Sunday Serenity – Reviewing “Give Them Grace”

Hope your Sunday is going well and that your are feeling refreshed!  I took a little nap on the couch after church and lasagna (which was from the freezer for when baby comes – but there were four casseroles, enough for one of those “baby is coming soon so I can’t bear to be on my feet making lunch right now” kind of days 🙂  It still amazes me when I think about it that Meriwether, John, and I were all able to nap while four children played quietly in the other room and Greer napped upstairs.  So thankful for the blessing of my sweet children!! Greer did one better by coming out of her room after her nap, taking off her diaper and pants (with a little help from Gabriel), pulling up the little ducky pottie, and proceeding to deposit her #2 into it, all while I lie on the couch cheering her on.  Good job baby!! I think I mentioned that she’s been in a bed that she can get out of by herself lately so she can get us up once she’s awake so we’ll take her pottie.  Only one poopie diaper in the two weeks since we started that, so I would say it is working!!  Now we’ve all had our dessert from lunch – cheesecake – as our 6pm dinner, and we’re settling in for the evening.  I love how much relaxing goes on on a Sunday at our house!  Normally we would be at our evening church service, but since about 7 months along it has been too much for me to go back out in the evenings on a Sunday and I was ending up exhausted on Mondays.  So this is working for us right now 🙂

On to the book — it is called Give Them Grace and was written by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson.  I haven’t finished it, and, unlike the last book, it is quite long and very “dense” with good things.  So I am just going to review about two chapters at a time for you.  It definitely is addressed to Christian parents, and does not seem to hold any other parenting advice aside from that view, although I haven’t made it to the “application” part of the book yet, so perhaps there is stuff in it later that would be more universally applicable.  There are only ten chapters altogether, but each one is pretty deep and takes a while to really digest 🙂

Here’s a picture from Amazon:

In the introduction alone I underlined quite a few quotes 🙂  The point of the book is about raising children from a distinctly Christian perspective which relies on the grace of God for our children’s behavior and salvation rather than from a moralistic perspective in which we use the Bible as a set of rules for them to follow without showing them the grace that saved us.  On the back cover it says, “Every way we try to make our kids ‘good’ is simply an extension of Old Testament Law – a set of standards that is not only unable to save our children, but also powerless to change them…We must tell our kids of the grace-giving God who freely adopts rebels and transforms them into loving sons and daughters.”  The author Elyse is the mother of co-author Jessica, and she freely shares how she raised her children in just such a moralistic manner, rarely speaking to them of grace, helping those of us who may have fallen into the same trap at times to see where we might improve our own parenting.  Here is a favorite quote of mine in the introduction, very long as most of the passages will be: “When we change the story of the Bible from the gospel of grace to a book of moralistic teachings like Aesop’s fable, all sorts of things go wrong…Good manners have been elevated to the level of Christian righteousness.  Parents discipline their kids until they evidence a prescribed form of contrition, and others work hard at keeping their children form the wickedness in the world, assuming that the wickedness within their children has been handled because they rayed a prayer one time at Bible club.  If our ‘faith commitments’ haven’t taken root in our children, could it be because they have not consistently heard them?  Instead of the gospel of grace, we’ve given them daily baths in a ‘sea of narcissistic moralism,’ and they respond to law the same way we do: they run for the closest exit as soon as they can.”

Even in the introduction – and all through the 3 chapters I’ve read so far – there are several instances in which they share a sample “conversation” about how to handle a situation with a child in a new way, which is always this looonnnnnggg conversation with the child about how they could have handled being angry at the sibling, or how they could have shared better, or what have you.  That would be a complaint I have about the book – sure, the example of some helpful words is nice, but as with many other parenting books I’ve read, they make it sound like you have all this one-on-one time available to spend thirty minutes discussing the issue with a child whenever he sins.  I think there is a place and a time in which you will find that you do have the ability to thoroughly cover a topic with your child, but in reality, these long, drawn-out conversations about the issue and what the Bible says about it etc, etc, are few and far between and certainly cannot occur whenever the child is misbehaving.  Maybe if I just had two or three children I would not feel like this is so annoying, but seriously, I find this all the time in the books I read (I specifically remember enjoying Don’t Make me Count to Three but constantly rolling my eyes at her super-involved discussions with the three year old about her shortcomings.) and there doesn’t seem to be the recognition that a lot of people who will be reading the book have a bit more going on since they probably have many children and are quite-likely homeschooling, so sometimes an abridged version is helpful 🙂  I know that the co-author Jessica had three children at the time of the writing and was homeschooling, but I’m pretty sure this means a baby, a toddler, and a 5-yr old learning her letters and not what is going on as you add to the brood and schooling demands increase.  Just my personal issue I know 🙂

