October 2012 – Manna For Moms

I Bless You No Troubles

Megan Breedlove October 29, 2012 4 Comments

Usually I’m the one who takes Kenny to school in the mornings (he is temporarily enrolled in public school to work on some of his language issues). Each morning as he hops out of the car, I say something like, “I love you. Have a great day!” or, “I’m proud of you!”

The other day when Kenny got out, before I could say anything, he said, “I’ll make you proud today.”

“Aww, I know you will, Son,” I said.

Recently, however, Kenny has begun saying something different. Each day as he opens the door, gets out, and wrestles his backpack onto his shoulders, he says, “I bless you no troubles!”

After he’d said it a few times, we asked him where he got the idea of saying it. “Nowhere,” Kenny said, smiling. “I just thought it would be a nice thing to say, because I don’t want you to have any troubles after you go home.”

Indeed it is. It’s a beautiful thing for a barely-eight-year-old boy to come up with, all on his own, a blessing he can offer his parents each day. It’s beautiful that he even thought of doing something like this for us at this age.

You know what? I hadn’t thought of offering him a blessing. Sure, I always said something nice to leave him with that warm feeling in his heart right before he went into his school. But blessing him? Hadn’t thought about it.

Good thing God thinks about blessing me, His child, a lot more than I think about blessing my own children.

I’m not saying I don’t do kind, loving things for my children. I do plenty of those, and I’m sure you do too. But thinking of what I do and say in terms of blessing them? More than that, thinking specifically of speaking blessings into their lives? Haven’t really thought about it.

There are two things I want us both to make it a point to think about this week. The first is to speak words of blessing to our children on a regular basis. Before they go to bed would be a great time to bless them. So would before they go to school, when they return home, or when something significant happens in their day. Spontaneous blessings would be meaningful too.

How exactly do we bless our children? There aren’t any certain words we have to say. Blessings don’t have to sound a certain way. They can be something as simple as saying, “May you be blessed with a good friend to play with at recess,” or, “You know what? Today God wants me to bless you by buying you an ice cream cone. Let’s go!”

The second thing for us to think about is this: Let’s see how many of God’s blessings to us we can recognize. I’m not just talking about realizing that our house or apartment comes from Him, or that the clothes we wear come from Him (though they certainly do). I’m talking about realizing it’s a beautiful day outside and thanking God for blessing you with beautiful weather. Or having a conversation with a friend and thanking God for blessing you with a few adult minutes taken out of your chaotic, child-oriented day.

Not only that, but check out all the blessings found in your Bible from God to you, or from human beings to their families. Blessings are powerful things! God has given so many of them to us in His Word, and He continues to give us more each and every day. In fact, He says that He has given us every spiritual blessing—not just “a couple” of spiritual blessings, but every spiritual blessing.

In fact, God has had specific blessings in mind for us since before the foundation of the world. Let’s look for those blessings this week and see how many of them we can recognize. But let’s not forget to bless our children this week too—frequently, lovingly, and purposefully. Let’s do our best to bless their hearts the way God blesses ours.

Ephesians 1:3—Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Close Enough

Megan Breedlove October 22, 2012 0 Comments

I love the way little kids draw people when they are just learning how to draw. Usually they draw a head and two really long legs sticking out from the head all the way to the round-ish feet. Then, of course, they add two arms sticking straight out from the legs, each arm having a few (number varies) stick fingers protruding from the end of the arms (there’s never a hand). Not quite what people actually look like, but adorable nonetheless.

My 4-year-old, Jessica, went through this stage too. Then she got into drawing animals. I remember one early animal she drew for me (she regularly draws pictures and presents them to me as gifts). It was a giraffe. It had a head, a long neck, and a rectangle-ish body. So far, so good. It also had eight legs.

Close enough, right? Absolutely. I hugged Jessica and thanked her for her beautiful picture.

The thought occurred to me the other day that as far as Jessica knew, that picture looked just like a giraffe. It had a head, a neck, a body, and plenty of legs. It was even smiling. What more could a giraffe need? She didn’t recognize any differences between her picture and an actual giraffe.

That level of discernment is fine when you’re four. It’s developmentally normal and morally acceptable. The problem comes when we as moms apply that level of discernment to spiritual things.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Yep, I do that. I go to church regularly, I have a regular devotional time (or at least I try), and I listen to praise music. Got that one covered. Never mind the fact that your prayers consist of a whole lot of talking but very little listening, or that you can’t remember the last time your heart felt moved with passionate love for Jesus.

Love your neighbor as yourself? Got that one too. I volunteer at my child’s school, and I donate my used clothes to Goodwill. Never mind the fact that when your child wants to play with you, you are usually too busy.

When we can’t see the difference between what God intends by His commands and the level of our performance of those commands, we become spiritually blind. We’re like the Pharisees, who tithed a tenth of absolutely everything, even down to their spices, but neglected all the “heart” stuff that Jesus said was more important (Matt. 23:23).

