What I Would Like to Say When People Make Me Feel Like a Freak For Having Children
And it happens a lot. For a long time, I tried to have a clever answer for the jaw-dropping, invasive probing into my fertility… “Are you going to have more babies??!!” Me: “Well, we do love children!” But the “my hands are full and so is my heart” quip just isn’t me anymore. And mothers […]
Homeschooling Idea Corner…Teaching Vocabulary
In my book, Think Outside the Classroom, I included about 5 “idea corners” to spark creativity. I thought I’d share one of those here… Idea Corner: Pick a “word of the day” and see how many times you can use it in the day, and encourage your children to do the same. Make up a […]
God’s Heart Toward Children: What is the Purpose of Children? (Part 2)
Read Part 1 HERE. Is our paradigm of parenting wrong? Another way our view of children affects the world is that if our thinking about children is not synonymous with His thinking about children, our entire paradigm of parenting is wrong. Did you hear that? We come into parenting with a completely wrong basis for […]
Raising Children: My Spaghetti-Smeared Generation
Farmer holds a few ordinary seeds in his hand. But he doesn’t see seeds. He also doesn’t see, or rather, doesn’t dwell on the work he’s about to give himself to. OK he does see the seeds, and dirt, and sweat and weeds. But it’s what lies beyond the seeing….it’s the VISION. He really sees […]
God’s Heart Toward Children (Part 1)
Listen on Youtube The church mirrors the culture A heart-breaking reality that we have experienced by default of our unusually large family, is that in general, the Church’s ideas about children is essentially the same as those outside, not reflecting God’s heart toward children. Heart-breaking, I say, because we let a culture that kills 3,500 babies a day […]
I’m Not Raising a Family (The Problem With Short-Sighted Living)
Listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Youtube People are tired, frustrated, bored or discouraged. You can see it, hear it, feel it. What’s more, you might be one of those people. We all are at some point. And I think I know why: Because we measure our contentment by today’s work. We live short-sighted lives–living for […]
Children According to Jesus: If You Want to See the Kingdom
We view children backwards. Jesus’ disciples did too… “Jesus, tell them to take their children away–they’re interfering.” (paraphrased, of course). Jesus said, “Do not forbid the children to come unto me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” And in other places He said, “Unless you humble yourselves and become as one of these […]
Dear Christian: You Can’t Be For the Great Commission & Against Growing Families
When you’ve written at the same spot for 11 years, sometimes you think you’ve said all the things. But then again, unless people are digging into the archives, some things bear repeating. So hear goes part of my heart… I recently listened to a Voddie Baucham sermon that reminded me of the Christian’s double standard […]
Why Did You Have So Many Children?
Faith is an oddly phenomenal thing. I remember reading the biography of George Mueller as a child, and wishing deeply, I could have that kind of faith. Faith believes what we cannot see. That’s it. So early in our marriage, we wanted to trust God and we wanted to be consistent in our belief in […]
We Need More Arrows: Christians & The Kingdom
The question of having children, fertility, birth control, which I fear, too few Christians have really wrestled over, is not about combing through Scripture to find all the evidence for or against allowing God to be sovereign over the womb. It’s not about concluding that “God gives us the wisdom to decide” and then breathing […]