Tag Archives: motherhood

Bad Day

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Monday. Monday Monday Monday. I will confess that I have had a total meltdown already today— it began with the kids bickering over breakfast and got worse from there. For some reason school today was overwhelming. Even the simple problems were frustrating the kids. So I thought I’d get them a snack to lift their spirits (and mine).

I made them all hot chocolate with marshmallows and brought it to the table along with some mixed nuts. I hummed Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” to myself as I measured out the chocolate powder. I surveyed the kitchen. Dishes everywhere. It was only 9:30. …just keep swimming, just keep swimming.I thought hot chocolate would make things turn around. You know, a little chocolate can do wonders, right?! NOT. Within five minutes child A had spilled child B’s hot chocolate all over her school work and clothes. It soaked through the tablecloth into the carpet and into B’s slippers. Child C proceeded to explain why it was all child D’s fault that no one was obeying.You can imagine where it went from there. : Child B is now folding laundry. I didn’t have the willpower to try and resurrect her ruined notebook pages. Child C is learning why it matters to line up columns when multiplying large numbers (yes, I made C do it until it was right), Child A is finding out how hard it is to get hot chocolate out of the carpet and D is now napping.

Sometimes, life is just hard. Homeschooling is hard. If we’re honest, we can encourage and support each other. If we’re not honest, we can easily find ourselves alone in a glass house. I don’t know about you, but I find I am most encouraged when mom tells me she had a bad day but she didn’t give up. 🙂

So that’s my encouragement to you today—if you’re having a tough time, don’t give up! It’s worth it. Even when the hot chocolate spills.

Be encouraged while you mop up the mess,
heidi

Heidi St John Guide to Daylight

It’s A Beautiful Way to Live

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–This is from a blog post I wrote at my old blog, “Confessions of a Homeschool Mom” back in 2006. I thought many of you would enjoy it.  Our daughter, Summer is now 9. She doesn’t suck cookie dough off her toes anymore. I’m glad I caught a picture of it.–

 

“Spencer Jay!”

“Yes, Mama?”

“STOP JUMPING ON THE COUCH!”

“I’m not, mama! The couch is bouncing under me!”

And so it goes.

Yesterday I walked into the kitchen just in time to see my newly-turned-three-year-old enjoying the cookie IMG_6135
dough that she had just stepped in… she was licking it off of her toes! Don’t call the sanitation patrol. I’ve got it covered. Believe me, it won’t help.

Fifteen years ago, I would have freaked out but I just handed her a washcloth (after the picture, or course) … and moved to the next crisis.

At least life is never boring, right? What happened? Oh yeah. That.  I remember now! And we rather ENJOY it!

It’s not that I’m complaining because I wish my life were different, because I really don’t!

It’s just that sometimes a girl needs to vent. Ya know? Take this post for example. I started writing it three hours ago. Since I sat down to type a “quick” entry, I’ve changed a poopy diaper (remember she’s just now eating cereal so it’s not the picnic it used to be!) , nursed the baby, wiped a teary-eyed face, handed out peanuts to the neighborhood (at least it felt that way) , located the Bob the Builder Bandaids, checked the pot roast, corrected an essay and
answered the phone at least five times.

Sunday afternoon is supposed to be my “time” to goof around while my kids play quietly… reading every volume of their Little House books and
inventing new theories for determining the speed of madagascar beetles.

Right???

And now I can’t remember what I wanted to say when I sat down to say it three hours ago.

And—it’s a beautiful way to live.

Heidi St John Guide to Daylight

Everyday Joys

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Overheard at my house today before 10:00 a.m. today:

“What’s for dinner, Mom?”
“Finish that up! It shouldn’t take you all day.”
“How do you spell ‘exhausted’?”

“Mom, we need to hire a maid.”
“Mom, what does >that< say?”
“Mom, I lost my book again!”
“Mom, what does this say? Barfer??” (the word was “before)
“She’s bothering me again!”
“He won’t stop annoying me!”
“But it’s not my day to unload the dishwasher.” (well, NOW it is.)
“This is my favorite book EVER!”
“Moooom! She answered the phone when you told her not to!” (This was heard by the caller)
“Mom! I only have one more page left!” (first time reading a chapter book)… “You’re the BEST MOM EVER!” (I served tea.)

Heidi St John Homeschooling Guide to Daylight

Homeschool Today

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A day in the life of a toddler ... Homeschool Today:

8 yr old learned that toddlers make colossal messes which cannot be cleaned up by said toddler and are therefore “community messes”

11 yr old learned that mom really means it when she says “get this done” or “that” will happen

6 yr old learned that it is difficult to get Sharpie out of the carpet

Oh. And we did some math and reading, too.

Heidi St John Homeschooling Guide to Daylight

This is Who You Are, Day 7

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Refuse to Be Sidelined

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9

Something sad and fascinating is happening to parents in this post-modern era. We’re being lied to. We’re being told that we aren’t necessary—and what’s worse, many moms today are buying the lie! After all, they say the “village” can do it better.

