Beyond Bringing Up Boys

You know the paper you get from school about your child: Things we should know about... "Samuel’s here in the clinic," the nurse said from the school. "He threw up but he’s not running a fever and says he feels fine." "Was he grossed out by something?" I asked. Turns out, he was indeed. His "job" today was scraping plates. He starting puking and it caused a chain reaction. "That’ll be the last day he’ll do that job," his teacher said. "Good to know," the nurse said. Oops Sorry about that.

A delicate caress along the bridge of a newborn nose, a gentle wipe across a face streaming with tears, a tender touch along a forehead raging with fever…the beauty of the human hand…the power of a touch. 2 months ago, Josiah Seth broke his femur. Many hands reached out to give comfort and aid to Seth (and to a distraught mommy). Visible hands. But the visible hands alone were limited. For physical healing to begin, Seth needed to be put into the care of unseen hands. He was taken to the operating room where a surgeon aligned the femur and, with the assistance of other doctors and staff, applied a cast to hold the properly aligned bone in place. With pain, I recall the uncertainty I felt as I stood, relinquishing to unseen hands my feeble attempts at comfort. In the weeks that have followed, I’ve thought a lot about unseen hands, specifically as they relate to the Christian journey. "Fear thou not for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, ...

At one point or another all of us have felt it. The bitter taste of rejection. Sometimes it’s laced in frilly words and other times it’s brusque. But in one way or another we’ve all experienced it. I’ve been thinking a lot about this today. More specifically how easily rejection leads to inferiority. "If I were"… then he/she would…. In the Daniel study Beth Moore admonishes us not to build images to ourselves by inferiority. I related to her words completely in this paragraph. "Because of past failures and the ample ammunition I’ve given my accuser, I sometimes have a hard time differentiating between full-scale failure and simple misjudgment and mistake. Anything that stirs up that old feeling of failure--no matter how little the infractions compare—can send me on an instantaneous plummet from shaky self-esteem to full throttle self-loathing." Am I the only one who does this? (Well, Beth Moore and I) :-) I want to be a woman whose image reflects God. So, I’m choosi...

For any of you who have read my other blog, you know that I have been posting a Thankful Thursday for several weeks. You also know that while I have done posts on my other two kiddos, Seth has not had a post dedicated to him! If you know us well, you already know that I am too busy keeping him out of a zillion things to think about thankfulness . Nah. Just kiddin.' I am thankful for Seth's precious little hugs. Often I'll feel little arms around my legs and him lovin' on me--although he wipes off any kiss I give him with a dramatic flair. I am thankful for his good manners. I hope they last! He is quick to say "please" and "thank-you" without being reminded. Just the thought of Seth's mischievous eyes makes me smile...always. I am so grateful that God gave us our sweet Josiah Seth and that my life was spared to be here with him each day. Thank you, Father, for Seth.

Meet my husband, David, and my 2 oldest boys, Samuel and Zachary. David and I met at a small private Bible college in Florida in 1990. He had a "solidarity" about him that intrigued me from the beginning--although it would be several months before we would date. He told me I was going to marry him before our first date! I can't believe I didn't RUN. Maybe it was because we were on choir tour and shared a bus seat. I had no place to go and he had several days to convince me that he was right. After 15 years, I'm not sorry.