Category Archives: God’s character

Sneak Peek #6

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Excerpt from THRIVE AND SURVIVE, ZERO TO FIVE

Little children give moms lots to complain about. They’re messy, loud, demanding, and needy, and that’s just on the good days. Coping with all of this is enough to send a young mom into a tizzy. I (Mary) am going to do a little true confessing here, sharing a motherhood moment I regret to this day, forty years after the fact.

Julia and Karl, ages three and two, were playing happily in the bathtub while I ran back and forth from the next room, working on a project and occasionally checking on them. When it was time to get out of the tub, I instructed them to put all the toys back into the basket, and then I went back into the next room.

When I returned a few minutes later, they had done just the opposite of my instructions. They’d thrown the toys (along with lots of water) all over the bathroom floor, laughing hard at their fun idea. Because it was an overfull day and I was rushing, my response was far from ideal.

I swung my leg back and kicked a plastic truck as hard as I could, flinging it above their heads into the tub wall where it broke into pieces. And it gets worse. Rather than remorse over my anger, my thought was, That’ll show ’em! And I felt really good.

But several hours later I asked myself, What good did that do? What did I teach them by losing my temper as I did? Though neither of them remembers the incident, I certainly do, and I wish I’d shown more self-control. I missed an opportunity to model a quality character trait: forgiveness.

SIDEBAR: CHARACTER TRAITS TO MODEL

  • Integrity
  • Cheerfulness
  • Kindness
  • Patience
  • Gratitude
  • Diligence
  • Perseverance
  • Optimism
  • Forgiveness

Sneak Peek #5

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Excerpt from THRIVE AND SURVIVE, ZERO TO FIVE

In your effort to succeed at mothering, be sure to take advantage of your very best asset: the Lord. Remind yourself often that your children don’t really belong to you but to Him. After all, by the time you found out you were pregnant, He had already been secretly at work for many days.

According to the Bible, throughout those nine months God was quite active in your womb, establishing your child’s personality, will, temperament, and much more, by way of DNA. He was actively weaving your baby’s parts together, readying him for life on earth. Though God did include you in the process, the end result was really a compilation of His choices.

Once your baby is born, it doesn’t make sense that the Lord would step aside and let you own His project. He gave you a critical role to play as the mother, and His hope is high that you’ll invite Him to share in your efforts. He knows it’s a big job with far-reaching consequences, so He offers to help.

It makes perfect sense that God wants to share in the responsibility of raising His children. And on those days when the heavy emotional weight of motherhood settles over you, He wants to share in that too. As you manage your children day to day, the Lord gives you a wide berth to be as creative as you like. But it makes sense to bring Him into the entirety of your mothering, since He knows your children even better than you do.

He created each one to be exactly as they are, placing them into your care, not someone else’s. He equipped you with everything you need to raise them, and He believes you will do an excellent job. God sees every child as a major blessing, and He actually died to save them. Everything that happens to and around them is keenly important to Him.

So when you’re struggling with something, whatever it is, ask Him what you should do. He’s the Creator, and His supply of ideas never runs dry. If you ask, He’ll put one of them into your head. And because He has never failed, if you follow His instructions, that idea is bound to work.

SIDEBAR: WHEN YOU PRAY

  • God hears your prayers
  • God cares about ordinary things.
  • God sees everything at all times.
  • God usually requires you to wait for answers.
  • God does answer your prayers.

When Dark Is Light

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Each part of a church service has a special significance, but the children’s sermon is one of my favorites.

On a recent Sunday, our pastor was doing a good job describing Jesus as the Light of the world when one of the children, age four, raised his hand. Having just heard all about the Light, he felt it was important to add something. “My favorite color is dark.”

Most pastors are good at handling this kind of spontaneity, especially when it comes from a child. After acknowledging the comment, Pastor Jay smoothly moved his words from darkness back to light.

That afternoon at home I was still chuckling over the morning’s comment when I remembered our first grandchild, Skylar, who would have appreciated that unprompted addition to the children’s sermon.

When she was only three (left), her Auntie Weezi asked her a question most kids love to answer. “Sky, what’s your favorite color?”

Skylar answered without even looking up. “Black.”

Most little girls are into pink and purple, but each child is allowed to have their own favorite. Skylar’s unusual choice gave us all a good giggle that day.

My next-door-neighbor, Linda, told me that when she was a child walking home in the dark, she was never afraid. Instead she looked into the inky blackness around her and thought about the interesting things that might be hidden in the darkness – good things. She probably would have nodded in agreement to the favorites of dark and black.

Some of my widowed friends (including me) have experienced the opposite perspective on darkness. After becoming widows, we might find our imaginations allowing fear to creep in, uninvited. This is when we need to turn to God to get his opinion. He created darkness as well as light and surely isn’t biased against either one.

His explanation to me has been that the black of night is not the problem. Rather it’s the fear. And fear is never, he says, from him. It’s a tool of the devil who uses it to knock us off balance emotionally. God tells us there’s no darkness in him at all (1 John 1:5) and that he’s not afraid of it. As a matter of fact, darkness looks light to him (Psalm 139:12). The only darkness that should concern us is spiritual darkness – not knowing the truth of salvation.

As for fearing the black of night, it might help to spend more time hanging around those youngsters who love both black and dark.

“For you are my lamp, O Lord, and the Lord will lighten my darkness.” (2 Samuel 22:29)