Saturday, February 9, 2013

As Seen Through My Eyes...

   Life as "Mama" can be very tiring, both physically and emotionally.  Physically, of course, because you simply never sit down, except when you crash into your pillows after the last nightlight is turned on, the last "goodnight" is whispered, and the very last "Shhhhhhh!" is said.  And emotionally, because the greatest dream in my life is that "my children walk in truth".   Do you ever worry if you're doing the right thing where your children are concerned?  Have you asked the questions a million times to yourself, "Was I too hard on him"?, or "Maybe I shouldn't have let that one slide"...?  There are millions of copies of "How to train your children right" but when it comes right down to it, its simply a matter of doing what you know is right and then letting God fill in the blanks, the places where you unknowingly failed.  Its not easy!  My greatest fear is that my children will stray from the Lord.  Oh that that will NEVER happen!  I pray that God will keep the devil and his influence out of our home, and far from my family!  But at times, I feel like pulling my hair out and I cry out to God, "What do I do now???  How can I get through to my children???"  Children don't seem to follow a blueprint, or a certain pattern during the growth process.  Each one is so different from the next.  Oh you can get a rough draft at your local bookstore on "How to train a child", but when it comes down to real thing, that book never answers all the questions that bombard your brain a you enter each stage of your child's life.  I constantly repeat to myself, "Train up a child in the way he should go...." and many other verses on the subject, then beg God for wisdom in an area I know nothing about.  Yes, raising children can be very emotional!  How many times have I cried for my children?  How many nights have I prayed for Christian and Audra as I rocked them before bedtime?  Christian has learned about 15 verses already and he's only 2 1/2!  It amazes me how much they absorb!  But how to get it from his head to his heart?  That's a different story entirely!  A lot of church kids have it in their head.  They know all the answers, look good, carry a Bible, and have a very polished outside.  But God sees the heart, and that's what I'm aiming for.  Because, as little as I know, I have figured out one thing.  If you can get God in their hearts, most everything else, including a 'polished outside' will be taken care of automatically, because they will WANT to please God...not HAVE to because their parents said so.  If we can get our children to love God with their whole hearts, trust Him, and have a burning desire to please Him, I believe we will be well on our way to having a generation of children who can make a difference for God in this world instead of being the next church fall-outs.  But at times it seems that it all hangs on a thread.  The decisions I make will no doubt tip the scales one way or the other.  THIS IS SCARY!  And many a night I've cried out to God to guide my every move, every day of my life.  Children learn by example best of all.  And WHO are their leading examples when they are young?  Mama and Daddy.  Yes, we set the spiritual pace of our house holds.  We teach them what to love, and what to hate.  What a huge responsibility!  One that you can only handle properly with the Lord's help.  "As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth...".  If an arrow is bent in the very least, or has a flaw on it, its flight will be affected.  It will constantly fight against itself and wobble until it feebly hits a target, and most of the time, it won't be a bulls eye!  But, a perfect arrow will fly straight and strong to hit dead center...whichever direction the 'mighty man' aims.  This hit me the other day.  We can polish our children and teach them how to walk and talk, but they still sometimes hit a worldly target.  Why is this?  Perhaps the parents were aiming a little off center?  Perhaps they let a little bit too much of the world into their homes in one way or another?  Perhaps through movies, or books, friendships, sports, or even attitudes.  I don't know.  Some of those things aren't neccessarily wrong, but I do know that the parent's loves are many times passed on to the children in double doses.  Their strong points AND their weakness are also passed down.  You have to be so careful!  This makes me take a good look at my own life, my own household, my own attitudes.  I don't want ANYTHING affecting my arrows, or the direction they are shot! 
   The other night, I was about to pull my hair out.  I'd been having some bad days with Christian and it seemed like no amount of training was getting me anywhere with him.  I'd just put him and Audra down for the night, and as I came down there stairs I stopped and looked around.  Here's what I saw...

Scattered Toys....
 
 
More Scattered Toys....


A giant ball I had to dodge coming down the stairs...

A tiny baby shoe...
 

 A bite taken out of an cone cup cake...
 

A little blue booster seat...
 
 

Dirty dishes left in the sink...
 
 
And yes, three baskets of unfolded laundry.
 
 
    But then, I thought about a very happy, little boy upstairs.  You see, the reason my house looked like this is because we had just had a Family Fun Night.  On these special family nights, we have pizza on our big king sized bed while watching an OLD cartoon like Donald Duck, or Chip and Dale (or the Monkeychips, as Christian puts it :)  Christian also gets to pick out the dessert for the evening, which on this night, was cake.  So of course you have to be a little creative and go the extra mile to make it a little odd and different...thus the cake in a cone idea  :)  I love to see the delighted surprise on my little boy's face!  After the cartoon, we just play together and have a good time centered around our children.  Everything gets put on hold, like the dishes and the laundry. 
   As I walked around I felt tears in my eyes as I again heard the squeals of glee while we played hide and seek in the dark.  I remembered Christian running up to me, throwing his tiny arms around my legs and saying with all the emotion he could muster, "Mama, I LOVE you!!!"   Its watching Audra smile and duck her head shyly, then peek out to see if he's still watching her, when Daddy greets her in the mornings.  Its seeing a two year old's eyes shine when I climb into his big cardboard train and we pretend its rumbling down the tracks through our little town, blowing its whistle to wake the late risers every morning.  (there's actually one such real live engineer who must hang on his horn the entire length of our town every morning!  He never lets up on it till he's way out of sight.  And he does this many times before dawn!  I've often laid in bed wondering who else in this town was also laying in bed at that very moment thinking unkind thoughts toward a certain horn happy man who figured it was his duty to wake every town on his route, since HE had to be awake as such an ungodly hour!  :) 
   Anyway, as I thought about our family evening, it was as if the Lord was telling me to just slow down and SEE my children.  Instead of going through every day making sure everything on my chore list had been checked by bedtime, making sure that everything ran on schedule, I needed to just slow down.  If the dishes didn't get done one night, that's okay!  There are more important things than a sink full of dirty dishes.  THEY will get done eventually, but the frustration I showed trying to get it all done on MY timetable may never be undone in a little boy's innocent mind.  And that is far more important.  The laundry?  So it didn't get folded today!  But instead I spent a few mins on the floor giving my son a horsey back ride, or rocking in a chair reading a book together, or letting him play a little longer in the bathtub than normal.  He won't remember those dishes...he WILL remember Mama the Conductor hollering "ALL ABOARD!" as we make another 'lap' around the room in the big cardboard train, while the thick black smoke billows from the green and red "stack moke" (smoke stack, of course...).  And he will remember, as I will, the nights he's tucked into bed, an him saying, "Mama, pray for me...", or us singing Jesus Loves Me, or the Old Rugged Cross together before bed.  Sometimes I wonder if God doesn't silence Heaven so that He can listen to a little voice sing "...so I'll cherish the old rugged cross...".  Yes, these things are far more important than dirty dishes, scattered toys, or unfolded laundry!  These are my arrows!  How will THEY fly???  Lord, HELP ME, GUIDE ME, GIVE ME WISDOM!!!  I want them to hit God's bulls eye, not mine! 

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