A Week of Encouragement

This may come as a surprise to some, but being a mom and a pastor’s wife can at times be frustrating and discouraging.  Not everything always goes as planned and sometimes things happen outside of a person’s control.  The chicken drops on the floor while you’re rushing out the door to get to a meeting.  A child calls complaining about a sibling while you’re in a prayer meeting for someone who is sick.  Yeah, mothering and pastoring aren’t always smooth sailing.

Recently, after a bout of difficult, frustrating, challenging, problematic, annoying, exasperating (well, you get the idea) situations I started crying out, whining and even demanding  God to show up with help and grace.  (Don’t worry, I know that God is not intimidated by my demands.)

I’ve often felt that God is just waiting for us to get really honest with where we are, how we feel about situations, and what’s going on deep inside our hearts.  As adults, we’re not much different from our children who act out in some troublemaking way while the real reason is that their feelings have been hurt.

God, in His gracious and tender-hearted way, heard and answered my prayers.  This week I’ve experienced daily tokens of His love and encouragements. 

Let me recount them:

Sunday:  Almost 4 hours of peace and quiet at home by myself while my family was elsewhere for the Vikings game.
Monday: A crisis of serious proportions with a computer was quickly solved by a good friend, saving us thousands of dollars.
Tuesday:  An encouraging meeting with the leadership team in which I could share some frustrations and heartaches and they listened with compassion and understanding.
Wednesday:  Someone who works with my kids at school told me that he thought they were incredible.  Does a mother’s heart wonders!
Thursday:  My lengthy breakfast-to-lunch date with my sister helped to fill my emotional tank.  Her generous birthday gift overwhelmed me.  And listening to my son be applauded after his piano performance raised that tank’s level a bit more.
Friday:  A FedEx package from my sister-in-law contained a fun and unusual gift.
Saturday:  After being gone all morning to a school board meeting, I came home to a sparkling clean kitchen bathrooms and living room prepared by my children.
Sunday:  The day’s not over …….

As I’ve recounted to myself these daily blessings, I’ve realized that God has handed me many blessings and specific gestures of love that I’ve missed.  That is probably why my “tank” go so low.  Ephesians 4: 30 talks about being “sealed with the Holy Spirit.”  God must need to do that because we leak so much.

My challenge to you:  be real with God about where you are and how you’re doing.  (You can’t fool Him; He knows anyway.) Be honest about what you really need.  Then wait.  You never know how He will choose to answer.

Homeschool Group Meeting

This week I spoke to the homeschool group in Northfield. I was originally asked to speak on preparing homeschool students for college. (I've given seminars on this topic.) However, when I found that most of the children in the group were in lower elementary grades, I had to do some quick adjustments.


My new topic: Big Picture Homeschooling. I encouraged and challenged the parents to take some time and think about what they wanted their child to look like when he or she left their homes. Too often as parents we get overwhelmed with the everyday practical issues of life: laundry, dishes, vacuuming and dusting, paying the bills, etc. I think it's essential to spend time with the Lord and ask Him about the skills, values, and goals that He wants for our children. Knowing the end-product, we can make wiser decisions along the way.

Another point I made to these hard-working moms was that they were going to make mistakes, but that's all a part of the journey. There's a lot of pressure in the homeschool community to do everything right... to have children who are brilliant, polite, and spit-shined. In a perfect world, we always have energy, never get cranky, and have enough money to hire a maid to wash the mountain of laundry. After 7 children and 23+ years of parenting I'm becoming more aware of my less-than-stellar parenting. I can choose to get all worked up over so many regrets; or I can choose to call on God's mercy and grace.

Life is too short to spend time anxious about our past mistakes or stressed over the fear of making fresh ones. So let's get over ourselves.