The Tough Days of Motherhood

The other day I was reading a post on a blog that I like.  The writer is a young Mama.  She was pouring her heart out, and venting about some of the frustrations in her life connected to being a young, stay at home mom.  Some of the frustrations were loneliness, boredom and just feeling out of touch with the world.

 

I remember those says so clearly.  I was just like her, I married right out of high school and had our first child within 2 years.  Even though I choose all of this it still was a struggle.  I longed for a best friend as she does, someone I could confide everything and share the struggles of motherhood.  But she never came.

 

Now I am thankful that she never came.  I learned to confide in and share my struggles with two best friends that I had hiding in the wings, my husband and my mom.  They have both always loved my unconditionally.

 

I also remember feeling unable to do some of the great things that I wanted to do, which lead to boredom and feeling out of touch.  I knew God had big plans for me.

 

I am thankful that I didn’t do big things back then.  Now I realize that I was not equip, I thought I was but I was not.   I also realize that I had then and still have 4 gigantic ministries I take care of, in the lives of our four children.   We now have one adult child and one very close to being an adult and I see the impact that my life has had on them.  Our faith, values and love for others has been multiplied by 4 more lives. 

 

I love to serve others, if I had spent my time and energy on that alone, instead of in my family, I would have been just me, but when we go to serve today we come as a army of 6 very willing servants.

 

The days of loneliness and boredom(of mind not body, those little ones keep you hopping) will be their.  Seek out those who are in your life right now, pour into them all of you and draw strength from them as well.  The days of constant activity and the desire for boredom will be on your door step before you know it.

 

God Bless!!

Jeannie

The Dangers of Girl Power

  The girl power “movement”,I will call it, teaches our daughters to be strong, to empower themselves, to be self reliant, and that she can be anything she wants to be.

  All of that on the surface sounds good, we don’t want wimpy, laydown and get trampled over girls do we?  Why shouldn’t she be able to be anything she wants to be,  she is very intelligent.

  But how strong exactly do we need to be?  Stronger than our husbands?  More dominant? Strength and honor [are] her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.  Proverbs 31:25

  How self-reliant should we really become?  Aren’t we supposed to rely on God? Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding:  in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.  Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.   This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Proverbs 3:5-8  

  Yes, girls/women have the capability to be anything we want to be but what will work best with having a family?
She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her:  “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all."  Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.   Proverbs 31:27-30

Just because we can, doesn’t necessarily mean that we should. 


Girl Power is just a mini version of feminism.  Just like many of the other movements that are contrary to God’s word, they are being taught to our children when they are young.

  We first experienced this, in such a subtle way, when our oldest daughter, Allie was in Girl Scouts, this was one of the reasons we left that group.  They had a workshop that we attended.  The name of the workshop was on “becoming a better you”.


You can see this girl power theme in kid shows, as well.  Have you noticed lately that the damsel in distress is rescuing herself.  In Mirror, Mirror, a version of Snow White, Snow white locks the Prince in the house with the 7 dwarfs, so that she can go fight and defeat the dragon.


Just a reminder, this is not only dangerous for your daughters, but also your sons.  This same message is dumbing down and defeating boys-taking their future place as head of the household, out of their hands.


Tread very carefully through any of today’s media when it comes to your children.

Jeannie

See a follow up Here

The Next Generation of Mommies.

Our Daughters and Granddaughters are the next generation of Mommies.  What are the opportunities ahead of them?  What are the trials?  What choices will they make?



For the next few posts I thought we could explore some of that together.  Our world is so rapidly changing.  The girls are maturing in some ways more quickly and in other ways less quickly.



One example, we are doing a tea party for our 3rd and 4th grade AWANA girls this year.  In planning it, I have noticed differences in girls from just 11 years ago.  When our oldest Allie went to the tea party at the same age all of the girls brought a teddy bear or a doll to the tea party now that is out of the question.  Just amazing!  And yet these same girls are not as responsible as she and her peers were at that age.



I just started a little devotion/training with our younger daughter, Isabella.  It is called Princess training.  I found it at Under the Golden Apple Tree .com.  I found so many great things on this blog.  It is great, you should check it out.



Princess Training starts out with a story and goes in to Character training specific to a little girl growing into a young lady.   Below are the topics:

The Heart
Femininity
Courageous
Virtue
Discernment
Trust and Obey
Reflecting Christ
Modesty
Long Suffering
Ambition
Thankfulness
Hospitality
Memory Verses


 Come back for more on raising the next generation of Mommies.

 Jeannie

Beware of Monsters

Has anyone else been bothered by the constant presence of monsters?  Everywhere you turn these days you will see monster toys, monster children’s movies and monster shows.  I don’t know what Satan is up to, but I know that we need to protect our children right now more than ever.  Protection starts first with arming them with the knowledge that these things are not of our God.  They are evil. 





The first monster toys did not pop up in the past year.  The introduction to monsters came many years ago when we were all children.  The scary thing is they were cute and cuddly.  The most famous one is named Elmo.  Satan has slowly began to desensitize us of the goriness of monsters.  Now they are cute and cool to our society. 




