How do you think growing up in your family prepared you for being a homemaker? Furthermore, what tips would you offer mothers like myself, who want to be the kind of mother yours was for you?
My mother and I sat down awhile back to reflect upon this very question. This is the list we compiled with just a few ideas of things she emphasized in my training. This resource is usual for mothers but the first half was written originally addressed to daughters with ideas and suggestions on how to use your single years to glorify the Lord while preparing to be homemakers. The tendency I believe is to get too focused on preparing to be married that we lose sight of some valuable skills that can be learned in serving others. If you are a single young lady, please read on as well! It is a high and wonderful calling to prepare little homemakers! Above all, the goal is to prepare daughters that first love Jesus, love the home and His beautiful design for placing us there, but also love to give their single years to serve and bless others!
Christmas is a wonderful season and yet how easily it fills up with an overwhelming load of activities! How can we simplify our outside activities and focus more on building strong family traditions during this season?
Limit outside events
Carefully and prayerfully evaluate how you wish to spend your holiday season as you know the invites, ideas and events will be coming. Using the holiday evaluation questions were a great tool for making these decisions and one I highly recommend you complete together with your husband. We have divided outside activities into two different themes for our families: outreach, and local holiday events (family building activities), and just limiting them deliberately to two events per category.
This year we are planning on hosting a Christmas Ladies tea for the women in our neighborhood and singing and playing Christmas carols at a local nursing home and visiting with the elderly. Other events are home centered – such as including our international students in our holidays celebrations and making some simple baked goods for our neighbors. We also like to attend two local Christmas events. I think it will be the Singing Christmas Tree (it’s free and right across the street!) & Handel’s Messiah this year. Limiting it this way helps us to prayerfully evaluate what events to participate in without stretching us too thing and not having a restful holiday season.
Enjoy Advent Reading
Advent readings throughout the season keep our hearts focused on the reason for the season and increase the family centeredness of the holidays that I enjoy. We can get so caught up in outside events and miss the meaningful times of building the family. Growing up, my family really enjoyed Jotham’s Journey: A Storybook for Advent and the other books in this series by Arnold Ytreeide. He has written three different advent stories that will take you through three years. Some of his doctrinal statements I do not agree with, but overall it was a fun family building time. When my own children grow older we will be reading through these again.
Of course, you must have an advent wreath to go with it! Last year we used a small wreath with a colorful small garland tucked into it and four red candles for of the four weeks prior to Christmas and one white candle in the middle for Christmas day. You can also use three pink, one purple and one white which is very common as well.
Other family traditions we enjoy: giving a Jesus gift to a family in need, buying one new classic Christmas movie each year, buying one new ornament to commemorate a special event from the year, going out and finding a Christmas tree together, along with a few other fun things.
Celebrating Advent with Kids – instructions on how to make your own advent wreath and readings.
Homemade Advent Calendar – including fun family ideas and events for each night counting down to Christmas. Why not include a fun activity along with a passage of Scripture to reflect upon using the resource below?
Advent Calendar with Verses (Days 1-12 & Days 13-23)- another option is to post a verse behind each day on your advent calendar.
Jesse Tree Info & Resources -Rocks in My Dryer has done a fabulous job creating a unique Jesse tree. Check out here ornaments here. The Jesse Tree is a means of telling the whole story from Creation to the Nativity story with the use of ornaments and devotional readings. A great means of keeping a Christ-centered focus during the holidays! An alternative to the Advent Calendar. Jesse Tree Advent Celebration by Ann Voskamp – another great resource for the Jesse Tree idea, including ornament ideas and devotionals.
How do you limit outside activities during the season? What traditions are you hoping to establish this year? Have any good advent reading materials to share?
“Service to others in need is an essential part of training and instructing our children in order to cultivate in them a loving and obedient heart. Serving others is a way to live out what the Bible would have us believe in our hearts. It puts feet to the message of the gospel.” (page 200)
The harvest is plentiful and the workers are few (Matt. 9:37-38)….God is calling each of us to make our homes embassies for the furtherance of His kingdom on this earth. What a wonderful opportunity we have to incorporate our children in serving and ministry to others as a family. It is not something we should do independently of them…for how else will they catch the vision and passion for service if they do not experience the joys of giving oneself firsthand?
“Jesus intended that one of the greatest gifts we could give our children was the baton of eternal life, to be passed on from one generation to the next. Surely, then, helping our children develop a heart for God and his kingdom work must be my fundamental priority as a mother. The specific ways in which we train our children to reach out to others – whether we teach them to give a ‘cup of cold water’ to the homeless or urge them to become missionaries to a foreign country-make little difference. It is in discovering what it means to be part of God’s redeeming work in the world that will excite our children’s heart to meet the needs of others…we help them receive love by learning to give it to others.” (page 213)
Jesus Christ is our ultimate example of one who gave sacrificially, and always felt compassion for the needs of others, no matter how demanding they were upon his time and energy. Matthew 9:35-36 describes Him as one who “and seeing the multitudes, He felt compassion for them…” Children must learn to see people as Jesus saw them! Together as a family we can grow in this area together. Encourage a giving heart around the home. Can we invite them to write a card to encourage a friend or family in need? Can we encourage them to take a cold drink to Dad when he is mowing the lawn? Can we open our home in hospitality to an overnight guest, missionary, or international student and give of the abundance that Christ has given us? Include them in the whole process!
