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Decision Making

August 18, 2019 by Amy Parsons in Family, Homemaking, Marriage, Motherhood, Prayer, Scripture

Lord, You know the pull I’ve been feeling.

The pull to slow down, to stop even… to let some things go. I’ve tried in the past; I’ve let things go, rearranged my schedule, tried to rest more. But I still wonder, am I doing too much?

And if so, what things do I lessen? What things do I stop? How, Lord, do I go about any of that?

You remind me:

"But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more; that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing." 1 Thessalonians 4:10b-12

Lead a quiet life.

"the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things — that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed." Titus 2:3-5

Love and follow Josh. Love Levi and Caleb. Be discreet, chaste, a homemaker.

Lord, is that enough?

Is it enough to serve my husband and my children, to raise the kids, to keep our home and manage schedules?

It sounds so silly, but what if I have free time? Shouldn’t I fill it with things after Your heart? Ministry, things at church, even making some extra money so I can supplement our income and support my missionary friends?

It seems like too much. But I also don’t feel like enough. Lord, guide me and help me to keep my eyes fixed on You. You know how often I compare, and how unsettled I can become. Yet I only want what You want, Lord - so show me.

Lead a quiet life. Love your husband, love your children, keep your home.

Maybe that really is sufficient? Maybe that is what will bring You the most glory?

***

The above is a version of a prayer I prayed for months. An ongoing conversation with God, trying to sort out what He wanted for me and our family in this season. I share because, well, we all wrestle don’t we? We all wonder what God wants for us. Where He wants us. What we should be doing.

Sometimes answers come quickly, and sometimes they don’t. But one thing that will always guide us in the moment (current and future) is Scripture. It’s there immediately. And whatever Scripture says for Christians to do, that’s what we should do. When we’re faithful to His Word, other pieces fall into place.

Over time, I’ve come to realize many things. One of those things being that free time is good time. You might’ve laughed at that part of my prayer, or maybe you’re wondering the same thing. Our time should be used wisely, yes? Yes. And rest is a wise use of time. It equips us to continue going with all the other necessities - the effort into our marriages, the countless meals to prepare and serve and clean up, the disciplining of our kids and the adventures with them, the laundry and mopping and organizing. There’s nothing wrong with sitting down at naptime to read a book or paint a canvas or call a friend.

Love your husband, love your children, keep your home.

One other thing I’ve learned is that life is full of seasons. And this season with children at home is a season focused on nurturing our family. There is absolutely no guilt in that, it’s what God designed. There certainly are other things we can do at the same time, and each one of us is given our own limits and abilities. It will look different for each of us - but there are also seasons coming in which some tasks/hobbies/careers/etc. will fit better. We can do a whole lot of things - just not all at the same time. And that’s good!

May this encourage you, friend. This whole process has certainly led me closer to my Lord and Savior, and I pray the bit that I’ve shared in this post will lead you closer to Him as well.

-Amy

August 18, 2019 /Amy Parsons
decisions
Family, Homemaking, Marriage, Motherhood, Prayer, Scripture
2 Comments
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If These Stairs Could Talk

June 16, 2019 by Amy Parsons in Friendships, Family, Homemaking, Hospitality, Marriage, Motherhood

If these stairs could talk, they’d tell you of many things.

The friends and family who visited when we first moved in, sharing in thanks for more space.

The weight carried up and down, things moved from one place to another.

The tears cried on them, many from the kids and many from myself.

The coffee spilled on them, hurriedly wiped up so the white wouldn’t be stained.

The babies carried up to bed, or snuggled in close and brought downstairs to try again.

The moments I’ve sat in the middle, waiting for quiet to come over the bedrooms.

The moments I’ve sat on the bottom, weary, waiting, resting.

The guests running up to use the bathroom, or grab their sneaky babies.

The kids’ friends scampering up and down to play together.

The toys thrown down, the balls thrown up and down and up again.

The times I’ve sat and listened to videos or read texts from dear friends.

