

These are just a very few of the multitude of opportunities to serve your world beyond your neighborhood, your town, your state, even your country!

What can your family do to stretch and grow beyond what is normal and familiar to you?

How might you consider helping to reach the most unreached peoples of the Earth, the third of our world population who currently have no hope?

I know that God asks believers to fill a variety of roles in the Body, of which missions is only one. But I also know that God’s heart is for all nations, not just the one we live in.

I read another missionary comment recently that said what is most needed is not more money. He reminded us, “Jesus is the fishes and loaves guy.” What is needed is those who will be willing to advocate for the most unreached people groups and those who will be willing to answer the call of “Whom can I send?”

As I mentioned in the Introduction of this blog-hop, I don’t have all of the answers, even for our family. However, I do believe it is something that all Christians should prayerfully consider.

How will you respond?

Jen 🙂

If you know of another firsthand missions experience opportunity, please feel free to share with the readers in the comments!

Want to learn more about the value of a firsthand missions experience for teens? Read here:
http://www.wordslingersok.com/2013/07/7-reasons-teens-need-to-go-on-short-term-mission-trips-2/

Much Ado about Missions: 8 Resources for Teaching Missions

July 15, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 27 Comments

As I mentioned in my last post, Global Missions has really been on my mind and heart recently, so I’ve joined forces with two amazing bloggers to do a series of posts on developing a missions mindset within the home.

This week our focus is on ways to teach or emphasize missions in our own homes.

When I began researching for materials on missions to use with our four children (ages 4 through 13) in the home, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of options available! I’ve compiled a list of favorite finds to share with you all.

8 Resources for Teaching Missions to Kids

*This post makes use of affiliate links. For more information, please visit Being Confident of This’s About page. Thank you for supporting the ministry of this site!

1. Growing Up Wild DVD series –is about a family of missionaries living in a tribe in Indonesian Guinea. This DVD series is unique because the missionary children are the ones narrating and introducing topics rather than the adults.

The Wild brothers even have their own blog! So far, we have only watched the video clips available on the website, but we plan to purchase or borrow a DVD or two from this series. This method of teaching missions works well for antsy learners. 🙂

2. Caravan Friends website – is about the peoples of Asia – a country in the most unreached sector of the world. I love this website for teaching missions, and so did my four children (ages four to thirteen)! It is colorful and aesthetically pleasing. The characters they have created help teach children about different areas of Asia, and my children really connected with them.

The videos were interesting to watch and after watching one only twice, my seven-year old was spouting off facts about the people groups there. The stories are easy to read and not too long. In fact, I had our seven-year old read several to his younger siblings and he was able.

The website also includes resources for parents and teachers who are teaching missions, such as printables, coloring pages, and other suggested activities (seriously, check out the activities tab for some amazing ideas), etc. This would be the perfect site for someone wanting to lead a class on Missions for children, for a free homeschool curriculum resource, or for Children’s Church, Sunday School, AWANA, Vacation Bible School, etc.
3. Trailblazer Books by Dave and Neta Jackson – we just discovered this series of books and so far, the kiddos love them, even our thirteen-year-old son! 🙂 This series doesn’t solely focus on missionaries, but also on other Heroes of the Faith, such as Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther, etc. Each biography is told from the point of a young, fictional narrator.

Right now we are nearly finished with the Samuel Morris story, and we have requests to read more of it nearly every day. It’s one book that I have actually been tempted to read more of on my own, even! Our four-year-old twins will usually only sit for one chapter at a time, but older children could easily read several chapters. I was happy to find that amazon carries used copies of volumes that contain 5 stories each! We bought several volumes for less than $20. The volume pictured below features Harriet Tubman, but it also has 4 other biographies in it. 🙂

4. Kids on Mission website – this website is put out by the International Missions Board of the Southern Baptist denomination. Kids on Mission offers a subscription that will provide you with a quarterly release on DVD. However, according to the website, if you are willing to download the files from the internet directly, you can access them for free! Under the prayer tab, there are even prayer requests from missionary kids themselves. What a unique resource for teaching missions. 🙂

5. New Tribes Mission – is the organization that my parents worked through as missionaries to Papua New Guinea (PNG). On their website you will find individual missionary pages and newsletters, as well as general information. While this website is designed for adults rather than children, I included it because they often upload new videos from various tribes around the world. I know my children enjoy seeing what it’s really like on the mission field or hearing about missions from tribal people themselves.

