Last year when I was struggling as a mother of four kids under the age of four (including newborn twins), a dear friend gave me a book called “Loving the Little Years” by Rachel Jankovic.  That little book has been read several times now, as well as the sequel, “Fit to Burst”.  I love these books because they are short, and the chapters are short.  They are random thoughts on motherhood in no particular order.  I could usually finish a chapter while nursing the babies.  It is chock full of humor, practical suggestions, encouragement, and lessons on motherhood – specifically in mothering little people.

Perhaps one of the reasons I “connected” with the author so well is that our children fall into the same birth order, two toddlers, then twins (and now she has two other children).  So many times I wondered if Rachel had been sitting in my living room watching me mother my children, and then gone home to write a chapter about it!

One of the biggest things I took away from this book was how to teach my children to restore fellowship.  I’m sure you’ve been there – the kids are fighting over that same toy, again.  One child gets mad and hits his sister, while the sister spouts off unkind names to her brother.  And there you are, trying to figure out who had the toy first, who did what, and who gets the discipline.

I am always frustrated when this breaks out in our home!  {And it happens quite often…just saying.}  But now I approach my teaching and discipline from a different perspective.  Instead of dealing with who had the toy first, we talk instead about broken fellowship.  You see, my children had both decided that the toy was more important than the fellowship with their sibling.  They assigned more value to the item that to the relationship.  They don’t realize they are doing that, but it provides a great opportunity to counsel them about sin and relationships.

We now go through questions something like this:

What is more important, your brother, or that toy? 

What did you act like was the most important? 

What should we do to show your brother he is most important? 

How can you restore the fellowship? 

It takes several counseling sessions to help your children understand the concept of fellowship.  You want them to understand that relationships (people) are more important than things.  If the rift in the fellowship is really bad, I do take away the toy.  I explain that it would be better to throw the toy away than to have it in our house if we are going to break fellowship because of it.  And when push comes to shove, the kids usually find a way to share the toy rather than have it thrown in the garbage.

To restore fellowship, the kids need to say something like, “I’m sorry I wasn’t kind and I broke fellowship with you.  Will you please forgive me?”  Then they hug, and make-up.

This has not only been very helpful in solving fights, but it is also a valuable opportunity to teach them about the Gospel.  Every one of us is born into broken fellowship with God.  The only way to restore fellowship is to ask Him to forgive our sins through the blood of Jesus, and to come into our life and be our Savior.  Even as Christians, we experience broken fellowship with our Lord on a daily basis every time we sin.  But the fellowship is easy to restore when we ask for forgiveness.

Every time my children my children experience broken fellowship with each other, I get to illustrate their broken fellowship with God.  I am praying that one day soon my oldest will understand more completely and choose to accept Christ and the restored fellowship He offers.

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We know that Jesus was calling Peter to be a leading force in the newly formed New Testament church.  The reference to lambs likely refers to new believers.  Jesus wanted Peter to gently care for those who were new in the faith.  “Sheep” could refer to more mature believers.

As my pastor was preaching through these verses he mentioned how lambs have to be fed more often.  Sometimes the shepherd might have to get up in the night to care for these vulnerable little ones.  On a recent missionary deputation trip we stayed with a family who has a hobby goat farm.  One of the goats died giving birth to twin kids.  The family members alternated who got up every four hours during the night to give the goats a bottle of milk.

My mind wandered to mothers of newborns and young babies.  We get up in the night to meet the physical needs of our children by nursing them or giving them a bottle.  We comfort them when they are sick, hold them when they are teething, and soothe them after a bad dream.  We don’t tell them to feed themselves or to go back to sleep – we deal gently with them, even though we are weary. 

Though there could be many applications from this passage, one was important to me, and I have meditated on it many times over the last couple of weeks.  As mothers, we have an important role to take care of the physical needs of our young children.  Sometimes we feel alone, home-bound, weary, lost in the monotony of routine tasks, and even unimportant, unaccomplished, and unappreciated.  But our efforts are not lost to the Savior.  He recognized that those who are young or immature need more care.

