John Parker and Pastor Mark Williams will be on the Home Front Show today, Friday, at 2:00 Mountain Time. If you want to bless and uplift a dad, send them here:
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Christian parenting
Getting Real with the Velveteen Rabbit at 2:00
The rabbit was real because the boy loved him. Pondering that and the chameleon tendencies of so many of us, I realized this: The acceptance of God’s love is what makes us real. The understanding, reaching for, TAKING of God’s love, indeed the very becoming of love, makes us real.
My thoughts wandered to antique cars, purple Cadillacs in particular. Definitely real cars. When we see such a car we exclaim, “Look at that! Did you see that?”
Our hearts yearn for the real. We are drawn to it. Because real implies honesty, truth, reliability. God’s love.
Join me today at 2:00 pm Mountain Time on the Home Front Radio Show for further exploration into becoming real.
And oh, so much more.
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Thanks!
Fabulous Fatherhood on The Home Front Show Today!
John Parker and Pastor Mark Williams will be joining me today on The Home Front Show, and you can join us at 1360am.co for great exhortation and inspiration about fatherhood.
Go to :
1360am.co , wait for the page to load, then click on “LIVE RADIO”
at 2:00 Mountain Time this afternoon, Friday, May 5 for an hour of non-stop blessings.
John and Mark will be sharing their stories of redemption and restoration and I’ll be adding thoughts from our Founding Fathers on FORGIVENESS.
As always on The Home Front Show, there’s much more than I can express in a few short sentences, so join us and encourage others to do so as well!
Thanks very much,
Bev
Conversation with Kids
My daughter Hannah was home yesterday, and she followed me around as I cleaned closets and drawers, chatting. What fun. What a joy to know she still likes to talk to me.
“How can I help, Mom?” she asked. I had forgotten to eat, and knew sustenance would be good, so I requested a bit of a tea party. We were soon sitting on the balcony, joined by Rebekah, and enjoying fruit, nuts and herbal tea. Better still, we were enjoying conversation.
When I said I had to be gone for a minute and would be right back (putting another load of laundry on) they said, “You’d better be.” How lovely to be wanted, popular, loved. And what better way to achieve this exalted state than by loving listening.
This morning I was all set to return to the balcony alone for breakfast and research, but I couldn’t get away from Seth’s conversation. I wanted to get on with my thing, but I remembered I don’t have anything on earth more important to do than to listen to my children.
“Follow me,” I told him, “and talk to me while I eat my breakfast.” He joined me and discussed a book he’d read as a child, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy. Marveling at what was expected and duly performed by kids back then, and discussing the differences in farming then and now, Seth was much more interesting, intriguing, and gratifying than anything I had on my precious agenda.
He left the balcony to be about his business and out popped Rebekah. “I’ve been praying and searching for answers about my writing and my time management, Mom, (haven’t we all?) and let me show you this.” She showed me passages from The Founder’s Bible about black American John Marrant, captive and then missionary to the Cherokees, and about his dealings with evangelist George Whitfield. In listening closely I marveled at how God was reaching Rebekah and how she was receiving from Him.
Conversation with kids. There’s very little kinder or more worthwhile that we can do with our time. I’ll never forget the day I was, as usual, regaling my dad with every detail of my day at school. “And then I go, and then she went, and then I went, and she goes . . . blah, blah, blah.” Nothing like the beautiful thoughts of my children this morning. And yet, my dad listened as though completely enthralled.
My older brother, who was waiting to go hunting with my dad, stood holding his deer rifle and tapping his foot. Finally he could take it no longer. “Did it ever occur to you,” he asked, “that Dad has anything better to do with his time than listen to you yak?”
I was horrified and embarrassed and suddenly acutely aware of the banality of my conversation. But before I could answer, Dad answered for me. “I don’t have a thing in the world more important to do than listen to Bev.”
Wow. No wonder I pray lots. No wonder I have every confidence God hears me. No wonder I have done this great and good thing for my own children. I converse with them, not at them. I listen to them.
