Excellence acquired is to be required

This past Saturday I was able to spend a lot of time with my mom. I picked her up in the morning and we drove up to BB's to do some shopping.
After shopping we went to Lapp's Family Restaurant which is just a mile or two from BB's and had lunch together. I had such a wonderful time talking about many things with my mom. She has such a wonderful way of sharing insight that God has given her while she watches Dave and I raise our children. She offers suggestions and often has the answer to difficult situations that I may be having with my children or with myself!
After spending all this time with my mom, I was able to see some areas in our family that sorely needed improvement. She in no way implied that we were having problems, but through me sharing with her and with the insight she gave, God revealed many things to me.
Most of these things I found needed to be approached with me first taken the initiative to set a better example. I realized that my quiet times had been weak and shallow and I really need to get back to getting adequate nourishment for my family. I need to be diligent in my physical exercising so that I am able to keep up with my kids better. I need to require better manners of my children. I need to be more consistent in the correction of my children - especially with the younger ones who are going through "tantrum phases"! I need to approach schooling my kids as a privilege, not a burden, and I need to do it as unto the Lord. I need to have the kids pull their share of the chore load around the house and make sure that they finish these chores before they are released to play for the rest of the day. Most importantly, I need to require my kids to spend time daily in the Word on their own - not with Dave or I reading a passage of Scripture to them, but finding for themselves what a joy it is to learn from God's Word with a daily quiet time.
In short, I need to require excellence in living first of my self, and then of my children. The Bible says, "Be EXCELLENT at what is good..." My calling in life right now is to be the best mom that I can be. I am to diligently seek the Lord to give me wisdom in raising these future warriors for Him. If I fail, it is only because I was not striving to be excellent at what I have been called to do. If I fail, then all these years of training will have been for nothing. When my kids are grown up and raising children of their own, I want them to be able to look back and see that they ended up where they are because their mom required excellence not only in their life, but in her own.

"There is nothing I desire to live for but to do some small service for my children, that as I've brought them into the world, I may, if it please God, be an instrument of doing good to their souls."
Susanna Wesley

Being Pious

Having a flexible schedule was always a must growing up in the ministry. It was something I learned at a young age and have carried it with me into my marriage and have been very thankful to be able to apply it in raising my children. Raising this crew requires much flexibility!
Having a daily schedule or routine is a wonderful way to keep your sanity, but sometimes life will throw things at you that require you to alter that routine. Things like children getting sick and needing to go to the doctor in the middle of your school day, running out of milk, or needing to pick up or drop off kids for soccer practice. Sometimes making school more fun for the kids requires changing your daily routine. Sometimes I will wake up to a warm sunny day in the spring or the fall and decide that it is a perfect day to go to the zoo. Having a flexible schedule is a wonderful thing!
I have found, however, that flexibility is not something to be used when trying to have a daily quiet time. For me, it must come early in the morning, first in my schedule, and top priority, no matter how flexible I am willing or able to be. There is no squeezing it in elsewhere in my day. At no other time in my daily routine will I have more freedom, more quiet or less interruptions than in the early hours of the day.
So, how I can I achieve being pious in this area? More often than not I feel like I could be pious later in the day when I've had more sleep. After all, wouldn't I function better as a mother if I had more sleep? Can I trust that I will find that block of time where I can be uninterrupted long enough to have a productive and meaningful quiet time? Not likely!
The only way that I can ensure that I will indeed keep this most important time of learning and hearing from the Lord, is that I put aside my need for flexibility and maintain order in my schedule even if it is only long enough to have this precious time with Jesus.
Susanna Wesley was a woman who thrived off of having an orderly day. She would get her husband up at the same time every day, had meals at the same time every day, and had prayers and devotions at the same time every single day. It was said that even as she measured her hours, so she measured the porridge that she gave her husband every morning!
I have been reading a biography of Susanna's life written by Sandy Dengler. When Susanna's husband Samuel questioned her about her need to be so pious about everything, she gave this reply ~
"A regular and orderly day provides that nothing will be neglected.You might well feel more pious later, but keeping to a strict order ensures that you'll be pious, whether you feel like it at the moment or not. One must never trust whim and feeling."

A Wonderfully Busy Holiday

This holiday season seems like it was more busy than in past years. Our family seemed to cram more events into our schedule than possible! So much has happened in the month of December that if I posted about it all, you would probably get bored reading it!
I thought maybe I would post some pictures that would highlight our holidays.


These are our two December birthday girls. Christiana turned 9 on the 10th, and Amanda turned 3 on the 11th. One of Amanda's favorite gifts was a princess dress up set given to her by Dave's parents. She turns into a princess almost every day as soon as breakfast is over!
Christmas day was wonderful! We started the morning at our house with just our family. We did the "present thing" before breakfast and then we had our traditional Christmas breakfast of French toast, eggs, bacon, sausage, and scrapple! MMMMM!!!!
After cleaning up from breakfast we headed over to Dave's parent's house for a few hours to visit with Dave's whole family, and then headed over to my parent's house for a while to visit with my family and to eat steamed shrimp!

We had the wonderful privilege of having my entire family at home for the holidays. My brother Todd is a pastor at Metro Life Community Church near Orlando, and so it's not often that He is able to be home for Christmas. This year he and his family were not only home for Christmas, they were able to stay through the New Year as well.

One of my favorite gifts this holiday season was being able to visit with my dear friend Amy and her husband. They were up visiting her grandparents in West Virginia over the New Year, and we were able to meet half way in Frederick for several hours of much needed fellowship with each other! I have known Amy since we were 15, and we have been through thick and thin together! She got married two years ago, and this is the first time that we have seen each other since her wedding.

All in all it was a wonderful holiday! We had wonderful times with our families and were able to truly enjoy celebrating the birth of our Savior.