Growing in God's Grace

My Mom to Mom study went great yesterday! Bryson went to his daycare for the first time. He did really well and I couldn't have asked for a better first day! It seems like things are falling into place just as they are supposed to.

Mom to Mom was packed full of good information. Almost too much information to process just in the two short hours while we meet. I am definitely still chewing over this information, trying to decide how it all applies to me and what God is trying to teach me.

I'm thinking it may not be a good thing if after you answer a discussion question your entire group is silent, and the leader looks at you and says "Wow. That was really honest." What is going on here!?!?! I thought we were supposed to be honest and really share openly. More on this later...

The main focus of this lesson was on the great expectations of mothers. Our culture, our families, and our own inner voices (this is especially true for me) tell us that we have to be the everything mom- all the time! How can we do this? We are only human. The answer is that God does not put these expectations on us, and we need to focus on remembering that.

We need to step away from the "WWPT Syndrome" (what will people think) and realize that we answer only to our Lord. I have really been hit over the head lately with a few different things:

• All children are different, so parenting will look different for different people. We are given certain guidelines in the Bible for raising children, but other than that, there is no instruction manual. What works for one mom and one child probably will not work for another mom and child. I think we are so worried about what other people are thinking of us as moms because we know what we are thinking of them as moms (this is the part where I got the reaction mentioned above :). I don't try to be judgemental, I don't try to be mean-spirited, yet I catch myself talking to my husband about other parents. There are many issues with this- but the main issue is that a lot of these girls are my FRIENDS. What am I doing? I have to take control of my thoughts and words and realize that God has given us the grace to parent the children he has given us- not anyone else's kids. What makes us think we would be experts on other peoples' children?
• Now that I am a mom I have really noticed a division within the church women on parenting. It seems like everyone is talking about staying at home versus daycare versus in-home care, public school versus private school, spanking versus not spanking, etc... Again, we all have different kids and what works for one probably won't work for another. We are supposed to be lifting each other up!!! I think parenting is a really tough job; too tough to have our friends and people in our church passing judgement. I am really working on this. :)
• We need be real with each other. We need to take off the masks that we wear, and really open up our hearts so that we can experience true fellowship and the blessings that God gives us in the form of friends. Can you imagine how differently things would look if we all really did this???

Another good thing I picked up is that we can't parent by comparison. If I compare the kind of mom I am to the kind of mom my good friend is I get a skewed view. This is because I am comparing my inside to their outside-- this never works!

So.... God calls us to always remember the most important things. We are called to provide, protect, prepare, and pass it on! Of these four areas, the "protect" really stood out to me yesterday. God makes it very clear that we are to discipline our children. Linda Anderson (the author of this study) said that "an undisciplined child is an unprotected child." Wow! I've never thought of it that way. It obviously is not/will not be fun to discipline our children, but we are told to do it- by God!

"Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him." Proverbs 22:15

Obviously I don't think this is saying we have to go out and pick a rod to use to drive foolish behavior from our children (there are books written about this!). I do think it means that we need to use whatever discipline method is working for our particular child at that time to teach them life lessons and to prepare them for adulthood. Linda went on to say that if we spare discipline in the home, we are going to have children who have difficulty coping with life's disappointments and have a distorted sense of self-entitlement. I am obviously not to this stage with my 11 week old, but this has sparked some serious conversations about our future as a family. These are conversations that need to be had now so that Jason and I will be on the same page when this time comes.

And last but not least- I am not my mom, I am not Jason's mom, I am not a perfect mom, I am not a mom like my best friend. I am a mom called to be Bryson's mom- what a wonderfully freeing realization!

I am a "Growing in God's Grace Mom." How amazing that grace is!!!