What About My Own Heart?

While talking to a friend about the Immediately, Completely, Cheerfully post, she made an important point. She wondered how often she does that herself, how often does she go about her duties immediately, completely and cheerfully? I was thinking that about myself too. My attitude is what often shows up in my children's attitudes and it isn't very nice sometimes.

One of the things I like about Tedd Tripp and Paul Tripp's writing on parenting is that they deal with the parent first. Before you can "fix" your children, you must "fix" yourself. If your own heart isn't right with God, it will be impossible to shepherd your child's heart. Being a parent is hard! It takes an intimate knowledge of God, walking with Him, and resting in His grace and mercy when you fail. I know from experience.

You waking before the children, not skimping on prayer and Scripture reading, spending time sitting under the preaching of God's Word, and fellowship with other believers are key aspects to parenting. As shocking as it may seem, those things are more important than the best education, the perfect playmates and most well balanced meals possible for them. It seems backwards and it's very hard to make it happen, but when your heart is right before God, you will be in a great place to guide their hearts.

I struggle with every part of the equation. I want to sleep late, get through prayer and Scripture reading quickly, skip church and stay home alone sometimes. I can come up with as many excuses as the next person to keep from tending my own heart, but they will just be excuses. Planning to guard my spiritual life is what it takes.

How does that planning happen? First of all, with Ray. He is my spiritual leader and has my best interests at heart. If I have a need in this area, he is the first person I go to. If I don't get out of bed before Abigail wakes up, he will try to keep her quiet and contained until I have some time to read and pray. This is not easy for me because I know he has a lot of work to do. He is usually out of bed before five in the morning so that he can get his work done. If I lay in bed too long, I am taking him away from his work. That is a huge motivation for me to get up. I know this kind of plan doesn't work for everyone, but the working out your time to get in prayer and Scripture reading is possible.

Also, if I don't give myself plenty of time for my 'quiet time', I rush through. Having to get breakfast ready for the girls who leave early, getting chores and homeschool done in a timely manner are more motivations to get out of bed. Strangely enough, because of the succession of events of any given morning, if I sleep thirty minutes late, it puts our homeschool day behind by an hour or more. And no one wants to be doing school at supper time.

As far as church is concerned, I am as guilty as the next person to want to skip. It's hard to teach a baby to sit still and be quiet during the service. I get distracted by things in the service and miss parts of sermons and songs. (Just this past Sunday, Hannah had a strange rash show up during the service. Who knows what that message was about!)  But unless we are out of town or really sick, I show up, because it isn't good for the pastor's family to skip church :) Being in church isn't an option, we will be there! (I also really like the preacher.)

I love to get together with friends. Other ladies often encourage me and spur me in my walk with God. But I also really like to stay home a lot. I like to be at home with my family and do things with them. It isn't good for women to hide in their own homes all the time from other people. Proverbs is full of words about the benefits of godly relationships.

All of these things work together to make my heart right with God. Because I love Him and want to know Him, I want to be a better parent. Because I want to be a better parent, I want to know Him and love Him more.  Because I want to know Him more, I am going to work hard to develop my spiritual life.