So today I just wanted to finish up with a few more quotes from Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches. I hope it has served to encourage other mothers out there as it has encouraged me!

Speaking of seeing your child’s greatest weakness in connection as the greatest strength:

“What I am trying to get at is that you do not want to discipline vices as though they are unconnected to virtues. They are almost always the good and the bad manifestations of the same thing. When you see a vice manifesting in your child, take the time to think through how you do want them to use it. Is your daughter being catty and critical of another child’s artwork? Tell her how you want to hear her using her tongue to build up. Teach her how to encourage Make her practice while you listen, and encourage her with smiles, winks, or nods.”

Dealing with growth spurts and different developmental phases (when you have a lot of yougn children, it seems you are always entering and exciting a new one every week!)

“Once again, I find that the children’s attitudes are tethered to mine. If I pray for a growth spurt, for ideas on how to help them, to make this a fun new phase, and to appreciate their new needs, then the change on my part usually clears up a lot of things. I am not saying that this eliminates the need for discipline, but it makes it gloriously clear-cut and sweet. My attitude is no longer a player, and it is no longer a big “situation” but just normal life.

You know those pain scales at the hospital, where they rate your pain from one to ten? Well, pretend that you are screaming, “Thirteen, thirteen! Fifteen!” What that should tell you is that it is time to restart the whole thing, stop screaming, and just deal with the fact that this is now the new “one.” Start over, and accept the new “normal.” I promise that this little mental change will actually change how you feel, and by extension how your children feel.

Growing is, after all, what God wants them to do.”

Concluding thoughts:

“Blessings, like children, are not ethereal and weightless. Sometimes they feel like they come at you like a Kansas hail storm—they might leave a welt! But if you accept your lot and rejoice in your toil, God will give you the kind of overwhelming joy that cannot remember the details. Motherhood is hard work. It is repetitive and often times menial. Accept it. Rejoice in it. This is your toil. Right here. Those are their faces. Enjoy them. The days of your life are supposed to be full of things like this. But joy is not giddy. It is not an emotional rush—it is what happens when you accept your lot and rejoice in your toil. So rejoice in your children. Look them in the eyes and give thanks. You will not even remember the work of all this planting when the harvest of joy overwhelms you.”

Happy Friday everyone,

This week I want to share extensively about a little book that has been an amazing blessing to me: Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches. My friend Angie sent me this book to borrow after we were talking on the phone one day and I mentioned how much I wanted to read it after reading Rachel Jankovic’s blog posts on Desiring God. Since Angie had it she sent graciously sent it to me and I DEVOURED it in about 18 hours after receiving it.

I will be honest and share that having 4 children all two years apart and still very young makes it hard for me to identify with a lot of other parents and parenting books. I know it is my pride, but I often have a hard time hearing advice or words of challenge from people with less children or with children who are spaced further apart. That is where Rachel Jankovic trumps me: at the time of writing this book she had 5 children ages 5 and under!  This is a woman who is in my world…and even more so.

This book is challenging and encouraging, so I want to share a bunch of quotes and thoughts that I had from this book over the next several days.  I have already ordered it on the Kindle re-read again very soon!

“If there is anything I have learned in the course of my fast and furious mothering journey, it is that there is only one thing in my entire life that must be organized.  The kids can be running like a bunch of hooligans through a house that appears to be at the bottom of a toaster , and yet, if organization and order can still be found in my attitude, we are all doing well.  But if my attitude falters, even in the midst of external order, so does everything else.”

“I didn’t write this book because mothering little ones is easy for me.  I wrote it because it isn’t.  I knwo that this is a hard job, because I am right here int he middle of it.  I know you need encouragement every day, because I do too.”

“God treats us with great kindness as we fail daily.  He takes the long view of our sin- knowing that every time we fail and repent, we grow in our walk with Him.  It is easy for us to accept this, because our sins are, well, ours.

But our children sin against us, annoy us, and mess up our stuff.  We want to hold it against them, complain about them (if only to ourselves), and feel put upon by their sin.  We have a much harder time accepting that every failure from them is a wonderful opportunity for repentance and growth and not an opportunity for us to exact penance.”

“Another way in which we can do damage to ourselves is through the use of totally innocent words that we use to allow ourselves something.  I remember thinking sometimes when the twins were little that I had better stop being overwhelmed.

This was normal now. There were a few months there in the middle of the wet, gray, rainy part of winter when I had two nursing infants, and diapers. It was very physically as well as emotionally intense. I can remember around this time taking the garbage out and just standing outside the door taking some deep breaths, getting ready to go back in. It was somewhere around this time that I realized I had better strike the word “overwhelmed” from my vocabulary. God gave me this to do. I may not be overwhelmed about it. I can try as hard as I can, and maybe fail sometimes. I can try as hard as I can and fall asleep at the dinner table. I can try as hard as I can and be completely burned out at the end of the day. But I may not be overwhelmed. Actually, I may be overwhelmed, but I may not say that I am overwhelmed! The words have a real power over us. If you say it, you allow it for yourself. You give yourself that little bit of room to say, “But I can’t!”

“Since we cheated and skipped right to four children I don’t really know about the three kid scene, but I am pretty sure that three is the tipping point. Up until three, it is easy to see your kids as individuals and their actions as exclusively their own. After three, they all start running together a bit.”

“The more children you have the more you need to be pastorally minded. Look to each of their souls and their needs. If you are focused on upkeep of the house and the schedule, as long as your child is not interrupting that, you don’t worry about it. If you are being a parent who is pastorally minded you will stop whatever it is that you are doing to go see how your daughter is up in her bedroom. Has she been quiet lately? Was that a faint door-slam you heard in the distance? Find out about that. Did one of your kids seem a touch off as they went outside to sit in a tree? Don’t let that go. Be a pastor to your children. Study them. Seek them out. Sacrifice the thing you were doing to work through minor emotional issues.”

Tomorrow I will share some more thoughts and quotes from the book.  Have a wonderful day,