And they talk to me. Glory Hallelujah!
P.S. The Proverbs 31 Woman “watches over the ways of her household.” How better to watch over the ways of our households, to know what’s really happening in the precious hearts with which we’re entrusted, than to converse, to listen.
I Did Not Need My Economics Degree to Figure this One Out
Just as I predicted, with the election of Donald Trump, the American economy is exploding. And I believe that will mean fewer marriages ravaged by financial stress, more opportunities on all fronts, and most of all, I hope it means more moms will be able to be at home. Homemakers, homekeepers, hearthtenders.
I not only hope, I earnestly and diligently pray that we are about to, once again, become a society where people are nurtured in the most excellent place of all – home. And by the most blessed and privileged of all people – homemakers.
I wasn’t so privileged when I got the “education”, bought the Italian pumps and sported the chic haircut. I had a fancy office all my own and a degree – a piece of paper – to prove I was somebody.
But now I have “medals”. “You and John have medals,” a lady at church recently said to me after we stood together as a family before the congregation. The pastor had asked our oldest son to come forward for prayer, along with John and me, before leaving for officer training in Fort Benning, Georgia. Our other three joined us as well. The pastor prayed, John prayed, and I managed to pray through the tears of an utterly full heart.
There were other words spoken and joys shared and then those words from a lady I didn’t know. “You and John have medals.” She paused and I waited as she gazed at our children. “Your children are medals.”
Indeed. And we fought for them. We fought financial fears when I chucked that fancy job to stay home with Benjamin. “It’s an opportunity to trust,” I said to John when the doctor said if I didn’t abort Hannah I would not survive. Told I would miscarry Rebekah, again we donned the full armor of God and we fought. Recovering from the C-section that brought us Seth, I battled for my health and vitality, and John prayed me through those wearying days.
Attempting to hear God and not our own insecurities or preferences, or the opinions of others, we stood our ground when we decided to home school. John prayed as I sought self-discipline, self-control and patience.
Always, we suited up for battle with the Word of God in our mouths, saying what He said about our children, rather than what we wanted to spew out of our mouths. This child is impossibly strong-willed, stubborn, willful, and I am at my wit’s end with her! was the thought. The words were prayers and positive scriptural confessions: “This child is my great and glorious gift, fearfully and wonderfully made for God’s purposes and she will live in the light and bring blessings all the days of her life.”
And so on. Through the years I have made the most powerful and eternally profitable investment a woman ever has the privilege to make: I have raised my children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have been a homemaker.
For John, the husband who supported my determination to do whatever it took to raise my children (for a time we took all four of them with us on our trim and tile jobs) I am grateful beyond all measure.
Because I raised my older children as a single mother, or rather they were raised by the daycare center and the public school system, I know the immeasurably high cost of a “real” job, of a society-sanctioned career. I know the ever-diminishing returns on that kind of investment – investment in the world’s ways.
“I simply can’t go through that again,” I said to John when we talked about my returning to work and finding childcare for Benjamin. It wasn’t just about my baby, it was about me, and my peace of mind. It was about that deepest of needs in my heart, the need to make a home for my family, to be a homemaker.
A homemaker who is also a homeschooler has it made in the shade, especially if she has a strong and good husband. Her life in no way resembles the stereotype of the harried and frantic chicken-with-her-head-cut-off mommy. Rather, if she seeks the impartation of wisdom freely given via simply asking the Holy Spirit and reading God’s Word each and every single morning, she grows ever more skillful in battle, ever more confident and in full receipt of her rewards. Her life is lived in rhythms of grace, rather than in sorrow and regret.
If I had it to do over in what I call my “first life” I would have cleaned houses and taken my babies with me, or lived in a tent by the river, or moved in with family. But I would not have sacrificed my children on the altar of career, I would not have bought the line that I “couldn’t afford” to do otherwise.
I would have said, “What I can’t afford is the breaking of the little hearts and spirits of my children by leaving them in the care of, at best, indifferent workers while I go and chase the almighty dollar.