*One note of caution: not all stories are appropriate for all ages. Be sure to preview the videos before showing them to your children. Also, NTM publishes a magazine full of brief missionary stories that we often read to our children. This resource, NTM@Work, is completely free. All that is required of you is to go to the website to sign up for it! 🙂

6. Torchlighter DVD series – is very similar to the Trailblazer books in that it focuses on missionaries and other heroes of the Faith, but in a dvd format rather than a book format. This series features people like Corrie Ten Boom, Augustine, and others who help spread the Good News.

Our kids’ favorites so far are the Amy Carmichael story and the Jim Elliot story. Each animated feature is about 30 minutes in length. What better way to learn about missions than to hear the biographies of those who suffered for the faith, but impacted the world because of it! 🙂

7. Windows on the World – is a curriculum that focuses on specific people groups, and their culture and beliefs. Some of the information is factual in nature, but there are also stories about the people who live there and ways for children to pray for that particular group. This is an amazing resources for teaching missions with a global perspective.

8. Missionary Stories With the Millers – This book of short stories about real life events that missionaries have experienced was recommended to me by a friend and is on our wishlist! These stories are shorter in nature and would be easier for younger children to sit and listen to.

As I shared previously, I sometimes struggle with the question of “Am I doing enough?”

But I know that this is a good start, to teach my children of the great need. (It doesn’t hurt for me to learn more about the various people groups in need, either!)

Who knows?

We could be raising the next generation of missionaries right within our own homes!

The next post in the bloghop can be found over at Love Notes . Sarah shared more about engaging our children’s hearts in missions in Missional M&Ms!

If you have a tried and true resource for teaching Missions at home, would you please share with us in the comments? Thanks!

Jen 🙂

Also sharing this post with: Hive Resources, Grace and Truth

*This post makes use of affiliate links. For more information, please visit Being Confident of This’s About page. Thank you for supporting this blog!

9 Ways to Sneak in Veggies

July 1, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 39 Comments

What mom wouldn’t like her children to eat more of those healthy, vitamin-bearing vegetables? If only it was easy to get kids to like vegetables in the first place!

When our firstborn was a baby (13 years ago now), I thought I did everything I could to encourage veggie-loving in his diet. When he started baby food, I fed him vegetables first, not fruit. When he disliked a veggie, I would sneak it between bites of fruit or sometimes even mix the two. He ate many vegetables in mushy baby food form, but when it was time for finger foods, he balked. Alas, veggie-loving just does not come naturally to him, nor does it for many children.

With the birth of our second child, I determined to work even harder to create a love (okay, at least a tolerance) for veggies. And then the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, decided to bless us with a strong-willed, picky eater. 🙂 However, I learned much from dealing with his picky eating phase, a phase that felt like an eternity! By the time our twins came along, I had a much better idea of how to get those all-important vegetables in.

So, today on Mama Mondays, I offer you this list of 9 ways to sneak in those dreaded veggies!

**This post contains affiliate links. For more information on our affiliate use, please visit the About page.

Start from the very beginning.

I’m talking from within the womb! Researchers claim that babies begin to develop tastes for foods before they are even born. Taste buds develop around 21 weeks, at which point baby receives a flavoring of what mama eats via the amniotic fluid. So, if you want your child to grow up loving vegetables, start eating more of them yourself. Not only will this make for a healthier pregnancy, but you’ll also be more likely to feed your children foods that you already frequently consume when they get to the finger food stage. Too late for this tip? It’s never too late to start leading by example in the area of vegetable consumption! You can even practice sneaking in vegetables on yourself first. 🙂
Offer veggies first!

We’re all familiar with the fact that most children will eat the things they like most first and save the least favorite for last. Even adults do it. 🙂 If your children fill up on foods they like, getting them to eat those remaining vegetables will be even more difficult. On the other hand, if you offer the veggies first when they’re still hungry, they’ll be more likely to at least try a few bites.
Slice, dice, or even puree!

