But I am not the only one growing a baby these days, it seems to be quite the trend. I’ve been thinking back on having the other kids, about being a first-time mom, about being new to the world of nursing sagas. Thinking about welcoming babies, about things that could have been easier. Thinking of things that I’ve learned now, but wish I had known the first time. Terribly incomplete, but I can’t focus for very long these days, so you will have to forgive that!

Ways to Ease the Welcoming of Babies

1) Buy some new make-up, get a haircut, paint your toenails, and get some cozy new stretchy lounge clothes that are cheerful and fresh before you have the baby. It makes you feel so much better, and the pictures will thank you. With my first baby, I gained 22 pounds. She was almost 9 pounds. I figured with the placenta, the water, and everything else (besides the fact that you feel super skinny right after delivering),  I could at least get into a few of my old clothes. Pulling out what I had deemed a loose button up shirt, I was unable to button any button but the neck. Nice. Don’t do this. Just wait until you are in a mentally and spiritually stable place before trying on your pre-pregnancy clothes! Now I have a pile of fat pants and fat-chance pants, proving that I have traveled this road before.

2) In the very beginning, trust your instincts, and look to your baby for answers. Do not let other people tell you what your baby needs, figure it out yourself. Of course I am not meaning to disregard medical advice or serious situations. I mean, in the normal scheme of “Is she hungry? Is she gassy? Is she wet? Is she tired?” Try to figure it out with your baby. Don’t stress about the baby crying and run look somewhere else for answers. Stay calm, look to your baby and work on figuring it out. And then, don’t take this too seriously. If you can’t figure it out, and you are sleep deprived and desperate, get help! Ask for ideas from people you trust.

3) About worry. I’m sure every mother remembers the first baby worry. Little burbles in the night, squeaks, choking while nursing, etc. Just remember that your baby is a gift, not a statistic. God created and sustained that life inside you. He gave you this child, open your hands to Him, and trust Him to protect what He has given you. I can remember specific times when I had to think, “Do not cling to this baby like it belongs to you. Open your hands to God, and trust Him to protect and preserve this little life.” Your protective instincts are good, but don’t let them rule over your heart.

4) Take advantage of the help you hopefully have in the first week or so. Everyone tells you this, but sleep when the baby sleeps! I did not do this the first couple times. Now, I know well that the help will end, the days will come when you cannot snooze in the middle of the day. Sleep when you can! It pays off when you are up in the night.

5) If you have other kids – especially little ones, put a baby gate in your bedroom door. I did this with Blaire, and it really helped. She slept in our room, so first thing in the morning I would clean our room, make the bed, etc. Then step over the gate into the real world. When I needed to nurse her, or change a blowout, I would go into our room. The little kids could come to the door, ask questions, and shout observations about how cute she was. It enabled me to not spend all the nursing time saying, “No, don’t climb on my lap. Don’t lean on the baby! Back off!” The gate was a simple way to enforce a boundary that everyone would have forgotten to obey in the excitement of a diaper change.

6) I used gallon ziploc bags to make what we called “blowout kits.”  They smashed flat easily in a purse or diaper bag, and came in excessively handy more times than I could easily tabulate. I included a one-piece outfit (usually pajamas), a cloth diaper or two (the cheap kind – in lieu of a changing pad). Diapers and wipes we always have in my purse, in the glove compartment, and in my husband’s back pocket, so I don’t include those. The best part is that you simply insert all the soiled goods right back into the ziploc, later to be plunged into oxyclean. If your child is a blowout hobbyist, you might want to keep one in the car too. And a stack of cheap cloth diapers kept me from always having to change the changing pad, or sanitize the diaper bag.

7) Do not mind telling people who want to hold your baby, “No thanks.” If you don’t feel like passing your baby around, don’t. This is a great reason to have a baby carrier of some description. It keeps people  from just trying to take the baby away from you, and might make you feel less awkward about saying no. Especially when the baby is new, and when a lot of people are around, feel totally free to say “I’m gonna take her back now, thanks!”  or “I’m gonna keep him right now.” Babies are not public domain, it’s ok to say no. You and your husband are the only people who have rights, everyone else is just asking.