We will all be called to give an account for the privilege we have received in the bestowal of the gospel. (Matthew 24:31-46). Ought we to give more attention then to how we are preparing our children to walk out the Great Commission? Questions to prayerfully evaluate with your children may include:“I wonder in what way God would have you invest your life for his glory? How can you use your gifts and strengths to bring others to him or to further his kingdom influence on this earth?” Answering these questions might just open up doors of opportunity as we seek to apply the gifts God has given each member of our family in meeting needs around us.
For excellent further reading on becoming a mission minded family, I strongly recommend you read The Mission-Minded Family, by Ann Dunagan. I had the wonderful privilege of meeting Ann personally and have been blessed by this resource! I believe every family needs to read this! For my complete review of this book, visit here.
What did you glean from this chapter? Do you have any creative ideas to share on how to participate in ministry together as a family?
“This is a crucial part of the mission of motherhood: exposing our children to the power and majesty of our Creator God and encouraging them to respond with gratitude and their own creative efforts…It means acquainting all the children with the tangible evidence of God’s nature, creativity, and character, as well as helping them to express their God-given creative nature.” – Sally Clarkson
Romans 1:18-20 so clearly emphasizes, “His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made.” What a passionate call to expose our children continually to God’s magnificent creation! I believe as children are given wide variety in the opportunities to explore creation, the more they will be exposed to a proper view and understanding of the magnificence of God and thus be able to aspire to exercising their own unique creativity in their everyday life and play. Let’s not get sucked into sitting them behind technology all the time! This can be an instrument for great learning but too much can distort their natural creative abilities from blossoming.
Exercising creativity is such an integral part of walking in the image of God. It is not limited to arts, crafts, or home decorating, as I so often assume. We are each created in God’s image and thus we each of the means within us to be creative. Creativity can be poured into every aspect of our homemaking – from storytelling to cooking to building blocks to crafts to music to basic problem solving.
The beauty of it all is that is doesn’t have to necessarily be all our own ideas! We can learn from each other and our creativity springs from learning to tweak each of those ideas to meet our own particular needs according to our households. Praise God for that!
Fill your home with creativity – meet those five senses! Music, nutritious food (another reason to avoid over processed or packaged foods – it doesn’t allow us to fully explore with our taste buds!), less technology, fresh flowers, paintings, pictures, a variety of tools and instruments such as crayons, pencils, paints and paper (recycle all your waste paper for children’s use!) for them to express their creativity, dress ups, legos and building blocks to encourage imaginative play.
I am one of those who can often give the excuss that I don’t have the natural gift of creativity…as it is integral gift of being made in the image of God, I have no excuse! I simply need to exercise and nurture creativity in my home and mothering.
How did this chapter impact your understanding of incorporating creativity into your mothering?
How do you imagine the ideal holiday season? I would imagine it would include the company of loved ones, fun relaxing times together, and maybe an inch or two of snow. How often does this actually happen unless we are purposefully deliberate in all that we do (besides the snow request – that is a bit out of my control!)
I am thankful for the idea once again from the Holiday Planner to sit down and complete a holiday evaluation together as a family to determine what your family’s goals are for the holidays. Determine what the Lord would want your family to do as far as activities, traditions, etc. this holiday season. Keep this form in a place where you will frequently see it and be reminded of your goals for the holiday season.
Here are few questions to consider:
1) What would be the ideal Christmas for your family?
2) What activities are particularly important to your family?
3) What traditions do you want to keep or establish?
4) What do you want to focus on? Hospitality? Family? Or just resting?
5) How much emphasis do our usual activities place on the spiritual side of Christmas?
6) List all the holiday related tasks for which you are responsible for (i.e. buying gifts, sending out Christmas cards, baking, decorating, etc). Consider which activities you enjoy and which need to be scaled back to reduce stress. Which can you enlist help to make the tasks easier and more fun? What activities can you cut altogether? Sending out Christmas cards can be a huge task…maybe you could just send a picture card this year or shorten your recipient list?
Let’s come back together at the end of the season and review!
“Home – it’s such a beautiful word! It’s the center of our lives, the place that holds us with invisible strings of love within its walls…Home is a haven from a world that is swimming with challenges and difficulty. It is a school where one learns how precious life is intended to be. It provides the context of learning to know and love my Creator, the beauty of the world he made, and His Word, which guides me. And it is the envirorment where direction and purpose and values are passed from generation to generation, protecting and preserving all that is precious in life.”
This chapter was such an encouragement to me to look above and beyond the daily responsibilities of homemaking to restoring the heart and purpose of it all. Organizing and cleaning have their place, as a messy home is not necessarily a haven, but what is my motivation and ultimate goal?
