30 Years

Marriage

 

 

10,957.

Today, that’s how many days we’ve been married. That’s almost 11,000 days of choosing faithfulness to a vow we made in front of God, our family and friends. Thirty years have passed in the space of ten, I think. How does it go so fast?

I was nineteen and he was twenty-one when we said “I do,” and yes, we were both as immature as we were young.

In truth, several people discouraged our marriage. After all, we came from very different backgrounds—his family was healthy and happy, while mine was on life-support, for starters.

His style was rock-n-roll, mine was very Portland preppy.

We both loved music, though. He played electric guitar and was the lead singer in a Christian rock-n-roll band. I was a pianist who was so intimated by his impressive skill on the guitar that I literally stopped playing when we started dating. I do wish I had kept with it, but it was a window into my terrible struggle with self-worth.

In the years to come, Jay would have his work cut for him out as he learned to navigate the broken places in my heart and mind. God has used our marriage as in instrument of healing in my life! Truly, Jay has loved me “like Christ loved the church” in so many ways over the past 30 years.

In the spring of 1989, we a sat down in a fast-food restaurant and completed an assignment from a pre-marital counseling session: we wrote out a list of marriage pros and cons. One column contained all the reasons why we should get married that fall, and the other was a thinly veiled attempt to be reasonable about it all. Of course, reason was long-gone. We were in love.

Even though we made that list more than thirty years ago, if I close my eyes, I can still see Jay spinning a pen over his fingers as he wrote. His eyes danced when he looked at me. He said I was beautiful and funny and smart—and amazingly, despite my secret insecurity and pain, I believed him.  He made me want to be all those things.

Six months after the list was made, we walked down the aisle and set out on the adventure of a lifetime.

We’ve been through a lot in thirty years. Seven newborns have been placed in our arms—the wonder of which never ceases to amaze us. Each child has exposed strengths and weaknesses in us—and forced us to face them. We’ve traveled the globe together planting homeschool co-ops and speaking to countless men and women about the hope we have in Jesus. We’ve graduated four of our seven children and been privileged to become grandparents, too!

Of course, things haven’t always been easy. Our hearts bear the scars of healing from shared heartache. We lost a precious baby to miscarriage early in 2000. That loss taught us that nothing is more precious than human life. Several years later, we endured the humiliation of losing our home to foreclosure and learned that people can be cruel when you pull out food stamps instead of cash at the grocery store. This taught us compassion and the of power kind words.

There have been seasons when we struggled to love each the way we promised to. We’ve been selfish and unkind to each other. Our words sometimes hurt instead of heal. I’ve pouted and slammed the door and, embarrassingly, engaged in childishness we call “the silent treatment.”

And through all of this, my husband stayed. He has loved me like Jesus. He held my hand as I was wheeled into the surgery that put an end to our ability make babies together. He’s been patient when our sex life was less than he needed, choosing to be patient as I struggled through hormone therapy and crippling anxiety.

For thirty years, his love has brought healing into my life.

Marriage is precious. It’s worth celebrating. Worth protecting. Worth defending and worth every ounce of energy we put into it. Marriage, after all, was God’s idea.

Today, I’ll look at my husband with tears in my eyes and let him know that I’d marry him all over again.  I’m so thankful for our marriage! I’m so thankful we got married young and that we have chosen — yes — chosen to stay faithful.

The vow matters. The promise is renewed with every passing joy and trial—and I am grateful.

Happy 30th Anniversary, Jay. I plan to spend the rest of my life making our home the place you most want to be. I love you!

Abundant Motherhood

Becoming MomStrong

 

Kara Moss recently joined me on the podcast, and I’m excited to have her sharing more of her heart today on the blog today! I want to encourage you, Mom—share your challenges with Him, day and night, and let Him be your shelter.

xo, Heidi

Momlife. It’s the good life, the hard life, the fun life, the challenging life…It’s full of glorious moments, and it sees its fair share of crash-and-burn days too.

If you’re anything like me, you open your eyes each morning with an idea in your head of what the day should look like. For many years, I had this idea that if we could just make it to the end of the day with no major issues, attitudes, meltdowns, or frustrations then I could call it a successful day in our home. A good day meant everyone made right choices…no conflicts, no problems, no arguments. As you can imagine, we didn’t have very many successful days when that was how I defined it.

