Seeing as this is a site about ‘growing into motherhood’ I could not resist posting pictures of one very proud mother (and father)!
Their babies are 17 days old today.
Two look like their mom, Snowy, and the other three take after dad, Frodo.
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you……..which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:7,9,10)
“One of my most influential ancestors from my mother’s side of the family was a great-grandmother who spent many hours on her knees praying for her unborn grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She liked to imagine her prayers were bricks in a wall going up to heaven; once a prayer is spoken, the words are in existence in the spiritual realm forever”
Extract from “God’s Promise for Families”
Marriage is made up of many different components. I chose the word component deliberately as the dictionary states it is a ‘constituent part or aspect of something more complex” and if something is complex it is made up of various interconnected parts, and believe me when I tell you, that once you are married, your marriage consists entirely of interconnected parts!
“For this reason a man will…..be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). You cannot get anymore ‘interconnected’ than that.
The challenge here, however, is the fact that before you took your marriage vows, you were both two individual beings, with two different upbringings, maybe even different cultures or races and now you are ‘interconnected’. One of the most important ways to stay that way is to COMPROMISE. To compromise means to find a midway point between the two of you that you can both agree on when you have different ideas, and sometimes it means that one or the other of you actually has to yield or concede entirely to a request/need/desire of the spouse.
I am speaking now about compromising in the “living together on a daily basis” areas of your marriage. Hopefully, by the time you walked down the aisle and out of the church with your new spouse you had already ‘compromised’ on things like where you were going to worship as a couple, how many children you each want, whether you would agree to take an in-law into your home if the need arose etc. This is why premarital counselling is vital, because it is during these counselling sessions, that those subjects are discussed and debated on, and hopefully solutions that both spouses can live with, are found if there are any major differences.
I will give you an example of two (of the many) compromises that my husband and I made in the first months of our marriage. I am the only person I have ever known whose husband brought a tea pot into the marriage! Steve is from Northern Ireland and when he left there in 1990 to come to South Africa, his mother bought him a silver tea pot as a going away gift. For the first time in my life I learnt that there was a whole ritual involved when making a cup of tea.
I had always just put a tea bag into a cup, filled the cup up with boiling water, let the tea bag soak a wee while and then taken it out, added some milk and ‘hey presto’ a lovely cup of tea! My husband, however, had never drunk a cup of tea made in that way before.
The correct way to make tea is as follows:
I did this every morning for three months after we got married! At the beginning of the fourth month when I walked into the kitchen to make tea I thought to myself “I am not going to go through this rigmarole for the rest of my life”. I made sure Steve could not see me, put a tea bag into a cup, let it stew for a little while, took it out and added a little milk and then took the cup to my husband.
He took three sips, looked at me and said “You made this in the cup. You didn’t use the tea pot”.
Now, this is where the compromise came in. I could have decided that a) I was never going to make him a cup of tea again b) I would continue to make it in the cup and he would just have to get used to it or c) I would continue the “rigmarole” of making the tea in a tea pot for the rest of my life.
If I had chosen a) or b) it would have caused a lot of friction between Steve and I and would have been an issue every day of our lives. Because I love Steve and because that is the way he likes his tea I made the conscious decision that I would take the extra time, every morning for the rest of my life, to make the tea his way. It was a major compromise for me.
Steve had to compromise on face/dish cloths! (Well, no-one ever said life was fair!!)
Ever since he was a young boy he had rinsed the face/dish cloth out, then squeezed the excess water out of it with one hand and just left it bundled up on the sink/wash basin. This really used to upset me. I mean how on earth is the cloth meant to dry properly if the water is not squeezed out with both hands, the cloth then shaken and laid out on a surface? I could not believe he could not see my point – it was so obvious!
Steve decided, that because he loved me and wanted me to be happy, he would compromise and unlearn a habit of a life time to please me EVEN though it made no sense to him.
So, if you walk into our home you will see the same silver tea pot sitting on the top of the stove in the kitchen and all the face/dish cloths laid out neatly on various surfaces. We have both been compromising for 22 years now and we don’t even think about it any more!
“Love ……is not self-seeking” (1 Corinthians 13:5)
(Originally posted on http://www.startmarriageright.com/)
Once again I stand in awe and amazement at how great our God is. We have recently had five new additions to our family. On the 16th September our dwarf rabbit gave birth to five little rabbits!
We got Snowflake (Snowy for short) in January this year. 
In April my youngest daughter and I went to the pet shop to buy some rabbit food. There was a rabbit hutch at the entrance to the pet shop and inside was the cutest little dwarf rabbit. They allowed my youngest to hold the rabbit and she never put it down again! After paying for the food and the rabbit we drove home and Frodo joined our family.
My husband has forbidden us to ever set foot in a pet shop again and told us that from now on we have to buy rabbit food from the local super market!