Precious mom, are you deceiving yourself, or perhaps being deceived? If you’re absolutely certain that you see your heart and actions completely clearly, that’s a sure sign that you don’t. But whether you think you see completely clearly; whether you’re not certain whether you do; or whether you’re well aware that you’re being willfully defiant of God’s standards, you need to pray. Ask God to search your heart and reveal to you areas in which you are falling short. Of course, you have to be willing to hear what He has to say.

Don’t merely shrug and consider that eight legs is close enough.

Jeremiah 17:9—The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Grocery Shopping

Megan Breedlove October 15, 2012 0 Comments

In the hustle and bustle of finishing the additions to the manuscript for my second book, as well as throwing Kenny’s 8th birthday party, both of which happened on the same weekend, we got low on groceries. Having focused intently on other things, I hadn’t been paying much attention to the fact that if we wanted some nice meals to eat this week, somebody would have to go to the store.

Fortunately, I love grocery shopping. For me, the best thing about it is the freedom to buy things I want. When I’m in a generous mood, I let the kids help me pick out things to buy (they usually pick out various kinds of snacks as well as those little, white powdered-sugar donuts for breakfast).

I often ask the kids something like, “Can you find the kind of peanut butter we buy?” They love finding our peanut butter on the shelf and putting it into the cart. It’s kind of like a game.

So today, knowing I would have to go to the store, I was thinking about how we do this, and how they enjoy it. And I realized that while I’m pretty good at playing games with them in the grocery store (we even played “Treasure Hunt” once to look for the items on our list), I don’t really teach them why we buy certain brands instead of others, or why we do or don’t buy certain products.

I guess that’s not really a big deal, though at some point they will have to learn to make these decisions. But I sure hope I’m preparing them for life better than I’m preparing them to go grocery shopping.

See, in life, you have to make all kinds of decisions every day, and you usually better have some reason for it other than, “Well, that’s just what we do.” It’s fine to have traditions that your family keeps, as well as your own ways of doing things. But if you never teach your kids to think about why you do or don’t do certain things, they will get out into the world on their own and not know how to make decisions.

Why are we Christians? Why aren’t we Jews, or atheists?

Why do we treat each other kindly? Why can’t we hit someone who takes a toy away from us? (By the way, the answer to that is a lot deeper than “because it might hurt someone”.)

Why do we say no to a certain purchase because we can’t pay cash for it?

Why do we put money into the Salvation Army kettle at Christmastime?

Why do we work hard in school or in the workplace?

Why do we live in a certain neighborhood and not somewhere more or less expensive?

Why do we attend the church we attend? Or why don’t we attend church?

Why do we tip the waitress when we go out to eat?

I want to be teaching my children not only how to act, but why they should act that way. Otherwise, they will grow up, find themselves in a situation I haven’t covered, and they won’t know what to do. Or, equally bad, they might decide that if Mommy never told them why, maybe there really isn’t a good reason, so they can act any way they want the minute Mommy isn’t there to stop them.

In life, I want my children to know which products on the shelves to choose and which to avoid…and why. I want them to know which people to avoid and why—and which not to avoid. I want my children to be able to make wise decisions based on an understanding of the principles our family lives by, not just an understanding of what will make Mommy mad and get them in trouble.

This doesn’t mean that you try to reason with a toddler who doesn’t want to get into a car seat. That toddler doesn’t understand the concept of “car wreck”. You simply have to put him in the seat, whether he likes it or not. But you can still say, “You have to sit in your seat so you can be safe.” Then, later, you can begin to explain what safety is and why it’s important so that when the time comes, your child will understand how to make his own decisions.

Likewise, you also don’t have to explain your every decision. When a child demands, “Why?” and you know they’re not really asking for information but rather complaining, you don’t have to offer them some reason that’s good enough in order for them to obey you. But in most situations, and especially as your children get older, it will benefit them to know what you are thinking.

Precious mom, are you teaching your kids to make good decisions? Ultimately, the most important decision you want them to make is that you want them to choose Jesus, and then you want them to choose His ways for the rest of their lives. Are you helping build good decision-making and thinking skills into their repertoire so they can do that? Will what they’ve learned at home help them make the decisions that only get more complicated as they grow older?

Teaching your children how to act is more than just teaching them what to do. It also involves teaching them why they should do it.

Ezekiel 44:23—They are to teach my people the difference between the holy and the common and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.

The Cage

Megan Breedlove October 8, 2012 0 Comments

It turns out that gardening isn’t as easy as it looks.

Seems like all you should have to do would be to get a pile of dirt, put some seeds in it, cover them up with the dirt, water them occasionally, and voila. Successful garden.

Apparently, there’s more to it than that. You have to have the right kind of seeds, the right kind of soil, and the proper amount of water. You have to plant at the right time of year, too.

Actually, there’s even more to it than that, though we didn’t know it for the first few years of our garden attempts. (When I say “our”, I mean “my husband’s only”. He did all the work. My part was going to be to eat the produce.) Each year, my husband would seemingly do everything right, and each year, critters would eat the produce before it could grow to maturity. My poor husband would come into the house discouraged from looking at his garden and say something like, “Looks like the critters got it again.”

I figured our gardening attempts were doomed. After all, if you take care of the soil, water, and seed aspects, which we (I mean, he) did faithfully, and your garden got eaten, you were just plain out of luck. Or so I thought.