I am eternally grateful for this second chance, but regarding my older children, there are no overs. I urge and exhort you, if you have young children being raised by others as your heart yearns for them, pray and believe God for the highest of callings and privileges, that He will make the way, that He will be the author and the finisher of your parenting, your marriage, your family. Your home.
Then say joyously to all who ask who you are and what you do: I AM A HOMEMAKER.
Courtesy Begins at Home
” . . . there is no place in the world where the amenities of courtesy should be so carefully maintained as in the home. There are no hearts that hunger so for the expressions of affection as the hearts of which we are most sure. There is no love that so needs its daily bread as the love that is strongest and holiest. There is no place where rudeness or incivility is so unpardonable as inside our own doors and toward our best beloved.” – Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. in Home-Making
Rude and disrespectful children were not taught at home the example of kindness and consideration. They were not shown by their parents the value of respecting the hearts of others.
From the time our kids were small we praised them for their kindnesses to others, and actively taught them how to bring light to the lives of others via small kindnesses. And it began at home.
“Your sister is a gift from God, one that you will always have. When you’re a very old man and have a sad day you will call her and tell her your troubles and she will pray for you and tell you she loves you,” we told the boys more than once.
“Some girls don’t have brothers,” I remember telling one of the girls. “Your brother will grow up to be a good, strong, kind man just like your dad, and he will always care about you and always help you and always love you.”
And so forth. And then, we would tell them to spend just a little time alone to pray (it’s never too early to teach a child to take their burdens to Jesus) and later they were required to give each other hugs and say, “I love you.”
To this day we have four kids who love each other and show it. They are kind and courteous almost all of the time. And if they slip up we are quick to check them. As I said to our oldest son not long ago, “You will never have a truer friend, you will never know a more quality person, than your brother. He’s a 17-year-old male right now, and if you’ll think back to when you were a 17-year-old male . . .”
He got the point: Courtesy begins at home.
“The tenderer the love and the truer, the more it craves the thousand little attentions and kindnesses which so satisfy the heart.” – Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. in Home-Making
“I came that you might have (and choose) life.” – Jesus, in John 10:10
Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women.” I believe that Mary was much more than we know, that she is a model, a pattern for emulating, and that in his hatred for her, Satan has twisted and snapped the threads of that life pattern for a tapestry of rhythm and grace. He turns what God intends for life, into death.
That is how I see abortion – the ultimate success for the ultimate woman hater. We are endowed with the ability to create the ultimate masterpiece – a child. We partner, as did Mary, with God, to make sons and daughters who can bring light to the darkness, beauty for ashes, healing for the broken.
My brokenness began with buying Satan’s lie that casual sex (no mating for life marriage commitment) is OK. I had that unplanned pregnancy, the one where abortion was suggested. I can only thank God and my heritage – not that of a Christian upbringing (which I didn’t have) but that of parents who loved me unconditionally, and who taught by example the preciousness of a child – for the existence of that child in the world today. How glad I am that Mom and Dad were too unworldly, too “unsophisticated”, to buy the lie from Hell that children are expendable, that abortion is a solution to anything at all, ever.
And so I sit in the middle of the night, pondering the angel’s words in Luke 1:28. I do rejoice in the face of temporal stresses, heartaches, things not as I want them to be, children partaking of my past brokenness. And yet, there is no denying it: I am highly favored. God has given me children, and He has shown my volatile and wayward heart over and over and over that He is with me. I am blessed among women.
And therein lies the sadness. There are too few women walking in my shoes. I look around me, especially at church, and I want to wear a sign: GOD DID THIS AND HE’LL DO IT FOR YOU, TOO!!!! Years ago I looked around as a single mother, bereft of that ever-so-essential ingredient in a family – Daddy. I looked at the women in church, the married ones, and wanted to know two things: Is it real, and if it is, is it forever beyond my reach?