Enjoy yourself. You know babies- they don’t stay that way long!

The Bible is very clear about where our words come from: they come straight up from our hearts. So if something nasty comes out of our mouths, then our hearts have got some nastiness in them. No way to dodge this. In Matthew 12:4, Jesus says, “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” And again in Luke 6:45, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.”

Now how can a sweet Christian woman get angry and say “evil” things to her children? Does that mean she has “evil” in her heart? Unfortunately, that’s what it means. We all have evil in our hearts. No one is good. So we all need gospel grace day in and day out.

Here are a couple of suggestions  Think about when you are most likely to be tempted to be angry. Is it when the kids first get up in the morning? Then pray before you go to bed that you will be full of goodness and light at the breakfast table. Is it during nap time? Then pray ahead of time that you will not get angry during nap time. Expect to be tested, and be prepared. When you put the kids down for their naps, then pray, asking God to help you be obedient to Him, cheerfully correcting the children if they need it. It is entirely possible to correct with a mouth of goodness. So I’m recommending what I call preventative prayer.

But what about the times when you are blindsided? You were going along merrily and wham! you got hit by the unexpected and reacted badly. If this happens regularly, then ask God to open your eyes so you don’t have a blind side. Pray for a warning sign so you see it coming. Then expect a test and be ready for it.

If you have ongoing anger toward one person in particular, then it’s likely there may be some unconfessed bitterness and resentment toward that person, big or little, young or old. We get resentful over some of the dumbest things. Deal with the bitterness that is lodging in your heart. It’s poisoning everything! It feeds anger and needs anger.

Don’t take your children’s misbehavior personally. Don’t get into an adversarial relationship with your children. You are the mother; you are in authority over them. Don’t get your feelings hurt when they don’t listen or when they disobey. They are children! That’s what children do!

If we want wise tongues, we need wise hearts. Here are a few ways to get there.

1. Don’t be wise in your own eyes (Prov. 3:7). You may be wrong, incorrect, mistaken. Admit it.

2. Heed God’s Word. When you hear it or read it, do it. Apply it. (Prov. 16:20).

3. Be teachable (Prov. 10:8). Don’t assume you have nothing to learn.

4. Receive correction yourself (Prov. 10:17). Even when you don’t like the way the correction comes.

5. Seek knowledge and store it up (Prov. 15:14 and 10:14).

6. Let your heart be taught first, and it will teach your mouth (Prov. 16:23).

7. Don’t fake love (Prov. 10:18). Ask God for supernatural love; don’t rely on your own supply of human, fallible love.

8. Don’t talk too much. Weigh your words! (Prov. 10:19)

9. Feed people (build them up) with your mouth, and you will be fed yourself (Prov. 13:2).

10. Guard your mouth (Prov. 13:3). Pray with the psalmist: “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and keep the door of my lips.” Psalm 141:3

Let’s just say (hypothetically of course) that you have just completely lost the bubble with your children. (That would never happen, right?) You got tweaked all the way out because they were being loud and rambunctious and they woke up the baby. And, (this is the vitally important part), you TOLD them not to be loud or they’d wake up the baby. You said it plainly and in English, and now they’ve gone and done it. This is clearly a flagrant disregard of your authority, of God’s law, of the ten commandments, of all the laws of nature, of house rules, of all human decency, and now you’re not going to have your calm moment to sit down and sip your tea and look at Pinterest. Or fold your laundry. Or get caught up on your email. Clearly (you tell yourself) you need to show the children the full weight of their offense. What better way to do this, than to pack all the punch you can into your frown, ramp up the tone of voice, raise the level of sarcasm to previously unscaled heights, and grab them (too tightly) by the shoulder and frog march them to the bathroom? All of this, you reason, is to show them how badly they have offended God – you are clearly obligated to show them how grievously they have transgressed.