A day before the babies were born Snowy started to pluck her fur out with her mouth and ‘spit’ it into the tray they slept in. In some places on her body she had blood spots from pulling the fur out and her little body looked ‘denuded’.
On Tuesday when our youngest went to change their water and food before school she gave a shout and we all rushed outside to see five, squirmy little beings wriggling around in the tray covered with the fur that Snowy had pulled from her own body.
As we daily watch these little things grow I marvel at how much detail and thought God put into His creation. The fact, that purely out of instinct (placed there by God), Snowy knew that she had to pluck her fur out, in order that the babies could be kept warm. The fact, that they are growing and thriving means that she is feeding them on a regular basis, and yet no-one has shown her what to do.
Way back at the beginning of creation God said “Let the land produce living creatures ……God made …… all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.“ (Genesis 1:24,25)
As I watch this miracle of birth and growth unfolding daily my heart echoes what the Psalmist said:
“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever.
To Him alone who does great wonders, His love endures forever.
And who gives food to every creature, His love endures for ever. (Psalm 136)
PROUD YOUNGEST DAUGHTER AND DADDY RABBIT
Once you accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour you become a member of God’s family. Ephesians 1:5 tells us that God predestined us to be adopted as His sons and daughters through Jesus Christ.
So whether you like it or not you are part of God’s family and there are going to be some members in the family that you are just not going to like! You won’t get on with all the members and at times may feel frustrated and angry and hurt by the members of this family. But, on the other hand, there will be some members that you will love dearly and who will care for you and love you in return – basically it is the same as living in any earthly family! Just as we cannot chose what family we will be born into physically we also cannot choose the members in God’s family.
The fact that as believers we all belong to one family was brought forcibly to my attention recently. I have a friend whose son is a Believer and who joined an internet Christian dating agency. He met this lovely lady from the Philippines on line and they started chatting and then skyping each other. The relationship developed over cyberspace and eventually he flew over to the Philippines to meet this lady and her family. Her family and her are also believers.
The couple decided to get married and my friend asked me to pray for them. Both families were struggling with the fact that the couple came from different cultures, spoke different languages and knew so little of each other’s lives. The only common ground they really had was Jesus Christ. As I was praying for them one morning I came across the following verses in
Ephesians (2: 19 – 22) “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow-citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.”
If we are believers we are not foreigners to each other. We are all part of God’s family and with Christ as the cornerstone of our relationships we will overcome any difficulties and challenges that we may have with each other as long as we continue to pray together and worship our Lord together. God calls us to live in one family by His Holy Spirit.
The following video is about five minutes long. If you have the time – sit back, listen to the words, relax and enjoy it! To me this video sums up what the Family of God is all about. It does not matter whether you are white or black, Chinese or Indian, a Zulu or a Xhosa etc, whether you are male or female, whether you are disabled or not – if you are a believer in Jesus Christ you are joined together with all other Believers no matter who you are or where you are in the world!
The title of the song is “Stand by me” and God, Himself, has promised to stand by us always.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1276623088715&set=vb.1624134122&type=2&theater (face book)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI_0Hyn57Lk (you tube)
One of the hardest things for me as a mother is the fact that I sometimes struggle to not allow my children’s attitudes to rob me of my own joy of living.
Their times of moodiness, their fighting, their lack of showing any appreciation for what they have can sometimes rob me of my joy in living. I find myself coming home at the end of a day, driving into the driveway, switching the car off and not having the courage or the energy to get out the car and enter the house.
All I want to do, with every fibre of my being, is to drive straight out the driveway again and just keep on going.
The thought of the sheer monotony of having to cook supper, which will be eaten within minutes with no real appreciation, then having to wash the dishes and pack away, nagging the children to help, coupled with all the other responsibilities of having children, just overwhelms me and I want to push my foot down on the accelerator and just get out of there!
It is at times like this that I find myself repeating the words of a song by Don Francisco “Love is not a feeling, it is an act of the will”. It is a song about the love between a husband and a wife but the words are just so appropriate to what I am feeling in that moment!
“You could never imagine it could turn out so rough
You give and give and give, still it’s never enough”
And then there are the times when they are unhappy and hurting because they are struggling with friendship issues or personal challenges and their hurt overwhelms me and I long to take their pain away and would willingly carry it for them if I could and I have to struggle not to let their pain rob me of my own joy of living.
I carry on singing the same song as I remember the One who did take the world’s pain and suffering upon Himself:
“Jesus didn’t die for you because it was fun
He hung there for love because it had to be done
And despite of the anguish, His word was fulfilled”
I then think of His words “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28) and “The Lord is my helper” (Hebrews 13:7) and “The Lord is my strength and my song” (Isaiah 12:2) and these beautiful words in Isaiah 61 “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, and He bestows on me the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair”.
