Our Parenting Journey: Giving Hope

If you haven’t read my disclaimer for this series please do so.

We spent another fall in 2007 home once again. Joe was not hurt this time, but for some reason, God did not present us with a job opportunity. And once again, we started the new year in a new country. Abby and Elijah began the year 2008 in a hotel room in Bandirma, Turkey.  It was another adjustment for our family and one that opened up more opportunities to learn and grow.

We got settled into our apartment and I was 3 months away from giving birth to our third child.  I had an interest in reading more counseling books and picked up a few that changed much of my outlook in how I dealt with people.  The most influential one of those books was “How People Change” by Timothy Lane and Paul David Tripp.

In this book I was brought back to the reality that change that is real must come from a work of God.  Whether it is in me, my husband, my children or anyone else in the world, the only lasting change will be initiated by God in the heart.  It brought me to a place once again where I realized I was focusing too much on external behavior and not enough on speaking redemptive words of love.  It gave me a vision for being a person who spoke words of hope.  I didn’t want to be someone who just laid more burdens on someone by reminding them of all they did wrong, but someone who was a breath of fresh air to be around.

So I knew that the change must start in my home.  I wanted to speak the promises of Scripture that point to the hope of the cross to Joe and the kids.  When one of them was struggling, I didn’t want to just tell them to “just change their attitude” but give them the hope of Jesus who died so that their attitudes COULD change.

This was a book that I will re-visit over and over again because I know that I am always capable of slipping into the legalistic mentality that tells someone to “just do it”.  I love being around people who encourage me to fix my eyes on the God who acts who those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:4), and I want to be one of those people as well.