The first part of the book, “Foundations of Grace,” has four chapters, so I will review it over two Sundays, Lord willing 🙂 The first chapter is called “From Sanai to Calvary” and is mostly about God’s law, and some different forms of obedience which we strive to instill in our children: “Initial Obedience” (which encompasses some concepts that will ultimately protect our children and which will help them “function within the family and society.” – Things like obeying the simple commands of “No,” “Stop,” “Come here,” “Put that down,” etc.); “Social Obedience” (basically learning to follow the “social conventions” (i.e. manners) of a particular culture – like saying, “Please” and “Thank you,” and refraining from burping in public – in America – or burping at the table to show satisfaction in some other countries); “Civic Obedience” (learning to be “law-abiding citizens” – something all responsible parents strive to teach their children like not beating others up, not stealing, and the like); and “Religious Obedience” (things that we teach children about living a life of faith, within the context of a family of faith, before they come to faith themselves such as: thanking God for our food, giving an offering in church, standing or sitting quietly at certain times during worship – basically outward conformity to religious exercises which are not a proof of “regeneration” – more on this in a minute.)

I didn’t underline much in this chapter – I think I was reading it one night at the ER with Greer after she had fallen down the attic stairs and wouldn’t stop crying to go to sleep that night, so I probably didn’t have a pen handy – but am looking back at it to see what struck me.  In this section about “religious obedience” the authors are careful to say that you shouldn’t be teaching your children that they’re being “good” if they are pretending to pray and that they are pleasing God with this behavior – rather, that we are thankful when they are obedient in this way because it means that God is helping our child learn to obey and that some day they will want to talk to God, but for now we are recognizing that they overcame a lot of temptation in order to obey our request.  Similarly, when they can’t observe our rules about worshipping together, we shouldn’t be telling them that are being “bad” but should explain to them how their disobedience is disruptive to others who are trying to pray, and that they have become a distraction to them and will be disciplined if it continues.

Elyse says, “There is a marked difference between this kind of gracious parenting and the moralistic parenting I did when I was raising my children.  I would alternately tell them that they were good when they sat quietly or tell them that they had to close their eyes and pray or be disciplined when they were bad.  My parenting had very little to do with the gospel.  I assumed my children had regenerate hearts  because they had prayed a prayer at some point and because I required religious obedience from them.  This resulted in kids who were alternately hypocritical and rebellious.  It taught them how to feign prayer, without pressing them to long for the Savior who loved hypocrites and rebels.  Religious obedience is probably the most difficult and dangerous form of obedience simply because it is so easily confused with conformity to God’s law.  It’s the place where most Christian families go terribly wrong.  Yes, we are commanded to teach the Word, prayer, and worship to our children, but their acquiescence to these things won’t save them.  Only the righteous life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ saves them.”

So to wrap up this first chapter, the authors go on to discuss something different for our children to obey – “God’s Beautiful, Holy, Good – and Crushing – Law.”  Paul talked about God’s law by saying (Romans 7:12), although it was “holy, righteous, and good,” it could never bring sinners to life because “no one could obey it.  He confessed that all his obedience (and it was extensive) had no more value than a pile of manure. (Philippians 3:8)”  They go on to quote the many places where Paul discusses this in the New Testament.  The book goes on to say, “These words about God’s law and our condition of lawlessness should make us stop and seriously question how we use the law in our own lives and in the lives of our children.  When we seek to have right standing (justification) before a holy  God through compliance to it, we are severed, cut off, separated from the grace and righteousness provided by Jesus Christ.  We are on our own…When we teach our children to do the same thing, we are drowning them in a ‘ministry of death.'”

