Thanks to Erin for sending this video our way. You have to watch until the end for my favorite line. This little girly is too cute.
Enjoy your weekend!
Janelle for Mom, Nicole and Kristin
You may wish you were only weary this Mother’s Day.
For you, weariness is merely the byproduct of numbing sadness. You don’t even want to think about Mother’s Day. A day that reminds everyone else of what they have, reminds you of what you’ve lost—as if you needed another reminder.
Maybe your child has rebelled and doesn’t want anything to do with your family. Or maybe you’ve lost a child through death.
I wish I knew the right words to say to you. If I could sit with you today, I would want you to know how inadequate I feel to comfort you. I know that no words of mine can dull the pain. But after I had grieved with you awhile I would remind you of the comfort of the cross.
There, God the Father sacrificed His only Son. This event did not seem to make sense either. But out of Christ’s unspeakable suffering, God, in His perfect wisdom, provided salvation for mankind. If He has purchased our salvation through the suffering and sacrifice of His son, we can trust that He is working good in the midst of our suffering.
May I encourage you to pour out your heart to the Lord of love? He knows, He sees, and he hears. Your tears are not lost on your heavenly Father. He is the compassionate Lord who urges you to draw near to Him. “I, I am he who comforts you” he declares (Is. 51:12).
It was said of Jonathan Edwards that even in the midst of being falsely accused and persecuted his “happiness was out of the reach of his enemies.” Your loss may be much greater, but the truths of the cross can also put your happiness out of the reach of your sorrows.
Because the Holy God sent His only Son, Jesus, into the world to live a perfect life and die a sinless death, in your place, for your sins, and rise again to conquer death, and because he has surely borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and because He has reconciled us to Himself, called us His children, declared Himself our comforter—because of all this and more, may I be so bold as to wish you a Happy Mother’s Day?
Her children rise up and call her blessed. Proverbs 31:28
Do you have a hard time picturing this ever happening to you?
Oh sure, your kids “rise up”—all the time! Your baby may “rise up” and call (very loudly) at 1:00 am and 2:30 am and 5:00 am. Your toddler might “rise up” with temper tantrums or endless calls to meet his needs. Your school-age child might “rise up” and call you to take her to this activity and help her with that book report. Your teenager may “rise up” in anger at your decisions and call you “strict” or “unfair.”
It may be very hard to imagine your children ever rising up to obey you, rising up to ask for your advice, rising up to thank you, rising up to follow your example, rising up to serve you, rising up to call you blessed.
In fact, you’d settle for just fifteen minutes of not rising up
so you could get a nap! You’re plumb tired. Weary. Worn out. Frankly,
your idea of a happy Mother’s Day would be to sleep right through and
wake up on the other side.
Motherhood can be exhausting; doubly so if we don’t think we’re making any progress. But we must remember the simple yet strength-infusing truth that faithful mothering requires faithful sowing.
Ours isn’t a work that yields instant gratification. It requires a lot of sowing (and not a lot of reaping) for a lot of years.
But the rewards will come. Scripture exhorts the weary mom to “not grow weary of doing good.” And Scripture promises the weary mom that “in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9)
Read those words again: WE WILL REAP. It’s a promise we can bank on.
It might still be a Weary Mother’s Day. The “rising up” of sin and of needs won’t stop for the day. But it can be a Happy Weary Mother’s Day as your soul finds rest in the truth of God’s promises.
My six-year-old Jack and I just returned from our local library. Jack loves our weekly library date, especially when it is followed by a vanilla-milk at Starbucks. But he doesn’t understand why we can’t bring two-year-old Tori with us (she stays at home with my mother-in-law). I try to explain that there is a quiet rule at the library, and that Tori, who loves nothing better than the sound of her own high-pitched squeals, would get us thrown out in a hurry.
I am looking forward to taking Tori to the library—some day. But even when we’ve passed the screaming stage, I’ll still have the colossal challenge of finding books for her to read that promote a godly picture of womanhood.
Thanks to the good folks at the CBMW blog I know where to start. In her four-part series “Girls of Character: Teaching Biblical Femininity to the Next Generation through Literature,” Gretchen Neisler offers suggestions for books that girls will enjoy and which illustrate and reinforce the values of a biblical womanhood. She also provides some questions to help parents evaluate the attitudes and actions of a story’s heroine in: “Reading is for Girls: Choosing the Right Book.”
These are posts I’m going to save for future use. But first I have to teach Tori to act like a lady in the library.
I know, I promised we were finished shopping for time—but indulge me for one more day; because while we’ve been talking about time, Dad has been posting on productivity over at the Cheap Seats blog. We didn’t plan this, honestly!
You can now download a PDF of his helpful series (37 pages long!), and we suggest you take along on your next “Seasons” planning retreat.
Tomorrow we’ll try to post something un-related to time. I promise.
It is the first Monday in May, and most New Years resolutions have been long forgotten. But here at girl talk we’ve been talking about making the best use of our time since the middle of January. Definitely our longest series yet!
And it’s time to move on.
Before we do, we thought a recap would be helpful. I know—we weren’t able to cover everyone’s season and we’re sorry about that! But we hope these posts encouraged all of you to “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15-16).
