If you lack wisdom, ask God!

Parenting is hard at times. Have you ever felt like you were doing a horrible job of it? I have. Recently I missed noticing, really noticing, that something was not going well with one of my kids. I knew it was going on but I missed how serious it was. When I realized it, I also realized I didn't have a clue as to what to do given the situation we were in. Ashamedly, I felt embarrassed to ask anyone for advice because I felt like a failure as a parent. Let's face it, none of us really want people knowing our failures.

Thing was, this was not a matter of one of our kids disobeying us or a sinful behavior, this was different. I had no experience with this and I knew of no one else who had experience with it. I was frustrated, angry with God, sad, feeling like a total failure as a mom and I didn't know what to do. I would like to say that the first thing I did was pray and go to the Bible as I know I need to. When I finally did, I asked God to give me wisdom in what to do. James 1:5 - If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God...

Awesome thing is, God answered as He always does! I found myself continuing to think the same thing over and over and I knew it was the Holy Spirit giving me the wisdom I needed. I was to ask for help. There are more Scriptures in Proverbs that talk a lot about seeking wisdom and guidance and how the wise listen to advice. I had to suck it up, not be embarrassed and get some professional advice as well as talk to some godly friends that could give us advice and support.

The point... sometimes we need others to help us be the best mom we can be. God put people in our lives for this reason. Don't be embarrassed, none of us have this parenting thing perfectly down. We all have our parenting failures. The best thing is, God hasn't left us to flounder on our own. God is the perfect parent and He is there to give us wisdom. Go to God first, read His Word and He will direct you in every situation. God meets our needs and sometimes He directs us to others to give us wise, godly advice. I am thankful God has blessed me by putting some wonderful godly women in my life to encourage me and to help me along when I need it. Thank you to my friends :)

Pain in Parenting

My stomach churns and my heart burns...it's the pain I'm bearing in being a parent. You laugh, but it's true! I have heartburn because I'm trying to teach one of my kids a lesson. See, our son constantly complains about the meal that has been prepared for him. Literally, not a meal goes by that he doesn't have something to complain about. It drives me crazy!

Frustrated, I told him that I was tired of his complaining and that he could start cooking dinner for us. He was more than willing to cook and last night was his first night. He made spaghetti. I tried to assist him but he kicked me out of the kitchen. Later, looking at his sauce, he tells me it's too soupy. I laughed because he was complaining about his own cooking! I'm excited because I'm thinking that his having to cook is going to help him appreciate what someone makes for him and he will learn and stop complaining. Proudly he serves us our meal. Wow, it tasted like he poured an entire box of salt into it! And, it was full of pepper. We choked it down but when I was almost finished I realized he had not eaten his. Did he do this to us to get us back? As a joke, he might do that. But no, to my surprise, he had complaints about his own food and wouldn't eat it! Unbelievable! My husband and I were left eating a pack of Tums for dessert. Sadly for us, he is cooking again tonight and I'm out of Tums. I mentioned to my husband that this lesson is going to be harder on us than it is on him.

Sometimes parenting hurts the parents more than the kids, in this case, the physical pain of heartburn! Seriously though, many times it hurts to watch our kids learn lessons caused by their behavior because the consequences for their actions can be painful and hard. Sometimes we parents even remove the pain of the consequences because it hurts us so badly that we can't bear to see our kids go through it but then the lesson isn't learned. I believe it's the same with God when we are suffering painful consequences and learning lessons. Our pain hurts God as much as it hurts us. The thing I'm reminded of though is that God, no matter how much it hurts Him, allows us to continue in the pain of our consequences so that we learn. It makes me think of what James says in chapter 1:2-4 - Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 

My encouragement to you is when you want to pull your kids out of their pain because it hurts you, don't. God your father allows you to go through the pain, so follow His example with your kids. It's hard, I know from personal experience, but in the end, it will all be worth it when your kids grow up to be godly men and women. But depending on the lesson, you might want to buy some Tums!

He has Me!

As Parents we all have dreams for our children.  They could cure cancer, invent the next best invention, be President!  So when my husband and I learned of the learning disabilities our young twins had, you can imagine our sadness, but we didn't give up the dreams we had for them.  We were determined they were going to learn.  It was just going to take them a little longer and look a little different.

After a few years, reality set in and I can remember the day when I had my pity party about my children and the dreams they weren't going to be able to live out.  I was so mad at God about my son whose disabilities were more severe then my daughters.  I was driving in my car and kept crying out to God, "Why my son? Why does he have to endure these struggles?  His life will be so much harder than it needs to be?  Why can't he just be able to learn like other children?  He is normal in every other way.  So why can't you make him able to read?  You're God, You can do anything!"

And as usual God was patient with me.  He let me rant and when I calmed down He answered, "he has Me." I responded, "but he needs to read or how will he survive in this world?"  To which again God responded, "he has Me!" WOW.  You see, my son with what they world calls disabilities knows and loves God.  He loves me to read him passages in the Bible.  If anyone needs something prayed for he is the one our family goes to.  He is the one reminding us of lessons we learned in church when we aren't applying them to our lives. HE KNOWS HIM!