One last thing from the chapter – “Even though our children cannot and will not obey God’s law, we need to teach it to them again and again.  And when they tell us that they can’t love God or others in this way, we are not to argue with them.  We are to agree with them and tell them of their need for a Savior.”  Anyway, you can see my point that the book has a lot of things to digest and that it says some things most of us Christian parents need to hear.  Now that I have gotten this far along, I think I will end this review with just the first chapter for tonight.  Hope this was helpful to you if this was a book you thought you might like to read but hadn’t had time for yet – or is one you might be interested in purchasing.  All for now, and we’ll back to the regular program tomorrow with some musical musings, a run, and possibly a recipe 🙂

 

Sunday Serenity – a Book Review for You!

I was not planning on posting today, but I just finished up one of my “Sunday books” and thought I would share my thoughts on it 🙂  I haven’t found a lot of time lately to read on Sundays since getting the family out the door and going to church and getting food for the family tires me out rather quickly so that I end up napping, but today I was able to read during lunch, since it was pizza on the couch, before my rest.  I had been perusing the book for a while and finally just read to the end because it is rather short.

It is called Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches, and was written by Rachel Jankovic.  It’s the sort of book that is supposed to be encouraging but can be a bit of a bummer in places because it can make you feel like you’re not doing enough.  I don’t usually give in to that feeling since I know I’m doing plenty of parenting over here, and I also like to read things with a little grace knowing that the author doesn’t carry things out in the way she recommends all the time either, and these are just the good tidbits of advice she has that she also probably needs to remind herself to follow at times.  So in some places this could be a brutally honest review about how I feel about the book, and in others could be trying to sell the book, so bear with me  —  or don’t, if this isn’t the type of book you’d even consider reading 🙂

I took this picture from Amazon, with the thought that the author wouldn’t mind the publicity 🙂

A little background – what makes this a “Sunday book” for me is that it is written from a Conservative Christian perspective and backs up its claims with Scripture for me to study and with which to encourage me.  So it’s a “Christian” book.  If this is not your particular bent, I will say that there is some helpful information that non-Christians could glean from it; however, there may be too much “Christianese” in it for your taste.  I don’t think she was heavy-handed in that realm, but I may just not notice that sort of thing enough anymore.  I’m going to point out some of the better ideas she had, though, and a few of the things that annoyed me, so then you can judge whether it might be something you would like, as based on my own humble opinions 🙂

First off, she opens the book by letting you know where she’s coming from, and for me this is important.  I know I shouldn’t base what I think about someone’s advice on how many children they have, how old they are, or whether or not their children are close together in age.  I know this.  When I had only one and had learned a few good things and was only 28, I wouldn’t have wanted someone to discount everything I said on the basis that “She doesn’t know anything yet – she only has one.”  I am sure some of you have been there — feeling belittled because you don’t have a ton of experience, but hey, even having one child is difficult and sanctifies you in some ways and brings you knowledge you didn’t have before.  We’re always learning about how to parent, from the first child to the last.  That being said, though, I do sometimes find myself rolling my eyes whilst reading a parenting book written by a parent of only two children, three years apart, telling me how to totally stop what I’m doing and have this looooooong conversation with the child who has just misbehaved, in order to get to the root of the problem and address the heart, etc, etc, etc.  I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater – I love to get ideas from any good parenting book to help me along in my journey – yet, I do know that some of the things this lady says really don’t apply to a family with 5 children all about 20 months apart.  I can’t always dig to the heart of every issue or the house will fall down around my ears, you know what I mean??  So hearing about this author’s background was helpful to me because it did give her a smidge more credibility in my biased mind, I am sorry to say.  But hey, which of us is truly objective all the time?  When she wrote the book I calculate that she had been married about 7 years and had 5 children — a 5 year old girl, a 4 year old girl, a set of 2-year old twins (a girl and a boy), and a 4 or 5 month old baby girl.  I think I have that right, but maybe the ages are a little off.  Either way, you can see she is really writing from way down deep in the trenches.