Yet our responsibility to feed our young children extends far beyond the tasks of meals, laundry, cleaning the home, etc.  As Christian parents we are responsible to spiritually feed our children.  They should hear the Word of God from our lips, and they should see it lived out in our daily choices.  It is not the Sunday School teacher’s job to teach our children the truths of God’s Word.  Their ministry is reinforcing what our children should be learning at home…from us.

We “feed the lambs” by teaching them God’s Word, living God’s Word, explaining God’s Word, helping them memorize God’s Word, and applying God’s Word to everyday situations in the lives of our children.  We feed the lambs when we pray for our children, and refuse to let the enemy get a stronghold in their lives.

Sometimes I get tired of going through the same lecture, the same discipline, the same scenario with my little ones.  Are they bickering over that toy AGAIN?  Did he just hit his sister AGAIN?  I want to say, “I shouldn’t have to tell you this again!”  But just as there are times physically when I don’t think I can squeeze another ounce of energy out to pry myself out of bed and nurse the baby, so there are times spiritually when I don’t think I have the strength to shepherd these little lambs and their delicate hearts to the Savior.  And do you know what?  I don’t have the strength.  I can’t do it alone.  As He gives me strength to meet the physical needs of my children, so the Lord gives the wisdom and the strength to go over that lesson on kindness with my children one more time.

We just started homeschooling for kindergarten last week, and I am very weary.  It seems like things are grating on my nerves more quickly than normal.  Each task seems to take more energy that I have.  But I have been encouraged from this passage to continue on feeding His lambs.  He has entrusted four of them to me, and I don’t want to fail the Savior in my task.

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Mountains of laundry.

Mountains of dishes.

Mountains of exhaustion, frustration, and confusion.

Motherhood is the hardest thing I have ever done.

Last night my husband took the kids out for a couple hours, and I had a quiet house to myself.  (Well, I had the baby with me, but she seems like no work at all when you're used to three other tornadoes in the house!)

You would think I would have enjoyed the quiet.  Having a chance to go to the bathroom without having to referee sibling bickering through the door should be blissful, right?

But you know who the happiest person was for those kids to get home?

Me!

I hardly knew what to do with myself while they were gone!  I was (dare I say it?) bored!

You see, while they are a challenge to face each day,  every one of those mountains in my home is beautiful.

Those mountains of laundry represent a little boy who is full of healthy curiosity about the world God made.  They represent siblings playing outside with one another, climbing trees, playing on the swing set, and picking honeysuckle together.

I want these to be the memories my kids have of home; not of how mom was always complaining about how hard they made her work.

Those mountains of dishes represent meals around the family table, talking and laughing together.  The discussions about how to read the clock on the kitchen wall will all too soon turn into discussions about how their college classes are going.  I don't want to waste precious memories that will pass too quickly by spending my time focusing on the dirty dishes.

The mountains of exhaustion, confusion, and frustration represent long days teaching children how to be kind, responsible, honest, and obedient, even when they are not the most cooperative students.

But each “Yes, ma’am” that I hear brings a renewed energy and determination to work diligently so that one day those “Yes, ma’am”s will turn to “Yes, Lord”s.

And one day when I see my grown children living a life for God’s glory, I will look back and reflect on this beautiful mess that defines my life as a young mother. And I will declare that every mountain I scaled was worth the effort ten times over.

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The Lord has really been working in my heart recently about one specific area of motherhood: sacrifice.  I don’t even feel qualified to write about it because many days I kick against the sacrifice involved in rearing my little people.  But as the Lord has continued drawing my heart, I am realizing the incredible privilege and reward involved in being a sacrificial mother.

Most moms are self-sacrificing for their children.  I was blessed with a godly mother who sacrificed day in and day out to stay home with her three children, homeschooling all of us from kindergarten to graduation, cooking for us, cleaning up after us, and much more that I am sure I will never fully realize.  And while I knew that being a mom involved these kinds of sacrifices, I didn’t truly understand the full extent of it until I was knee deep in the trenches of motherhood myself.