That's not to say my son is perfect.  By no means, he's a kid learning life's lessons usually the hard way.  However he has God and I know he will be able to get through anything with Him.  I sometimes still get sad about the struggles my son faces.  But whenever I do, God with His usual gentle reminding says, "he has Me!"


My dreams for all my children changed on that day.  My dreams are no longer of this world.  My dreams are now only that my children really know God.  If they have Him, they have everything.  With Him they can do anything.  How much easier is life for all of us when we realize, We have Him!

1 John 5:1-5
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.  This is how we know that we love the children of God by loving God and carrying out his commands.  In fact, this is love for God: to keep His commands.  And His commands are not burdensome, 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 the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God.

"Thank heaven for grace!"

My husband and I have been blessed with two wonderful children. While they are truly a gift from God, I have to admit there are days when I wonder if I am even close to being the mother that God wants me to be. In fact, I highly doubt that I’m in the running for any mother of the year award. I don’t always get it right, but the older I get the more I am learning to give myself some grace.

At the beginning of this year, I set several goals for myself. Of course, a few weeks into the year all of them fell by the wayside - again. The only resolution that I have kept has been spending more time reading the bible. Starting my day by seeing what God has to say is helping me to be a better mom. I’m not perfect, it doesn’t happen every day of the week, but I’m getting better.

What have I learned so far? That I’m done checking out umpteen books on whatever parenting skill I need help with. I used to spend hours reading parenting books in the hopes of finding a magic solution to “fix” my children. My new method of operation – I’m never going to check out a parenting book again – ever. Like it says here at genea2genea, I already have the only book I need, the Bible. The more I read it, the more I realize that God has already covered it all.

So I have a new resolution (even though it’s not New Year’s). When my kids say things like “Why do I have to do that?” I’m going to try and no longer respond with “Because I said so”. Instead, I’ll flip open the Bible and find scripture that supports the reason I want them to do something. I know it’ll be in there, because every answer is in there. And since they seem to have the same complaints OVER and OVER again, I’ll have a pretty good list of scripture to quote in no time!

This is where that grace I mentioned earlier comes in again. I know it’s not going to happen overnight for me, I’m just not that good. However, I’ve got more time on my hands now to pray about it and ask for God’s help because I’m no longer reading all of those books! Just one – the Bible – He’s the only one I’m going to trust – they are after all His children, I’m just raising them for Him.

Father of All and the Bride of Christ

For years I’ve read books on parenting and books on marriage. Some of these books offered some wise godly advice and ideas that I benefited greatly from, but most of these books had some idea that worked for someone else and when I tried it, would fail.  Talking to friends, they too experienced this failure. 

I believe that the problem is that we all too often look to these books instead of looking to the best and first book we should be looking to, the Bible. Thing is, for a long time I thought that the Bible didn’t specifically say much about parenting and marriage. There are passages and verses regarding these things but not that many. Turns out, I was wrong. I just couldn’t see what it said from the perspective that I was looking from. I was trying to find passages and verses and I learned that I needed to look at the Bible differently.  When I did, I found that the Bible is the most amazing book on parenting and marriage but you have to look at it as one whole book with God as the Father of all of us, His children.  When you view the Bible with that perspective, the entire book is about parenting!  Every Word is about God dealing with His children and therefore when we look at how God deals with us, His children and parent our children how God parents us, we have all the parenting advice we need.  This perspective opened up a whole new way of thinking about parenting and it’s the same with marriage.  We, believers make up the church and the church is the bride of Christ.  How does Christ treat us, the church, His bride?  When you look at it that way, you will know how to treat your spouse.

This blog has a goal and it’s not to teach you how to parent, how to be a better wife or how to live a more godly life but to be an aid in helping you learn how to see your parenting, your marriage and your life from the perspective of the Bible and then apply it.  The Bible has all the information we need; we just sometimes need a little help finding it.       

Why blog on these topics?

This blog is for moms by moms and in a nutshell offers perspectives on parenting, marriage and living godly lives.  There have been a lot of books written on these subjects.  Google search parenting books and the results say about 128,000,000!  Marriage books about 240,000,000! Living godly lives about 10,400,000!  That's a lot of books and more and more continue to be written so why a blog?  Thing is, most of the books I've read on these topics are good in theory but in practice they don't help much.  Why?  I believe it's because the answers simply are not found in these books.  I'm not discrediting all books on these subjects, some are great and give some great and godly advice.  However, the best and first place we should be looking for answers and advice on how to parent, how to have a great marriage and how to live a godly life is the Bible.  God's very own words to us about everything.  I pray this blog helps you gain a better Biblical perspective on how to parent, be a great wife and how to live a more godly life.  How we plan to do that is by looking at Bible passages and talking about how we moms put it into practice in our own lives.  Tomorrow's blog is a general overview of parenting and how the Bible tells us way more about it than most of us realize!