There are twenty short chapters, all about 2-4 pages, with succinct points and helpful anecdotes, some of which are a bit comical, but most of which are a little convicting – as in, you can see yourself in them and how you maybe should have handled a similar situation in a better, calmer way.  Here’s a good line from chapter two to show you what I mean: “You can’t be greedy with your time and expect them to share their toys.”  Ouch.  “You cannot resist your opportunities to be corrected by God and expect them to receive correction from you.”  So there you go – a few hard things to get you started….

In chapter four she makes a really good point that applies to our children and to us.  It’s about taking note of their progress — which runners should appreciate.  You may feel like this is really hard, and you’re worn out from all the child training and tantrums they throw and beating your head against a wall with trying to get them to understand why they should be kind to one another and all the messes they continually make — but you are making progress as a parent.  “You might feel just as tired,” she says, “but you are now running ten miles instead of two blocks.  Take a moment to remember what used to annoy you when you were single…do you see how totally unchallenging that looks now?”  The same applies to our children — maybe one of them used to have a problem with leaving a huge mess of the toothpaste and you were constantly finding it on a shoe or a piece of clothing when you least expected it, but now that same child has passed that test and instead has trouble with trying not to fight with her younger siblings over shared toys.  You may not have noticed that she is past that earlier phase and is doing such a great job with the toothpaste (and is cleaning up after herself in the bathroom, and in her bedroom, and in the place where she does schoolwork and has just generally become more tidy) because some younger child is now annoying you with the toothpaste, and this older child has moved on to new challenges.  I think she makes a great point here that I hadn’t thought of before — “As a parent it is very easy to demean their progress by demeaning the struggle.  Instead of praising them and pointing to their progress to encourage them, we ignore it….sometimes this is because the struggle just seemed so dumb in the first place….so when they quit doing it, we don’t recognize they’ve gained the victory over a very real struggle with temptation.  Oftentimes we don’t even notice that they aren’t doing it, because something else has replaced it, and we are now too busy nagging them about [that]”.  Great point.  I think I definitely have fallen into this trap.

There’s a chapter applying specifically to little girls and the fact that their emotions can often get the best of them – with some helpful advice for talking them through the process of reigning in their emotions.  “A well-controlled passionate personality is a powerful thing.  That is what dangerous women are made of.  But a passionate personality that is unbridled can cause a world of damage.”  Her point is to help your daughters along to the point of being able to have more self-control, not to squash their passion.

In chapter seven about “Thanksters and Cranksters,” I did find myself rolling my eyes a little.  She says how the obvious antidote for children being fussy is getting them to be thankful instead.   And that when our children are fussing in the back of the car and we’re frustrated about it, that we need to get our own hearts right (and switch to an attitude of gratefulness) before we try to get them to stop arguing with each other and complaining, etc.  Be thankful for the headache, “thank Him for the scuffle that your children are currently having over who unbuckled whom and why.”  Um, no thank you.  You can tell me over and over to thank God in every circumstance, and it’s still going to be impractical to apply to my real life as a technique for making my heart feel less grumpy and more grateful.  I see her point, and she says to practice it by asking them in other situations how an unthankful person would respond to something and doing some role-playing with the children, to practice being thankful by thanking God for the trees, and the birds, and the rain, etc, etc, etc. I am sure I do this sometimes with the children when they are complaining – about the rain (and we’ll talk about how things grow) or about the long drive (and we’ll talk about how thankful we can be that we have a working vehicle and the money to buy fuel).  But when they’re arguing and fighting and fussing about things in the backseat with each other, I don’t attribute it to unthankfulness – I consider it to be two siblings sinning against each other and in need of correction.  I wouldn’t want to say, “You should be thankful you even have a brother and that he just hit you, because you could be an only child.”  Instead, we’d deal with the hitting, and then the reaction to the hitting, and being thankful or cranky have nothing to do with it.  And just because I am a bit frustrated that they’re fighting and am working on how to sort it out with them does not mean that I need to stop and be thankful that I have two healthy children who are capable of hitting each other in order to correct my attitude.  So anyway, that may be a bit of a harsh take on that chapter, but I just didn’t agree with her points there.