This might be obvious to some of you, but it wasn’t to me thirteen years ago. The smaller the veggies are, the less offensive they are to sensitive palates. My all-time favorite, couldn’t-live-without-it kitchen tool is my food chopper. If I place a nice helping of normal sized broccoli in front of my youngest son, he’ll immediately turn up his nose. However, if I chop that broccoli to bits, he’s more willing to eat it – especially if it is combined with another food or a sauce. This is my absolute favorite method for sneaking in vegetables! I know some moms who add pureed butternut squash and other veggies to the famous toddler favorite, Mac’n’cheese. The possibilities are endless when you dice and then ….disguise.
Disguise those veggies.

I looooove casseroles/slow-cooker meals for many reasons: only one dirty pan, time to do other chores while food is baking, etc. But my biggest reason for serving up lots and lots of casseroles is because it allows me to sneak in a lot of vegetables that my children wouldn’t eat alone. I add petite diced tomatoes, finely diced onions and mushrooms, and sometimes even bell peppers to spaghetti sauce and chili. I add California blend (diced, of course) to our chicken divan. If we have scalloped potatoes, you bet I’ll be hiding some veggies in there. Shepherd’s pie, homemade potpie, even fried rice – all of these dishes are veggie-friendly! You can even hide veggies within other veggies. How, you ask? If I gave my 7-year-old purple cabbage to eat, I’m sure he would run the other way. But he eats it in a salad, along with pieces of fresh radish and spinach. Twice baked potatoes, anyone? Stuffed bell peppers? Use whatever method works for sneaking in vegetables that your kids will learn to love!
Substitute veggies for other starches.

In addition to hiding veggies, I’ve recently learned how to substitute vegetables for pasta and potatoes. The spaghetti I mentioned above? Instead of pasta, use strings of baked spaghetti squash. The shepherd’s pie? Instead of potatoes, used mashed cauliflower. For chili broth, I use low-sodium V8 juice (and then I add even more veggies).
Add cheese, sauce, or dip.

Although this method can easily turn healthy veggies into big calorie veggies, when used in moderation, it’s an effective technique. We have a son who loooves condiments of all kinds, so I’ve learned to offer a small amount with his fresh vegetables. Low-fat cheese works well with cooked vegetables. We do whatever it takes to sneak in those vitamin-packed vegetables!
Offer a variety.

As I mentioned in How to Make Food Fun, research supports that offering a variety can lead children to eat more of a single food group than they realize, especially if the variety is colorful. For example, if you offer bell peppers, offer multiple colors of bell peppers. If you’re offering broccoli, why not offer California blend instead. A variety of vegetables gives children choices, as well, and we all know they love the power of choice! 🙂
Try, try, and try again…and then some more.

As a rookie mom, I had no idea how many times young children need to try a food before deciding whether they like it or not. But when our picky eater came along, I learned that children may need to try a food 10-15 times before making up their minds about it. It makes sense really! One day Johnny loves peas, and the next day he’ll have nothing to do with them. Often, we give up too soon on new foods and assume that they just don’t like them. Even if your child has repeatedly demonstrated dislike for a particular vegetable, tastes can change over time. It never hurts to pull a rejected veggie out after a few months and try it again!
Find the Why behind the “No.”

Sometimes there is a reason behind a child’s refusal of a food other than a dislike for the taste. I saw this clearly when our twins began to eat finger foods. Our daughter began to refuse banana, a fruit she previously loved mashed up. At first, I was baffled. One day I saw her try to pick up a piece of banana and she made the most disgusted face ever. It wasn’t the taste of the banana, but the sticky texture she was objecting to. I happily fed them to her from a spoon until she learned to use a spoon herself. Consider physical reasons for refusal as well, whether it be a texture issue (I still cannot eat beans unless they are pureed) or a possible food allergy. Once you understand any sensory issues, you will have no trouble sneaking in vegetables that your child won’t react to!