If you don’t have a baby, then change the above scenario to the one where your daughter used up more minutes on her phone than she was allotted, or sent more texts than she was supposed to, or didn’t get her chores done. You draw yourself up, put your hands on your hips, and commence an outraged speech, littered with tasteful phrases like, “Why can’t you ever LISTEN TO ME???!!!”

You know how this goes, right? You tell yourself that you are training up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, showing them right from wrong. That you have a zeal for righteousness. That they need to understand the weight of judgement in order to comprehend the righteousness of God’s standards.

However, follow me closely here, you actually aren’t doing anything of the sort. You’re being a big stinker. Of all the pills in the house, you’re being the worst. In this little scenario, the prize for bad behavior goes to mom, with the loud children and phone offender coming in a distant second.

Now, am I saying that disobedience should be ignored? That we should forgo teaching our children to be righteous? Obviously not. I’m just saying that when you flip out at them and really haul up your slacks with outraged tirades, you’re actually only showing them that disobedience to God is something that is perfectly ok with you. Long story short, you’re teaching them hypocrisy. You get to ignore God’s rules whenever they don’t line up with your mood . . . so why shouldn’t your children be allowed that same privilege?

Here’s the trick. The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. If you are an angry parent, you will not produce righteousness in your children . . . even if all your anger is directed at sin. The wrath of man DOES NOT produce the righteousness of God. Tattoo it upon your paddle. Write it on the doorposts of your bathroom.

Or how about this one? Proverbs says, “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man.” You’re not supposed to even be friends with an angry man . . . so what exactly are your kids supposed to do if you’re an angry mom? How do they obey that proverb? We like to pretend that our anger is righteous, and that we’re in this for justice and truth. But as a matter of fact we’re just being selfish little punks when we lose our temper at our children.

We have been saved from the wrath of God through Christ. This means that the full weight of God’s wrath has been turned from us. Are we going to be like the unfaithful servant who, after being forgiven much went out and choked his fellow servant for a piddly little sum? You’ve been saved from God’s wrath . . . why would you feel like you need to pour the burning brimstone of your wrath out on your kids?

If you’re an angry mom, confess it. Stop pretending it’s justice. Stop pretending that you’re on a crusade for righteousness. Call it what it is, and confess your sin. Confess it to God, then confess it to your kids, and then confess it to anyone else that witnessed it. The confession should be as public as the sin was. And if you find that you’re shrieking at your kids all the time with very little apparent provocation, dig a little deeper and see if you actually have some anger issues with someone besides them. Are you mad at your husband over something? Are you angry at your parents? Are you angry at God for your situation in life? Do you feel wronged by someone from your past or present? If you’re hanging on to that and nursing it along in your heart, then your kids will be the unlucky recipients as you sub-consciously re-direct your pent up wrath. And even if you pretend that it’s justice, your kids will see right through it.

Well, Happy New Year! With the resurfacing of my old milkshake post came the reminder to me that I had promised a little more on the topic. Well, here I am, a whole year later, trying to do just that.

It does seem that every mother has energy, joy, and fulfillment sometimes, but consistently having these things can challenge us beyond what we feel is a reasonable amount. Joy all day? Every day? Even if Daddy is out of town, or when the whole family has the stomach flu, or when the pre-dinner warp spasm is upon the children? How can we maintain a cheerful, calm, happy, giving attitude when we certainly don’t feel like it? Well, here are a few thoughts, incomplete though they be, that may help us  get a little perspective.