In chapter eight she talks about language, and how calling things by certain names can really start to determine how we feel about those things.  How she had a problem after she had had the twins (keep in mind this meant she had the twins in diapers as newborns, a 2 year old in diapers, and a 3 year old) of telling herself she felt “overwhelmed” and how she just had to bar that from her vocabulary – even just in her mind – because it made her feel more overwhelmed to talk about it.  Well, really, I think she had a right to feel overwhelmed and to say it.  I feel overwhelmed at times, and my 5 are further apart than hers – the oldest turning 7 right before the 5th was born.  Now that I’m about to have 6, the oldest is 9, and the second youngest will be two a month later.  So am I a wimp for letting myself feel “whelmed” as we like to say in our house? I don’t think so. (But hey, maybe that’s just me wanting to be wimpy and wallow in my wimpiness.)  She does give a really good recommendation for a helpful way to get through such overwhelming times — look at the clock.  Tell yourself to “give it 20 minutes” and then put your head down and dig in to the work.  In 20 minutes the storm will have passed (probably) and you can have that diaper blow-out cleaned up with the new outfit on and the old one soaking, the twins nursed, and the broken glass and spilled milk cleaned up and the toddler down for a nap, or some other such combination of impossible tasks when you’ve just come in the door from doing errands with them all morning and all he** is breaking loose.  Yes, I agree, probably you can do it, and then -whew- you can sit down and rest and catch your breath.  But you know what, it’s still okay to feel overwhelmed at such a time.  You shouldn’t feel guilty if you do.  You’re a mom, and you need to make the situation safe and hygienic, so sometimes you have to push through it even when you do feel overwhelmed.  And I think we all know that.  But it still doesn’t make the feeling of the “whelming flood” insignificant or wrong.  There’s a hymn that says, “His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood.  When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.”  What I’m meaning to say here is that there are times in which we are overwhelmed and need to rely on some power outside of ourselves to push through.  Just because our “flood” may seem full of small tedious things rather than some martyr out in a far-off country or soldier in the field does not make the water any less capable of making us feel like we’re drowning.  I feel like when the author says, “no self-pity, no tears, no getting worked into a dither,” she is really telling someone who occasionally does have a few tears of frustration that she is just out of control and overreacting.  I think this is a bit like telling someone with depression to “get over it.”  I personally have never struggled with depression so I don’t feel like I can really speak wisely to the issue, and here is someone who HAS dealt with feeling overwhelmed (the author) and has found some coping mechanisms, so in a way, she is qualified to speak to the issue.  But that doesn’t mean that the issue can always be handled in that way or needs to be discounted as something to just “get over” basically.  In that vein, though, feeling overwhelmed constantly by the demands of motherhood is something that can seriously overtake you, and you do need to learn how to deal with it.  In a lot of cases, though, even if you THINK you can’t afford it, or you don’t want to admit you need it, the answer might be to ask for help.  REACH OUT in your time of need, admit your weaknesses, and ask for free help from friends and family, or hire the occasional – like $50 a week – help that might just get you through.  Or maybe you have parents who live really far away but who wish they could be there to help you – maybe they could help finance a little assistance for you?  I don’t know the answer for you personally, but I know that if you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s probably legitimate, and it’s okay.

Oooh, I really liked chapter nine “To the Fifth Power.”  It’s about how we can tend to bunch our kids into this one big frustrating situation (think: trying to get everyone out the door on time to be somewhere, properly dressed and fed) and stop seeing them as individuals.  We can end up taking our frustration with a “situation” out on one child when that one comes into our sites having still not found his other shoe because he got distracted in the living room by a toy.  Then we snap at him because the whole situation is just spiraling out of our control, and a lot of it is really our own fault.  I can think back on countless Sundays when I have raised my voice at one child or another for not being able to find her sweater, and at a different one for not eating her breakfast quickly enough, when really I should have made sure the night before that their sweaters were ready and that all their shoes were together.  Last night I finally did just that – I had each of them get their own sweaters and shoes staged by the door, so it was not more work for me, and we got out the door a bit quicker today, without any fussing from me 🙂  I totally understand this principle, though, of the exponential growth of problems as more children are added — just how sometimes having them all come at you en masse can make it seem like there are ten children instead of five — and that we can’t blame THEM for this problem.  We’re the ones who had all the children, and we need to try to remember to treat them as individuals who deserve our respect.