This year, our garden is actually on its way to being pretty successful. Lettuce and carrots are sprouting, and various shoots from whatever my husband planted are poking up out of the raised bed. And this year, we’re confident that critters won’t eat the results. In fact, we’re positive.

How can we be so sure? Because my husband built a portable cage which rests over the garden (it’s a small plot). It can be tilted away from the garden for watering purposes, then easily tilted back into place.

Ingenious, right? Yet so simple. Protect the garden, and it won’t get eaten.

It’s a seemingly obvious principle we don’t always think about, but one that, when properly applied, will afford a much greater possibility for success. And it applies to our spiritual lives, too.

Too often, we see living a Christian life as a matter of “do the right thing, and it’ll work out.” So we read our Bibles, pray occasionally, attend church, and do all the “right” things. Then we wonder why our lives don’t bear fruit.

Often, it’s because we don’t protect ourselves. We forget that being a Christian is not merely a matter of doing, but of being, and the being has to be right in order for the doing to be right. Yet we get it backwards, concentrating on the “doing” and forgetting that both are matters of the heart, and that in order to function as it should, a heart must be protected.

You know, our ribs are amazing things. They are built like a cage (which is why, of course, they are called the “rib cage”) to protect our physical heart. God designed our bodies this way because He knew our heart needed extra protection.

He designed our spiritual heart to need extra protection, too, and He made that protection easily available. The only problem is that we don’t take advantage of it. Sure, we pray, but we pray for our neighbor’s aunt’s doctor’s dog. We don’t pray about the danger crouching right at our own door. We don’t pray for our heart to be protected because we don’t realize how desperately in need of protection we are.

Or we read our Bible, but we read in order to check something off on our to-do list rather than for information on how to guard our heart.

Our enemy Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone he can devour (1 Peter 5:8). Which do you think a hungry lion is more easily able to attack? Prey that is guarded and protected, or prey that is left out in the open, undefended and vulnerable?

Precious mom, are you leaving your heart unprotected? If so, you’re in spiritual danger. And if that’s you, don’t hesitate. Cry out to God right now for His protection. Do you want to have to “try again” at some point in the future because your garden didn’t work out this time?

I don’t. And neither do you. Both of us want to be successful now. And for that to happen, we must protect our heart.

Will you do it?

Proverbs 4:23—Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

3:00 p.m.

Megan Breedlove October 1, 2012 0 Comments

Recently, my husband and I made the difficult decision to temporarily enroll our son Kenny in public school. It was a tough call because we knew God had called us to be a homeschooling family, yet we also knew that Kenny needed the help the public school could provide in working on some speech and social issues.

We prayed and sought God, and God made it clear in various ways that right now, He is expanding our family’s calling to being a public school family as well. So last Tuesday, we enrolled Kenny in our local school.

In processing this decision, I posted about it on Facebook. One particular comment said I would really miss having Kenny home with me all day. “I know it will take some getting used to on both of your parts,” a friend of mine responded, “but just think of the joy at the end of each day.”

Oh, yes, I could imagine the reunion with my precious son. And in that same moment, I realized that this is how God feels about us.

I long for 3:00, when I can pick Kenny up and take him home. God longs for a day and hour sometime in the future (only He knows the exact moment) when His Son will descend to pick us up and take us home to heaven. And if I, being evil, long for my son with that much love, how much more does a perfectly holy and loving God long for His children—us?

Each day I get excited when 2:45 rolls around and it’s time to get ready. And we know that even now, God is getting things ready for the day and hour He chose before the foundation of the world to pick us up. How much more excited is God at picking up all His children and seeing His plan for the ages come to completion?

One of the things I love best about getting Kenny is that I get to see his face. That’s because his face is precious to me. When I look at him, I see so much more than his physical attributes. I see his spirit and his personality. I see my beloved son.

God, too, is waiting to see us face-to-face. Oh, sure, He can see our faces now. But we can’t see His. Yet He, and we, both know that there is coming a time when we will be able to see each other face to face. How excited must God be as He contemplates being able to show His face to His beloved children! And how excited we should be in realizing that for the first time ever in our life, we will be able to look at the face of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer! Our Provider, Comforter, and Savior. Our Strength. Our Almighty God.

Precious mom, I can’t wait for that day. It’s going to be the best day ever when that happens, and then eternity will only get more and more joyful and glorious from then on.

The next time you pick up your child, whether from school, daycare, a friend’s house, or somewhere else, stop just a moment. Stop right there in the busyness of your day. Think about how much joy you feel upon seeing your child’s face. And think how excited God is right now, waiting for the day when He will see your face.

Because as beloved as your child is to you, you are far more beloved to God. As much as you long to see your child, God longs for you even more. “One day, I’ll send my Son for you,” He tells us over and over in the pages of Scripture. “Because I can’t wait to see you.”

1 Corinthians 13:12—Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

I Bless You No Troubles

Close Enough

Grocery Shopping

The Cage

3:00 p.m.

You Missed

Priorities

I Wouldn’t Do That

Little Things

8 Seconds