Today I have the privilege of sharing some of my personal realness at the blog, Baking Humble Pie, run by Bethany, a virtual friend of mine whom I met here, as she as read and commented over the years. As she recovers with her new baby, she has posted a fabulous series called, “I Don’t Do it All.” Because y’all, I really don’t. Hop over and say “hi!”
It’s hard for me to understand how the masses became convinced that motherhood was a “peripheral” job. In an interview I recently had, I concluded:
Being a wife and mother is not just something we ARE; it’s something we DO.
And that changes everything. Because that “doing” is magnanimous. What we do, that is, what we are supposed to be doing, has far-reaching, even eternal implications. It’s physical, it’s emotional, it’s spiritual and it’s constant. No other profession surpasses this one in import, yet we spend little to no time training for it. To the extent we prepare for and engage ourselves in the profession of managing the home, we change the culture. To the extent we dismiss our professions, we change the culture.
We cannot escape our profound influence on the next generation. God has given it to us for our stewardship. We can choose to give it to someone else, but the responsibility is still ours in the end.
A book could be written on what this managing the home entails. My mind reels even now of so many areas that wives and mothers are influencing. But it doesn’t happen on the side. It’s not extra and it’s not easy. Sometimes it’s downright messy and all-consuming. But in God’s economy, it’s glorious.
Lately, it falls hard on my heart, the realization of how important it is to teach our children to think rightly. About everything. Deception runs rampant around us–in the church, in the media, in the schools–everywhere. As a society increasingly rejects God’s Word and His sovereignty in our lives, mayhem is the result. And the more rampant the deception around us, the more vigilance is required to offset it. I’m trying to say that a word here or there is not sufficient. We’re talking Deuteronomy 6 kind of teaching.
And why are so many adults being swept away by deception and following after the god of self? Primarily because as children, they weren’t “rooted” in truth. And a plant without roots is easily blown around “by every wind of doctrine.” (I should say here, that sometimes children rooted in truth still become deceived and choose to reject it. Still, our job to be faithful remains.)
Children grow up shaped by something. Every day someone will teach them, influence their thinking, sway their opinions, and lay the groundwork for their life choices. And that someone, that something, will affect everything they do, reaching even to their children and grandchildren, affecting their lives too.
It needs to be us. It needs to be us, transmitting to the generations coming after us, the truth of the gospel, the power of God to order our lives, the freedom of living for Christ when he shows up each day to guide our thoughts and choices. He changes everything when we let Him.
Enjoy these fascinating, thought-provoking articles by Roger Schank about our current educational system:
“Somehow we accept school as a painful experience of no real relevance to our lives and we talk about what we liked when we mean what we disliked least. And we talk about school’s relevance by assuming it provided “the basics” when we really do not know what the basics are.”
Conversations about learning: Part 1: how should school be different?
Conversations about Learning Part 2: real life learning
It’s interesting to think about the challenges each generation faces. Our grandparents probably couldn’t have imagined a world where we have access to virtually every source of information, every buying opportunity and every social conversation in the world. And while this advancement is good in so many ways, like everything else, it has grave pitfalls.
The worst part, to me, of our Internet Age is that these things have access to us in a way that makes it feel impossible to resist. Most of us carry a phone around because it’s convenient. But the trade off to convenience is that we are expected to be available to anyone who needs us, 24 hrs. a day, 7 days a week. (The only way I’ve found to avoid this dilemma is to simply not carry a phone. Believe it or not, one can survive in the 21st century without one unless it is needed for work. Most of the human race has survived for centuries.)
So we’ve created a great irony. For the sake of convenience and/or saving time:
Perhaps even worse, it puts our face-to-face relationships in jeopardy.
The one texting you doesn’t know you’re in a conversation with your husband. But if you don’t answer, you know they’ll feel ignored. And ignoring people is rude. And we don’t want to be rude. So to avoid being rude to our friend who texted, we are rude to our husband by interrupting the conversation we’re having to answer our friend.
For one of the most powerful, eye-opening books about this subject, go and get Simplicity Parenting. It is so, so good.
Even where we use our devices for work–and many people truly depend on them–it allows our clients, employers/employees to have constant access to our personal lives and interferes with our family relationships, as opposed to the old-fashioned 8 hour work day.
And when our children, who have less self-control than we do are given devices–when our whole family is now consumed with looking, playing, texting, shopping, answering–we stand to lose so much more than what we were supposed to be gaining.
And sometimes, more is less. A lot less.
