Tuesday's Manna

the kids are upstairs. daughter is sleeping and the sons are enjoying educational computer games. i am free, for now :) so i thought i would catch up on my blog reading. a post from girl talk caught my eye. it is about how we become so involved in raising and caring for our children that our husbands get pushed to the side. how that strains the marital relationship. a pastor of mine at a church i attended in california (the church where my husband and i met, actually) used to ask the following question of engaged couples in premarital counseling: If you and your spouse and children were flung out of a boat, and you could either save your spouse or your children, who would you save? the man almost always said he would save his wife, and the woman almost always said she would save her children. a bit harsh, i know, but eye opening. we are called to love our husbands. we are charged to respect them. we are to become one with them. i haven't found anywhere in the bible where it says i am to become one with my children. nurture and care for them, instruct them in righteousness, yes. but put them above my husband, no.

so i have a confession to make. in the busyness of life, sickness and homeschooling, i have neglected to put my husband into the driver seat of our marriage. i have taken control away from him in the smallest of ways, and have cut him off at the knees. eeeek. ok. i need to change this and change it fast. i need to show more love to my husband while maintaning my role as a mother. there are lots of ways i can do this. i am going to revisit the book "A Wife After God's Own Heart" by Elizabeth George. i remember it being challenging and practical. i am going to pray every day for my love for my husband to grow beyond his wildest dreams. i am also going to pray for clear ways to show my husband respect.

hold me to it, ok? we shall see where these 3 steps lead :) God is good and i have faith to know that He will accomplish His good work in me to completion.

Manna from the Husband

my hubby is so much more generous than i. i have known this since we got married almost 10 years ago. he has always wanted to give away huge chunks of our savings to churches and causes worldwide. this was a serious bone of contention for me early on. i was raised in an unbelieving home. my family ascribes to the theory that if you are a good person, you will go to heaven. (imagine the waves i caused when i witnessed to my father in a letter soon after becoming a christian and essentially told them they were all going to hell because they didn't believe in Jesus...still haven't mended the bridge from that one) so i was raised to look out for ME. not anyone else. even in marriage, my parents were pretty focused on earning money and insuring their own personal security. i don't want to bash my mom and dad here, they are both hard-working morally driven people who don't like injustice. they just have their focus on the wrong thing. and so i grew up with my view a little askew. i never in a million years would have considered giving people on my doorstep a check for their cause. i never would have even opened the door, really. so when we got married, i had to really reign it in and take a good look at my lack-of-generosity views of my life.

it all boils down to this. what i have isn't mine. it is HIS. it all belongs to God. my money, my house, my children even. all things are created by Him, for Him. i have been given some gifts while i am here on earth and i am called to be a good steward of these things. i am to be responsible with what He has blessed me with. i am not to squander my money on insignificant things. i am to think of others first before myself.

this is very hard for me to do. i have had to readjust my thinking. i oftentimes find that i have been selfish with my time or money without even realizing it. it is just the way i have grown up. but i want to change. i desire to change. i know that He will change me if i ask Him to. He will probably do it even if i don't ask. He is like that. He wants what is best for me, and what is best is to be more Christ-like. i am grateful for the Holy Spirit who works in me to grow me and counsel me. i am glad i am not alone. because, if it were up to me, i would stay the way i am and not even know i need to change.

so yesterday a young man came to our door around dinnertime from an organization called Teen Challenge. my husband opened the door and then stepped outside to talk with him. me, i would have told him it was dinnertime and that we couldn't talk right now. but, my husband went outside and heard him out. he was a young man with quite a past. and he was trying to make a better life for himself, and he was on his second attempt at getting clean. my husband came in and asked me (bless him for including me in this decision...another trait i love about him) if we could afford to write a check to this group. i balked. i even offered up a few objections...but he persisted and i relented, and i am ashamed i even hesitated. i am so glad my husband has such a generous spirit. it is good for me. he is also gentle in leading me this direction, because he knows how deep-seated my fears run about financial security. God knew what He was doing when he put us together.

Wednesday's Manna

i am sick today. really sick. wish i could have a day off from mothering sick. plop in front of the tv, kids...it's gonna be a long day kind of sick. so it is amazing to me that i managed to pull out my bible study this morning and answer the day's questions. wow. thanks, God! at least i managed to get that right today :)

the biggie for the day was the question "Read Isaiah 29.13 and Matthew 23:23-38. What are "acts that lead to death"? wow. i know that my basic sin leads me to death. but what does it look like? these passages went beyond the sin of the garden. they delve into the hypocrisy that we (as Christians) often express. we pay a lot of lip service to what we do for the Kingdom, but where are our hearts?