The one stair at just the right height to let me sit and watch cars come down our street.

They’re not an idol, these stairs: they’re a reminder.

A means of giving thanks.

Because when I look back at all the memories and daily happenings, I am reminded:

  • God provides: for all our needs, all the time

  • Our babies are safe and loved

  • Our friends and family are welcome and comfortable here

  • We live this life fully

We always have enough. We always can extend more, and when we serve out of humility and love for our Lord it never comes back empty. He fills us up. He shows Himself to us and He teaches us what we need to know, when we need to know it. He is so incredibly sufficient!

If these stairs could talk, I think they’d tell of what a great Savior we have. What a hope we have in Him, what care we have from Him.

What a sweet, sweet place to be.

June 16, 2019 /Amy Parsons
home, reminders, remember, history
Friendships, Family, Homemaking, Hospitality, Marriage, Motherhood
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Comparison Is Not the Thief of Joy

March 24, 2019 by Amy Parsons in Family, Gospel, Homemaking, Marriage, Motherhood, Scripture

Comparison isn’t the thief of joy.

Helping my seven-year-old write a compare-and-contrast essay on puppies and kittens is like a jaunt into the human psyche. We educate our kids so that they’re really good at articulating what’s the same and what’s different. We make sure they can evaluate all the ways a puppy measures up to a kitten. But when they notice a child in a wheelchair or a figure skating man who’s acting like a girl, we clam up and wish they hadn’t noticed any of it. And once they start drawing comparisons with themselves, we do more than clam up; we call it sin.

If Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim is true, that “comparison is the thief of joy,” then it seems we’re all comparing and contrasting our happiness away.

Roosevelt is clearly onto something. Head over to Pinterest or Instagram or Facebook, and you’ll see a thousand posts memorializing his proverb. Listen to Christian talks, sermons, and podcasts, and you will start to think that this little saying is God’s — all that’s missing is chapter and verse. The solution seems plain then: stop doing that. Stop measuring yourself up against others. Stop noticing the discrepancies; it will only lead to misery.

The problem is that we can’t stop comparing. Comparison is a fundamental part of being human, because it’s how we acquaint ourselves with reality. The very first thing Adam did when he saw Eve was to write his own brief compare and contrast essay. “She’s like me! Only different!”

Not only is it impossible to opt out of comparing, but God actually wants us to do it.

Comparing Is Necessary

Comparing is how we discover what holiness is. It’s how we see what is set apart as distinct from us. It’s also how we know what we ought to be like. To abandon comparing is to abandon our understanding of God, and of ourselves. What we need to do is train ourselves how to compare properly, not cut ourselves off from the necessity of comparison.

If we took all the measuring — the comparing and contrasting — out of the Bible, we wouldn’t have much of a book left. God’s laws and instructions fundamentally help us to see what we are and are not, what we should and shouldn’t be. They also help us see how we measure up to others, so that we can either imitate them or do the opposite of them. This is not sin — it is essential to growth, and health, as Christians.

My concern is that, far from letting comparison fuel our growth in godliness, we actually have trained Christians that it’s good to ignore the ways someone else might be doing something well, so that they can spare themselves the discomfort of how they might not measure up. With this logic, bad feelings about my situation or sin problem are the real issue — that’s what must be avoided. When we admonish ourselves or others to stop comparing, we may actually be insulating ourselves from reality.

Of course, we have to evaluate if the comparisons we’re making are real or not. We shouldn’t compare our real life (the house with actual people in it and sticky faces and hair-raising smells) with the fake life of someone we’ve never met on Instagram (the tasteless, odorless, iocane-powder version). That’s a false comparison. Remember, our goal is figuring out what’s real and true, not inoculating ourselves to it through make-believe images.

Make Comparisons Fuel Joy

What if, rather than pretending not to notice that our friend is excelling in homemaking and parenting (while we’re scraping by), we honored her by giving thanks to God for her obedience, her diligence, and her example of Christ that we can follow? What if we started observing her more closely, making more comparisons rather than less, so that we could tease out the principles of godliness present in her life and do likewise?

