The moment when you are most repelled by a child's behavior, that is your warning light to draw the very closest to that child.
Motherhood is a hallowed place because children aren’t commonplace. Co-laboring over the sculpting of souls is a sacred vocation, a humbling privilege. Never forget.
Expose your life to real need. Visit a developing a country. Take a short term mission trip. Write an inmate, send a letter to a sponsored child, serve in the inner city, at a food bank, with a crisis pregnancy center. Make time for shut-ins, the elderly, the sick, the single-parents, the new believers. Just find one way you can make your awareness of your gift-graced life intersect with a real place of need - and Christ in us will do the rest.
Simplicity is never a matter of circumstances; simplicity is a matter of focus. So in the midst of educating and parenting our children, we can't necessarily go ahead and make everything fit into neat, controllable, simple schedules. But the point is, simplicity is: how do we keep our eyes fixed and focused on Christ, no matter where we are?
I don't think of myself as an author. But simply as a grateful child of God. John 3:27 has long been a life verse: "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven." Any more words will only be solely a gift from Him. I can only faithfully wait.
Parenting is about preparing children to get along with each other, to get along with you and without you, and that it's impossible to get along without God.