The next chapter continues in this vein and is called “Know your sheep.”  It’s sad but true when she says, “A lot of children from big families discover very early on that their parents simply do not have time for their problems.  So they find ways to take care of themselves, usually through adapting to loneliness.”  And this one: “The fact that your children have learned to go with the household flow and do their chores does not in any way offset the fact that they spend all their available free time sulking in their room.  Christian childrearing is a pastoral pursuit, not an organizational challenge.”  Here is her take on it, and something to really take to heart if you have several children: “Be a pastor to your children.  Study them.  Seek them out.  Sacrifice the thing you were doing to work through minor emotional issues.”  There was a point in the chapter where I just had to say, “no way,” though.  She talks about how much they love being involved in the kitchen.  Check this out.  “It turns out that one child in a Baby Bjorn and four more [five and under] in the kitchen on chairs trying to help knead the bread can be a little overstimulating. But the thing that I have had to learn is that it is my job to figure out how to make this work….when there is a whole chorus of voices and a whole army of chairs moving into the kitchen, bringing out the enthusiastic welcome is a lot harder.  I have to adapt.  It is not their problem.  Individually they are being precious and curious and excited.”  You know what?  Just because I have five children and make homemade bread doesn’t mean I need to include them in the process every time or all together.  I can be discerning about the time I choose to make the bread and about whether I choose to include one or several of them, etc.  Perhaps the author really doesn’t mind the picture she painted, but I can tell you I would PULL OUT MY HAIR if that little scene repeated itself in my house.  I know I would.  Call me insensitive or impatient or 36 years old (I think the author’s younger than me), but I like to involve my children when it is a bit more convenient rather than at any time they think they want to jump in.  Sometimes they need to hear a patient, “No,” from me and don’t always need to be constantly on my coattails.  She does say that there are times she’ll tell her children that it’s not a good time for helpers, but that example she gives of all of them in the kitchen while she’s kneading bread, well, that would be one of those times in my book 🙂

Okay, two more quick points although I’ve only covered about half the book.  My “sitting on the couch” Sunday time is about finished, and I need to put in some “feeding the family” time.  There’s a chapter called “Me Time,” in which she agrees we all need some of this.  But she also talks a lot more about sacrificing yourself for raising your children than I would tend to do were I writing this book.  She talks about how our body is being spent and undone in the service of another person (our children) and that we need to not buy in to the propaganda saying we need to keep our bodies perfect like they’re treasures.  In fact, they are tools, and they will be well-used by the time we die.  In a sense I agree with this, but I think overall that this chapter could really turn someone off and be seen as just being over-the-top.  I can’t really put how I feel about this chapter in to words, it would seem, but it just gives me sort of a bad taste in my mouth.  Obviously, having had five children already and being a runner, I constantly cycle up and down in my weight for the sake of having my babies.  And this can be frustrating at times since I can often feel down on myself for the way I look.  But for some reason I still don’t see this as spending my body in the service of my children.  I think when you start to look at it that way you might tend to really “let yourself go” over the years as you raise your children – sacrificing your own health and fitness in order to have them at every event and be a “supermom” with a perfect house, etc.  She does mention that, as a tool, we need to maintain our bodies well for service, i.e. we shouldn’t just schlep around in sweats all the time after we have a baby, and that we should endeavor to regain our bodies in order to be better moms and people, etc.  But when she says, “Carry the extra weight joyfully until you can lose it joyfully.  Carry the scars joyfully as you carry the fruit of them,” I am just a little skeptical.  I think this lady must be a bit more of a “glass half full” person than me because I tend not to bear things quite as joyfully as her.  I think of this along the same lines as being thankful for a headache.  These are just not things that I think the Scripture is saying when it says to be thankful in all things or be always rejoicing.  There are things that result from hardships and ways that we grow through them that are, indeed, things to be thankful for.  And in that way I think we can be thankful for the hardship.  But I am human, and actually feeling “joyful” about something with which I am dissatisfied is just not easy for me, and really, is not what I think is being said in those verses.  I will be joyful always – but I will look for the reasons why I am joyful and not look around at things that are not awesome and then try to rejoice about them.  Am I making sense?