1) Perspective is the key word. I mean big-picture, honest, for-reals perspective. Things can get smoshy and desperate and smelly and tense in our homes in very little time, because we keep people there. But the reality is, no matter how terrible it is, it isn’t terrible. Not in the cosmic scheme of life. Watch a little cell phone video made by people on high ground who watched their world float away in the tsunami in Japan. Think of your grievances about your day, were you to be airing them to a person  who suffered through something of this magnitude. Remove yourself from your fussing at the coffee shop to a nice caring friend and think of talking to someone like Corrie Ten Boom or Elizabeth Elliot about this problem. “AND THEN,” you say with dramatic tones, “THEY GOT NAIL POLISH ON THE CARPET!”  Get outside yourself for a minute and see what is really happening. You have miles and miles of a list of things to be actively grateful for (no matter how difficult your situation is), and you should try to keep it in mind when you start wanting to tally up the troubles you suffer.

2) The milkshake analogy is just descriptive of a feeling, but it isn’t how the thing works. A friend of my sister’s once sorrowfully told her husband that her well had run dry. His very wise response was to say, “But it isn’t a well, it is a river.” In actual point of fact, my energy and joy is not something that I drum up somewhere alone. It has tributaries. Contributors. Often times the takers are also the givers. This is especially true of your husband and children. When you give freely, you receive fully. Stingy out gets stingy in. An example of this would be holding yourself back from your husband simply because you feel tired, stingy, selfish, or generally put upon. Not only have you cut off a way that you could give to him, but you have cut off a cycle that gives to you as well. Nothing, when it comes to people, is entirely simple. When you need, give. When you are tired, look for ways to lift the burden of others.

Another example of this would be the mess in your house (I trust that you have one). When I focus on the mess, I am aggravated by the things that do not matter at the expense of the people who do. When I consciously refuse to be upset by the side product, I am free to enjoy the people who are messing it up. Giving my own work freely does not just make me a martyr.

Let’s say the twins come up the stairs in wild dress- up ensembles. Chloe has a purse full of playmobile people, and Titus is pulling a blanket loaded with duplos. I know what this means to the playroom, and I know what it means to the place they are seeing as a destination. It means an imposition on me. But if I freely give, I am also free to get a good laugh out of them. I enjoy what they are doing because I took my own little issues out of the picture. They delight me. They delight me even when they are bombing the house out, if I am looking at them and not at myself. So try to see moments that feel like a take-take-take as more of a give-and-receive, give-and-receive cycle.

3) Let’s talk more about messy houses, because I can’t stop. Imagine you spent the day rearranging and cleaning up the living space in your home. You have flowers and clean curtains and fresh throw pillows and maybe a candle. You are pleased. The right lights are on. Things are good. And then, like the wolf on the fold, the people in your life descend upon your work. They peel off socks and put their feet on the coffee table. They come from afar bringing baskets of craftiness to spread out upon the couch. They pop popcorn and carelessly munch. Someone goes so far as to get out the puzzles. In such a moment, it would be easy (don’t ask me how I know) to become shrill. It is easy to see each chin-glancing popcorn shrapnel as an insult. “Don’t you value the work I do?!” “Don’t you care how long this took me?!” “Why can’t you just not do this??” Even if you don’t say it, you may feel a little despair, a little resentment, and a little “why do I even try?”.

But the truth is, we need a new perspective. It is moments like this that should give us a lot of job satisfaction. These people are enjoying you. They are enjoying your work. But, like a great dinner all laid out on the table, you don’t enjoy it without touching it. A chef would not look at dishes coming back to the kitchen untouched as a sign of success. It would not mean great things about your work. Yet this is what we want from the work we do in our homes.

I’m sure most of you have noticed the magnetic power of what you clean. Clean the bookshelf up, and everyone wants to read. Organize the little toys, and everyone wants to play with the things they have been callously walking on for days. This is a sign that you are succeeding, that your people love your work. Think of it like food, because that is how it is getting used.

Mothers of children, let me tell you something. You are like a pastor to your children. You must feed them like a good pastor does. You must know how each one is doing. Each and every one. You must make sure each child is receiving love and attention, that each feels loved as a special member of this family/congregation of yours.  You must see that each one is washed and clothed and fed. And you must be available at all hours to minister to these little or big ones. You may not ignore them or put them off. The way you love and teach them is showing them what God is like. You are teaching them about God, about His world and His Word, and you are teaching them who they are in the Big Story God is writing. This is momentous work.

