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Your Family
Quotes on motherhood
Today I thought I’d share some interesting quotes on motherhood. Gave me some food for thought:
“Motherhood has completely changed me. It’s just about like the most completely humbling experience that I’ve ever had. I think that it puts you in your place because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in and if you can’t stand up to those principles when you’re raising a child, forget it.” (Diane Keaton)
“Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I’ve become a juggler, I suppose. It’s all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do.” (Jane Seymour)
“Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedastal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent.” (Barbara Ehrenreich)
“Motherhood was my career. I’m totally satisfied with that.” (Ann Romney)
The Child Centered Marriage
I can’t remember the last time my husband and I have been on a date night. We talk for an hour or two after the children are in bed. I call him on the phone during the regular workday (or a lot if I’m having a very hard day at home). But we haven’t had the time to actully say, we’re leaving the children at home and going off on a date. And during this date we are going to stick to the follwowing three rules:
1) Don’t talk about children.
2) Don’t talk about children.
3) Don’t talk about children.
Child centered marriage. It’s an easy pit to fall in.
We’ve fell in it. Big time.
I hear all these stories about how parents spend time solely focused on their children: shuffling them off to various activities, being too permissive for fear they’ll psychologically damage their children, etc. And when the children are up and gone, there’s nothing left to give to the one to whom you said “I do” at the altar decades ago.
I don’t want to be that person.
I want to celebrate my sixtieth anniversary and say: “It was good. Hard sometimes. But good. I’m glad I did this with you, this life. We did good together.”
To accomplish, I have to make the time, to listen, to talk. To hope with him. Together.
Hope is the engine.
Hope is the fuel.
Hope puts together the messy parts, the hidden parts, the scary parts (and the child centered parts!) of marriage and molds them with the beautiful. Makes them fit.
I know of a woman who lost hope. She lost hope after years and years of being in a physically abusive marriage. After the marriage ended on paper, the divorce settled, fear still haunted her. Kept her from loving again. She lost hope.
I know of another woman who lost hope too. She lost hope in her dream of being a singer after she said “I do.” Not because her husband didn’t want her to be a singer, but because she had a false persception of what a “good wife” should be. And so she lived out her marriage carrying the burden of a false hope. And her relationship with her husband grew strained as the years went on.
Thinking about these women, having a child centered marriage doesn’t sound so bad.
Or does it?
I may not have experienced the same level of stresses that these brave women endured, but I do know the importance of ensuring healthy, loving interactions with the wonderful man I share a one-flesh destiny with.
Hope.
I want to make room for hope, true hope, in marriage. And so I resolve to do something small to keep the marriage part of the family going. Something like a compliment a day.
Then, we can take a baby step towards a date night. {RedBox movie, anyone?}
But hope can be lived out simply. Day by day.
Rage Against the Machine
I seriously started to reconsider my relationship with the computer when my two year old recently asked me to get off the computer. I ignored his request at first, until he became more insistent day after day after day. I then started to examine how I spend my time.
The moments I spend with my children are fleeting. I cannot believe it’s been two and a half years since I gave birth to my oldest child, and now he’s telling me how I should spend my time…away from the world wide web.
So I’ve decided to spend time on the computer only when the children are sleeping and my other top priority activities have been taken care of for the day. This has been tough, kinda like going on a diet. It wasn’t until I decided to consciously monitor my media intake that I grew aware of how out of control I’ve been.
I don’t need to check email every hour. I don’t need to see what’s going on at Facebook every.single.minute. And that Google search can wait.
Because children grow up, and I don’t want their memory of Mom to be one of me staring at a screen all the time in a semi-comatose state.
How has your relationship with gadgets affected your personal relationships?
Intentional Motherhood
It’s easy for me to get caught up in the rush-rush of life and forget about my purpose as a mother. Sometimes, the most important thing is to stop and just spend time with my child. The dishes and the laundry and everything else screaming for my attention will still be there. But the time I spend sharing, laughing, tickling and playing with my son is for a moment. And life is made up of meaningful moments, not items checked off on my ‘to do’ list.
So, I’m reevaluating how I can become more intentional as a mother. I don’t believe it requires much, just…paying more attention. (Duh!)
Question for You: If you’re a mom, how do you ensure that you spend meaningful time with your children?
An Adoption Story
Hello readers it’s Preslaysa,
I’m happy to welcome guest blogger Melinda Pepper. Melinda is writing today about her family’s journey towards adopting two children from Russia. I love to hear about families who are opening their hearts to the orphaned and I know you will enjoy her story. In addition to reading today’s post, you can visit their website and learn more about their adoption fundraiser. Enjoy!
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Melinda’s Adoption Story
My husband Gary and I have always wanted to have a large family and adding children into our family through adoption has always been a hope for us. God has blessed us immeasurably with three beautiful and healthy biological children and we have now come to a place where we feel led to adopt two children from another country as our own. Gary and I were adopted as God’s children when we put our hope and trust in Christ Jesus as our Savior. Galations 4:4-6 says:”But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” We are so grateful that God loves us as His own and we are inspired by this gift to reach out and love our new children in the same way. There are an estimated 163,000,000 orphans world-wide and we want to play a part in lessening this number. We are compelled to follow God’s commands in Scripture to: “Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans…”{Isaiah 1:17}. We are inspired to love our new children as Jesus loves us and as we love Him.
We are adopting two children (of either sex), ages ranging from nine months-through four years of age from Russia. Our file has been in Russia for two months and we are waiting to be matched with our children. We are trusting in God’s perfect timing and joyously anticipating the day that we will welcome our children home. We feel blessed to know that on the day of their homecoming we will be drawing closer to Jesus. “And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me,” Matthew 18:15.
We covet the prayers of those who are following our journey. Please pray for continued peace and courage for our family and that God will continue to provide all we need to fulfill and answer this call He has placed on our hearts!
Our Christmas Efforts
So my efforts at making the house more Christmas-y have been, er…challenging. The tree is up and decorated (thanks to The Man’s valiant efforts), the stockings are hung and I even have a children’s Christmas CD which I play occasionally.
But there’s the toddler.
He loves all things shiny, glittery and noisy, especially the bells which I hung on the doorknobs. As soon as I placed then on the knobs, he took them off and shook them like he was a member of a hundred member symphony. He shook them so much, a bell fell off the cord. Now, they are gone. Who knows where they went! Like a lot of items in the house, I’m sure I’ll stumble across the bells in the Spring when I’m vacuuming or decluttering something.
That’s the Mom life!
Praying With A Toddler
I usually mentally berate myself for going through entire days with my 18 month old without doing something spiritual like reading the Bible.
Then, my son got his arm stuck in the cabinet door.
After quickly wiggling himself out of it. He cried and ran over to me, rubbing his arm. At that moment, I had an epiphany. We prayed. I said: “Lord, heal the pain in this arm, in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
My 18 month old said: “Amen!” and toddled off, smiling.
I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. “From the lips of babes and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.” (Psalm 8:2, NIV)
Faith at home should be a natural part of our day’s activities. We don’t need to put on a big Sunday school production for our children for them to get it. As moms, we just need to demonstrate a living faith…and pray for the owies!!
How do you live out your faith at home with your children?