The day finally came when I had the courage to believe, to trust, to call (loudly) on God. “Lord,” I said, “I need a husband. I don’t care if he’s tall or short, fat or skinny. I don’t care where he’s from or what he does for a living. I just want a good, honest man who will love me like I am.”
Two weeks later, after a nine-year drought, God sent John. John the Blessing, John the Family Man. John who knew the value of a child. John who God knew would heal my brokenness through the very love of Christ Himself abiding in John’s heart and being passed on to mine.
And John who would partner with God and with me to make a family, the most beautiful thing of all. Our children weren’t planned or affordable or convenient. They were and are simply the greatest of all blessings, the highest of all honors and privileges, the gifts beyond all gifts.
And that, Dear Reader, is what you and I are to God.
Rejoice, highly favored one.
A Job Well Done
John and I recently had the blessing of seeing our son Benjamin receive his Bachelor’s Degree and become a commissioned officer in the United States Army. We are blessed and highly favored by our awesome God, through faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.
I have tons more pictures, but I’ll stop now.
P.S. John and I will be on the radio tomorrow, Friday June 24 at 2:00 Mountain Time, talking about our trip to the Pacific Northwest (for Benjamin’s graduation), about taking dominion in this life, about friendship in marriage, and more.
http://streema.com/radios/KHNC
“Well, who do you think is pretty?”
When my daughter Jane was ten and carrying on about the latest Hollywood sensations, John pulled a face at her taste. “Well, who do you think is pretty?” she demanded.
“You. Your mother. My mother, my granny, my sister,” he replied. Out of all the brilliant things John has said, that was one of the most brilliant.
That was years ago, but this morning I awoke thinking about how our society makes heroes out of quite and very unheroic women, at least as compared to those near and dear to me. What, I wondered, would I say to anyone asking me, not who was pretty, but who was beautiful, heroic, worthy of praise and emulation in my life?
“My mother, my grandmother, my mother-in-law, my sisters-in-law, my friends, my daughters, daughter-in-law, and granddaughters.”
I remember my dad talking about my grandmother chasing a poisonous snake who was trying to escape under their house. “You’ll not get near these children,” she shouted as she brought a garden hoe down on it, severing it’s head. When I was little she used to put The Happy Goodmans on to play for me. She deftly peeled what may have been the world’s best tomatoes (grown in her weedless garden) with her ever sharp paring knife, sliced them into thick, fat, juicy slices and served them to me with salt. One day, I vowed, I would do that for someone.
But how would I ever emulate my mom? I’ll never be as strong as she is was my silent concern. She never stopped moving except maybe once on “slow” days for a cup of coffee and a Lucky Strike. She was up before us to put a fantastic breakfast (a platter full of meat, eggs, biscuits, gravy) on the table, to starch our jeans, and then off (for the second time) to her many-thousand chickens. She was up waiting when I got home from basketball games (once it was 2:00 a.m. and there she stood, leaning on the kitchen counter for support, smoking her Lucky Strike). She didn’t say “I love you” she did love.
And then there’s my mother-in-law who taught my manly man husband to cook, can, sew, clean, iron, and to always be clean, neat, and presentable. So when our youngest, Seth, was born, John brought the older three to the hospital looking like little dolls. The nurses went on about it. “Who dressed those kids?” one asked. I was bewildered. Who do you think?
“John did,” I told her. “Well, I never!” she said. “Just look at them. All spit and polish!” And so I looked. Their clothes were ironed, Benjamin’s hair parted perfectly, the girls’ hair curled, their eyes shining. In other words, looking like kids should look when they’re coming to see their new sibling and their mother. Did other dads bring the kids to see mom looking any other way? Evidently. Talk about dumb as a post.
And who was to thank for that? My mother-in-law. Well, and John being smarter than a post.
And then there are my sisters-in-law (brothers’ wives) who stayed with my brothers through thick and thin, who are excellent mothers, citizens, and friends. As for John’s sister, even when her life was falling COMPLETELY apart, she was fun, kind, and positive. How many women “leaders” can say that? These sisters of mine! All of them are absolutely indispensable to the welfare of all of us blessed by their presences in our lives. I really could never say enough about any of them.