I want you to know that I am just a regular mom, not a hypersensitive, over protective mom.  Please don’t blow off this idea as being fanatical.  I believe that our children are under attack, our next generation is under attack.

Monsters do not exist but, evil does and it reigns here on earth.

Pray for your children and those around you that they not get sucked in to this monster craze.  If you think that I am being fanatical, just pray before you allow your child to take part in any of this. 
 
The other reason I wanted to point this out is that, I have a feeling that this year Halloween costumes are going to be scarier than ever and to remind you to keep your eyes open to protect your little ones.

Another reason to have our nation in prayer.

Jeannie

Great to be back

We have been going and going for 2 weeks now and it is great to have a day a home.  It has been a great 2 weeks, very hot, but great.  The first week we worked at a camp.  Our whole family went to a YFC camp and spent the time with 100 elementary age kids.  Mike, Zach and Allie were all counselors, I was the playground supervisor and the little ones just played and played.


Here are Mike and Zach with a few of their kids and the camp director, the greatest lady I know.  Such a heart for Jesus and kids.

Zach with his shirt after crud wars, which is basically an outdoor food fight.  It was a visual for the kids to see mess and then we talked about how God sees our mess and wants to be in it with us helping us through.


Jacob and Bella enjoying the playground and other fun stuff. It was great because the speaker brought his family and their kids were my kids ages and they played together.

Mike, Zach and Allie with their groups, also after the crud wars. 

Then last week we went tent camping with two other families.  And I forgot my camera.  It was so hot that we were in the water most of the time anyway, and don’t we all love those swimsuit pictures.  I hope all of you are having a great summer, growing in the Lord and enjoying his creation.

Jeannie

Our Small Group

This weekend our small group met to celebrate the end of another book.  We just finished

The 5 Love Languages of Children By Gary Chapman, Ph.D. & Ross Campbell, M.D. / Northfield

   I learned so much about myself and my children, in reading that along with my husband and the group. 

Each time we finish a book we have a party with the kids.  The kids are always there when we meet but they usually play in the basement or watch a movie together.  We have 10 children between the 3 families, usually my 2 big kids don’t come but all 8 of the others do.   They play so well together that we like to reward them at the end of the books.

I do have to do a plug for small groups.  We started our small group in September, and I feel like Mike and I have forever friends.  Meeting weekly helps you to feel free to open up and share things that you can’t in passing with friends.

It has also drawn us  together as a couple .  We have a common topic on our minds, from our book study, that we can mull over together.  It also gives us time to see other marriages in action and also parenting in action as well.  We can all grow from what we see others do, the good, the bad and the ugly alike.  If you have a couple or two that you would like to get to know, I encourage you to talk to them about starting a small group and meeting regularly together.  We have a group at our church that has been together for 6 or 7 years.  Talk about forever friends.

Together

I’m sure you saw that I underlined all of the times I used the word “together”.  I did that because I started to noticed a theme as I was writing.  If you have ever done an inductive Bible study you know all about this.  When a word is mentioned many times you need to perk up to the word and check out the theme.  Same here, the word together is such a rare thing in our iSociety, that being together is a thing we really need to work to do.   It also goes along with our blogs theme of the three strand cord.  You can have friends and that is great but friends in Christ are where you can gain your strength.

I’ll let you know what our next book is as soon as I find out.
Jeannie

How Hospitable is your Home?

We received, what I thought was a great compliment the other day.  My oldest daughter asked if a few of her friends from college could come and stay with us for Easter since they lived so far away. 
During a late night talking session, one of them, who goes to a Christian college but grew up in an unbelieving home, said that our family was way more normal than they thought we would be.  I guess they thought that Christian homes were stuffy and unfun.




I took this as a compliment that someone would come to the realization that being a Christian can be a fun and “normal”.  We did have bunches of fun, going to the park to play basketball and tag, also playing games at home and just hanging out.  I hope that we gave them a good picture of what their family life could look like one day, in their Christian home.


I wanted to remind you all too, to have a home that has boundaries and rules to follow and yet is still a great place to be.  After all getting down and playing right at the stage that they are in is they best way to have the opportunity to teach them.

Jeannie

What do you Put on your Face in the Morning?

I have been reading in I Peter this month.  Today I was in chapter 3, it was about wives submitting to their husbands and I won’t get into all of that today but after that part it talked about not adorning yourself with braids and gold jewelry.  Does that mean I can’t wear jewelry? No!  What it says is that we can’t have our beauty come from our adornments. 


A woman with eyes that sparkle with the love of Jesus, cheeks that glow from being madly in love with your husband and smiles that send messages of love to your children.  Those are the adornments that make us beautiful. 
If your face is unable to display any of those things, turn your heart towards Jesus and ask Him to clothe you with the character necessary to possess such lovely adornments.
Ladies, those last two paragraphs are straight from the Lord to you.  All of that came to me this morning and I just knew I needed to share it with you.  I hope it blesses you on this possible bad hair day. 
Ask anyone what they remember most about their favorite Grandma and I tell you, it won’t be her earrings or her lipstick. 
Thank you Lord for that reminder. 

