Category Archives: Being a Mom

Preparing Our Hearts and Schoolroom

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Moving books from one shelf to the other; hanging maps, and cleaning some other shelves; checking our list of books, making lesson plans and buying binders, notebooks and pencils all must be ready for a new school year.

So our hearts must be ready.

I was thinking about this while cleaning our schoolroom; what about my heart is it ready for a new school year? Am I preparing myself to be the Christian example my children need?

The only way to keep on doing this great task of homeschooling, is to stop and see what an impossible task it is; and it is only through God’s grace that we will be able to do it. The moment we start trusting on ourselves, the moment we hear ourselves saying that we can easily manage our children’s souls, that is the moment to fall on our knees and ask for repentance, because we are not trusting anymore on our Father but on our own selves.

Let us go in prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to search in our hearts, and prepare us to …

Serve our children by love,
To be always ready to edify their souls.

To be able to choose beauty and lead them to it.
To live pursuing those things that are lovely and of good report.

Let us ask in prayer,
that the Lord will help us live the religion we profess amiable and inviting;
always with zeal but full with love.

Let the Lord prepare our hearts so that we won’t forget
that we must reach our children’s hearts.

That we may not lose our temper, that we may hold our tongue
that we may fight our sinful nature and live serving them.
that we may live in a way that might say at all times:
“Come with me, journey with me, follow me,
I am On My Way to Heaven”

Only the Lord, can help us to be prepared to all the changes and trials
and uncertainties of life, giving us a content heart, a praying heart.

Let us pray as the Puritans,
“May I be in character and conduct 
like the dew of heaven,  the salt of the earth,
the light of the world, the fullness of the fountain”

Let us pray so that our hearts be well prepared to
see all things in the light of the Scripture,
always working hard, never wasting our lives,
redeeming the time.

Let us prepare our schoolroom, but most of all let us prepare our hearts.

Let us clean our schoolroom, but most of all let us clean our hearts with the Word of God.

Let us not forget that all we do is because of Him, through Him, and for Him. To God be all glory.

Lord, help me fulfill the great end of my being-
to glorify thee and be a blessing to my children.

Our Homeschooling Goals

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 This time of the year is planning time for Moms who homeschool, but most of all, I think Summer should be a time for us to make an effort to examine our motives, (obviously this is best when done with your husband, the headmaster of your homeschool!)

Why are we homeschooling our children?
What keeps me up and going every day?  

There is one book in particular that I have read many, many times now, always in the summer, and it helps me focus on what I believe is the heart of homeschooling, it is entitled When You Rise Up. a Covenantal Approach to Homeschooling, by Dr. R.C Sproul Jr.

If you are homeschooling and haven’t read this book, I would love to encourage you to read it, it will be like honey to your soul.

Besides reading and searching my heart, and praying, and organizing shelves with books  and shopping online for more, and register my children for new online classes, I take the time to go through the goals our husband and I  have set  for our homeschool.

So here they are, from the archives (September 17, 2009) some have been added later.

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My husband and I drafted some of these goals in the year 2006, we have been updating them since then; now I want to share them with you.

Maybe you are thinking about starting to homeschool, or maybe you are weary after some years of doing it and need to be reminded of all the goals, that I am sure , you set before your eyes one day. I am sure I will come back many a  days to add more goals as my children keep on growing.

May God help us achieve them!

1. Raise men and women who honor God and fear his commandments.

2. Raise men and women with godly character qualities, virtue, honor, responsibility, truth, love, faithfulness, honesty, hard workers, merciful, generous.

3. Raise men and women who will know by heart the Scriptures, that can make them wise unto salvation.

4. Raise men and women prepared to make right  decisions and stand firm on them.

5. Raise men and women who marry Christians, and build godly families.

6. Raise men and women who  love to study, read, learn; capable of teaching.

7. Raise men and women able to love and appreciate aesthetics; music, arts, literature.

8. Raise men and women capable of expressing clearly  their thoughts and defend their beliefs, both, verbally and  written.

9. Raise men and women who will leave a heritage of godly principles to their children and   grandchildren.

10. Raise men and women who’d love their Mom and Dad until the day they’d be taken away to their home in Heaven.

11. Raise men and women who will be able to understand that God’s Sovereignty has shaped our world and our history up to this day.

12. Raise men and women able to communicate in more than two languages, to be able to share the gospel in different places, and different circumstances.

13. Raise men and women willing to serve others, willing  to live with open hands, always ready to give.

14. Teach our children that their best friends will always be at home.

15. Teach them to be godly fathers and mothers. Our young men need to be taught how to be providers and our women need to be taught how to be homekeepers.

16. Love the elderly and come to them. Be wise enough to listen to them and take their advice.

17. Do not walk in the way of the sinners.

18. Be able to discern sound doctrine from false teaching.

19…

 What are some of your main goals when raising your children? 

Please share!

Learning to Converse

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I heard our conversation and I certainly did not like it. I did not like it because of me. My dialogue, my lines were too long, repetitive. I wanted to make a point clear, but as I listened carefully to those words coming out from my mouth, I though more about a continual dripping of rain, than a healing balm.

My words certainly did not taste as honey.

“When words are many, transgression is not lacking,
    but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.”
                                                          Proverbs 10:19

Here I was, a Mom of many words…

But I want to do do something about my conversation with my young adult children; I want it to be fruitful, blessed, sweet, and profitable.

“Whoever restrains his words has knowledge,
   and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.
Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise;
   when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.”
                                                  Proverbs 17: 27-28

I read this and many others passages in the Scriptures, and I realized that the only way to improve my conversations with my children (and everyone else!) is to say fewer words, and listen more.

Before saying my twenty five thousand words about a topic, it would be better for me to learn to restrain my words and listen first to what they have to say, listen to them attentively and then speak wise words to their hearts. This, I am sure, is more efficient.

The hardest thing, however,  is to break patterns that we have been dragging behind us; it is easier not to listen to our children, and just say what we think they ought to do; but this attitude will only bring grief, and will not nourish the relationship I am longing to have with them.

I wrote these questions to help me examine my conversation with my children:

1. When I am busy doing something, and one of my children wants to tell me something, do I stop immediately what I am doing to listen him?
-Yes, I have also said that what I am doing is very important…but to be true, those “super important” things could have waited ten minutes or so?

2.When one of my children is talking to me, am I listening attentively or my mind is somewhere else?
-I have been guilty of this one, especially with the little ones.

3. When I need to correct them, do I listen to what they have to say first?
-Letting them talk and explain to us their “side of the story” is not wrong; if we have instructed them in ways of the Lord, by now, they should know how to express themselves respectfully with us.

4.When I give them a chance to talk and explain, am I listening with a humble attitude, or I am just waiting until they finish to say what I have to say? Am I willing to say, “I am sorry, you are right, and I am not”?
-This is crucial, if they do not see in me a humble attitude, they will not choose to come to me. No one wants to engage in conversations with the prideful.

5. Do I enjoy listening to them?
-My children will have to give the answer to this one.

Today I am here, learning to converse.

What are some ways you have learned in your journey about conversing with your children?

The pictures were taken by Annie, and I chose them to remind me that I need to start applying all these principles with my little one!

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The task (confronting parents) is to bring the children to love that Biblical standard. at the very center of childrearing, therefore, is the question of inculcating loyalty. a covenant family cannot stay together without loyalty. But loyalty is a function of deep gratitude, and gratitude is a function of grace”
Douglas Wilson, My Life For Yours, p. 107