I won’t even start with my friends, except to say that my dad was right when he said to me years ago, “Bev, you’ve always had truly good friends.” Indeed I have. They have filled gaps, dried tears, inspired, listened, commiserated, advised, and loved me through some pretty dark days. Real women, that’s what they are.
And then there are my daughters, daughter-in-law, and granddaughters. Let me just say right here that there aren’t a handful of movie stars in history as lovely as these young women, as brilliant, funny, kind, or true.
I’ve said all this to say that we might stop taking note of celebrities who we’ll most likely never even meet, and start celebrating those women near and dear.
My Child was Sad, and that was BAD
There was lots of fun stuff happening, and I was loving every single minute of it, except when I looked at Rebekah’s tight, sad, face. I gave her hugs, I asked her if she was OK, I mentioned it to John (husband/dad), and I queried her siblings, “Do you know what’s bothering Rebekah?” I gave her more hugs (she seemed to want lots of them) and finally, I prayed.
Rebekah is a writer, and we’ve had an ongoing issue about her using up school, chore, family and personal time on the computer–not writing, but looking up and reading about the somewhat ridiculous antics of various celebrities. Recently when I asked her if she was writing she fibbed to me about it. I don’t mind lies as much as I mind a child acting like I am the village idiot. “Shut the laptop,” I instructed firmly. “Do NOT get back on there until I say so. You can write in longhand on your legal pads for now.”
And I went about the business at hand: celebrating: Hannah was born on my and John’s anniversary and this year was, as all years, a celebration of the unmerited, beyond-all-I-could-ever-ask-or-think-or-imagine LOVE of Jesus. Still, I noted and pondered and watched the expressive and beautiful face of Rebekah.
Hannah had her birthday date with John, John and I had our anniversary date, we celebrated both with a steak dinner and birthday/anniversary party, I went on my Hannah date, and finally, last night about midnight, Hannah, John and Seth were off to bed, and Rebekah found her way to a bit of quiet with me.
“Mom,” she said, “I got on YouTube today. And yesterday. And the day before.”
“Why?” I said a bit sharply, reluctantly looking up from watching Creflo Dollar teaching about what the Bible says about speaking in tongues (very interesting stuff).
She looked utterly miserable and I was filled with compassion. I scooted over on the couch and told her to come curl up next to me. I took her in my arms and kissed her head. “Rebekah, God forgives me absolutely when I make a mistake, and I forgive you absolutely.”
She began to cry, and I recognized that look, the sound of those sobs: I try and I try and I just can’t seem to do what I say I will do. I’m such a loser, blah, blah, blah.
“It’s OK, Sweetheart,” I told her. “Tomorrow we will talk and pray and make a plan about exactly what you want to be learning and doing and enjoying. I want to see you practicing your violin. Do you want that?”
She began to cry again. “I don’t know why I haven’t been doing that.” Back to the self-chastisement, the recriminations and condemnation.
I was inspired as I thought of the “roaring success” of breakfast (cooked by her and her brother, Seth, while Hannah and I were gone). “There’s no reason you and I can’t cook more together (she loves doing things with me). We’ll put that on our petition of things we want to learn and do. Now, you just don’t worry about anything at all. We’ll work everything out tomorrow.”
She was still curled up next to me, in my arms. She sat up. “I feel better now.”
I did a few things right: I paid attention to my child, amidst all kinds of diverting activities; I responded correctly to all those hug requests; I shared my concerns with other family members, so that everyone would be kind, aware that “something’s bothering Rebekah”; I made myself available; I listened and suggested solutions, and she listened to me, because of the most important thing of all: I said, GOD FORGIVES YOU ABSOLUTELY AND I FORGIVE YOU ABSOLUTELY.
The Bible tells us that it’s His kindness that leads to repentance. In receiving His kindness, we are able to extend kindness to our children and to our mates, and to ourselves. Let’s do it! Amen.
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