What if, rather than smugly disdaining the mom who can’t get her act together, we offered her a better way? What if we actually said with Paul, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” not because we think we’re better than she is, but because God has really done something profound in us and we’re confident he can do it in her, too (1 Corinthians 11:1)?

Leading our comparisons in the right direction — away from envy, pride, covetousness, and self-pity, and toward Christlike imitation and the fear of God — will turn us into better parents, mentors, and friends.

Parenting Children Through Comparison

Faithful parenting means discipling our children into reality. Many parents balk when their kids make observations about themselves and their siblings like, “I’m not good at school. Eliza’s good at school.” We rush in to say, “Oh no, honey! You are good at school!” But, are they? Does it even matter to us as parents if what they’ve said is accurate or not? It should.

If our child is doing poorly in school and their sibling is doing great, we shouldn’t pretend like that’s not the case. If we do that, we will be training them to ignore what’s real. We will be training them that true speech is too scary or too difficult for us to handle and, therefore, too difficult for them to handle. We will give them the impression that what’s different about them is so scary and hard to deal with that it’s unspeakable. We shove reality out of the picture so that we can coddle them — while really we’re coddling ourselves. We ignore deficiencies as if they were too much to bear.

But what if we acknowledged that what they’re saying is true, at least in part? Their sister is doing well in school and they are struggling. Then, we can shepherd them to give thanks to God for how he’s made their sister, and ask God for the discipline and grace to help them do better. And while they struggle, we can teach them to ask God for the contentment in the areas that are hard for them, and give thanks for the particular strengths he’s given them that are different than how he’s gifted their sibling.

We won’t be able to do any of that if we haven’t asked God for the thick gospel-skin that helps us live in a world of differences and similarities, without making it all about a narcissistic insecurity that someone, somewhere has more than me, or is working harder than me, or is doing better than me. That is a sickly way for Christians to live! In Christ, we have it all — we dare not dishonor him by our self-pity (Romans 8:32).

Differences Are God’s Design

The Bible assumes some will have more faith, and some less. Some will have this gift and another that gift. Some will be rich and some will be poor. Some beautiful, some homely. Some with lovely homes, some with drab. There will be children with disabilities and children without. There are Gentiles and Jews, tribes and tongues, men and women.

The Bible even assumes that some will be more Christlike and mature than others. Noticing these things isn’t a sin, but a gift, and it need not lead to the evaporation of our joy, but can be the water for its growth.

Holy imitation isn’t about cramming ourselves into another’s mold. It’s about recognizing the Christlike principles another has applied to their life and figuring out how to apply them to ours. It’s not about making all of our voices sound the same, but getting us all to learn the same song of the Lamb who was slain. It’s not about making us all identical, but about training all of us, amid our diversity, to walk together in the light of Christ.

Originally written by Abigail Dodds for Desiring God. Used with permission.

March 24, 2019 /Amy Parsons
comparison
Family, Gospel, Homemaking, Marriage, Motherhood, Scripture
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10 Things to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed as a Mom

December 03, 2018 by Amy Parsons in Homemaking, Family, Motherhood, Marriage

Since my husband and I have been married we have moved ten times, lived in four states, and nine different cities. Many of those moves were due to different ministry/job opportunities and some of them were due to being a military family. I feel like I can safely say that I am a pro at the whole packing, purging, cleaning, and setting it all up again thing. My husband and I also have two little ones that are only seventeen months apart. When we had our second baby my husband had just graduated from boot camp in the Navy and he was working nights over at the military base.

Let me just say, that was a really rough season. We were a brand new military family with a newborn and a one year old living in a city and state that we had never been to before without any family around. We knew that it was only for a season but that didn’t take away from the intensity of our daily lives. Aside from a few amazing military families we had met I felt very isolated and alone. My walk with the Lord felt very watered down and since I had given birth to our son I felt like was constantly teetering on the edge of depression.

