Recently, worship has become a widely debated topic in theological circles. This is not the familiar, shall we sing hymns or praise songs, shall we have an organ or a drum set, debate. Leaders are calling for the church to thoroughly rethink how we think about, address and conduct coroporate worship. As a woman who personally worships the Lord and as a mother who models and teaches my children about worship, I think it is imperative to think and pray deeply about this subject. The February Christianity Today contains an excellent article called “9.5 Worship Theses“. I will spare you a summary of it in hopes that you will click on the link and read it. The author, Gary A Parrett, makes several excellent points, 9.5 to be exact, but I believe the most important to ponder is number 4. Parrett states “Many in our churches have their theology formed principally by our hymnody.” Most of us know our theology, our understanding of God, from the songs we sing! Firstly, not as many Christians read the Word for themselves as purport to and secondly, music has a very powerful effect on both our hearts and minds. Melody implants truths in our soul in ways nothing else can, and there are some truths that must be sung in order to be fully expressed. This is especially, vitally important when we think about raising our children. Most of the truth about God you will actually get across to your child will be through a song! Obviously, we don’t want to be singing lies to our children and I think most Christian mothers understand that. What has particularly impressed me lately is that the absence of certain truths and certain depths concerning the life of Faith is a problem in the songs we sing. Are we covering all of the essentials of faith in the songs we sing with our children? Are we teaching them songs to address the various experiences they will feel in life, both happy times and difficult times? I love a Psalty Praise tape I have for my daughter, Elise. It has a variety of very happy, fun songs as well as a few more somber songs that help teach on a child’s level how to seek the Lord when all is not well. Lately she has gone around singing “I cast all my cares upon you, mom”. Two year olds have cares too. Hopefully soon she will hear that the song means God and not me! Please read the article and comment on what you find. In my reading, I have heard many vocal opinions from the men. I am very interested to hear what the fairer sex has to say! I would also love for you to please share excellent tools, resources and songs you have found. When you list an item, please tell us why. That would be very helpful. It is overwhelming to navigate alone the abundance of material out there!
I also have found the “Hide ‘em in Your Heart” series with Steve Green to be wonderful. Every song is a Bible verse, with only the verse as lyrics. From two DVD’s Elise already has 26 verses memorized. The verses chosen for the songs are well suited to a little child’s life. I especially like “Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right!”

Lately I have felt as though my children, home, husband, family, friends and responsibilities were all attached to me by a million little strings that I drag around through my day with a weight comparable to a mini-van. When I try to imagine the freedom I crave, I think of backpacking. I love to hike 6 miles straight up the side of a mountain onto an alpine meadow with a 40 pound pack. I know that might sound strange to you, but there is no feeling so gloriously free as reaching the top utterly exhausted, only to drop your pack and run across the meadow beneath rugged snow glittered peaks in air so crisp and clean you believe you have never truly breathed before. You are far too tired to have any though or care other than to ravenously drink in the awesome beauty around you. There is simplicity in freedon.

If I am honest, there are moments when I think I want someone to take my kids and send me to ‘go take a hike”, a long one. But every mother knows life after baby cannot ever be the same as it was. There is no escaping the constant responsibility and care a mother feels for her child. If God answered my careless request, would I find freedom in the loss of my “children, home, husband, family, friends and responsibilities”? Do I really want to be rid of all those things? There was a time when I did live my life so as to be as unattached to anyone or anything as possible. It was a very cold, lonely, miserable season for me. I often forget the heavy, aching loneliness I carried around before I picked up the lively mini-van.

I don’t know if I will ever this side of heaven fully understand why God has been so gracious to me as to heal my mind and turn my dark thoughts toward knowledge of Him. But as He gently heals and mends me, the daily things I most want to complain about become my deepest blessings. We as mothers have been given an incredible blessing that has the potential like nothing else to push us toward true emancipation. There is nothing like a precious needy little bundle to stage a coup d’etat against the dictatorial rule of self-centeredness.

Bono wrote in a recent U2 song, “freedom has a scent, like the top of a newborn baby’s head” (How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, “Miracle Drug”). That lyric has haunted me since I first heard it. Haunted me. (Click on this link, you must hear it!) I can’t get it out of my head. Do you remember the intoxicating scent of your newborn’s head? It seemed to cast all practical reason from my head and fill it with inexplicable adoration. From an objective standpoint, it seems almost silly to love a creature so much that your heart could break, only 5 minutes after that little person was born! Why, you hardly know him! He just caused you 9 months of inconvenience and quite a few hours of pain! But with the birth of a child, your heart has broken. When God gives you a child, He deals a hefty blow to the self-protecting walls of your heart. It’s almost as though the Lord yanks you up by your collar and firmly plants you onto a well-worn but narrow path marked by the sign, “This way to freedom”. Perhaps this also is what Paul meant in 1 Tim. 2:25, “a woman will be saved in childbearing.”