And as I sit and reflect on all these things, my foot slowly lifts off the accelerator, and I remember again that my joy does not depend on any external circumstances, or on my feelings and emotions – “God, alone, is my joy and my delight” (Psalm 43:4).
“Love is not a feeling” can be heard on http://www.elyrics.net/read/d/don-francisco-lyrics/love-is-not-a-feeling-lyrics.html
Saw this board whilst walking down the street yesterday. It triggered a memory of an incident that occurred a few years ago with one of my children. I need to set the scene for you first though!
Ever since our oldest child started pre-school I have prayed, together with other mothers, at their respective schools. We have also always taught our children that lying and stealing is wrong and are, in fact, even mentioned in the ten commandments!
“You shall not steal”
“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor” (Exodus 20) – which basically means don’t lie.
Now about the incident.
I was just walking into a prayer meeting at the Junior school, feeling quite ‘holy’ when I checked my phone messages. Please note that subsequent to this, I no longer check any messages before going into a meeting.
There was a message there from my child in Senior school. What follows is a record of messages stemming from that one:
Child: “ Hey, mom. Is it ok if I forge your signature on my History test? If it’s not signed I get detention”
Me: “What planet have you been living on for the past fifteen years?? (now you can see why the message on the board above triggered this memory!” From the time you were born your dad and I have taught you that lying and stealing is wrong. By forging a signature you are effectively doing both!!!!”
Child: “I thought it would be ok cos you have already seen the paper and thought my mark was pretty good”.
I walked into the prayer meeting and told the ladies present “you will not believe what my daughter has just asked me!” and proceeded to tell them with great indignation.
One of the moms present responded “I think it is amazing that she asked you whether she could forge your signature and didn’t just sign it”.
This stopped me in my tracks and I messaged the child back:
“Meet me in the reception area at your school at first break and I will sign the test for you”.
When I arrived at the school I told the receptionist (who also happens to be a good friend of mine) why I was there. I was still feeling a bit indignant.
She replied “Noel, you should be so thankful that your child asked you. A large majority of the students here would just have forged the signature and not thought twice about it”.
That evening I was recounting the story to my oldest daughter via skype as she was overseas at the time.
Her response was “That is so silly. Why would she even ask you something like that?”
I was just starting to pat myself on the back and think ‘well, at least I have got it right with one child’ when she stated “I would have just signed the test if you had already seen it!”
When you have children you just can’t win.
There is a lovely Irish saying “Shame the devil and tell the truth”
“The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in men who are truthful” (Proverbs 12:22)
I have sometimes, in the past, told a ‘little white lie’ mainly when I have wanted to spare someone else’s feelings when the truth would have hurt them but a ‘little white lie’ is still a lie.
And in the long run our ‘little white lies’ add up and can be quite detrimental towards others.
If we are to teach our children honesty, we need to be honest in all things.
(Please note: names have been changed to toddler and child and children to protect their identities!!)
This morning I came across a journal entry that I had written more than a decade ago. I had written about a week in my life when my children were very much younger. It starts off like this:
“After a day when it felt like all I had been doing was lifting and fetching children, cleaning house and hanging up the washing I stopped off at an ATM to draw money in order to do food shopping. The machine swallowed and retained my card. I had to go into the bank and be issued with a new card. I was not on my best demeanor by then and it took forever to be issued with a card. The thought did cross my mind as I exited the bank, toddler on hip, that if anyone asked the man who had been dealing with me whether he thought I was a Christian, his answer would have been an emphatic, “Hell no, not her!”
I then went shopping with my toddler. When it came time to pay we had to stand in a long queue. It was one of those shops that have the queue aisle lined with sweets on both sides. I am convinced that if all mothers with young children started to boycott shops that did that, there would be a major change in the interior design layout of shops frequented by mothers with young children. My toddler decided that she wanted a Barbie chocolate. I said no. This is what followed:
“I wanta a Barbie choccie”, “Sorry, but you can’t have one” “I wannntaa a Barbie choccie (progressively getting louder followed by stamping of feet and waving arms) I waaaanntt a Barbie choccie”. It was a very long, slow queue and I could literally hear the people behind me muttering “For heaven’s sake, just give her the darn chocolate – anything to keep her quiet!” I am proud to say that I did not give in, but I did slink out of there with my head hanging down, feeling very embarrassed by my toddler. Needless to add, I did not go into that shop again for the next six months.
From there we went to pick up another child from her playgroup, only to be informed that she had scratched a child earlier in the day and I was shown the nail marks on the back of this child’s neck to prove it. I duly apologized to the mother and scolded my child who by then had forgotten all about it and couldn’t understand why mummy was so upset. That same child by the way now has no fingernails left because the first thing I did when we got home was to cut them extremely short. A bit of forward planning and damage control! At least now when she attacks another child she can’t draw blood. I hate to think what will happen if she ever starts biting other children as I think our dentist will balk at extracting all her teeth!