A big family, like a big church, may need more pastors. But a big family doesn’t work like that. You are it. So you must ask God to give you plenty of grace and strength and help to shepherd this flock He has given you. The bigger the congregation, the bigger your duties. Learn to shoulder them. Getting help from the bigger kids may be great, but you can’t hand off your responsibilities to them; they are some of the sheep you are ministering to, not co-shepherds.

Of course, I am not excluding the father’s responsibility here. We can call him the chief shepherd in this little analogy of mine. My point here is that you mothers are the shepherds who are out in the field each day, tending these sheep of yours.  You are the teachers and pastors in your little (or big) Bible school. You must give an account of how the sheep are doing. You must tend them. You must care for each one.

Don’t take this lightly. Learn to be a good shepherd to your children. Read the Scriptures and take them to heart. Don’t compare your little flock with the other flocks. Compare your flock with what God wants from you, not from what you think will impress others. Are you being faithful with what He has given you? That is what counts.

God will give you all you need to finish what you have started. He has promised! And God bless you and your little or big congregation as you go.

Then he goes on to draw connections between our own earthly homes and what it means to dwell in God as our home. I was particularly struck by his idea of home. Here’s a summary of his comments on home.

1. “At home, we take our rest; it is there we find repose after the fatigue and toil of the day.”

2. “Home, too, is the place of our truest and purest happiness.”

3. “It is also for home that we work and labour.”

4. And here’s my favorite: “At home, also, we let our hearts loose; we are not afraid of being misunderstood, nor of our words being misconstrued.”

What a lovely image! And what a good thought for mothers and wives. We should labor to make our homes all these things and more. And our children and husbands should find that home is where they can let their hearts loose without fear!

I would suggest that we teach them by learning it ourselves. We parents are not immune to peer pressure. Think about it. How many times do we feel an urge to do something, or buy something, because are friends are doing it? Our friends are traveling to Europe. We should go to Europe. Our friends are building a new house. We should build a new house. Our friends are taking up golf. We should take up golf, etc. Now these are all neutral issues. It’s a free country. Golf if you want to!

But some issues are more important. What if you feel pressure from peers to homeschool or to enroll your kids in a Christian school? Both of those choices may be good choices; neither is wicked or evil.  But if you make a weighty choice like that, a choice that will affect your kids long term, without understanding why you are doing it and what it means, you are simply following the crowd and responding to peer pressure.

Other issues may include what I would call “cultural” choices. You may feel peer pressure to adopt a certain lifestyle based on peer pressure. This could include the kind of foods you will or will not eat, the kinds of grocery stores you will or won’t shop in, the kind of car you will or won’t drive, the way you celebrate or don’t celebrate Christmas, the kind of diapers you will or will not use. All of these choices involve decisions that must be made. But why are you making them? Is it because you want a certain group of adults to admire you, welcome you into their select group, and think you’re one of the cool ones?

You see, we adults can still be affected by peer pressure, so we had better be able to spot it when it is applied to us, and we had better learn to make wise choices that are not simply the result of wanting to please certain people.

Our children need to be taught how to do this, so we need to show them how. That means we are teaching our kids how we made the choices we did and why. We don’t just send them to a Christian school or homeschool them; we teach them how we came to that decision. We want to be thinking Christians and we want our children to be thinking Christians. We want to make principled decisions and show them how we got there.

Now of course, some peer pressure is good pressure. If the pressure is coming from the right kind of people steering us in a good direction, then we ought to be grateful. We may have made a decision because of peer pressure that turns out to be a great blessing for us down the road when we finally understand the wisdom of it. God is good.

If one of our kids is being unkind at school to a classmate, we want their peers to exert pressure on him or her to put it right. A godly peer pressure is a good thing, not a bad thing. But even here, the goal is to get our children (and ourselves) to do good things for the right reasons.

