5 Thoughts for MOPS (1)

What nuggets have been most helpful for me along this journey of parenting? 

This was the question I asked myself during the weeks leading up to speaking at a MOPS (Moms of Preschoolers) group last week. After prayer and some chats with my mom, these are a few snippets from the five nuggets I shared. Perhaps they can be helpful to you too on your own sacred mundane journey through the preschool days. We’ll do 3 today and finish the last two on Friday. Thanks for reading.

1:: First things first.

Children follow the footprints of the steps we actually take, not the ones we talk about taking.

• Your relationship with God is the single most important relationship in your life. You are first and foremost a daughter of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ. Neglecting this soul care, this intimate time with God, will leave you empty, weary, haggard. Fill yourself up first, first thing in the morning, and you will find the strength, stamina, and wisdom to meet the demands of the day.  What this doesn’t mean: This doesn’t mean you drag your kids along to every Bible study and ministry event you can stuff into your schedule. Your relationship with God is first, but your church-life comes farther down. That said, we benefit our children when we teach them the priority of corporate worship. Not attending a local church gathering because it interferes with our child’s napping schedule isn’t necessarily the best thing. Seek God constantly (during those quiet moments in the morning) and ask Him for wisdom for those schedule conflicts and tricky decisions.

• Your relationship with your husband (if you are married) is the next most important relationship in your life.  Your marriage is sacred, and is meant to be a picture of Christ and the Church, a beautiful portrait of true love and sacrificial giving. Long after the children have moved away you will still have your man.  Often, we are guilty of bending over backwards to love on, nurture, and provide for our children while giving our husbands leftovers, emotionally and physically.  If your children’s sleep schedules are depriving your husband of his physical needs, make adjustments. (Read: They might not belong in bed with you!) Be mindful of making him a priority. The best thing you can give your children is a healthy marriage.

2:: Keep them with you. 

• This seems obvious, but in a culture which elevates (obsesses over?) experts and early childhood development, it’s easy to think that we need to outsource the spiritual development of our children. Nothing could be further from the truth. You are the BEST person to train, nurture, and disciple your child. No one else loves your child as much as you. No one knows them like you know them. No one can see into their heart and motives like you can. Take great caution before making decisions or enrollments that take your child out or your presence. There will be a day when outside sports, activities, tutors, and coaches will play a major role in their development. Now is not that time. YOU are the most important person.

• Do the hard training work so you actually enjoy being with your child. We’re embarrassed to admit it, but often we enroll small children in activities and ship them off places because we really want them out of our hair. It is exhausting to parent preschoolers. It’s hard. They aren’t adults. They whine. They’re always hungry. They don’t understand logic. They spill stuff. They are raw flesh that needs constant discipline and training. So, we’re faced with  a choice. We can let the frustration and irritation make us just get out of the house and go to Target or enroll them in whatever busyness we can to avoid the tantrums, or we can stay  home and engage with them and do the hard work of training them to be delightful. Sure, we’ll have bad days, but we must resist the temptation to escape the hard-work of parenting. Do it now, keep them with you, and the payoff will be huge.  If we love our children, we will be with them and discipline them: “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” Prov. 13:24

• The most significant teaching times are always “on the way.” Planned devotional times and daily Bible reading are great, but children learn best in real-life scenaries where you make everything a teachable moment and apply God’s truths to life. Deuteronomy 6:7 says, “You shall teaching [God’s Words] to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” You can’t do this if they’re not with you! When you’re driving, playing, eating, going to bed, getting up, constantly be talking about God and His love, truth, and wisdom. Keep them with you and all of life will be a teachable moment.

3:: Focus on the heart. 

• Sometimes when we toss around the idea of focusing on our kids hearts, it’s as if we’re implying that the outward actions don’t matter. They do. Children’s minds and spirits are not developed enough to understand profound abstract concepts, so we train their them through addressing their outward behavior, words, actions, etc. But, we must also be attuned to what is going on on the inside. In my opinion, moms are naturally able to do this, but we sometimes tune out this intuition because of outside pressure (more on that later). Outward actions are always because of an inward situation. The inward stuff is our goal–getting to the heart.

• We’re wise to take life with preschoolers SLOW. The only way we can truly see inside the hearts and minds of our children is if we live slow enough and have enough margin that we can take the time to really look into situations. If we are frantically carting our children around from one activity to another, we’ll likely just shove some fruitsnacks in their hands, tell them to be quiet, and settle for the right outward behavior. But when we keep them with us and go slow, we have time to really see, really listen, and really diagnose what’s going on inside. It’ll pay off.

{Whatever stage you’re in, how can you keep first things first today? How can you take responsibility for the spiritual growth and development of those in your care? How can you focus on the heart in ALL those relationships around you. And finally, how can we all go SLOW enough to really nurture, notice, and care for those souls God has entrusted to us. Thanks for reading.}