Last point now, is about chapter sixteen “Grabby hands and grabby hearts.”  I can summarize what I liked about this chapter without referencing the book directly because I’ve already been implementing it some today.  It refers to when your children are arguing over a toy – who had it first, whose toy it really is, who took it, etc – how you really need to get to the heart of it simply by realizing that the fellowship that used to exist between them has now been broken and needs to be healed, while, in the process, figuring out what to do with the toy.  She asks her children if the toy or the sibling is more important to them, and they come to see that they are putting the importance of a toy before the blessing of having a sibling.  They are putting their Polly Pockets before their sister.  Which one should matter more to them?  It becomes obvious, even to a 3 year old, which thing should be more important.  There’s a little dialogue, too, that helps give you some good ideas for dealing with such situations.

Okay that was a REALLY long blog post today – but I hope you found it helpful if raising kids is something which with you struggle 🙂 I mean, even running at 36 weeks pregnant is easier than figuring out why my 4 year old is sad sometimes!! 🙂

Jonah: Not just a Fish Tale.

Hope you are having a nice, relaxing Sunday!  We just returned from church and ate some pizzas from the freezer and are all snuggled up on our couches for some family quiet time.  We reflected on the way home about the sermon on Jonah which made we want to mention a few things about it here as well 🙂

Our pastor has been preaching through Jonah for about the last 2 months – yes, it is only 4 chapters – shedding new light on it for me personally and I think for the rest of the family as well.  He mentioned early on how there is only one verse that really talks about the “big fish,” yet, we often come through our childhoods (whether or not we ever attend a church) with the general impression that the story of Jonah is mostly about Jonah and the Whale.  Most children will remember only the whale mobile they made, or the paper plate whale, the finger puppet whale, or maybe even the ship tossing in the ocean during a storm if they did some sort of craft with that.  If the child does go to church and reads about Jonah again  when a bit older, the most that is usually noticed is that Jonah disobeyed God at first and then obeyed after God saved him from the “belly of the whale.”

I won’t go into the points he’s made in past weeks, although they were very helpful, especially because I don’t remember them well enough to do them justice.  But today, he was talking about the last few verses — about Jonah and his anger versus God and His inestimable grace.

Jonah was very angry it says that the people of Nineveh had repented and now were being shown grace by God.  The pastor compared this to most of us and how selfish we can often be – not being happy for other people when they receive blessings.  He mentioned how Christians can sometimes feel “put out” when people are converted on their deathbeds because – here is someone who has been indulging in whatever lifestyle he chose, and now he gets his free ticket to heaven; whereas, here am I, daily struggling to say no to sin, giving my time and money and resources to God’s church, and this guy who repents at the last minute gets the same thing I do??  Is this at all how we should feel or behave? Of course the answer is no, but we as humans are still selfish, and often envious, when we think others have gotten a “better deal” than ourselves.  In contrast, we should be thrilled in general and, specifically, we should rejoice for and with that person for the promise of heaven which is now theirs.  This is the struggle shown so clearly in Jonah – here he had wasted his time preaching to the people of Nineveh forever and they had ignored him (maybe treated him poorly) and now God was going to accept their repentance and extend them grace rather than destroying their city??  He was selfishly angry, and God calls him out for it.

Jonah was displeased with the salvation of Nineveh and cries out to God – explaining why he ran away in the first place (rather than obeying God and going back to Nineveh to prophesy to them) saying, “for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah 4:2)  See, Jonah knew that God might withhold his anger, and Jonah hated those Ninevites!  In his eyes they didn’t deserve to live, so he didn’t want to give them that one last chance to repent.  The pastor brought up the story of the man in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred a total of 77 people, apparently with great joy.  I mean, who would want to be the one to go to THAT guy in his prison cell, and to have to spend time with him day after day as he continues unrepentant (he apparently witnesses the testimony of survivors with no trace of emotion and was emitting shouts of joy during the massacre at a youth camp), telling him to turn away from his sin and to believe on Jesus for salvation from sin and eternal life?  What if you were a family member of one of the victims? You certainly would not want to go in there and preach to him of the love and forgiveness of God!  And yet, this is what Jonah was called to do essentially, and what Christians throughout time have been commanded to do.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, so we ALL need to hear this message, and none of us “deserve” to hear it any more than another.