Every time I get together with other women, the time is inevitably too short. A great question or converstaion will just begin about the time a tantrum ensues or I must deliver one child from another. However, contrary to our common fatigued feeling, mothers do still have intellects and I believe that every faculty God gave us He intended to be vigorously exercised! I wanted to create this blog to be a tool for engaging in all those conversations we mean to begin and know we need. This is a place to share what thoughts, feelings, questions, struggles, joys and laughters need to be shared. Come here when you have the need and 5 spare minutes, from the convienance of your own home. You don’t have to pack up the kids! Come to encourage, grow and honestly wrestle with this awesome job we have been given; to love, train and nurture a generation.

I somewhat cringe at the title I created for this blog. I really hate cliche expressions and contrived phrases, but I am striving for the most universal cultural icon I can find that evokes a sense of ambition, excellence and achievement. (I must give credit for the idea to Creative Counterpart by Linda Dillow. Excellent book.)

How many women do you know who exhibit these characteristics in their primary job of motherhood? No wonder so many mothers are bored, depressed, frustrated or discontent. These are the characteristics of anyone who does their job poorly and unimaginatively. (Now don’t think about whether they admit to feeling this way or not. Examine the evidence of their lives. BabyTalk just published an article this January about how much women lie about their children and their role as mom. This is the link. An atrocious article in my opinion.)

I also want to indirectly and ironically evoke the thought of power and control with the express purpose of crushing it. Don’t let me confuse you. By ambition, I do not mean selfish ambition, a characteristic certainly pictured by last year’s corporate scandals, but a drive to achieve true excellence. Achievement is not bad. I do not believe that the human drive to excel, create and achieve is a result of the fall. God created us to reflect Him in the world and all that God does is excellent, creative and a most wonderous achievement to behold. It is a God given blessing to want to imitate Him. I belive our desire to excel, create and achieve in order to promote ourselves above others is wrong. It is the “self” in our ambition that is repulsive and grotesque. Achievements motivated by love and shaped by purity andintegrity are a joy to behold. Many women are confused (and I must admit another driving motive to this blog is to encourage sharp thinking as opposed to the usual mental emoting that we women get so easily caught up in) about the feminine role of nurturing and serving. Women are not meant to be weak and passive. That is certainly not what the Bible teaches and please, literally for God’s sake, would you get that picture out of your mind! Women are meant to be tender, loving, caring. To truly accomplish that in a day takes a great deal of strength and proactive effort.

I want this blog to be a place where iron sharpens iron, but please remember that knowledge without love is a clanging symbol. Take out the cymbols with the trash. And I know I am a terrible speller, so yes, I am open to any needed editorial critiques as well.

I asked my husband recently, “What would you advise to a mother who comes to you totally burned out from serving, serving, giving, giving all day? Certainly the structure of life and the family is such that a mom just inevitably ends up doing much more giving than she recieves from other people. So what do you tell her so she can keep on keepin’ on with joy?” I had some ideas of my own, but I wanted to hear what he’d say. His answer revolved around our rewards in heaven. No, we as women in our homes are not actually striving for the rewards of a CEO: 6 figure salary, snazy clothes, prestige in society, nice cars and other material delights. Though I strive to do my job as well as Condy Rice does hers, I certainly know I am not going to see any comparable material benefits! But God knows we need a reward, He made us to strive for a goal and He gave us the capacity to enjoy the rewards of our labor. (see 2 Tim. 2:6) And I am counting on every day, as I labor through hundreds of seemingly thankless jobs and address hundreds of needs with a chosen attitude of joy and thanksgiving, I am counting on rewards someday that are beyond all I have ever seen, heard or imagined. More importantly, I am expectantly waiting to see my Beloved’s face smile with approval. I like to imaging I see it sometimes now. And I count on those times that seem laboriously, exhaustingly long, as actually becoming but a blink of an eye. I count on a small feeling of wishing I had been more of a willing servant once I see the rewards it brings.

“There is only one way to lead a child down the right path, that is to go that way yourself.” - Unknown

“This is the true joy of life: The being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” - George Bernard Shaw

“Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues - faith and hope” - Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens.

“The Bible calls debt a curse and children a blessing; but in our culture we apply for a curse and reject blessings. Something is wrong with this picture.” - Doug Phillips

To love anyone is to hope in her always. From the moment at which we begin to judge anyone, to limit our confidence in what Christ can do through her, from the moment at which we identify [pidgeonhole] her, and so reduce her to that, we cease to love her, and she ceases to become better. We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love. - Unknown