Words for Moms

Archive for the ‘Christianity’ Category

The Bible Verse says “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6 (N.I.V). The King James Versions says “be anxious for nothing”. In the real world sometime we act like we have read the King James Version verse the wrong way. How many times as moms are we “anxious about nothing:”?

Last night I could not sleep. Anxious thoughts (related to my children) were on my mind. There is nothing I can do. I was busy thinking about how it would all work out. Today, a lot of the issues worked themselves out without my help. I wasted a perfectly good night’s sleep.

It is so hard as moms to trust the Lord for our children. This is a theme that comes over and over again. It doesn’t necessarily get any easier as they mature. As moms we want to fix things for them. Our kids have to learn by there mistakes. We can’t be going behind them cleaning up the messes in their lives. We have to trust.

When we put things in God’s hands, we find that all our fretting was for nothing. We just need to take it to God in the first place, and leave it there.

It is not that I don’t pray, I just present my requests to God and then I take them back into my hands.

Today’s word for mother to go to God with our anxieties and plans for our children. Whether your child is 5 months or 50, take those anxious thoughts to God and leave leave them at the feet of Jesus. God can do fix the situation a whole lot better and he will do it the best way way.

The theme of this whole blog is the importance of mothers and the important work they do. Today we focus on that and say thank you.

There are couple Bible verses which remind how important mothers are for teaching spiritual things. So many of us look back at the faith of our mothers and see their influence on our own faith. Fathers play a different, but just as critical a role in development of faith as moms.

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
Proverbs 1:8 N.I.V.

I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also. 2 Timothy 1:5 N.I.V.

In tribute of the day, I am posting some pictures of the current four generations of moms and daughters in my family.

A Young Mom (Me) with Her Kids (Ryan and Erin) in 1991

My daugther with her daughter

Katherine with my mom

Katherine and Me on my Birthday

Any day now, I should be promoted to the title “grandma”.  Every time I get a call now, I am waiting to here “mom, I am in labor now”.  I always believed that being a mom was the most important thing that I could ever do, and I do believe my daughter believes the same.

So many times we are asked “what do you do” and the response is often “just a mom”.  I work a bit  some through my computer and some outside of the home. For me it all works around, my most important role and that is being a mom. My kids are older now, I have more freedom to do other things, and even though most of them are taller than I am, they still need me. Even my daughter who is about to enter the world of motherhood herself, still needs me to be there now as a friend and counselor (and probably the occasional babysitter).

I think we have a lot of floundering people  in their world because moms have  forgotten how important it is to be “just a mom”. Many try to fit their children around careers and busy schedules.  Child need a quantity of quality time. We don’t necessarily have to be actively teaching them every second, we just have to be there and be there with our brains, not focused on something else.

What do moms do? Moms provide emotional soil for children to set down deep roots. If children have strong roots with faith in God and emotional security from the time they are babies, they are set to grow. Moms provide the care and nurturing of the child as the they group. Moms make sure that children have their physical needs met by feeding them and making sure that they have cloths to wear.  Moms also prune and shape children through discipline and training. Moms also let go and help their children enter the world step by step, so that they can be fruitful citizens of the world themselves.

Today is labor day. Our kids have been in school for weeks already, they are about to receive their first report. I thought I would write some quick tips for Christian moms especially those with children in “government schools”. Some of these I learned the hard way.

1. Pray for you kids, their teachers, and the school. I don’t do this enough. Once year I met weekly with a friend just to pray for a schools. It is hard to find someone else that is available for that.

2. Keep on top of what is going on with their behavior, projects and homework. Make sure that you have a system to communicate with teachers (especially if the students are young). The last few years we had “Parent Connect” because it lets you know there is a problem before it gets too big. If there is a behavior issue, try to work with the teacher to find a way to resolve it constructively. It may involve communicating daily with the teacher until the problem is solved.

3. If you have issues with the school and what is going on, communicate with them. You never know you may be the final person communicating on an issue that leads to change. Try to limit it to big issues. Pick your fights. If you do it too much, they view you as a problem parent.

4. Encourage you children as they grow older to remember that most of their friends need Jesus. Even when the behavior of their friends irritates them, remind them that that is how lost people behave and they need to pray that their friends will find new life in Jesus. Encourage them to be faithful witnesses for Jesus (by word and deed) and even than itself will keep them out of a lot of trouble.

5. Keep trusting God for you children and their safety. God has the power to look after you kids. He is even more powerful than government schools.

As I start to post these articles, I see landmines ahead that can trip me or the reader up. Proverbs 16:18 says: “Pride goes before destruction,a haughty spirit before a fall.” I do not want to come across as “I am good parent so listen to me”. First off, there are times that I am not a very good parent. Also, much of what I am writing has come through trials and getting to the other side.

On the other hand, I don’t want parents to feel discouraged either. If you listen to many parents of adult children, even in churches, you can get the feeling that there is no hope, no matter what you do it is all up to “chance”. Maybe your kids will come out okay, but there isn’t a whole lot you can do to change the outcome. Proverbs 18 also says later: “Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers, and blessed is he who trusts in the LORD. The wise in heart are called discerning, and pleasant words promote instruction.”

When my children were young, I would watch and listen. I would watch for families that seem to be working and try to follow what they did. But first of all, we need to heed the most important instruction book and that is Word of God.

It is my plan, that as I write these words of encouragement or words to build up, that I will be saying close to the ultimate set of instructions and showing they the Bible applies in the world of child rearing.

In Titus 2 older women are instructed to teach younger women “what is good”.  That motivates me to put these posts together for the younger women in my life.

In the end, it is not follow me, but follow God and here are some words to build you up and encourage you  as a Christian mom as you continue to follow  God.