There you have it: Nine ways to sneak in more veggies. One last helpful hint – you can even use these tips on husbands – true story! 🙂

If you have a clever way to sneak in veggies, pretty please share with us in the comments.

Jen 🙂

If you found this article helpful, you might also enjoy:

6 Principles for Picky Eaters

How to Make Food Fun

Sanity Saving Chore Charts

May 23, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 24 Comments

Last summer we sold our home and moved to the community that we are currently ministering to. We were very blessed to be able to move into a larger home, and I just knew it would be perfect for the kids and perfect for entertaining people. What I didn’t count on was the time it would take to adjust to cleaning and maintaining a larger home!

I quickly found myself overwhelmed by the cleaning projects that come with maintaining an older, farm-style home.

I struggled for months with the housework and felt like I was always “behind.” Because I felt frustrated and overwhelmed, every little mess the kids made irritated me – every spilled cup, every toy left out, every article of dirty clothing on the floor – and I often found myself grumping at them even as I was telling myself to have patience.

I felt like I was losing my mind! It was as if I was stuck in Romans 7, knowing what I wanted to do, but feeling utterly incapable of doing it.

So, after many tears of frustration and quite a bit of prayer, my husband and I decided it was high time to expect a little more of our four children.

You see, our children have always had chores, but in the craziness of moving and settling in, we’d become lax in our supervision of them.

We decided that the best way to save my sanity was to create new chore charts!

I set about researching some age appropriate chores since we have such a wide age-span in our family and quickly realized that we had failed to see how much our children had grown. Obviously they had grown physically, but we failed to notice they were now also more mature and more capable of handling more difficult tasks.

For our younger two children, we chose this flip-up system with pictures of each daily chore. When all chores are finished and flipped, they can see their names spelled out.

Need a little help getting started? You can check out my parenting board on pinterest for DIY tutorials that I used as a base for building my own. (Also, my amazing sister has taken these flip charts a step further with some great ideas at her blog Love Notes. In addition to the flip chore charts, she utilizes a morning and evening checklist and a chore jar, where children get to choose an extra chore to complete and receive a nice prize.)

Preschool chores focus mainly on taking care of the body, and beginning to take responsibility for their own messes. We chose to incorporate things that should become daily habits such as: brushing teeth, making bed, getting dressed, clearing dishes from the table, picking up laundry, and picking up toys.

They both remain very enthusiastic about flipping up the chores they have done each day, even after several months have passed!

In fact, our daughter often wants to do her bedtime chores (laundry) in the morning because she wants her name to be complete. 🙂

Our older boys have more complex chore charts that are laminated so they can be re-used. We use dry-erase markers to check things off. One of the things I like most about the chore charts for the older boys is that they are divided into categories that emphasize different areas of their personal responsibilities.

You can see the various categories highlighted on the left in the picture below.

The weekly responsibilities have options to allow for personal choice, and the tasks in that area of the chart are more difficult for our oldest son, who is 13.

(One important note: the “Taking care of my relationship with God” area is included only as a reminder to our older boys. We don’t want time with God to be assigned a “task” status.)

In our home, chores are part of being a family and working together toward a common goal, which is to be good stewards of the material things God has given us.

Doing chores helps our children to learn personal responsibility as well as team-work.

For that reason, we do not pay our children an allowance in relation to their chores. Instead, we reserve allowance for teaching financial stewardship and how money works in general, but that is just our family preference.

However, our older boys were understandably less excited about the new chore charts, and our fairly intense 7-year-old was so overwhelmed by the change that he was practically in tears. (What he didn’t realize at first is that most of the things on his list were things he already does on a daily basis, like brushing his teeth and making his bed.)

In an attempt to lighten the mood and help them adjust to additional responsibilities, we added a bonus for good attitudes and for helpfulness without prompting – an additional 50 cents on their allowance.

For our new chore system to function well, we realized that we would need a consequence for those times when our older boys failed to complete their chores. We wanted the consequence to be more of a learning opportunity (“the punishment fits the crime” approach).

Eventually we settled on this method: if there is a pattern of a chore going undone, then the consequence would be to complete the undone chore, as well as an additional one.

