Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches

So realize that your body is a testimony to the world of God's design. Carry the extra weight joyfully until you can lose it joyfully. Carry the scars joyfully as you carry the fruit of them. Do not resent the damages that your children left on your body. Just like a guitar mellows and sounds better with age and scratches, so your body can more fully praise God having been used for His purposes. So don't resent it, enjoy it.

Treat sins that your children struggle with like basic math. Practice, Practice, and you'll get it.

Sin is a fact of life. It is the way we deal with it that changes ours.

Blessings, like children, are not ethereal and weightless. Sometimes they feel like they come at you like a Kansas hail storm— they might leave a welt! But if you accept your lot and rejoice in your toil, God will give you the kind of overwhelming joy that cannot remember the details. Motherhood is hard work. It is repetitive and often times menial. Accept it. Rejoice in it. This is your toil. Right here. Those are their faces. Enjoy them. The days of your life are supposed to be full of things like this. But joy is not giddy. It is not an emotional rush— it is what happens when you accept your lot and rejoice in your toil. So rejoice in your children. Look them in the eyes and give thanks. You will not even remember the work of all this planning when the harvest of joy overwhelms you.

…the garden was full of trees to eat from, and only one was a “no touch.” Structure and freedom combined together make happy children. Too much of either is very destructive.

…His commands are a means of joy. Make your children understand that obedience leads to freedom and joy— it is the path of life.

As our children grow, we ought to be releasing them from our authority to God’s authority alongside us.

…every time your children have a conflict about a toy, they are breaking fellowship. If you step in and redistribute the toy but don’t address the unkindness or selfishness or envy, you allow that to stay between them.

There is a wrong way to be right and a wrong way to be wrong.

Whenever this happens, this ambiguous restlessness in the house, I try to think of it as a growth spurt. It is like all my children have a growth spurt at the same time and develop new needs. This is only a problem when Mom doesn’t have a growth spurt herself. It’s even more of a problem when Mom refuses to have one, and demands that everyone else get back into clothes that are too tight. Just like the wine and the wineskins, you can’t make the old schedule work with the new needs. Naps, when filled with children who no longer need them, crack open and make a big mess… I pray for a growth spurt, for ideas on how to help them, how to make this a fun new phase, and how to appreciate their new needs.

It is the parent’s duty to take this raw product and shape it with discipline until it is a virtue and not a vice.

Oftentimes, our children’s gifts will take us places that we never intended, but needed, to go.

…your body is a testimony to the world of God’s design.

…our bodies are tools, not treasures. You should not spend your days trying to preserve your body in its eighteen-year-old form. Let it be used. By the time you die, you want to have a very dinged and dinted body. Motherhood uses your body in the way that God designed it to be used.

…I am responsible to see them individually, even when they are presenting themselves to me en masse.

Sacrifice the thing you were doing to work through minor emotional issues… Sacrifice your peace for their fun…

…try thinking of discipline as a different kind of nourishment— a sweet means of grace to your children.

Sacrifice your peace for their fun. Your clean kitchen floor for their help cracking eggs. Your quiet moment for their long retelling of a dream that a friend of theirs allegedly had. Prioritize your children far and away above the other work you need to get done. They are the only part of your work that really matters.

So while your children are little, cultivate an attitude of sacrifice. Sacrifice your peace for their fun. Your clean kitchen floor for their help cracking eggs. Your quiet moment for their long retelling of a dream that a friend of theirs allegedly had. Prioritize your children far and away above the other work you need to get done. They are the only part of your work that really matters.

Give the children a chance to get outside themselves and see their behavior as it plays out in a story. It often turns out that they know exactly the right thing to do.

Setting behaviors into stories is a great way to communicate with your little people.

One of the greatest kindnesses you can do for your kids is to lay out for them clear expectations.

The other thing is that the structure is a fence—around freedom. We go on fun walks to practice our obeying and end up at the park, where we run around and play for a while. Obedience to God's law is freedom. Your kids should feel the same way about obeying you. Sometimes you should give them little jobs to obey, knowing full well that they will love to do it. Praise them for their quick obeying. You should not be training them that obedience is bondage. Do not do epic training camps that teach them that obedience leads to sitting quietly on your hands and speaking to no one. Obedience to Scripture is life. So if you are giving lots of commands it should be things like, "Okay, stir this. Grab the eggs out of the fridge. Great. Dump in the flour. Nice job." God does not command things that make life miserable—His commands are a means of joy. Make your children understand that obedience leads to freedom and joy—it is the path of life.

Growing is, after all, what God wants them to do.

Prioritize your children far and away above the other work you need to get done. They are the only part of your work that really matters.

So make sure that before you start rebuking them your own heart is in order. Thank God for the headache. Thank Him for these prime opportunities to teach. Thank Him for the scuffle that your children are currently having over who unbuckled who and why. And then, after your own heart has been sorted out, move on to theirs.

The opportunities for growth and refinement abound here—but you have to be willing. You have to open your heart to the tumble. As you deal with your children, deal with yourself always and first. This is what it looks like, and feels like, to walk as a mother with God.

It is no abstract thing—the state of your heart is the state of your home. You cannot harbor resentment secretly toward your children and expect their hearts to be submissive and tender. You cannot be greedy with your time and expect them to share their toys. And perhaps most importantly, you cannot resist your opportunities to be corrected by God and expect them to receive correction from you.