Especially if you have little people in your home, I’m sure the sacrifice seems very real.  I know – I have four kids, ages four and under.  Sometimes I think they wait for my head to hit the pillow and then they start crying.  I am usually the last one to sit down to eat, and often my meal is cold by the time I get to it.  Just when I finished the breakfast dishes there is a pile of lunch dishes to wash.  I can change bed sheets pretty quickly – I do it nearly every morning right now on at least one bed/crib.  Some days I feel like I discipline for the same thing all day long.  The laundry and floors are two things that are never clean!  Yes – motherhood is sacrifice.

Many times I have struggled with all that I have to do, all that I need to do, and how fast the time seems to fly away.  I have lamented to my husband that I never get to scrapbook anymore, or that I just spent all day cleaning the house only to have it messy again at bedtime, or that I am so tired from being up several times in the night with sick children.  Sometimes I just want a little time for myself.  Sometimes I just wish I could stop and take a vacation from mothering.  But then the Lord reminds me: motherhood is sacrifice.

This point was really brought home to me when I came face to face with these facts.  Did you ever stop to consider that your child is an eternal soul?  That one day – he/she will spend all of eternity in either heaven or hell?  If that is not sobering enough, consider that your child is entrusted to you for the first 20-ish years of this eternal existence.  And then consider the fact that we only get one chance at this mothering thing.  We can’t put it off until later or a more convenient time, we can’t start in when they are a teenager and hope to fix all the problems, and we can’t go back and do it over a different way.

I had never seen parenting from that perspective before.  I get to be the one to influence and raise my children for the first 20-ish years of their eternal existence.  My children are really the only thing I can take with me when I die.  The house?  It stays here.  The money?  It will be left to someone else.  The scrapbooks/hobbies?  They will probably end up in the garbage one day.  But my kids – I can take them with me for eternity…If I am willing to sacrifice what I want now for what I want my kids to be someday.  Because motherhood is sacrifice.

It really comes down to what is most important to me.  I could put my kids in day care so that I could pursue a career which will ultimately be of no lasting value.  I could be selfish with my time and energy, insisting upon “me time” instead of pouring the Gospel into my children’s lives and living it before them.  I can fuss over having a clean house instead of playing with my kids and building  life-changing relationships with them.  Motherhood is sacrifice.

Now I am not saying you can’t ever have any “me time.”  Or that you can’t ever leave your children with someone else.  But I am saying we should be willing to sacrifice some of the temporal pleasures and entertainment in order to be the right kind of mother to our children.  My scrapbooking can be picked up again when my kids are bigger or on their own.  Eventually I will not have a living room full of toys.  There will be time for  hobbies or pursuits later.

If I neglect my children now for other things which I deem to be more valuable, then one day I will be left with empty arms and fading accomplishments.  But if I sacrifice temporal things now in order to influence my children in their foundational years, then when my kids are grown I will have a full heart and rewards in heaven.   Proverbs 22:6 promises, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  When my kids grow up to serve the Lord, I will get to share in that reward because I will have poured my life into discipling them.  That is something that is worth the sacrifice in my book.

Mothering is a hard job.  It is not for the faint of heart!  Many days I earnestly desire to be done with diapers and discipline.  But until then I am trying to remind myself that this sacrifice now will bring rewards and benefits far into the future that I cannot even begin to imagine.  So be encouraged to keep giving, to keep teaching, to keep sacrificing because your rewards are eternal!

“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
Galatians 6:9

The post Thoughts on the Sacrifice of Motherhood appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

Each verse directly applies to things children will face in their daily lives, such as:

• Salvation
• Obedience
• Being kind
• Being generous
• Being cheerful
• Being diligent
• And more!

You can use these along with the Bible time suggestions for toddlers and preschoolers to help your little ones get to know God and his word better.

Each verse is full sized with colorful illustrations that are appropriate for each month of the year.  All scriptures are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

These cards are free for subscribers.

Download these today and help teach your little ones God's Word!