I love this solution! It simultaneously helps me and provides an unpleasant experience that they don’t wish to repeat. I’m happy to report that we rarely have to enforce consequences with the chores because the boys really, really dislike doing extra chores.

Although we’ve had a few bumps along the way, our house has been much tidier in general, considering we have four children living here. I no longer feel overwhelmed on a daily basis. Additionally, I’m less uptight about the messes the little ones make because I know they’ll be picking them up before bed.

My sanity has been restored!

Perhaps most importantly, I know that developing these good habits now will benefit them greatly as they grow into adulthood.

Although initially the chore charts mean a little more work for us parents in supervising and making sure tasks are completed (or even teaching a new skill), the goal is to eventually make parenting a little easier in this area of keeping a tidy home.

So, if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by your housework, feeling taken for granted as the one who cleans up after everyone, or feeling like you just might lose your mind, consider the following questions.

4 Questions to ask about chores:

Who does the chores? Are you expecting enough help from your children, or do they think it is just Mom’s job to clean up after everyone all of the time? Or do you often take on the majority of the work because it’s easier to just “do it yourself?” I admit to being guilty as charged on both accounts previously. However, especially if you have sons, try to consider how their future wives might feel about this unhealthy portrait of what a wife and mother is “supposed” to do. At the same time, think of the message you are sending your young daughters. Yes, we are called to be homemakers, managers of the household, but that does not mean we have to do everything on our own! 🙂
Are the chores age-appropriate? If like me, you failed to realize how “big” your babies are getting, you might want to rethink your expectations of them. If you are unsure of what chores are appropriate for your children, a quick google search or pinterest search will return a wealth of information!
Are the chores focused on teaching your children personal responsibility? One of our goals with the new chore charts was to emphasize the stewardship aspect of chores. We want our children to learn to take care of their things and the things we share commonly, such as our home and vehicles.
Are the chores fairly distributed? Yes, older children are capable of handling more responsibilities than younger children. However, avoid burdening one child with the majority of responsibility. For example, when in a hurry to tidy up previously, I would ask our oldest son to pick up the toys. He is generally helpful and I knew he would do a good job. However, when my husband and I looked at teaching personal responsibility, I realized I was making a mistake. With the new chore system, we really worked at making sure he wasn’t bearing a disproportionate load just because he is older and is more compliant. Additionally, make sure you don’t put off the majority of the housework onto your children. Mom should have her own set of chores to do (Dad too)! Lead by example. 🙂

For now I am very happy (and sane!) with our current chore charts, but I’m sure after a time we’ll need to look at it again and make changes. I wouldn’t mind trying out a few different methods to give the children a variety, to keep it fresh and exciting.

If you don’t currently have a chore system in place, why not give one a try? It just might save your sanity!

Jen 🙂

What methods do you use for teaching responsibility and team-work in the home? Give us your best advice in the comments!

For more great ideas on how to maximize the flip charts for younger children, check out this blog:

http://sarahjofairchild.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/bogo-mommyhood-chore-charts/

Also linking up at:

Peaceful Parenting (No Thanks to Pinterest)

May 17, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 7 Comments

We’ve been experiencing some parenting problems in our home recently. With four children, it’s bound to happen from time to time!

One of our children is struggling socially at school since we moved last summer and has requested to home school this fall. While I’m willing and capable of teaching him at home, we want to be certain it is the best solution for him.

At the same time, one of our preschoolers has been demonstrating disrespectful behavior by grunting or growling when I attempt to correct him. It’s basically the same thing as saying, “NO, Mom!” I wasn’t expecting such stubbornness to surface at the age of four! What happened to my sweet two-year-old?

Continuing in our efforts to parent with Christ in mind is difficult when we aren’t seeing results.

What am I doing wrong?

What should I do differently?

Sometimes when we’re parenting, there is no clear right or wrong answer.

And this is where I struggle.

When I lack enough evidence to declare one parenting choice as superior to another for our family, I often worry that I’ll make the “wrong choice.”

I can become obsessed with gathering information from various sources in an attempt to make an informed decision. Unfortunately, when I turn to parenting resources (even Christian parenting resources), I often find that they can contradict each other in the details.