Matthew 23:27-28 reads:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."

my answer to the question? honoring God with our lips and having our hearts far from Him. neglecting justice, mercy and faithfulness. cleaning the outside so that we look good to others but not attending to matters of the heart. being full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Abba Father, i pray today that you will empty me of all the things that separate me from You. You alone are God. i do not want to be a shell of a christian. i want people to look at me and see Christ. empty me of me and fill me with desire to love you and serve you and obey you. amen.

Morality in Politics

in the last two months, i think we have begun to get a taste of what the current administration is all about. yesterday it left me physically nauseated. the president basically said that a life to come was not nearly important as a life that already is.

Mr. Obama called his decision a "difficult and delicate balance," an understatement of the intense emotions generated on both sides of the long, contentious debate. He said he came down on the side of the "majority of Americans" who support increased federal funding for the research, both because strict oversight would prevent problems and because of the great and lifesaving potential it holds. (See story here)

i am not sure to whom the president is referring when he says the "majority of americans." i do know that many people who are in support of embryonic stem cell research are very uninformed about exactly how these stem cells are obtained. a life is taken. it is as simple as that. the "promise" of researching embryonic stem cells can not possibly outweigh the loss of a life. a good read on this is by joni erickson tada and nigel m. de s. cameron called "How to Be Christian in a Brave New World." since i am not too politically motivated, it is hard for me to find the words to express my feelings. i just know that i need to pray for the voice of those unborn children to be heard.

Wednesday's Manna

i attended a moms group wednesday morning at our church. it was very fruitful, and i think i gathered manna that was both nourishing and challenging. the topic for the morning was how to be busy at home. the scripture reference was from Titus 2.3-5

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

several questions were posed to us as moms of young children (birth-6ish). i thought they were worth pursuing on a deeper level. i think it would do my heart good to see what God has in store for me as i answer them for myself. i want to be honest with Him, first and foremost. and i may even share the answers with my husband. if i answer them and do nothing, i lose out on the blessing of character change *wince* that God has in store for me. below are the questions.

1. What does being busy in your home look like?
2. Who or what has inspired you to be content working at home?
3. What has God shown you to focus on in the home?
4. What things tempt you away from you priorities in the home and what do you do to fend off the temptations?

the last one is going to be the one that challenges me the most, i think. i let a lot of things get in the way of my daily duties in the home. identifying the things that get in the way should be easy. changing them is a whole other ball game.

manna for the day

sunday i was able to gather a little manna...a little of God's goodness and mercy. i know that these are always mine for the taking, but sunday i recognized them as such and grabbed enough for the day. we have been blessed beyond our belief with the health of our children, in particular our middle child. God is good. we still have a bit of a long road ahead of us in our quest to determine exactly what is going on with him, but the scarier stuff has been ruled out. so on sunday we were singing about how God is good and i decided to just soak it in and gather some goodness for the day. it was simpler than i thought it would be. i highly suggest it.

gathering manna

i struggle with being a bad mother. i mean, really who walks around thinking they are really a great mom? i want to meet you if you do!! i lost it the other day on my 3 yr old because he had yet another potty accident. these have become a daily occurrence since his hospital stay in december. (i have called the doctor about it, and they said it was probably just trauma related to the hospital stay). i know i should not have gotten upset, but it is driving me nuts! esp since i keep sending him to the bathroom every hour and he announces "no yellow" every time. ugh...i have so little patience with my kids lately. is this a result of my own shortcomings? absolutely. i have been hit from all sides lately with the need for daily devotional time with the Lord. my cbs study last week had a great way of putting it (and i am going to paraphrase it because it is not right next to me): God's grace, mercy and leading are like manna, they have to be gathered fresh every morning. wow. like manna. manna was the only thing the israelites ate (that and the big shower of quail). they were only to gather what they needed for the day, anything more would spoil. on the 6th day they gathered enough for days 6 and 7 so that they could observe the sabbath. (i have to go back and research this, but i think the only 'holiday' they observed during the 40 years in the desert was the sabbath..not passover, any of the feasts. just the sabbath).

i need to gather manna. i need to depend on the Word as if it were (because it is) the only source of sustenance for my life. i don't need to know everything in the Bible today...just what God has given me for today. what a freeing concept. i don't have to know everything in it to live by it. the Holy Spirit will guide me if i ask Him to. the manna is there for me to gather it in. i don't have to go anywhere to look for it. He has provided it to me, just as He promised. Praise God.

as for me and being a bad mother? nothing else in this world has been able to show me my need for a Savior. i make mistakes with my kids all the time, and i hope i have been able to use the opportunity to show them the gospel. because honestly, that is what they need from me. they need the basics of food, shelter and a lot of love...but they need to know Jesus loves them more than i ever could. and that this house on earth is not their home. they are strangers here and will be at odds with many they come across in this world. i am still a bad mother. i don't consider myself good enough to be a mommy...but God has seen fit to write my name is His Book...and i need to stop taking advantage of it.