Love God, Love Others

"Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'"  Matthew 22:37-39 (NIV)


Happy New Year Moms!  Wow, a new year...new opportunities, new goals, a new me, a new mom.  Are these your thoughts at the beginning of a new year?  I resolve to be a better mom, to be more physically fit, to be better with my finances, to be a better wife to my husband.  We dive right in and suddenly find ourselves smashing into the bottom of the pool.  As soon as that first mistake or failure comes (and it will) we "beat" ourselves up--how could I; I was supposed to be better at this--or we completely blow off the whole idea.  Does that sound familiar?  In all honesty, it certainly does for me.

I have been thinking and praying a lot about this upcoming New Year.  I do not want to overwhelm myself with lots of resolutions or put pressure on myself to finally be "supermom" nor to give up altogether on everything.  So, I have been talking with God about this very thing. Lord, how can I be a better mom?  How can I raise these children You have entrusted me with in a way that honors you?  I feel overwhelmed at the responsibility and tend to be quite hard on myself whenever I fail.  I have finally learned after about 7 1/2 years of parenting that failure (as I call it) is inevitable.  I will make mistakes and need to ask for God's forgiveness, which of course He lovingly always gives.  I even need to ask my kids for forgiveness often, good grief!

I must remember, God's view of me is not a failure at all.  He loves me no matter what!  And this is the very thing I have been trying to instill into my children.  There is nothing you can do, to stop God from loving you.  His love is unconditional.

This is the sign that hangs above my oldest son's door in his room.  We made this sign when he was 5, I think.  We made it because I wanted him to remember that this is what God says is the most important thing for us to do as Christians.  

So, as I have been talking with God, He has reminded me not only of His view of me, but also of the most important thing in life.  Jesus says in Matthew 22:37-39, that to love God and to love our "neighbor" is the first and greatest commandment.  This is the number one most important thing we can do to honor Him.

Therefore, when I ask God, "How can I honor you as a mom?"  His answer...to love Him and to love others and to teach my children to do the same.  Just making this my one focus for the New Year is so much better than resolving to be "supermom."  

The bible says that without love, I am nothing.  I love how The Message says it in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, "If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.  If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.  If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere.  So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love."

LOVE is the most important thing I can give, show, and teach my children.  And I have learned that the more I know God's love and "fill" myself up with His love, the more I can show that love to others.  When my "cup" is filled and overflowing with God's love, then others will have that love come pouring over to them!  Is that not amazing!  And, loving others becomes easy, not a chore or something else I need to add to my "to do" list.   When I know God's love, I naturally want to love others!  

I plan to blog more on this in the New Year.  So, prayerfully resolve with me to know and experience God's love this year.  Dive into His overwhelming love because when you do, I believe we will all be suddenly surprised to not smash into the bottom of the pool, but instead, to soar through the water, splashing His love joyfully onto others.

Take Time to Make Memories

Merry Christmas all! I am honored to have the opportunity to do some blogging with Jenny on her fantastic site. After having the privilege of knowing Jenny for almost twenty years, I was thrilled when she asked me to contribute. I look forward to sharing stories of my faith and learning many of your own as we muddle our way together through this precious gift of motherhood.

 

 

 

It’s 7:00 PM on Friday, December 21^st. Today was supposed to be a day of huge excitement. First there were those who assumed life as we knew it would end today. Of course, as we all know, the world is still turning and each of us is still blessed with the opportunity to continue enjoying life. With that established, it was time to begin our regular morning. I quickly realized though that the rest of our planned excitement was about to drastically change. Instead of getting dressed to head to my daughter’s school for her class holiday party, I was taking her temperature and trying to figure out the best way to get the supplies, food, and crafts to the school with a daughter running a temperature of 102 and looking thoroughly miserable.  Needless to say, my definition of excitement changed greatly.

By lunchtime it was official. My precious little one tested positive for both flu and strep. It was not the way we intended to begin celebrating Christmas.

Now, I’m sitting here with her head in my lap trying to figure out how to rearrange all of our plans. You see, like most Moms, I am the ultimate manager. I am the one who organizes everything for our family – the schedules, the gifts, the travel arrangements, the food, and every other thing imaginable. My planning schedule just got turned upside down.