The majority of my feelings and my emotions during that season could be summed up into one word “overwhelmed”. I felt practically overwhelmed by everything going on in our lives, our finances, the basic needs of our kids, meal planning, sharing a car with my husband, not having a good church nearby, not having family around, laundry, dishes, the list went on and on. The state of our home felt like it was in constant chaos. I am the creative type and cleaning does not come naturally to me. I like things to be organized but typically while doing so I make a large mess somewhere else. My husband is the neat and tidy type. He doesn’t love to clean but he can’t function in a home that isn’t perfectly polished. Okay, that was a little bit of an exaggeration but he really likes it when the house is tidy enough to walk with bare feet on the floor.

Our chaotic home was often a common start to many arguments during that season. My husband desperately wanted to help me get organized with a cleaning routine and meal plans (he was willing to do whatever it took) and I wanted him to learn to live happily in the mess. We sound kinda like that movie Yours, Mine, and Ours huh? I don’t really know what caused me to change, maybe it was from being late to every event or never being able to find a matching pair of socks but one day I decided that I could no longer live with the mess. It was by no means an easy decision. It has taken a lot of effort to get to where I am now and it continues to take a lot of effort. If you are feeling overwhelmed and maybe your mind is wired more like mine here are ten tips that have worked really well for me:

1. Pray.

I know this one kinda sounds obvious. Whenever I feel like I am trying to retrain myself I like to lean back on God’s word and ask for Him to give me the wisdom I need to get through the season that I am in. “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.” James 1:5

2. Turn off the TV, Put the phone away, and get off social media!

Whenever I feel like I am spinning my wheels and I just can’t seem to get myself into a good routine, it’s usually time for me to do a reset. I start by telling my friends and family that I need a break for a few days to play catch up. I will alert them to not expect me to be answering my phone, emails, or text messages. I may even make a post on social media to let my audience and clients know that I will be out for the next several days. Personally, I am an extrovert and I naturally feel the urgency to communicate and socialize with others through face to face time, talking on the phone, and social media. Even if you aren’t someone who enjoys those things, I highly recommend taking a break for a few days from any media (including movies and TV shows) in order to get your life back on track. The amount of time I save by simply putting my phone away and staying off my socials always surprises me and usually gives me the extra time I need to get my families’ lives reorganized.

3. Focus on the Practical

I like to take my focus off of the big picture and focus on the small practical things that are directly in front of me. My most important responsibility is to make sure that everyone is safe, clean, and fed. Despite what my Pinterest boards may look like, I know that my home does not need to be fancy in order to be functional. I tell myself to take it easy, take it one step at a time, room by room. No one ever said that I had to be Marry Poppins or Martha Stewart. I typically let my kids watch a show or do a special activity while I focus on creating a plan for organization. I keep it simple by using a basic notepad and pen to make a check-off list for the things I plan to get done throughout each day. Cleaning up the clutter is the first thing that I do whenever I need to reset. It helps to have the misplaced things out of the way even if that means placing them in a large basket until I can take them to their proper places. If you are just getting started my advice would be to take it slow. Prioritize by focusing on the most important tasks and then go from there.

4. Get everyone on a schedule

This is my staple to maintaing a functional life and a functional home. Without some sort of basic schedule I find myself lacking in the most practical areas of my life such as meal prepping, and showering. By not being able to meet the practical needs of my family I am forced to take from the other areas of my life; finances, sleep, and quiet time. I have found that when my family and I have designated bedtimes and mealtimes we are happier and healthier as a whole and we have more time to do fun things with friends and each other.

5. Make a cleaning routine

This one is my least favorite. Seriously, though, I don’t like cleaning. I like how things feel when they are clean though! I gravitate more to cleaning when I feel like it and cleaning when I feel stressed. This approach is often a recipe for disaster in my home. Although I don’t always enjoy it, I have found that it is a lot easier to maintain my home with a simple cleaning routine. I don’t have anything fancy in place, in fact I don’t really even have anything written down at the moment. My husband and I have an understanding that we do certain things on certain days of the week such as cleaning our sheets, wiping down the bathrooms, laundry, and even grocery shopping. With our basic cleaning routine in place we have become more hospitable as a family and we tend to want to stay at home more often when we have a consistently clean environment.