“If our gardens need cultivating to grow well, our children need that attention much more. Seeds of excellence and grace must be planted and tended. The weeds of selfishness and bad attitudes must be plucked. The plot must be protected so that the wild storms and prevailing winds of culture will not damage the fruit. In addition, wise food for thought and the finest of art, music, literature, hospitality, and creativity must be fed to fertilize the soul so that the child may grow fruitful and productive.”
Sally’s encouragement this week is to provide a little fertilization in the souls of our children through cultivating real life skills, appropriate life experiences, manners and graciousness, and an appetite for excellence. I was inspired to prayerfully evaluate with my husband what important skills we wanted to pass on to our children that would be essential for life and their purpose to go forth and live out the Great Comission (Matt 28:18-20) in all aspects of life.
What a treasure it was to have a strong friendship with my parents growing up. I look back in thankfulness at the times when my dad would tuck me in at night and just spend a few moments in conversation and prayer together, or when my mom would take me out to coffee and just talk together. There were many emotional moments during my teens when these times provided necessary stability and strength for my soul. It would often just require a listening ear to provide the support necessary to keep me going through those emotional roller coasters. Each moment of time my parents invested in building a relationship with me strengthened my respect for them and desire to imitate their faith.
Sally Clarkson in chapter 7 of Mission of Motherhood gives a call to mothers (and I would definitely include fathers in this) to establish a friendship with their children. It is not all about training, correcting, or disciplining, but must be properly balanced with the understanding that part of our eternal influence on their souls comes through simply investing quality (not necessarily quantity) time in making our children our best friends.
She shares the example of a precious tea pot full of memories that would be used time and time again as a means of sitting down with a child who needed a little love and talking together and allowing them the freedom and protective environment to open up and share their hearts. Rather than correcting every bad attitude, she discerns whether there might just be a deeper issue at hand that needs to be talked through.
“Because people will last through eternity, relationships have eternal significance. The relationships we make and cultivate and nurture will also sustain us throughout all of life’s seasons…When children have a a safe haven – a place to be protected from the storms of life; a place to be emotionally, mentally, and spiritually encouraged; a place where they enjoy the time and attention from the important people in their lives – and time in which to mature, then they will have a good opportunity to become emotionally healthy and flourishing human beings.”
Children need love, affirmation, attention, and acceptance…if they do not find it from my husband and I and in our home, they will surely search for it from other means! I want to be the one that touches, caresses and talks with each one of my children and provides them with the emotional stability and sense of well-being that they need to be godly and influential men and woman of God!
How have you cultivated strong friendships with your children? Or how can you begin today to do so? Why not establish monthly dates with each of your children?
It can be as simple as enjoying a cup of tea together!
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”
Why is it so important to train our children to think biblically? Sally Clarkson in chapter 6 of The Mission of Motherhood responds by reciting Proverbs 23:7, that as a person “thinks within himself, so is he (NASB).” Our children’s thought processes and beliefs will determine, as they grow and mature, what kind of people they will be. “What we think about God is the most important thing about us” as A.W. Tozer so profoundly pointed out. How we view and comprehend God will not only affect our beliefs, but also our decision making process, our purpose, and our behavior. Therefore, ever more reason for us to heed the important call to train up our children in biblical literacy, morality, laws, theology, wisdom, and faith, which she expands upon in detail throughout the remainder of this chapter.
I have greatly treasured the sweet moments of rocking my daughter before bedtime each night. I love taking a moment to pray over her and sing worship songs to her. My heart’s cry is that she might come to treasure and know Christ from an early age. He name means “grace” and literally “gift” and thus the Lord has shown me the importance of laboring in prayer that she might be a gift carrying God’s grace to others.
While reading Girl Talk recently, I was blessed by this post of a simple tradition:
“Right after my first child (who is now 7 was born) I heard Joni Erickson Tada talk about how much hymns meant to her immediately after her accident. She recommended choosing “Life Hymns” for your children. So my husband and I have done just that. Each child (there are three living children) has their own hymn. We have chosen it before they were born and sing it to them the first time we hold them. We sing it each night before they go to bed – and before each nap.”
What a treasure and legacy! She goes on to share the value of instilling these solid Biblical truths that are so powerfully conveyed in hymns as a means of providing her children with strength during the storms of life.
I loved this idea! I began praying over the last week or so about what hymn I could adopt for Karis. After her birth a dear older woman prayed over Karis that she would have a voice and be a singer to praise the name of Jesus. This has always stayed with me…one of those things you store up in your heart. While at a mission conference this past weekend, we heard “Blessed Assurance” be sung. The Lord confirmed in my heart that this was for Karis.
“Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.
This is my story, this is my song.
Praising my Savior all the day long!”
That is my prayer for my little girl…that her life story would be one of a worshipper of our precious Savior! I have been so blessed to hear my husband start to sing it as well when he has the opportunity to put her to bed…it’s precious to hear her daddy sing over her too!
Shannon asked:
