Manna For Moms

Devotions for Moms Like You!

Megan Breedlove

I Bless You No Troubles

Megan Breedlove 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

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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.

Jessica's Eight-Legged Giraffe

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

Grocery Shopping

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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

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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.

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Kenny is Ready for SchoolRecently, 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.

Macaroni Soup

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I love my crock pot. I think it’s neat how you can throw a few ingredients in there, turn the pot on, and come back later to find a nice, homemade dinner all ready for you. So yesterday morning, before church, I assembled the ingredients for a new macaroni-and-Velveeta cheese dish, doubled the recipe, and put them all into the crock pot. I pushed “low” and prepared to collect all the brownie points I knew my kids would send my way when we sat down to eat in a few hours.

I had to stay home from church with Ellie, who was suffering from allergies. So I peered through the crock pot lid a few times. Hmm, doesn’t look like the milk is thickening very much, I mused each time. Oh, well. Maybe it just needs more time.

My husband and other children arrived home from church. “Mmmm, what smells so good?” the kids asked.

“Macaroni,” I said smugly. They cheered as I prepared to serve it up.

The only problem was that it still didn’t look very thick. Sure, it had improved some, but I like my macaroni to be super thick, as in absolutely-no-liquid-at-all thick, and there was definitely liquid there. “Honey, it didn’t turn out!” I moaned to my husband outside the kids’ hearing. “I don’t know what happened, but there’s still liquid in it.”

“Call it ‘macaroni soup’,” my husband responded. “You know, ‘when life gives you lemons’….”

The kids loved Mommy’s Cheesy Macaroni Soup. “Wow, this tastes just like regular macaroni and cheese!” they said. (“Um, yeah. It’s pretty similar,” I said.)

So, thanks to my husband’s quick thinking, we had a great and somewhat exotic (“I’ve never had this before!” Kenny exclaimed) meal. We all enjoyed it. And Mommy still got those brownie points.

How different things would have been had I decided that because the meal didn’t turn out the way I planned, it was no good. I would have been bummed, and I probably would have presented the macaroni to the kids while saying something like, “I’m sorry it has so much liquid. You can just eat the macaroni pieces if you want.” They would have taken my cue that there was something wrong with it, and they wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as they did when I offered it to them as something special.

I wonder how much enjoyment you and I miss out on in life because things don’t turn out quite the way we planned. Many times when something doesn’t work out, we see that as negative instead of looking for the positive in the situation. For example, I wanted to go to church this morning. My daughter’s having allergies prevented that. But if I had focused on what I was missing by not being at church, I also would have missed the pleasure of spending quiet, uninterrupted time with her doing some of our favorite quiet activities together. I would have missed the gift God was offering because I was stuck on not having gotten the one I hoped for.

What is there in your life right now that might be an unexpected gift instead of the disaster it seems to be? Even if it is partially a disaster, might there also be something good you can get out of it? Sure, you wouldn’t have chosen this situation, but you’ve got it, so instead of focusing on the fact that it’s not what you wanted, maybe you could cooperate with God’s desire to redeem it in your life by asking Him what good He wants to give you in the midst of the bad.

I’m not saying to sweep your pain under the rug. After all, you’re well aware there’s too much liquid in the macaroni. But you can choose your perspective. You can either see it as an unmitigated disappointment, or you can decide that even though it’s not what you hoped, it can still, in some ways, be a good thing.

And sometimes, macaroni soup turns out to be more fun than plain old macaroni anyway.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 – Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Tremble Not

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You know how you hear something over and over, and it never means all that much until WHAM! the same old words you thought you knew reach out and smack you between the eyes?

Such was the case for me last Sunday in church. In the bulletin was listed the hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”. Oh, good, I thought. I like that one. When it came time to sing the song, I sang along with everyone else. I wasn’t using the hymnal because I know almost all the words. I was kind of singing on autopilot, enjoying the sounds of the congregation’s voices raised together and of the organ music.

Until…WHAM!

The third verse goes like this: “And tho’ this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph thro’ us.”

I know what it’s like to have this devil-filled world threaten to undo me. Maybe you do too. So I was excited about this stanza, because it reminds me that I don’t have to fear! Over and over in Scripture, my God has promised that I will triumph!

But then came the next line, the one that was so meaningful to me: “The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him.”

WHAM.

All of a sudden, I could see clearly the ways in which I had indeed been trembling because of the Prince of Darkness, that is, Satan. Oh, I know that Jesus has saved me and will take me to heaven to live with Him one day. I don’t tremble in terms of my eternal destiny. Nor do I tremble in fear that I might not be victorious one day; I know I will be because God has already won the victory.

My trembling looks more like trying to force people to treat me a certain way so that I can feel loved and secure. Satan has used circumstances in my past to wound me to such an extent that sometimes, the thought that something similar might be happening again seems like the worst thing I can imagine at that moment. So when someone acts a certain way toward me, or fails to take action, the pain from those experiences in my life rises up and demands a response. The fact that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will take care of me gets pushed into the background.