The week ended by me taking the three children to the beach on the Saturday morning. It is almost impossible to keep an eye on three children simultaneously in a large open expanse. The only thing that benefited that morning were my calf muscles from all the exercise of trying to contain them. The children got to go home with a grumpy, irritable mother.
That night I reflected on the words from Psalm 127:3 “children are a gift from the Lord; they are a real blessing”. God sees children as a gift, a blessing and a reward. If only we as parents would learn to view them the same way”. End of journal entry for the week!
I had to laugh but at the same time, had a feeling of immense sadness overwhelm me, as I read this so many years later. I don’t even remember that week but I do remember that my overriding emotions when my children were young were largely of stress, impatience and tiredness. I wish I had known then what I know now – I would not have ‘sweated’ the small stuff and would have spent less time tidying the house and more time playing.
They truly are God’s love letters to me here on earth and I wish I had spent more time reading the beginning of the letters …………
This morning I woke up carrying the world upon my shoulders with David’s refrain running through my mind “why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?” (Psalm 42:5). I made myself a cup of coffee and went and sat at the bottom of the garden. As I sat and watched the birds in the garden feeding and listened to their morning songs, the heaviness that had settled upon me started to lift. I looked at the house that I have been living in for the past 20 years and once again it struck me how true to His Word our God is. He says in Joel 2:25 “I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten” and in Isaiah 43 He says “Forget what happened before, and do not think about the past. Look at the new thing I am going to do. It is already happening. Don’t you see it? I will make a road in the desert of your life, rivers in the dry land of your life”.
From age twelve to eighteen I moved every year – sometimes two or three times in a year. I had one suitcase and a teddy bear and that is all I carried around with me. Maybe this is where my love of writing developed. There was no place in my suitcase for any personal ornaments or photo frames so I would write down on paper any sayings or words that struck a chord within me and then stick them to the wall of my room. When it was time to move again I would take them down and lay them flat at the bottom of my suitcase – they did not take up much space.
From about the age of fourteen I started to long for a home of my own. That is all I wanted. A place I could call my own, a place that I could settle down in and make a home. I once calculated that by the time I reached twenty-six years old I had moved thirty-four times!
I also longed for a family although as I grew older that longing dissipated as I came to the realisation that I actually did not want to get married or have children. Who would willingly want to bring children into a world so full of hurt and betrayal?
God says that “He will give you the desires of your heart” and He never forgot that heart’s desire of mine to have a family even though I let go of it along the road of life.
I have been married for 22 years now and have three children and have lived in the same house for 20 years!
I believe God gave me a husband and children in order that I would be able to grow as a person and in my relationship with Him. It is often through my children that my relationship with God is reflected. I bemoan the fact that they can sometimes be very thankless for all that is done for them and given them. They can be disrespectful at times and wrapped up in themselves.
God then reveals to me, not very subtly I might add, that this is exactly how I behave to Him at times. I take the things He has blessed me with for granted and am often far too busy to spend time with Him or to acknowledge that everything that I have and am is because of Him.
How incredibly disrespectful is that of me to Him.
At other times I stand in awe and marvel at the beauty, kindness, care and compassion my children exhibit. My love for them overwhelms me and I would willingly lay down my life for them if they were in danger. I then have a glimpse of how great the Father’s love is for us in that He sent His Son to die on the cross in order that we could have fullness of life here on earth and eternal life with Him.
When my children are hurting or feel betrayed by those around them I long to carry that hurt for them and then I am again reminded of Jesus’ words “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. (Matthew 11:28-30)
At the end of the day I can say as David said “put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my God” (Psalm 42:11)
Definitely a post worth re-blogging.
I am the mother of an almost 19 year old, a 17 year old and a 12 year old. I think for me the main thing I am learning is to ‘choose my battles’!
That, and trying to be self-controlled in the sense of ‘responding’ rather than ‘reacting’.
Being a parent of a teenager is a bit like being a tight rope walker. It often feels like one is ‘walking on egg shells’ and I find myself being very challenged in finding a tactful way of saying something to my teenagers.
The tone of voice you use is also vital. Often our teenagers just hear our ‘tone’ and immediately switch off.
What is really great, however, is the fact that even if we misstep and fall of the tightrope, our safety net is ginormous!
GOD IS OUR SAFETY NET and when we go to Him in prayer for wisdom FOR OURSELVES in raising our children and we request wisdom, self-control and safety FOR OUR CHILDREN we know that He hears us and responds in love.
My all time favorite Bible verse is found in 1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins”. Instead of sins I put ‘mistakes’ because as a mother I have made countless mistakes in raising my children but the one thing I can say is that I love my children deeply, completely and utterly and they know it!!
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UNDER A JUNIPER TREE 