Jeannie

I didn’t think I would ever do this again.

We belong to a small homeschool group at our church and we do projects with our kids.  This last week it was sewing which is not my thing.  But my kids loved it.  I told them we had and sewing machine and they were so shocked, because they had never seen it.  So, I broke it out and we spent an afternoon sewing pillows of all sizes. 


Here are two of Isabella’s smaller pillows.  Made just for her American Girl dolls. She even sewed a button onto the front of one.

And Jacob stuffing his fire pillow.  He was so excited about this fabric.  Just a hint, which many of you have probably figured out, I bought regular pillows for $2.50 each instead of spending almost $6.00 for a bag of stuffing at Wal-Mart.  I did feel a little destructive (tearing up perfectly good pillows) but I was pretty proud of my savvy thinking.

Here I am with bat boy hand sewing of all things.  You know it wasn’t that bad.  We may even do it again soon.
Jeannie

Don’t you love when your kids get ahold of your camera!

I was downloading all of my pictures the other day and found these.  I love seeing things from a kids perspective.

O.K. I took this one.  He was “fixing” the TV.  What you can’t see is the retro Atari controller in his hand.

SuperBoy, Bella must have gotten this shot.

Big brother playing with a balloon.  Shh!  Don’t tell anyone.  And please do not look to closely at the messy kitchen behind him.  Hey, I said don’t, please it is terrible.



This I thought was cute.  It is a picture of Mike and I and you can see Bella’s reflection in the shot.  Then there is the bouncy ball. Gotta get a picture of that.

And last and certainly least, the shot of my son in his usual at home form that we try to reserve for home alone.  I just wanted you to know that your kids aren’t the only ones that are gross.  Mine are too.
Jeannie

Three Generations Loving the Lord

Hi everyone, 

I wanted to share this post with you from my Mom's blog.  By the way the granddaughter is my daughter who was doing her favorite thing ever, bake cookies.  My little ones miss her cookies.  Check it out!  You can find this post here.

What do you think it means?

See the question at the end of the post.

My eighteen year old granddaughter was baking cookies yesterday and out of the blue said, “Grandma, I want to read you something I read this morning that really made me think”.

She went to get a book who quoted A.Z. Tozer. He wrote,

“Sometimes God gives us the desires of our hearts to teach us that it is possible to famish while we feed, that these desires gratify self but send leanness to the soul. In fact, if we ask God for anything, only desiring to get pleasure out of it, we are asking on a low level. For prayer is God answering His own desires: that is, desires begotten in the soul by God the Holy Spirit which are presented in the name of God the Son and answered by God the Father”.

First, I was so thankful that she understood it and that it made her pause and meditate on it. I had to have her read it again. It is pretty deep and I was a little slower than she was to get it. It helped me to break it up into separate sentences.

1)“Sometimes God gives us the desires of our hearts to teach us that it is possible to famish while we feed, that these desires gratify self but send leanness to the soul.

2)In fact, if we ask God for anything, only desiring to get pleasure out of it, we are asking on a low level.

3)For prayer is God answering His own desires: that is, desires begotten in the soul by God the Holy Spirit which are presented in the name of God the Son and answered by God the Father”.

How profound.

1)That the Lord gives us what we “our” desires are to see that they don’t satisfy like we thought they would.

2)That when we ask for things we want to get pleasure out of, we are asking on a “low level”.

3)That our desires need to line up with His desires and they will be answered.

How do we get out desires to line up with the Lords?

Matthew 6:32-33 says to, “ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
Seeking God and His righteousness.

Question: What do you think that means? How would you go about seeking Him?
Please send a comment! I will share it with our readers. Thanks so much!

Blessings, Pat
A.W, Tozer, “Missing Jewel,” Essays on Prayer (Downers Grove, Ill.A: Inter Varsity, 1968),9-1

Family Fun!!

We had a crazy busy weekend, full of fun.  One the the highlights was doing a joint b-day party (I know we had b-day month in December but the little ones didn’t get a party with friends.  We wanted to do it in February to break up winter a bit.) with Melissa and her family.  We went to a fun place that has bowling and laser tag and of course pizza.
Now you can see more of her family too.

All of the b-day kids and their cake. Melissa’s twins Ethan and Ella in front and Bella and Jacob in the back.  Happy Birthday!! Sorry we cut the cake a bit before we thought to take a picture.

Mike and Melissa.  Aren’t they cute.  I love the funny face she is making.

Both of our little Boys.

Anna the star bowler!

Zach and Morgan (girlfriend).  So sweet!

The ever graceful and sweet Bella.

Not the best shot of my handsome man but the only one I had on that day.  Love you Babe!


What does everyone want to eat?
For some reason I didn’t get any pictures of Melissa’s Allie and of course our Allie wasn’t there either.  Sorry girls.  I missed getting a shot of Allie getting cake faced by her Dad.  Where is your camera when you need it?  I’m sure she would not have let me put it in anyway.  But I had to mention it.
Jeannie