The thing is, Satan can’t cause me to tremble unless I allow him to. I don’t have to tremble before him or his plans because greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world. Yes, certain things happened or failed to happen in the past, but I don’t have to let those things determine how I respond today. And I don’t have to live in fear that anything that might happen in the present can truly harm me, because I have a God who loves me passionately and has promised that He’ll always take care of me.

True, sometimes people do wound me. But being wounded by someone’s verbal remarks (or lack thereof) here on earth not the worst thing that can happen, even when my emotions tell me that it is. The worst thing that can happen is that in those moments I might forget that God has already won the victory over my pain and that I don’t need to tremble anymore. The worst thing would be trembling instead of standing strong and secure in the knowledge that God loves me and won’t let anything destroy me.

As the third verse continues, “His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure. One little word shall fell him.” In other words, one day God is going to put an end to Satan’s ever hurting anyone ever again. You won’t be destroyed by Satan’s schemes. For one thing, Jesus has brought you into relationship with Himself and will never let you go. For another, Satan is already defeated by Jesus’ victory over sin and death. He just doesn’t recognize it yet.

Satan’s doom is sure—not yours. That means you’ve already won the victory.

So don’t tremble before Satan and his schemes any more. Praise God, you don’t have to.

John 10:28—“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

1 Corinthians 15:57—But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 John 5:4-5—For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

1 John 4:4—Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Be Still: A Video by Lisa Chan

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gksWkR0wXAM

Have you ever thought you would love to have time to spend with God, if only you could figure out when to do it?

Have you ever felt caught up in the craziness and distractions of being a woman, wife, and mother, so much so that you know exactly what each of your children would order in a Happy Meal, but you don’t really know God?

In this first video in Lisa Chan’s series entitled Be Still, Lisa identifies with the rest of us in our struggles. She does not present herself as a spiritual giant, but rather as a fellow sister in Christ who has dealt with the same issues as the rest of us. Graciously, compassionately, and lovingly, Lisa reminds us that while it may indeed be difficult to get alone with God and be still, “the things of this world are passing and not important.” She makes the vital point that “I don’t think it’s possible to know God without being still and putting the time and the effort into your relationship with Him.”

“And you know, you know that [the things of this life are] not what you really want,” Lisa says. “So don’t let the distractions and don’t let this world and don’t let Satan have any victory over you. You just choose right now to say, ‘I will choose today to know my Savior, to be connected to Him, to love Him’. Start today.”

Isn’t this what we all need, moms? To know God better? Through Lisa’s honest sharing of her own struggles, she shows us how moms in everyday circumstances need God—not just need to read the Bible and attend church more, but need God Himself—and can come to know Him. Susan, a friend of Lisa’s, also shares her story about how she came to know God as He sustained her through a difficult time in her life.

Whether or not life is going smoothly for you or not, you need God. You need to know Him, not just know about Him. Lisa will empathize with you in the difficulties of making time to be still with God, even as she doesn’t accept any excuses for not having time. Hers is a balanced and encouraging approach for every mom who knows she needs God, but needs someone to help her get started.

This video would be great not only for individuals who would like to feel as if they’re having a personal conversation with Lisa (she makes this easy to do) but also for groups, as a discussion starter.

You can purchase this video from Flannel.org.

*I received no compensation for this review other than a free copy of the DVD.

Any Other Mommy

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Yesterday was one of those mornings. Nothing “big” had happened, but every little thing seemed to be getting on my nerves. I was crabby. And to make matters worse, it was Sunday, so we were getting ready for church.

So when poor Lindsey came up to me and said hesitantly, “I hope this won’t make you mad, but…would you…would you braid my hair?” I didn’t really want to. I sighed and said ungraciously, “Fine. Come here.”

Lindsey handed me the two elastics she’d picked out—lavender, to match her dress—and a brush. I divided her hair into two sections and began to French braid it. And all the while, I was thinking, Nobody cares that Mama hasn’t gotten to eat breakfast yet. Everybody else’s needs come first.

Though I remained silent as I worked, my attitude was getting worse and worse, until….

“Thank you for braiding my hair,” Lindsey said humbly. “You’re the best mommy in the world.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, graciously this time, because I knew I’d been wrong. I also knew that more conviction was coming, and I was right.

“I bet no other mommy would have done it,” Lindsey said gratefully and meekly—and trying to encourage me, of all things. “I bet any other mommy would have said, ‘No. There’s no time’.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” I said, and this time I meant it. And I wanted to cry.

The sweetness of Lindsey’s spirit yesterday morning—her sweet, giving, generous nature—stood in sharp contrast to the smallness of mine. And I realized not only that I had been very wrong, but that I’m sure glad God has a far better attitude about giving to me than I did about giving to my daughter.