In our “how-to” age, we can access a hundred different opinions, or even tried-and-true techniques, about any given subject at any given time.

Which one should a desperate parent choose??

As a mama of four children, I know that not a single method will work well with every child, every time. Thus, one potential problem with looking to others for help is the tendency to see that repeatedly re-pinned, how-to post as gospel-truth.

As I was thinking about social media and how it has changed the way we parent, I wondered: what happened to relying on the Spirit to guide us?

What happened to prayer?

I’ll be the first to admit that when I encounter a problem or challenge, I often run to other humans for wisdom first! After all, it’s natural to ask our peers for advice. However, consider King Solomon’s humble request,

However, consider King Solomon’s humble request,

“Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?” (2 Chron. 2:10).

You see, Solomon had some pretty big shoes to fill when taking over his father David’s kingdom. How would you like to be next in line after the “man after God’s own heart?” Solomon knew he lacked wisdom for leading. He also faced a huge project, the building of the temple! The temple would be a place of worship for generations to come, and that burden rested on Solomon’s shoulders.

Parenting is a little like that, isn’t it?

We know that the choices we make will affect not only our own children, but also our children’s children and even the generations to come. Like Solomon’s task, our task is also great, for a whole world of lost people is at stake!

The key is remembering Whom our children ultimately belong to. Solomon recognized that He was given authority not over his own people, but over God’s people and that the best leader for those people was God Himself. In the same way, as parents we’ve been entrusted with these beautiful beings, but they don’t really belong to us. They belong to Him.

Here’s how to have peace as a parent:

Like Solomon, we parents should ask God for wisdom to lead them, His children.

Please hear me out; I’m not suggesting we exclude the advice of others altogether. I really do enjoy Facebook, Pinterest, and other social media forums and have successfully used many ideas from other savvy moms (along with a few epic failures)! 🙂

What I am suggesting is that we not forget the ultimate source of wisdom when it comes to parenting, or really anything in life – our Father God.

In the midst of my parenting problems, I imagine His response.

Trust Me. Ask ME for wisdom instead of asking others first. Be led by the Holy Spirit and by my Word. After all, I am their Creator; who better to understand them and their needs, but me? Persevere in your purposeful parenting and wait to see what happens.

I still don’t know how to best correct our four-year-old’s sudden defiance, nor do I know where our middle child will attend school this coming fall (update: he has adjusted well to his new school!).

Both situations are works in progress because I am a work-in-progress parent and my children are works in progress as well.

However, I do know that in the midst of my uncertainty, I can trust Him. He is in control. He knows my heart is in the right place.

He knows I want to be a peaceful parent, not one ruled by fear, or dare I even say, by Pinterest? 🙂

My sisters in Christ, if like me, you often feel confused by the wide variety of parenting styles, methods, and opinions out there, I hope today you hear His voice: trust in Me.

If you find yourself lying wide awake at night wondering, “What am I going to do with this child?!,” ask for wisdom. And then sleep peacefully knowing that although your children have imperfect parents, they are perfectly protected in the hands of the Father.

I’d love to hear from you, if you are willing to share!

What parenting issues are you struggling with lately? What scriptures have you turned to for wisdom or encouragement in parenting?

Jen 🙂

If pressure to be a perfect parent plagues you, you might enjoy:

4 Missions Experiences for Your Family

What can your family do to stretch and grow beyond what is normal and familiar to you?

This week our focus is on ways to teach or emphasize missions in our own homes.

8 Resources for Teaching Missions to Kids

Start from the very beginning.

Offer veggies first!

Slice, dice, or even puree!

Disguise those veggies.

Substitute veggies for other starches.

Add cheese, sauce, or dip.

Offer a variety.

Try, try, and try again…and then some more.

Find the Why behind the “No.”

We decided that the best way to save my sanity was to create new chore charts!

Doing chores helps our children to learn personal responsibility as well as team-work.

4 Questions to ask about chores:

Sometimes when we’re parenting, there is no clear right or wrong answer.

Here’s how to have peace as a parent:

In the midst of my parenting problems, I imagine His response.