We are no longer able to be “all there” wherever we are. We are scattered, with attentions split, 16-tabs-open-at-a-time people. And ironically, as advancements in technology do buy us more time, we just fill it up with more activities or browsing, or connections. We don’t like to admit it because it might mean drastic change.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]I fear for our children who are losing the gift of solitude, who hardly know such a thing exists (much less why it’s important) because they rarely see it modeled. What becomes of the next generation who has no focus, who are alive but not really living because they’ve been distracted to death?[/inlinetweet]
(I could insert here the studies about what all this does to our brains, but there’s enough to talk about without it.)
Can we use the benefits of technology for the glory of God in our lives? Yes, absolutely! But we need to be extremely aware of how easily it can rob us of the important, simpler things in life.
I may be the meanest mamma in the world because I haven’t bought my kids a smartphone (I’m sure by now “smartphone” is so last month but I don’t know the newest cool thing). But maybe one day they’ll think I’m smart and not so mean after all.
Homeschooling does not a Christian make. I fear too many have put their stock solely in homeschooling and have forgotten key elements of raising a faithful generation of children who truly love the Lord. The GEN2 conference is an important one. Men and women who care deeply about the next generation are gathering to talk about how we carry the torch, how we finish strong, how we keep the vision and love our kids through so many things that would distract them from Jesus Christ.
I will be there with a panel of other women answering questions from the heart of being a homeschooling mother. I hope you can too!
Hurry and register HERE! January 30, 31. Save 10% off using the code: SAVE10
I meant to include this on my post about our daughter’s marriage and forgot. I wrote a song for her, played during the entrance of parents and grandparents. If you know any publishers who would like to buy my song and make it fabulous, send them my way. 😀
Many thanks to Iachod Media for recording, adding beautiful instruments and editing!
FREE
(Just add to cart and the link will be sent to you.)
$4.97
Not long after I started blogging, I wrote a series that became known as “The Ruby Rebel“, extolling the many qualities of the Proverbs 31 woman.
Read the original post here.
A “Ruby Rebel” is essentially a woman who desires to be what Proverbs 31 calls “an excellent wife”, a woman who is “far above rubies” and therefore is in rebellion to the culture’s idea of womanhood.
I’ve always thought it would be glorious to “advertise” our brand of womanhood in a culture that blares its message at every turn. What if we became walking billboards too? At the very least, it might open the doors for opportunities to share Christ or for God’s Word to be presented in a practical way and thus pique someone’s desire to read it. So I designed this t-shirt and my question for you is, would you consider buying something like this? They would come with different snippets from Proverbs 31 on the back. (“Strength and dignity are her clothing.” … “She laughs at the time to come.”…etc.)
I’m interested in your feedback before I decide to have them printed. I’m also open to suggestions about the design.
Motherhood is really, at its core, about perseverance and deliberate, focused endurance.
I don’t mean just the physical kind…more often, it is the emotional and spiritual kind. It requires the kind of tenacity that frankly, few women in our age are willing to develop.
Not the tenacity to simply run a household, though the mechanics of that are a very real part of our job. But the motherhood I’m talking about encompasses a whole world besides; a world where hearts are painstakingly drawn out, attitudes are carefully monitored and molded, and life-lessons that can only be taught through the zeal of a mother are learned.
Quite frankly, we’ve probably all had days we thought, “this would be easier if someone else were doing it.” And someone else might be able to handle the mechanics. Maybe even more efficiently.
But we’re talking about mother-love: that all-encompassing vocation that has been given only to us.
I get tired. I get grouchy and start to look around and only see too many pairs of shoes out of place, dust under the couch, toys left out for the 100th time.
Painstaking.
But I MUST reboot, and remind myself that the mechanics–that is, how I handle the mechanics, are intricately tied to this bigger thing that we do…this growing of souls, and launching of good, sturdy men and women.
I cannot allow myself to be too tired for too long. Grace is given, yes, but then I must draw, not from my own strength, but from that source of never-ending power that comes from the One who has called me to this.
I have to re-think before I speak. The pile of shoes may be bothersome, but they also may be an opportunity to shape my character which will transfer to my children.
The moment of bickering calls me to dig deep into the well of my being and carves out of me a more patient and loving spirit–if I let it. That, too, is simultaneously working in my children’s character.
This short time is fleeting. They will carry a part of me into the rest of their lives. Which part?
Get alone, get quiet, get still, and ask the Lord to bring the vision back, if you are struggling to hold on to it.
This is big. Rise to the occasion on the wings of Him Who is able.
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