Imitation is how we learn. We are to imitate Paul as he imitates Christ. We want our kids to have good role models in us, so they can imitate us. We don’t want them imitating the wrong kind of people, not because imitation is bad, but because the world is always eager to press them into its mold. In the same way, we want them to imitate us as they see us imitating the right kind of people. This is how wisdom is passed on from one generation to the next.

Now, worry is bad for us. And it’s bad for our kids. It’s an uglifying sin (like all the rest of them). Worry is antithetical to biblical femininity. It is never pretty. It sucks the joy out of our lives, disturbs our peace, and  disrupts a gentle and quiet spirit.

How do you know if you are worrying? A worry always begins with “What if…?” And you cannot answer that kind of question. So don’t ask it, don’t listen to it, and don’t get in a discussion over it. Ignore it and let it go find somewhere else to roost.

Worry is “loving concern” gone amok. It is unproductive, unhelpful, self-centered, and is one of the ways women can tear down their houses (see Proverbs 14:1). Worry may look like it is thinking of others, but that is a deception. Worry is really all about me. I want to be in charge of this situation, and I don’t want to trust God to oversee it.  I want to talk about it all the time to everyone: Let me get out all my pet worries to play with.

Mothers can chase their kids away with worry. Who wants to be worried and fretted over? Kids don’t. Adult kids don’t. Worry makes them feel crowded. They will look for more space somewhere far away.

The way to help your kids is to quit worrying. Pray for them. Help them. Show them how. But don’t worry over them.

If they are sick, take care of them. If they are hungry, feed them. If they are late, wait up for them. But don’t worry. Jesus says that we may not. It doesn’t help a bit. It only makes the waiting uncomfortable.

Some women worry over real issues: health issues or spiritual issues or money issues or marriage issues or wisdom issues. But other women worry over what might be an issue in ten years. This is called borrowing trouble. It’s not pretty and it’s not cute.

Trust is lovely. Peace is beautiful. Cast your cares on Him for He cares for you, and He cares for your kids. Don’t worry over them. Pray over them. This will cause them to draw near. Worry sets them up to pull away.

One thing that is often mentioned about discipline is the value of consistency. Just be consistent, and it will work. This is true on some level. But it isn’t necessarily true that whatever you are doing will work if you just keep on doing it. Children need consistency, but the most important thing to be consistent on is caring for them. If you are faithfully dealing with them, then the consistent thing is you. Your presence in their life, you working through their issues with them. If your methods change, you are still there. If you try something different, you have not thrown everything out the window. It can actually be an encouraging sign that you are still there. That you are still engaged in dealing with them.

When your kidlets are little like Blaire, keep it simple.  Use the same words. For Blaire, we say, “No, no” and “No flopping.” When she is rough with the other kids – scratching, biting, pulling hair, etc., we always say, “No, no. Be gentle,” and then we practice touching softly. When push comes to shove and a discipline situation is upon you, stick well within the child’s range of understanding. Even little children are very smart. But this doesn’t mean they will track with you as you talk a lot about self control, or change the command continually. It is easy to add frustration that wasn’t there before by talking too much. With Blaire (17 months), when she flops, I stand her back up right away and say, “No flopping.” If she has gotten carried away with it and this does not affect her, I hold her on my lap. This is usually not what she wants, and she will not take too kindly to it. But, she has to sit on my lap until she stops the crying and is willing to give me high five. The important thing is that she should be running into a wall of parent when trying to indulge herself this way. She will not give a high five unless she is in fellowship, and for her, sitting on my lap without fighting is letting it go. The high five is just something that we know she knows how to do, and know she is able to do.

It is a perfectly clear, baby-level lesson: “You are not in charge, I am. I love you, you are my buddy and you can’t get out of that. You may not be miserable, you may not be alone with your drama. Let it go, I love you.”