When Mother's Day Is Challenging

photo by di_the_huntress
I love Mother’s Day. I love the fact that it falls on a Sunday and that we get to celebrate it in our church worship services. Everyone is all hugs and smiles, the moms tend to be more dressed up than usual, and there’s just an air of sweet nostalgia that hangs over everything.

Today our church’s praise team leader read from the book of Samuel, describing from the first chapter Hannah’s anguish in not being able to conceive a child. As her words poured out across the page, her pain was palpable, heart rending and real. She so badly wanted a child that she poured everything she felt out before the Lord.

I felt a tug at my heart, one that triggered a memory that had quieted over the years, but had never ever left my mind. Nineteen years ago I was lying on an exam table in my obstetrician’s office. I was twelve weeks pregnant and the doctor had scheduled an ultrasound to listen for fetal heart tones. I was anticipating the joy of hearing life for the first time within me.

Instead we were met with a deafening silence. We discovered that the child I was carrying had perished within me. I was quickly scheduled for a D&C, but what I felt torn from me could only be answered with tears and a heart that screamed in grief-stricken anguish.

As we celebrate Mother’s Day with chocolates, flowers and special dinners, I’m reminded that not everything in life comes with guarantees. Sometimes, because of unfortunate genetics, we lose a child or give birth to one who will go through life with challenges. Sometimes, because of ill judgment on our part or otherwise, we bring a child into the world we weren’t prepared for.

Sometimes, just because, we’re faced with circumstances beyond our control and we find ourselves crying out to God in our confusion and pain, wondering how we can possibly get through what seems like insurmountable trial ahead of us.

That’s when it helps to realize that we’re not required to do this mothering role by ourselves. We don’t have to be that strong or that resilient or that whatever to come out victorious.

We have a God who knew us before we were born, who knows the very number of hairs on our heads and who cares for us and our circumstances. In fact, He’s always been here and has promised that He will never forsake us. How awesome is that?

After the passage from Samuel was read our church’s praise team sang the song You Are God Alone from Phillips, Craig and Dean. It was the perfect song to perform. I want to share it with you here in a video. If you’re a mom who is struggling with certain challenges, in spite of the fact that everyone around you thinks you should be celebrating this very special day, I pray this song will remind you that you don’t have to go it alone.

Our God is so good. Trust in Him to see you through.

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Verse Memorization Can Be Done

A friend sent this video to me and I think it is just too cute not to share. Beyond that, however, it emphasizes that our children are never too young to learn the Word of God. Give it a look-see.


I'd guess this little girl is about three years old, but I bet her daddy, who I assume is the one filming and offering the occasional coaching, has been working with her for quite some time to get her verses down. Some might argue that this seems a little too over the top, that there's no point to having someone her age memorize something she probably doesn't understand anyway.

I say, Go for it, Dad! There are more advantages to teaching your child to memorize Bible verses than there are disadvantages. The biggest one is the fact that God is being made a big deal in your home so that someday, when your child is old enough to understand a little more, she'll make a decision to make Jesus her Savior, and one day when she really gets it, she makes a commitment to follow and obey.

It's a cute video, but it speaks volumes. You can get your child to memorize Bible verses. Go for it!

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An Opportunity For Prayer

photo by US Geological Survey
This article was originally written in February 2008, after our town suffered not one, but two, serious floods within a four week period. The picture to the left was taken at Legion Park, a beautiful recreational area that sits on the Iroquois River. We weren't living in Watseka then, but would move there within the next few months (not on or near the river, mind you). Catastrophe comes in many forms, but all provide opportunity to demonstrate prayer to your child.

For the second time in a month my children and I found ourselves baling water out of our basement following torrential rains, a large snowmelt and having a ground so saturated that there was nowhere for the water to go. The first time was on January 7th, when I awoke at 4am to two feet of water in our basement and a parade of Christmas decorations floating by. This second time was nowhere near as bad, having caught it as it was happening and being able to keep up with it as it came in, finally getting ahead of it by eleven at night. Our legs and backs ached for days after.

We were fortunate we didn’t fare much worse. Our neighbors to the west, across the Illinois state line, found themselves evacuating their homes once again as the waters of the Iroquois River overran its banks, flooding their streets, homes and businesses. For the second time in a month our church was converted into a Red Cross shelter, providing safety and warmth for those who by now felt nothing but a sense of resignation and overwhelming fatigue.

