How are attitudes with your children - like muck and mud?

I talked with a mom yesterday who was having a tough time with her teens, their fighting, hitting and just plain being nasty to each other. After listening for a while, I prayed with her and hung up the phone.

Today I read an interesting family story about a mom who was tired of her children fighting and being nasty to each other so she took a break and went to the barn to shovel muck and mud. While working out there, she prayed and asked the Lord to show her what she could do about the problems with her teens. She ran across an old box of photos and found a cute one with her kids when they were younger, happy and smiling. She wrapped the photo in a ziploc bag, buried it in a bucket of muck and took it to the house.

She called her kids to come and watch something. As she dug through the muck she talked about God's love for us, how He loves to forgive us and that we often need to forgive each other because our sin is like that muck in God's eyes. When she uncovered the photo, her children loved seeing it, reminded them of happier days but the message was not lost about what they needed to do. They all realized that they needed to ask each other for forgiveness as well as forgive the other person. It cleared the home atmosphere that day.

Sometimes we have days like that when we are dealing with muck and mud in our lives. God's reminder to us is that our muck and mud, also called sin, can easily be taken care of when we ask God for forgiveness as well as forgive those people that need to be forgiven. It clears the air as well as send of breath of healing to us.

This story is in the January issue of "Family Currents" and will go home this Sunday (12/19) in the 9:15 elementary Sunday School classes because there is no Sunday School next week (12/26). So many people are out of town and so few subs are available that Pastor Steve has allowed us to cancel Sunday School the travelling weekend of Christmas.

The 11:00 elementary Sunday School classes also have a monthly newsletter that goes home and will go home this Sunday. They also have a weekly paper that goes home and gives the Sunday School lesson for next week. We are asking parents to read the scriptures with their children before Sunday to give children's a heads' up on what the lesson will be. The Rio "Family Currents" also has a place on the front page where we put the lessons for the month with the scriptures. We feel that it can be a valuable family time if parents read these scriptures with their children each week. Preschoolers also have papers that go home with them that tell about the lesson for that day.

"A Cup of Christmas Tea"

I have just finished my annual reading of "A Christmas Cup of Tea".  I don't remember when I bought the book but the copyright is in 1982.  I  know I've had it many years, lost it a few years, then found it again.   It's a very short, simple book, but has a profound message.  A young man got all his Christmas done - the decorations, the gifts wrapped and under the tree, felt very smug but something was bothering him inside.  He remembered his great aunt's Christmas card and her note that she'd love to have him come for a cup of Christmas tea.  He really didn't want to go but finally gave in and went to see her.  It turned out to be one of his soul's important moments.

I often think of the message of that book, what Christmas is all about, not just the most important thing being to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but the traditions of other things we celebrate and how people are at the heart of it all.  Without the relationships to our family and friends around us, the gifts and decorations are all just hollow things that mean nothing.

Now that Christmas is almost here this year, and I'm closer to his great aunt's age, maybe I'll start a new tradition of inviting my kids and grandkids for a cup of Christmas tea.  It's a great time for chatting and sharing what's happening in our lives.

Discipline? Punishment? Course Correction?

As we are finishing up going through the book Spiritual Parenting by Michelle Anthony, she has a very interesting chapter on "course correction", the words she has chosen to use with her children instead of discipline or punishment.  "Punishment" has a negative connotation and so does "discipline".  As she studied Hebrews 12:11-13, Michelle proposes three steps that are involved in the way she explains "course correction". 

Step one is that the consequence for sin, breaking a rule or doing something wrong has to be painful to the child.  This is where we need to ask God for something specific that will speak pain to the child.  God has created this child and knows best what the child needs in this pain to bring him/her to a place of repentance and remorse.  God customizes life experiences, specific trials and loving environments for each of us to train us to repent of our sin, which is the root cause of our doing evil/bad/wrong things. 

After our child has gone through the season of pain, step two is to build them up in love, strengthening what we broke down in step one, bringing restitution in love in reassurance and in encouragement as our Heavenly Father does for us when we sin.

Step three, we are to "make a straight and level path so the lame will not be disabled but rather healed."   God wants us to learn what is the right way to do something so that we will be healed from the root issue of sin instead of becoming disabled by the issue.  God's promise then is that the harvest produced will be a harvest of righteousness and peace for those trained by the process of course correction.  We can then celebrate when the healing takes place and the sin has been dealt with openly and honestly. 

As parents, this was a new and refreshing way of looking at disciplining our children to accomplish true spiritual changes in our children's lives instead of just modifying their behavior.  Behavior modification may work in the short term and look like a true change of behavior but it hasn't dealt with the heart issue of the child. 

An interesting website that also has some excellent issues on dealing with heart issues of our children is  www.biblicalparenting.org.  They send out a couple tips a week if you'd like to subscribe at their sight.  They have also published a book called Parenting is Heart Work by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN.

Am I listening to the Lord and discerning His voice?

I walked into a situation this morning where the thought "what needs to be done here?" came to my mind as I was walking through the Children's Wing here at church.  One of the ladies was looking for a particular item for the MOPS meeting and the lady helping her had no idea where the item was.  Overhearing the whole conversation, I had a choice to make as I continued walking down the hall.  Do I want to step in and help this lady find what she needed or do I just continue walking and ignore the need.  Because this thought was fresh in my mind about being aware of what needs to be done, I couldn't just ignore it.  So, I went back and found the lady, showed her where the item was that she was looking for.  I have been here for 16 years and know our resources intimately, so was able to show her 3 or 4 other possibilities for what she needed to accomplish.  That made her day because she had been struggling to do her job in MOPS.

In our Sunday School class last Sunday (11:00, Room 9 through Nov. 28), our topic was "What Needs to be Done?", teaching our children to look around and see what needs to be done.  Michelle Anthony (author of the book "Spiritual Parenting") relayed in the book that she had chosen to not use the word "chores" with her children but instead used "acts of service".  She wanted her children to understand that we all have certain things that need to be done, just being part of the family, but we are interdependent on each other and sometimes need to do things above and beyond the call of duty.  She feels that our children need to be taught that their calling from the Lord is to be servants, so it can be taught to children while they are young and  learning life habits. 

How about you?  Have you ever thought about what needs to be done as you walk into a particular situation?  Did you respond to or ignore the need?

Am I listening to the Lord and discerning His voice?

In our Sunday School class last Sunday (11:00, Room 9 through Nov. 28), our topic was "What Needs to be Done?", teaching our children to look around and see what needs to be done.  Michelle Anthony (author of the book "Spiritual Parenting") relayed in the book that she had chosen to not use the word "chores" with her children but instead used "acts of service".  She wanted her children to understand that we all have certain things that need to be done, just being part of the family, but we are interdependent on each other and sometimes need to do things above and beyond the call of duty.  She feels that our children need to be taught that their calling from the Lord is to be servants, so it can be taught to children while they are young and  learning life habits. 

I walked into a situation this morning where the thought "what needs to be done here?" came to my mind as I was walking through the Children's Wing here at church.  One of the ladies was looking for a particular item for the MOPS meeting and the lady helping her had no idea where the item was.  Overhearing the whole conversation, I had a choice to make as I continued walking down the hall.  Do I want to step in and help this lady find what she needed or do I just continue walking and ignore the need.  Because this thought was fresh in my mind about being aware of what needs to be done, I couldn't just ignore it.  So, I went back and found the lady, showed her where the item was that she was looking for.  I have been here for 16 years and know our resources intimately, so was able to show her 3 or 4 other possibilities for what she needed to accomplish.  That made her day because she had been struggling to do her job in MOPS.

How about you?  Have you ever thought about what needs to be done as you walk into a particular situation?  Did you respond to or ignore the need?