Loving The Middle Years

I have discovered that there is a whole in all parenting plans and books. It seems that as soon as you are done training toddlers, if you did a splendid job of it, that your kids should run on their own pretty smoothly. Good training is like riding a bike, and once those training wheels come off, you just sit back and watch your kids ride away. The problem is, this is not how it really works! Discipleship is never ending. There is never a point that you reach that is "the Point". There is no DONE in parenting. You leave the toddler stage to enter into a whole new world, a whole new game. Thankfully the manual for this next stage is the same. The Bible always speaks to us as parents. It speaks to us in the consent and insistent age of 2 year olds, it speaks to us in the early wisdom age of the 7 year old and it continues to speak to us as we raise up our children to love the Lord. But it does seem that in parenting books this age is skipped. It does seem that this is the age where kids are given a lot of freedom without the right equipment for the job. When kids are young you need a lot of energy and a whole lot of patience and self disciple to do the same thing every day. When they get a little older they learn how to function in your home (they do not stick there fingers in the outlet anymore). And they really are able to play with friends without stealing or hitting! But, but, but....They still need you. They still need to be guided, they still need help and they still need bounderies. They are able to hang out with friends (siblings included) pretty effortlessly but issues still arise. It is a different set of issues but there is plenty to talk about and ample room for teaching and instructing. If these issue are not coming to you, you have a whole different issue. You need to know who your kids are with. You need to know what they are playing, how they are playing (or not playing!) and where they are playing. If your kids are playing with other kids out of earshot, you should ask questions in the car on your way home: Who did you play with? What game did you play? What did you talk about? And then you interact with what they tell you. If they are constantly having issues with the same kid(s) make sure to be observing the situation first hand so that you can help your young lady or young man, deal with it properly. Basically, you need to oversee there free time. This is not the stage that we let go of our kids!! We need to invest in our kids at this stage and teach them how to interact in the world they are in. When kids are toddlers we teach them the rules and boundaries of home life. They have rules all over the place. These rules are teaching them how to live in your home and how to live in your family. These rules are put into place for protection, function and to maintain peace, joy and some kind of order in the home. Really, the rules are in place for everyone's good. So by the time your kids are 5 they usually have the rules down. Yes, they may still break the rules but they know the standard. But these middle years are when their world begins to expand a little bit. They go from home, to playground, to school, to more school to work to starting their own families. Their world just keeps expanding!! It keeps getting bigger. And as it gets a little bigger, they need our help! They need our wisdom to apply to their new situations. They need guidance and guidelines for this next step. Because of this, I am going to try and focus on this for a little bit in my next posts. I am in the thick of it right now with a 8, 7, and almost 6 year old. And this is really me trying to figure out what I am doing right now with my kids. And as I go on this journey, I hope to please the Lord and help my children grow in grace and beauty!

Happy sweeping! And for those of you with older kids, much of that sweeping is in attitudes and spending time talking through things! We rarely spill milk anymore but there is still plenty of sweeping going on!

Dandelions

I have a strange memory from my early school days. Memories from St Patricks catholic school hold a special place in my mind. I loved my school and only have good memories of the 9 years that I spent there. It was small. We went to mass every friday. There was no play structure. There was asphalt and paint. This meant that kickball and foursquare where honored at recess time and that our school could have taken any other school on and destroyed them. Scraped knees where not a thing to cry over but something that made for a good story and to compare to the other kid's bloody knee to see who's was better. There was no room for bad attitudes or girly silliness. The school had a good aroma. And my class was the potpourri of the school! But back to this memory. I remember picking dandelions. My class went out during school hours to some of the houses in the neighborhood and picked their dandelions. We had big bags that we filled. And boy did we fill a whole lot of bags! We took these bags to a big factory. This is where the memory goes a little fuzzy and all I have left are some sparse but vivid pictures of this factory. I have no idea what this pest of a plant was turned into. But it did some good I am sure. And isn't that just how life is. Sin pops up in our heart but God..... God takes the sin and turns it upside down. God takes death and swallows it up with resurrection life.

Dandelions are on the brain. My yard is full of them. And they grow so fast, so relentlessly that I have given up trying to mow before they outgrow the grass. I would need to mow weekly to defeat them. But I really only like to mow every other week so my yard only looks decent for about 5 days before my grass is hiding below a bed of dandelions. Or rather a sea of dandelions for they really do appear to have no end!

The other reason that dandelions have consumed me (as well as the yard), is that I came up with a great analogy today while taking to a sister about sin. I was looking out at my yellow speckled yard when my sister was taking about how discouraging it can be when you just cannot get the upper hand on sin. Just when you think you have it down, just when you think you are over something, it pops it's ugly head up in the form of a thought, "but really it was so horrible how........."fill in the blank. How he spoke to me, how he treated me, how he lied to me, how he cheated me. And the list of offenses is as varying as condiments in my fridge. But the real perspective is quite different. Look at it this way. When sin comes in (a dandelion in the yard) and you repent (you pick the dandelion), you have dealt with it faithfully. If you notice another dandelion, and then another dandelion, do not be discouraged. Just pick the dandelions out as they come your way. And pretty soon you will find that the yard is looking pretty good! And that your maintenance of this pesty weed is becoming quite manageable. But, always, always get rid of it as soon as you notice it! It is often tempting to go sit in the bed of dandelions and ponder over why they are there. It is easy to sit down with the dandelions and ask "how did you get here?" "where did you come from?" But all this does is turn you into another weed in the garden. Pick the dandelions, get rid of the dandelion. Don't turn them into a little pet to cry over. Just get rid of it. And if you notice that your whole heart is overrun with dandelions, do not fear. But rather rejoice that God is faithful and just to forgive. Start with one dandelion at a time. And if they will not leave you alone, remember to fight the good fight and never tire of doing good, good being killing the dandelion. You will have victory! And yes, each victory leads to another fight. But that does not mean you are failing. It rather is a sign that you are being faithful. If you are not fighting sin, then you have lost. Fighting is the ticket to living a fruitful blessed life. So get out there and take a sword to your dandelions. Cut there little heads off and never tire of doing it. And you will find that you get better and better at fighting. So the key is not to stop fighting, but to become a skilled warrior. The bible is very clear that this life is not one of ease. There are blessings all around us. And life is good. But it is not true that good and easy go together. It is a lie to think that fighting is a sign of failing. Or that fighting is a sign of something wrong with you. It you have this mindset, then get rid of it quickly! Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Gear up for battle!! But on the whole armor of God. Stand and fight. And it is in this fighting that you find victory. Victory in Christ will one day lead to rest. But that will be the day that you stand before Him face to face. That time is not yet here and you want to hear these words when that time does come, "well down my good and faithful servant." So get out there and pluck those dandelions. And when you pluck one, get ready to pluck some more!