However, none of this compares to the overwhelming feeling I had yesterday morning at Bible Study.Dan Panetti spoke on not letting the culture raise our kids. Basically, raising godly kids vs. raising good kids. It was incredibly interesting and insightful and he had a ton of great information to give on countering the culture today. However, I walked away with this feeling of "Oh my goodness, I've already done so many things wrong... how am I ever going to raise a boy in this culture!" We talked in our small group about it afterward(thank goodness for small groups) and all of the women there felt the same way. It's a feeling of "How in the world can I do ALL of this for my child?" He even mentioned instilling the heros of the Bible in your children so they want to be like Gideon or David or what have you. I leaned over to Marci during his talk and said, "I feel horrible, I don't really even know the story of Gideon... how am I supposed to teach Brady?"
It was incredible. He had all of these wonderful things to say and suggestions at how to raise your kids and I didn't even know where to start. And Brady's only 5 and a half months old! What is the world going to be like when he's a teenager??
Thankfully though, as I was sitting at the park with Brady stewing over all of this and asking God what in the world I should do, our sweet leader, Laurie emailed us the following email:
"I was thinking this afternoon…some of you mentioned that you felt overwhelmed after hearing Dan speak…take it from me, you never really stop feeling overwhelmed as a mother…don’t be disheartened by the feeling, it’s more than natural…as I pondered our discussion this afternoon I came up with this: think of that overwhelming feeling as the FIRE that drives you as a mother. The minute I stop feeling overwhelmed I might have the tendency to become apathetic as a mother and that is far more dangerous… use that feeling to drive you to perform your best as a mom… your highest calling!!!! Remember we have God as the ultimate “parent” to seek refuge and advice from…it’s all right there in His Word. God uses us, as imperfect as we are, to guide and love our children. He created them and placed them directly in our homes; He trusted us with them... so we have to use our faith to walk in the path He chose for us, the greatest path, as a mother…it’s the ultimate privilege. You WILL have days of failure but the next day starts anew and fresh…continue to fill yourself up with God’s Word and you will have the peace you need to raise your little ones…it’s ok to be a little fearful…that’s when we operate the closest to God…which is EXACTLY where He wants us!!!"
How beautiful were those words? I think she's exactly right. This isn't just advice for mothers, either. Joanna pointed out last night that this is good life advice too. The minute we start feeling okay where we are in our walk with the Lord, that's when Satan attacks, and little by little he starts chipping away at us until we're further from Him than we ever dreamed! I just wanted to share that bit of encouragement with all of you out there. I know that for me, it's very freeing to know that there are no perfect moms out there that get it right 100% of the time. There are probably ones that it get it right 90% of the time, but I'm not one of those!
You may ask where I decided to start. I decided that God was telling me (and has been for a while) that I watch too much t.v. Too much as a whole and too much with Brady as well. I always chalk it up to background noise, which it is mostly, but before I know it, I've been sucked in to whatever show is on. So, I've decided not to even sit in the living room during the day for a week. That way, I'm not even tempted, and we can sit in Brady's room and play on the floor or go for walks, since it's so nice outside. We've downloaded lots of Raffi songs on my iPod so we listen and sing all afternoon. (Brady actually thinks it's pretty funny when I sing. Hmm.... so does Jeff, I guess there isn't any American Idol in my future anytime soon). Anyway, just one small thing I'm going to work on for this week. We'll see what next week brings.
Yesterday afternoon we walked to the park. We stayed for two hours, watched a pee wee baseball practice and read books. Brady eventually conked out in his stroller. Jeff came and picked Georgia up after work from the park so we didn't have to walk back with her. She doesn't necessarily love walking next to the stroller.
Here are some pics that I took with my phone from the park!
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