6. Be patient

I am not a naturally clean person. I would rather go on a spontaneous outing than maintain the cleanliness of my home or grocery shop. While we do occasionally go on spontaneous outings, it is better for us to have designated times throughout the week to go exploring in our city. It takes time to develop cleaning habits before they become second nature and it takes time to get an entire family on a schedule. Little things like holidays and family in town can really throw off a routine and sometimes it takes a while to get back on track. Patience is needed, lots of patience and lots of grace. I know that if I am faithful to stick to my goals eventually I will get things where I want them to be.

7. Get your husband on board

Whenever I decide to change something or start something new, I always make it a priority to communicate with my husband. Sometimes, his input will help me to better structure my ideas and his support is always a huge bonus. We do our best to share the load in our marriage when it comes to parenting, cleaning, and other household tasks. In order for our relationship to operate smoothly it is imperative for us to communicate and get on the same page. We don’t always agree but we try our best to listen to one another and compromise with each other until we reach a decision that is best for our family.

8. Implement family values

This is a new one for us as a family. Obviously, we have values and certain things that we feel are very important to us however, until I had listened to a recent podcast by Havilah Cunnington we hadn’t ever taken the time to write down the reasons for doing what we do. Havilah’s podcast was all about the “why” behind family values. Why do you do what you do? If you can’t answer the why behind your goals you are not going to be able to stick with them when the going gets tough. You should also be able to have a why behind your no, this will ensure that you don’t over-extend yourself and others will respect you more for being able to wholeheartedly fulfill your commitments. My husband and I know that we want to be on a schedule and maintain a clean and organized home so that we can fulfill the vision for ministry that God has placed in our hearts. When our home isn’t in order we are often late to meetings and events because we can’t find things, we eat out more because we don’t have meals that we planned ahead of time, and we are forced to use up valuable time playing catch up on chores rather than using the time for our ministry and family fun.

9. Plan ahead

I am sure many of us have heard the saying “those that don’t plan, plan to fail”. This saying couldn’t be more accurate. I have always known that planning was important but I never understood the value in it until I began planning for things in my everyday life. Once there was a lady in my Bible study who told our small group that the key to being on time was to begin tomorrow the day before. I took her advice to heart and I started my preparations for the next day a day or two ahead. If I know that we are planning to go on an outdoor adventure or to a barbecue at a friend’s house on Saturday and church Sunday morning, I will make sure that I wash and fold laundry on Friday so that everyone has clean clothes to wear for the weekend. Since we have been using this method in our home, my husband and I communicate better, we are less stressed out, and we are generally more carefree when we spend time with each other and our kids.

10. Have fun

I am naturally a play before work kind of girl. It has taken a lot of work, a lot of prayer, and a lot of time for me to have a lifestyle that is organized and on a schedule. Getting on a schedule is not a walk in the park. It’s messy and difficult. That’s why it’s important to have fun. Be honest with your kids when you make a mistake and don’t forget to say I am sorry. Remember, they are watching you and copying everything that you say and do. Someday, I want my kids to be able to run their lives and their homes in an organized and peaceful manner. If I want them to do this, I have to first do it myself. Have fun with your kids, play music and dance with each other while you fold laundry. They might not be old enough to fold laundry with you but at least let them try to fold something small and maybe carry a pile of their clothes to the dresser in their rooms. Letting your kids help you will require you to take a few extra steps but it is worth it. There is always a way to make chores a little bit more fun even if that means celebrating with ice cream afterwards. Get creative and do what works best for your family.

Thanks for reading! I hope that my experience encourages you and maybe even helps you in your journey as a mom.

Written by Jo Rogers. Used with permission.

December 03, 2018 /Amy Parsons
overwhelmed
Homemaking, Family, Motherhood, Marriage
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