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The Lord has impressed upon me the need to be pouring Scripture into my children while they are young.  One tool that I have used to accomplish this is a daily Bible Time.  I struggled at first to know what to do with my young children since they don’t understand a lot of Bible terms, and they get the “wiggles” pretty quickly.  Through suggestions of godly older ladies, and some trial & error, I have put together three elements to make Bible Time fun and successful.

I have four children ages four and under, so our Bible Time isn’t always daily, though that is the goal.  And it usually isn’t at the same time every day, because we have to flex our schedule around the ever changing needs & schedules of twin babies.  To accommodate this, I put my Bible Time items together in a basket near the couch so that it is always easily accessible whenever we have a few minutes to sit down together to read, sing, and pray.

Just as in a corporate worship service, I believe that the key ingredients of devotions or Bible Time with our children are reading God’s Word, praising God through song, and bringing our requests to God through prayer.

Reading God’s Word

Be careful in selecting a children’s Bible.  Many have quite diluted the Word of God.  Others have introduced many inaccuracies or changed God’s Word in order to make it “child friendly.”  The Egermeier's Bible Story Book was suggested to me, and we love it!  It goes through the Bible in order, but divides the stories/chapters into kid-friendly portions.  Though written in story form, it follows the Scripture carefully and closely.  And the pictures are very beautiful!

Right now we are reading through it in order from Genesis, but we have also picked stories to correlate with a “letter of the week”.  (Lazarus, Lot, and Salt & Light for the letter L are some examples).  I read one section to the children.  Often they are riveted and ask me to continue reading, but sometimes they are squirmy and so we end with just one story.

Singing

My children love to sing!  And though they have favorite songs, they are eager to learn new ones also.  I have been trying to introduce them to a couple of new songs per month.  I often visualize the songs by printing the lyrics and adding clipart in Microsoft Word.  Sometimes I print out the words and we color the pictures together for a craft project.  (I like to laminate them to make them more durable). Even though my kids can’t read yet, the pictures help them follow along as they learn the song.  We also sprinkle in some songs that have hand motions, which is very helpful if they kids are squirmy.

My kids get a good dose of children’s Bible songs at church.  We sing their favorites and teach them new ones too.  I also want them to learn the good old hymns, which are so rich in doctrine and Scripture.  We take it slow when learning these new songs to be sure they understand.  After we sing the song, I discuss the words and the meaning with them.  Through this repetition they come to understand what the song means.

For example, Nolan loves to sing “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.”  Our visual folds out into the shape of a cross.  After we sing I ask them questions like, “What shape is this?”  “Why is it a cross?”  “Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?”  “What is the only way we can be clean from our sins?”  “What is sin?”

Prayer

We have three different approaches to praying with our kids.  We mix them up based on the time and their attention span that day.  Sometimes I ask them to share one blessing and one prayer request, and then we pray for those things.

Another way to guide prayer time is to pray for missionaries.  We have a basket of prayer cards, and my kids love to pick out a card and pray for that missionary.  This teaches them to be concerned with the needs of people around the world.  It also helps them put a face to people we are praying for regularly.  When a missionary was badly burned in an accident, we showed the kids his picture to help them make associations as we prayed for his recovery.  And they each have a favorite card they dig through the basket to find!

The last tool we use is a jar of “prayer sticks.”  We wrote blessings and special people on popsicle sticks.  We let the kids pick a couple of sticks out at prayer time, and that is the blessing/request for which they are to pray.  Some examples are people with chronic illness, family members (we have all of our grandparents on sticks), and people in need of salvation.  Some examples of blessing are friends, books & toys, health, etc.

Do you have a daily Bible Time with your children?  So often they are a thirsty sponge, absorbing everything they encounter.  It’s important, and a great opportunity,  to “fill them up” with the things of God!  What have you found to be the best way to have a devotional time with young children?

The post Bible Time Suggestions for Toddlers and Preschoolers appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

Suddenly a bird swooped down, attacking the cat.

For a split-second, I was incredulous.  A bird?  Attacking a cat?

But I quickly realized that this bird was not attacking a cat because she thought she was bigger and badder than the cat.  She was a mama bird, and she had baby birds nearby.  Even though the cat didn’t seem to be seeking his breakfast, he was still close enough to the location of the baby birds to cause their mama plenty of concern.

