If you haven’t read my disclaimer for this series please do so.
To conclude the series, I thought I would share the three P’s of parenting, that for me are the essentials of being a mom to God’s glory.
1. Prayer. More than anything else, I want to be a mom of prayer. I want to pray for my children in specific and continuing ways: for their salvation, for their strengths and weaknesses, for the grace to suffer well, for their sexual purity, for their future spouses and in-laws, and for my relationship with them. I also want to be a mom who prays daily for wisdom in parenting. I don’t want to run immediately to a friend, book, website or even Joe when I have a problem in parenting. I want to turn first to the perfect Father and ask Him to guide me and teach me. I want to humbly ask for wisdom and then open my eyes to see where that wisdom may come from around me.
2. Priorities. My biggest struggles in parenting usually come when I am feeling inconvenienced by the task of being a mom. In reality, when I step back and look at things, this is one of my most important jobs (after being a child of God and a wife). I often perceive the extra work in parenting as holding me back from other things. But if you asked me about these other things, I would not say they are high priorities. When I face a temper tantrum and know that it could take an hour or so of heart work, when I am in the right frame of mind in regards to my priorities, I can face it gladly.
3. Perspective. This is the thing that keeps me thinking right most days. When I am tempted to become frustrated with one of the kids, my first dose of perspective is usually: What if this child were not in my life? Isn’t the little bit of struggle worth all the good? And then secondly, I usually think: In the grand scheme of all that God has created, how big of a deal is this right now? When I gain the right perspective it is so much easier to joyfully parent my children
Prayer, priorities and perspective. My three “musts” for parenting. Through our journey as parents and the lessons we’ve learned along the way, our parenting has become focused on becoming the kind of people we want our children to become and enjoying every moment we can to the glory of God.
I enjoyed very much your parenting series! Thank you for sharing your experiences.