Category Archives: Children

My First Mother’s Day (By Birgitta)

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Technically, today is my first Mother’s Day. I haven’t met my baby yet, but I think motherhood began for me about 3 months ago when I learned I was pregnant. I found out on February 14th, and it was quite the unexpected Valentine. My fears and worries eased as I gradually shared the news with family and friends and was surrounded by their love.

Tonight my family went out to dinner and enjoyed a Mother’s Day celebration together. Among other things, my mom gave me a pack of diapers, and I realized that I’ve never changed a diaper before. It’s hard not to feel a little defensive when people tell me I have no idea what I’m in for or how difficult this will be for me. My life has already changed quite a bit. I think it’s important for me to look for the good, happy, and beautiful things all around me as I move forward.

My mom has been a tremendous example to me of always focusing on the positive things. Her upbeat attitude is contagious, especially when it comes to my baby. I can’t forget how delighted I felt when I first saw my baby dancing around inside of me or heard that precious heartbeat for the first time. It’s amazing to think about the brand new life I’ll be a part of and the intense connection and joy I’ve experienced.

One year from now on my second Mother’s Day, I’ll probably have experienced some of what others have “warned” me about. But just the thought of being able to hold and kiss my baby has me eagerly awaiting that day and the whole year ahead!

Well Care

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Throughout the childhoods of my 7 children, we used only one pediatrician, Dr. Bernard Hankin, and during 34 years of active parenting, we visited him hundreds of times. On one of those occasions, when I was toting a feverish child, I said to him, “How do you stay well with a continual parade of sick kids coming to you?”

“When I was a young doctor,” he said, “I caught all kinds of things. But I’ve built up immunity to almost everything now, and I virtually never get sick.”

Going through sickness can build resistance to more of it. The vaccines Dr. Hankin gave our children were examples of the same principle, an intentional but small dose of the disease in exchange for not having to fight the full-blown version.

God sort of inoculates us in similar fashion. He lets us take on some of the disease of sin, hoping we’ll quickly identify it as a “sick” way to live and immediately step away from it. If we insist on experiencing sin’s “illness” in a full-blown version, he lets us have it.

Today’s youngsters are fortunate in not having to suffer through many of the childhood diseases my generation did: measles (several kinds), mumps, chicken pox, even polio for some. The generation before mine had to deal with all that, plus whooping cough, tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, small pox, and killer infections. As science continues to gain knowledge of infectious diseases, the rest of us gain the benefits of fighting them more effectively.

Fighting the disease of sin, though, is a different story. It’s negative consequences don’t usually appear immediately, just as being exposed to a disease doesn’t produce symptoms for several days. But at that point, it may be too late for God’s preventive medicine. He might say, “I’m sorry you had to go this route, because doing things my way would have been like using a protective vaccine. But now you’re choosing the full-blown disease.”

Thankfully, the Lord doesn’t turn away after that. Just like a parent goes out of his or her way to soothe an ailing child, God administers reassurance and doesn’t let us wallow in our misery without offering to help us. When we finally say, “I can’t heal myself!” and recognize his way is the only way to rid ourselves from sin, he shows us the route back to good behavioral health, through Jesus. I know this from harsh experience and have gradually grown to be a devotee of his preventive measures.

Our friend and medical mentor Dr. Hankin is now in his 80’s, and though my children are too old to bring in for exams, he’s still active in his pediatric practice. His conservative approach to doctoring was something Nate and I appreciated, and his medical advice always yielded good results. Because of that, each time we left his office we were faithful to follow his orders.

If only I could always follow God’s instructions with the same faithfulness.

“Godliness with contentment is great gain.” (1 Timothy 6:6)

Something to Crow About

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Three year old Skylar lives in a country-like neighborhood with lots of natural wildlife, including a flock of crows. Sometimes they swoop around in a group or congregate in one tree. When that happens Skylar says, “Today they’re having a meeting.”

Recently a crow flew overhead with a “Caw! Caw!”

“Wow!” I said. “Did you see that giant black bird?”

“That’s a macaw,” she said.

“Really?” I said, watching the crow disappear over the trees. “I thought macaws had bright colors.”

“No. They’re black.”

Then she said, “And I speak their language.”

“Impressive,” I said. “How’d you learn that?”

“Oh, I always knew it,” she said. “Actually, I taught it to the macaws.”

Learning languages is tricky. Teaching them is more so. Most of us have struggled to learn the ins and outs of a foreign language during school years, from Latin to French to Spanish and beyond. Biblical scholars work at Hebrew and Greek, and toddlers work to be understood by anyone.

Gary Chapman wrote THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES, explaining how to communicate best with those we love most. Not only do different generations speak differently, different decades do, too. But that’s not all. There are male-female variations and personality-type distinctions. It’s almost too complicated to figure out, so why bother?

We bother because of love.

When we love someone, we want to understand them better, including foreigners. Despite not understanding at first, it’s good to keep trying. God, the Great Communicator, is hoping we will. His desire is that we all become members of his family, and part of having harmonious relationships is communicating effectively. If we can’t understand each other, we are, in a way, foreigners living together in frustration. The Lord wants us all to “click,” and like all good fathers, he’s hoping his children will get to the place of communicating blessing to each other.

He also wants us to come to him for conversation. The biblical David put it well: “My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.” (Psalm 27:8) I’ll never get over the fact that God Almighty has an interest in our communication with each other, and even personally, him with me. My longing is to talk to others and to him in a way that will please him, and to accurately understand his language back to me.

And so I’ll keep trying.

I’m also trying to communicate with the crow-macaws as well as Skylar does. Yesterday we were playing in her driveway when she said, “I can ride my bike as fast as the birds fly. And when I yell up to ’em in bird language, they fly where I tell ’em to go.”

Flawless communication, to be sure.

”There are many different languages in the world, and every language has meaning. But if I don’t understand a language, I will be a foreigner to someone who speaks it, and the one who speaks it will be a foreigner to me.” (1 Corinthians 14:10-11)