Although a bird is no match for a cat, she was willing to put her life on the line for the protection of her babies.  She swooped down over and over until she had driven the cat far away from her home.  Then she flew high into a tree and waited until the cat was completely out of sight before she flew back to her nest.  She didn’t want to chance having the cat know where her babies were located.

Mamas, there is another member of the feline family just waiting for his chance to destroy your children.  He is the devil, and like a lion, he walks about seeking whom he may devour.

What are you going to do to protect those children of yours?

You need to recognize the various ways that he will try to attack them and eliminate his opportunity to do so.

I’ll give a few examples, but you as a parent need to be diligent to think through the circumstances of your own child’s life and pinpoint all of the areas that need to be protected.

•     Friends

God let us know for a reason that “evil communications corrupt good manners”.  The people your child associates with on a regular basis are one of the biggest influences he has.  Do you know who your child’s friends are?  Do you know what they believe and what they talk about to your children?  If you are not aware of these things, you are leaving your child in a very vulnerable position.  The devil has the opportunity to use those friends to influence his thinking in ways that could completely undermine everything you are trying to teach him at home.

•     Media

One of the most powerful influences on the mind of your child is the media that filters through his eyes and ears.  The tv shows, movies, books, video games, and music that he is exposed to are not a neutral force.  They are either drawing him closer to God or driving him away.  Examine closely what goes into your child’s mind, and do everything you can to protect him from anything that contradicts God’s Word.  Even if you become the world’s most “uncool” mom, saying no to these things is worth every minute of your unpopularity.  I’d rather be uncool than to lose my child’s soul to the devil.

•     Their own sin nature

We are all born with a burning desire to sin, and even after salvation that sin nature still rears its ugly head, tempting us when we least expect it.  You may be doing all you know to do to protect your child from evil influences, but his greatest and most subtle enemy lies within himself.  Just as those baby birds will one day leave the nest and be responsible for protecting themselves, your children will gradually become more and more independent.  You won’t always be right beside them, swooping down and chasing away the devil when he comes too close.  Give them the tools to protect themselves when they’re on their own!  Teach them the Word of God.  Engrain it into their minds and hearts.  Instruct them about the armor of God which they possess if they are a child of God and teach them how to use it!  Pray for your children every day.  Pray for their protection from temptation and that God would help them to remember the things you have taught them about resisting the devil.

That mama bird would have been devastated had the cat gained access to her babies and taken the opportunity to injure or kill any of them.  Can you imagine the grief that you will feel if your child falls prey to the devil?

To the mother bird, it was worth risking her very life for her children to be protected.  What will you risk?  How hard will you work?  How unpopular are you willing to be?  

It’s worth it all.

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One thing I really want to do better with is being intentional in my mothering.  I want to plan ahead more to spend time with the kids.  Sure, there is a place for spontaneous time together, but that honestly doesn't happen very often.  There are always dishes to wash, clothes to fold, and floors to sweep.  The work is never ending, and the time to spend with these little ones doesn't often just happen by accident.

I decided that since I'm all about Anti-Procrastination this year, that I was going to purposely make time to spend with the kids today.  Instead of waiting until everything magically fell into place (which it never would), I purposely cleared my schedule and gave my undivided attention to them.

And guess what?  I think I had more fun than they did!  Granted, I'll need to stay up a little longer tonight and finish folding the laundry, but what is more important?  Claiming my children's hearts as they grow up right before my eyes, or folding the laundry that will always be there?

One of several activites we did together today

What about you?  Is there something about which you need to purposely be more intentional?  Maybe it's not your kids; maybe it's being a better wife, a better nieghbor, church member, or friend.  It's time to stop planning to do better and just do it!

Have you been challenged to be more intentional about a certain area of your life?  Leave a comment and tell me about it!

If you’re just now joining our Anti-Procrastination challenge, you can read all the details here. Be sure you’re subscribed to email updates or follow me on Facebook to receive each new challenge!

The post Anti-Procrastination Challenge: Being Intentional appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.