God absolutely loves to give to me and to you, His beloved children. He delights in our asking Him for anything we need, from little things like having our hair braided all the way up to big things like…well, maybe that was the big thing. At least it was to Lindsey. And instead of looking at her request as an opportunity to show how much I love her by cheerfully serving her, I only saw it selfishly, as if my getting to eat breakfast when I wanted to was more important than ministering to her spirit and helping her fulfill her desire to look nice for a special event at church.

God, on the other hand, never reacts selfishly when I bring my requests to Him. He never says, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, I’m busy listening to the angels worship Me. Come back later.” He never fulfills my request, all the while making it clear that He doesn’t really want to. Instead, He gives freely, generously, and willingly, and He takes pleasure in doing so.

Precious mom, our kids and their requests are not an inconvenience to us. Our children are precious gifts from God, and their requests are God-sponsored opportunities to flood our children’s hearts with love and the sense that they are worth Mommy’s time. We don’t have to be those “any other” mommies Lindsey spoke of. We can be the mommy of our child’s dreams.

Responding to our child isn’t an interruption of something more important; it is the more important thing. But do we act like it? I’m ashamed that my answer is “no, not always”. But I’m working on my attitude, especially after yesterday.

If you need to join me in working on yours too, I recommend that you listen to Scotty McCreery’s song “Dirty Dishes.” For that matter, this song is worth your time even if you are strong in this area. It’s not an overtly Christian song, but I promise you that there’s nothing offensive in it. The mom in this song has the attitude I want to have. She is grateful for…well, I’ll let you hear it for yourself:

Grateful for opportunities to serve instead of being selfish. That’s where I want to be. I know you do too.

Philippians 2:3—Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

Just Like I Said

Megan Breedlove No Comments

I wrote before about the vacation my family and I took to Austin (our state capital) when my husband had to attend a professional conference. The rest of us went with him, and we all stayed at a nice hotel. My kids still talk about that vacation, especially our youngest, Jessica (she’s 4). Every now and then, she says, “I wish we could attach our house to the hotel and live there forever.”

Her favorite part of being at the hotel was the pool. Even more often than wishing to attach our house to the hotel, Jessica says, “Can we go back to that place where they had the cold pool and the hot pool (a hot tub)?” She absolutely loved the pool, and so did the rest of the kids and I.

We spent several hours on a couple of different occasions playing in the pool and hot tub. For some reason, we were the only people at the pool both times—which was fine by me. It felt sort of like a private pool. I wasn’t always in the water with them, though. Sometimes, I sat on a nearby lounge chair and watched them.

Ever so often, one of the kids would check back in with me. “Mommy, are you watching us?” We are very conscious about pool safety, and I’ve made sure the kids know that they are never to swim unless there is an adult watching them closely.

“Yes, I’m still watching,” I would say. “I’m right here, just like I said I would be.”

Just like I said. As those words left my mouth one time, I could almost hear God speaking them to me. I’m right here. Just like I said I would be.

Just as my kids immediately felt more confident in their play upon realizing that Mommy was watching and would take care of them, I felt more secure upon hearing God’s words. God’s with me. He’s taking care of me right now. I can live confidently as long as God is watching.

Granted, sometimes bad things do happen to Christians. Christians aren’t immune from financial difficulties, sickness, or even death. But neither do Christians need to be afraid of living. We shouldn’t fear attempting new things when God is looking on in approval (and of course, having His approval is key). We shouldn’t be anxious about going out there and having a blast. There’s simply no reason to be afraid.

Mom, do you hold back from truly living because you’re afraid something might go wrong? Do you stay safely on the side of the pool because you’re afraid to venture into the water? Or are you willing to get into the water and have fun?

True, it was possible that one of my children could have mistakenly strayed into the deep end of the pool and needed rescuing. But I would have been there to perform the rescue. Likewise, if something goes wrong in our life, God has had a solution in mind since before the foundation of the world. He doesn’t want us to miss out on living because we’re afraid of what might go wrong. He wants us to remember that if something does go wrong (and eventually, that will happen, because we live in a fallen world), He will take care of it.

But not only that, He wants us to realize that He is not a mere observer on the side of the pool watching us live our lives. He is right there in the water with us. We don’t live life on our own. We live life with God right there, having fun with us when things go right, and ready to hold us up so we don’t drown as He puts His solution into place when things go wrong.

With such a God, why would we not fling ourselves into the pool and live? Why would we miss out on all the fun and everything God has planned for us because of fear? Especially when that fear is unrealistic, because nothing can happen to us that God isn’t prepared to handle?

Jump in, my friend. As long as you’re jumping into His arms, you have nothing to worry about.

Hebrews 13:6—the Lord is my helper and my salvation; I will not fear. What can mortal man [or life, or circumstances] do to me?

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