Shopping for Time - Introduction
Life’s Best Bargains
Look Carefully
Good or Best?
Changing Seasons
God of Our Seasons
Best Deals of the Season
Shopping for Time In Every Season
Best Deals for Moms of Young Kids
Best Deals for Moms of Teenagers
and Moms of Wayward Teens (pt. one, two, three, four, five)
My mom’s friend Irene sent this one to her. We may have posted it before, but I thought it went well with my visit to the bank today. I gave my Caly-girl a scare when I had a little run-in with the curb. Probably the banks fault.
Happy weekend!
Janelle for the girltalkers
A new sign in the Bank Lobby reads:
‘Please note that this Bank is installing new Drive-through ATM machines enabling customers to withdraw cash without leaving their vehicles.
Customers using this new facility are requested to use the procedures outlined below when accessing their accounts.
After months of careful research, MALE & FEMALE Procedures have been developed Please follow the Appropriate steps for your gender.’
*******************************
MALE PROCEDURE:
1. Drive up to the cash machine.
2. Put down your car window.
3. Insert card into machine and enter PIN.
4. Enter amount of cash required and Withdraw
5. Retrieve card, cash and receipt.
6. Put window up.
7. Drive off.
*******************************
FEMALE PROCEDURE:
What is really funny is that most of this part is the Truth.!!!!
1. Drive up to cash machine.
2. Reverse and back up the required amount to align car window with the machine.
3. Set parking brake, put the window down.
4 Find handbag, remove all contents on to passenger seat to locate card.
5. Tell person on cell phone you will call them back and hang up.
6. Attempt to insert card into machine.
7. Open car door to allow easier access to machine due to its excessive distance from the car.
8. Insert card.
9 Re-insert card the right way.
10. Dig through handbag to find diary with your PIN written on the inside back page.
11. Enter PIN.
12. Press cancel and re-enter correct PIN.
13. Enter amount of cash required.
14. Check makeup in rear view mirror.
15. Retrieve cash and receipt.
16. Empty handbag again to locate wallet and place cash inside.
17. Write debit amount in check register and place receipt in back of checkbook.
18. Re-check makeup.
19. Drive forward 2 feet.
20. Reverse back to cash machine.
21. Retrieve card.
22. Re-empty hand bag, locate card holder, and place card into the slot provided!
23. Give dirty look to irate male driver waiting behind you.
24. Restart stalled engine and pull off.
25. Redial person on cell phone.
26. Drive for 2 to 3 miles.
27. Release Parking Brake.
This week Mom suggested some “Best Deals for the Older Woman” and they include:
Prayer and Study of God’s Word
Prizing Your Husband, Serving Your Children, Loving Your Grandchildren
Training Younger Women in The Church in Biblical Womanhood (pt. one and two)
We want to conclude this mini-series with a story. It’s another snippet from the recent Pastors Conference, from Mom’s message for pastors’ wives. In closing, she shared a story from Susan Hunt’s book, Spiritual Mothering, about one woman named Miss Elizabeth who truly made the best use of her time.
Listen as Mom reads her story.
That’s the question my friend Janis Shank began asking herself a few years ago, as her oldest children graduated, got married, and left home. For the answer, Janis turned to Scripture and there she found God’s wisdom and direction for this new season of her life.
Recently, at the women’s session at the Sovereign Grace Pastors Conference, I asked Janis to share how she is seeking to make the best use of this time in her life. Many women told me how excited and encouraged they were by what Janis’ shared. I hope you will be too.
Listen to Janis’ testimony here
In addition to serving our family, there are many other ways in which God wants us to use our gifts and talents in our middle and later years. But again, we must be careful to look to Scripture, and not the worldly culture, as our guide. We must ask questions such as:
When we begin with biblical goals and values, our role and purpose for this sometimes-confusing season become clear—and exciting! There’s one opportunity I want to encourage all of us to seize, and that is the Titus 2 mandate to train the younger women in the virtues of biblical womanhood. In Titus 2:3-5, Paul gives us “older women” a job description: we are to display godly character “and so teach the younger women” to love their families, care for their homes, be pure, self-controlled, and submissive to their own husbands. We’ve got a job to do ladies! And this isn’t just a task for a select few. Titus 2 is clear—if you are an older woman with godly character, this assignment is for you! The younger women need our help. And so many of them are desperate for the counsel, advice, encouragement and care of a godly older women. We must fulfill this vital task of passing on the qualities of biblical womanhood to the next generation. Thirty years ago, Elisabeth Elliot issued a call to older women, or, as she calls them, “WOTT: Women of Titus Two”:
I think of the vast number of older women today….what a pool of energy and power for God they might be. We live longer now than we did forty years ago. There’s more mobility, more money around, more leisure, more health and strength. Resources, which if put at God’s disposal, might bless younger women. But there are also many more ways to spend those resources, so we find it very easy to occupy ourselves selfishly. Where are the women, single or married, willing to hear God’s call to spiritual motherhood, taking spiritual daughters under their wings to school them?
Are you willing to hear God’s call to spiritual motherhood? Ask the Lord today: who is a young woman you can take under your wing and teach the beauty of biblical womanhood