Slowly but surely society is shutting parents out. What used to be regarded as a parent’s responsibility is now seen as an infringement on the child. If we want to stay in the race and finish it we must refuse to be sidelined. MomStrong moms possess a willingness to endure rather than become a passive onlooker in the lives of their children.

When the world says “give up” or “it’s not your business,” I challenge you to stand up for the sake of your child. Go ahead and risk being annoying. Be the mom who knows the names of your child’s friends. Be the mom who asks the hard questions and loves unconditionally. Be the mom who refuses to be sidelined and actively guides her child through every stage of growing to adulthood.

Your children don’t need the government or the school system to teach them about the big things in life, they need their parents. Moms, you are stronger than they say you are. You are more capable and more invested. You’re your children’s mother, and kids today need their mothers to be all-in.

They need the wisdom and love of their parents, and they need a mom who is one hundred percent invested.

Be that mom!

This is Who You Are, Day 6

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Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15

I have been talking about parenting for a long time, not because I have it down, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the older I get and the older my kids get, I realize how much I really don’t know and how very dependent on the Lord I am.

It’s easy for me to get tired and busy and neglect my own time with the Lord. Maybe you can relate. If you are parenting your children from a spiritually dry place yourself, remember this: you can’t give them what you don’t have. If you don’t have a walk with the Lord, if you don’t have a clear understanding of God’s Word, or a love for His will, or a clear method of reasoning with Biblical convictions, your children won’t have that either.

I want to encourage you today to spend time with God. Read His Word for yourself. Often times, we do not know how to use the Bible to guide us in matters of everyday living, and our own lack of knowledge is keeping us from teaching our children to live in a Biblically wise way. Our job is to teach them to develop their own set of internalized Biblical convictions: a set of standards that they derive from the Bible, so that when we are not around them, they are capable of making good, moral, and wise decisions.

We should be teaching our children to love, serve, and follow the Lord, so that they can stay away from the two spectrums that the world defines as religion. There’s a ditch on either side. We always tell our kids; the one ditch is legalism–where everything is bound by law and things done by rote. The other side of that is moral relativism where truth is undefined.

Neither of those are Biblical boundaries. A true believer decides that the Lord is in charge of his life and willingly lives inside those boundaries, he does not live testing them. Often times we find our children testing them and I’ve noticed some things in the life of our own children, and, frankly, in my own life, that our convictions are based on the truth of God’s word. We must have those convictions in our hearts, and in order for me to impart those to my children, and to do what the Bible says in Deuteronomy, to train my children to love and follow the Lord, I have to be doing that in my own life.

Jay and I wrote a Bible Study series because we are seeing so many families who are giving their kids rules but they are not directing them to Scripture. It’s easy to parent our children out of fear and not even realize we’re doing it. Older kids, especially, need to understand the boundaries that God has set for us in Scripture. As parents, we have to know God’s word.

When you think about what the most important thing is you can do for your children, think of it in the context of how you can help them walk with the Lord. I am convinced that it is so important to define the concept of conviction and personal responsibility in our children within the framework of God’s Word.

So, take them back to His Word–over and over again. If they have a question that you don’t have an answer to, it’s okay to say, “You know what? I don’t have the answer to that. But God does. Let’s pray about it.”

Be a place where your kids can be a sounding board and get to know God’s word yourself in a personal way, because you can’t give your kids what you don’t have yourself. You can do it, because God will give you what you need. Just ask!

This is Who You Are, Day 5

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Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Colossians 4:6

Grace is something that’s given but not deserved. It’s the free and unmerited favor of God, demonstrated when He sent His son as atonement for my sin. And i was the last thing on my mind last night when I noticed it was 9:30 p.m. and the kids were still going full-tilt—after I put them in bed for the third time. I just wanted them to go.to.sleep.
It’s daunting to realize that my kids are learning about grace … from me. To be honest, I sometimes wonder if God got the wrong girl. You see, I came to this motherhood thing broken in a thousand ways. I needed healing and a lot of grace. In short, I needed Jesus.

Over the past 24 years, God has shown me ten-thousand different kinds of grace. He’s good like that. God, through His son, Jesus, is grace personified. In fact, whenever you read the word grace in the Bible, you can substitute the name of Jesus. What does grace look like? It looks like Jesus. What does it sound like? It sounds like Jesus.

Sometimes, I admit, I don’t sound very much like Jesus to my kids. And honestly? If I can’t get that right, my witness isn’t worth very much. My kids know the “real” me. They will reflect to the world the kind of grace they learn at home. It matters now more than ever—because the world is asking important questions right now.

We’ve got to know how to give—and receive—grace. Why? Because God wants us to teach it. To testify. To bear witness to the faithful goodness of God.

Paul understood this. He wrote, “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” Acts 20:24

He knew his ministry was to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. He knew that grace was the big deal.

The word grace is as over-used as “cool” these days, and I think we’ve forgotten how powerful grace is. Grace is love, personified. Grace is undeserved favor poured out over a lost world in the name of Jesus.

If you are not talking about what grace is with your kids, now is the time.

Give grace, sweet moms.