As Moms, we work hard to ensure the holidays are as perfect for our families as possible. Yes, we know the importance of togetherness instead of things, and of flexibility instead of perfection. In fact, many of us encourage those ideas every year at the exact same time we are stressing over making Christmas cookies, wrapping presents, or putting in appearances at family get togethers. You see, we can focus so hard on doing the right thing for our families for Christmas that we forget to do the important thing.

Somewhere along the way, we forget the significance of making memories and it’s those memories that will carry our children into the future. They won’t always remember what they received for Christmas, whose Christmas present was wrapped the best, or which cookie had the most beautiful design. Instead, they will remember the year the turkey didn’t cook and Spam was served in its place. They will remember the year the cat climbed up the Christmas tree. They will remember the year the nametags were not filled out on the presents and they played the game ‘match the gift to the person.’

My daughter will not get a chance to sing her solo on Christmas Eve. She will not get to travel and visit with her cousins nor will she be able to wear her new Christmas dress. Instead, because of the strep and the flu, many of our standard family traditions we have built a lifetime making with her will fall to the wayside. So, Mom is throwing out the plan book. Instead, we are going to have a quiet Christmas of three and spend our time making those unplanned memories she will never forget.

Moms, in these last few days before Christmas, I encourage you to take a little pause and see if you can find some time to create the little memories with your family in addition to enjoying the beloved family traditions. Don’t stress when they occur; instead, enjoy them. They will be remembered!

Take Five

Hey, Sorry I have been so silent for so long... life has been CRAZY!  I have not been in the writing mood in a very loooooong time, and that is not normal for me.  You see, last year we adopted a 5 1/2 year old boy, and soon after settling in with him and getting past all the transitional crazy that went with that, the Lord led us to get pregnant again.  So last Dec, right after Christmas I found myself with child. The news came one beautiful morning, and then later that night I got a call that my Dad had been rushed to the hospital... a few days later he died.  So dealing with his death, still adjusting to the new son, and being pregnant made for an interesting year.  But all is well, and of course we are loving life no matter how hard it is at times.  Our sweet little girl was born Aug 31, and is such a bundle of joy to each and every one of us.  The transition to 5 kids was not as easy as I was hoping.  She is a great baby, but juggling an infant with my already full life with all we got going on, wiped me out.  We are finally figuring things out; a new normal is making its way into our life.

Anyway, I wanted to share something here that I have been doing recently.  Really I don't know why I have not been doing something this structured sooner, because I have known about this parenting wisdom for some time now and heard it a few times in different places.  I guess maybe I didn't like the appointment type approach it seemed to have.  But, one of my kids is in counseling and it was recently brought back to my attention; so I decided to give it a try.  I did not want to just do it without telling the kids what I was doing.  And I want them to be able to help me remember and hold me accountable to doing this.  I also like to try to make things sound fun or cool for the kids and wanted to make it easy for them to remember.  So, like my "hang time" I have mentioned before where each month 1 kid gets a day where we have special time together out of the house, now we have "take five".  This is 5 min a day, that each child gets to have with mommy all to themselves.  Of course it can go over that 5 min if able or allowed, but the idea is for the kid to get 5 min to do whatever they want to do with mom.  They get to choose and as long as it is something they are allowed to do, we do it.  I am not allowed to give commands, or say anything negative, or ask any questions... we have fun playing whatever that kid wants to play.  I enter into their world, just like I was a kid too.  The kids really like this idea.  My son, who is an extreme E personality, will always come and say "take five" to me constantly.  So whenever I am not busy with something that needs attention at that moment, we are not doing school, the baby is okay without me, etc... they are allowed to come say "take five".  They can only have one a day, unless all the kids have had theirs and there is somehow a lot of spare time in my day still and I am able to do more.  This is still new, but I look fwd to seeing how it goes and what things come of it.  I hope it helps grow our relationships better and love each other better.

DO any of you do something like this as well?  If so, does it work?  What do you do differently?  Do you find it hard to have child-led play time?  Do you find yourself turning 5 min into an hour?  Would love to hear input.

Go enjoy your kids,
Chrissy