The story in Jonah continues – in which God causes a tree to grow to give Jonah shade.  Then He causes a worm to eat it so the plant will die, and Jonah again is at his wits’ end – this time out of pity for the plant, the Bible says – to the point of saying that it would be better if he could just die.  God points out his hypocrisy in saying, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.  And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons” – basically you care more about the survival of this plant than you do about 120,000 human souls?? So Jonah’s anger was  towards the compassion God showed to people he thought unworthy, and because of the apparent “lack” of compassion God showed to this “innocent” plant.  The ridiculousness of the comparison shows the reader how out of place Jonah’s anger was, telling each of us in the same way that we are not to begrudge others of the grace of God.  We can see Jonah’s feelings all around us still, though, in people who appear to care more about animals and trees than they do about other human beings.  We can also see it in ourselves when we don’t feel happy for the blessings other people receive, especially when we think we are more worthy of said blessings than they are.  One of the points here in Jonah may well be to tell us that, even if there are people we don’t like or don’t think deserve our love or God’s grace or whatever, those people are still infinitely more important to God (and should be to us) than the most majestic plant or animal on earth.  They are human beings, made in God’s image, and if God commands us to tell them about His love, then we should, because all of us are literally in the same “boat,” doomed to be swallowed by a great fish if not for the intervening power of God’s grace in our lives.

Sunday Serenity

I looked up serenity to make sure that it would properly fit the bill for my aim of posting on Sundays.  “calmness, tranquility, peace.”  That sounds about right.  For us, Sunday is The Lord’s Day, a Sabbath for rest and worship.  We spend our days normally going to church, having fellowship with others, and resting, usually closing the day back at church.  So on The Lord’s Day, if I post at all, it will be as an aside to what I’m doing that day – something gleaned from the sermon, or from our fellowship, or from my rest time in the Lord at home.

Today is a bit unusual since my husband and I will be driving back from Huddersfield all day – so I will just reflect in the car on the way and tonight will post my deep thoughts from a full day on the highway….a day spent thinking and talking with my husband in a car by ourselves for 3-4 hours is always a nice gift, and it usually produces copious amounts of food for thought 🙂

Well, we have arrived in London safely with all the children and our friend Meriwether.  Not too much to report on the journey from the Huddersfield hotel to our home, but we had a bit of excitement getting to the London flat.  We had a one hour turnaround time at home while I finished packing and baby finished napping.  Then we drove a little more than an hour to a tube station outside of London so we could take the London Underground in to the flat that we are borrowing from our friend.  When we arrived at the train, we went the wrong direction on it first and then had to get off at the next stop and cross over the tracks going up stairs and then back down to get on the correct train – which pulled in to the station just after we disembarked our first train. We raced up and over, my husband carrying the stroller with the baby in it (and random things hanging off it, and his backpack on), Meriwether dragging her small wheeled bag and Claire along, and me running ahead of the other 3 with two bags to make sure they didn’t get to the train first.  I made it just as the doors were closing and was able to hold the doors for everyone else, and we were on our way.

We rode the train a ways and then got off at Baker Street (home of Sherlock Holmes?) to switch to another line – and that train arrived just as we were walking up to it, so that was nice 🙂  Just a few stops on that, and then we had to navigate over to the flat a few blocks away, open the lock-box, and viola!  Perfect place with a kitchen, living room, and bedroom, and lots of random places to sleep 🙂  We rested up a bit and then walked down to a nearby Spanish restaurant where we had paella and sangria, my two favorite Spanish exports 🙂

Yes, we almost licked the paella pan clean 🙂  Tomorrow we are off to tour the city with the children, and then Meriwether and I will split off to go to a few famous stores and more.  Trip report to follow on Tuesday 🙂 And tomorrow night I’ll tell you about the concert we went to last night and the show Meriwether and I are going to tomorrow night!! Lots of musical memories being made about which to blog…

For now I will leave you with a few thoughts from Proverbs:

Proverbs 3:4,5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”