As my children and I put up our buckets and peeled off our wet boots and socks, I wondered out loud how our neighbors in Watseka were doing. My children shook their heads in wonderment also. No telling, they both said. I recognized this as an opportunity to teach them concern for the welfare of others, and announced, “I want us to pray for them right now.” Wet and tired as we were, we bowed our heads and asked the Lord to look after our neighbors, provide for their needs, and to stay the waters of the Iroquois.

Opportunities to pray with our children present themselves everyday. Sometimes my husband or I will take the lead, sometimes one of the children will step up. That the children feel comfortable enough to pray out loud is due to years of my husband and I setting the example. As a result, the children know that they can stop anyplace, any time, and speak to the God of the universe with whatever is on their heart.

Praying with our children is a tool we as Christian parents have to help them develop and maintain a relationship with their Savior. Whether they’ve made a decision for Christ yet or not, they know He is only a spoken word away. Take advantage of opportunities to pray with your children so they may see how special your relationship is to the Lord, and desire the same for themselves.

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Teaching Your Child To Want More Of God

photo by babasteve

One of the most important tools you can use for bringing your child to a decision for Christ is prayer. Not praying for your child (we’ll talk about that another time), but praying with your child. Praying with your child makes God real and a big deal in your home. It lets him or her know that our God is personal and near to us. It’s part of how we help our child establish a relationship as opposed to just knowledge of the Lord. As that relationship grows, your child will become more inclined to making a decision for Christ’s salvation.

Saying grace before meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and praying at bedtime is wonderful, but don’t relegate God to a time slot. Since He’s the Creator of time we have to assume He’s bigger than it. What I’m talking about here is creating an ongoing dialogue in the same way you want your child to come to you in conversation.

We’ll look at how to integrate prayer into your child’s daily life, how to answer when your child says, “But I don’t hear God,” defining what I call prayer speak, and how to overcome the fear that many of us have, that of praying out loud.

Teaching your child how to speak to his God is an awesome way of sharing intimacy with him, and it seems very few parents get to really experience that level of closeness with their child. That same level of closeness to the Lord is what you will be passing on. That which we are close to, we want more of. Teach your child the intimacy of prayer. Then watch him desire to want more of God.

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Our Approachable God

photo by Dave_F almost retired

Our morning family devotions have centered around using a William Barclay commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (from the Daily Study Bible Series). Barclay's commentary has added rich insight and extensive knowledge to our readings, using the occasional story analogy to even more highlight God's truths. Here's one we read just Friday that I want to share with you. After reading it, my children and I sighed with deep satisfaction at knowing we have this kind of relationship with our Lord. I think it's a wonderful precursor for our Easter celebration.

If we believe that God is Father, it settles our relationship to God. It is not that it removes the might, majesty and power of God. It is not that it makes God any the less God; but it makes that might, and majesty, and power, approachable for us.

There is an old Roman story which tells how a Roman Emperor was enjoying a triumph. He had the privilege, which Rome gave to her great victors, of marching his troops through the streets of Rome, with all his captured trophies and his prisoners in his train. So the Emperor was on the march with his troops. The streets were lined with cheering people. The tall legionaries lined the streets' edges to keep the people in their places. At one point on thetriumphal route there was a little platform where the Empress and her family were sitting to watch the Emperor go by in all the pride of his triumph. On the platform with his mother there was the Emperor's youngest son, a little boy. As the Emperor came near the little boy jumped off the platform, burrowed through the crowd, tried to dodge between the legs of a legionary, and to run out on to the road to meet his father's chariot. The legionary stooped down and stopped him. He swung him up in his arms: "You can't do that, boy," he said. "Don't you know who that is in the chariot? That's the Emperor. You can't run out to his chariot." And the little lad laughed down. "He may be your Emperor," he said, "but he's my father." That is exactly the way the Christian feels towards God. The might, and the majesty, and the power are the might, and the majesty, and the power of one whom Jesus taught us to call Our Father.

-excerpted from The Daily Study Bible Series, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 1 (Chapters 1 to 10), Revised Edition, translated with an introduction and interpretation by William Barclay, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1975.

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