I was unintentionally putting a pressure on myself to do things perfectly. I was expecting a level of perfection out of my children to the point of growing impatient and frustrated with their sin…when the truth is, I am well aware of my own sin and my need for grace on a daily basis.

The journey of motherhood is teaching me that success isn’t defined by not messing up; it’s defined by getting back up. Every failure is an opportunity to grow…for both me and my children. If we learn to fail forward, our failures become launchpads for growth rather than set backs.

The real victory is overcoming challenges together not simply avoiding them. Those attitudes and meltdowns…those are actually gifts.

I know, I know…call me crazy. But that moment when your toddler has a meltdown in the middle of Target, and you have to walk out mid-shopping, leaving a cart full of stuff un-purchased…it’s a gift. Or the moment when your teenager is spewing words that you know deep down they can’t possibly mean…that is gift. These are the moments we get to see into the hearts of our children. We see where they are struggling, and we get to walk with them through it. We get to find Jesus together in the middle of it.  

When we pause, take a breath, and anchor ourselves in Christ right then and there, we can change our perspective. We begin to see the challenges that will inevitably come up, not as an inconvenience, but instead, as a moment we can make an impact.

So what does a successful day look like? It looks like making the most of every opportunity we have to speak love, life, and truth into our children’s hearts. It requires us to let go of the pressure of perfection and be fully present where we are. It calls for us to stop taking our children’s sin personally and help them find Jesus in the middle of it. Success is when we capture the struggles and challenges of the day and watch them become the moments where hearts are changed and souls are shaped.

You can always go back later and get that cart of stuff you left at Target…

Kara Moss is a wife and mom daily reminded of her need for Jesus. She is passionate about equipping and encouraging women to walk in the abundant life Christ promises. Her message is open and honest as she brings a relevant word rooted in Biblical truth.

More on Kara: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Abundant Motherhood

Chipotle Salsa!

Recipes,

Best.Salsa.Ever.

So … I am a HUGE salsa fan. I like it HOT. (Can you imagine?)

I started making salsa years ago and when I started I did things the “purist” way … even fire-roasted tomatoes! Well, several children later, I’ve graduated to canned tomatoes and I have to say that they taste every bit as good because all the other ingredients really “make” the salsa!

Here’s my recipe for my favorite salsa, and a few tips for those of you with more “mild” tastes:

  1. If you don’t like SPICY salsa, you can cut down on the heat by taking out the seeds in the jalapenos and all the white membrane that holds the seeds. **word to the wise** Be careful with jalapenos! I’m here to tell ya, I made the mistake one time of taking out my contacts with jalepeno still on my hands.  It.Wasn’t.Pleasant.  WASH YOUR HANDS THOROUGHLY after handling jalapeno peppers.
  2. Chipotle peppers are just smoked jalapeno peppers in yummy sauce. They can be hot. If you want a more mild recipe, simply cut the amount of chipotle pepper but don’t cut it out entirely. That yummy smoked flavor is AMAZING in salsa.
  3. Use fresh ground pepper if you can. It’s the best. 🙂

So without further adieu, here’s my secret recipe! Enjoy!

1 large white onion
1 red pepper
2 cans diced tomatoes – drained
3 jalapenos – seed them to remove the “heat” (I like mine HOT)
4 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of cilantro (yes the whole bunch)
1 or 2 canned chipotle peppers
2 tsp liquid smoke
1 T white vinegar
1 T lemon juice
salt & pepper to taste

Add these to your food processor and blend FIRST.

  • Onion
  • Cilantro
  • Jalapeno

Adding these first helps keep the tomatoes from becoming “soupy”

Add the tomatoes last and pulse your food processor. The trick is to get it the consistency that you like it. It might take a few tries but keep at it. It’s worth it!

After you have blended those, add your liquid smoke (Optional if you don’t have it. Don’t run out to the store, just buy it for next time.), vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, red pepper & chipotle pepper.

Blend. Add the drained cans of diced tomatoes LAST. Taste for salt and pepper. Remember to PULSE your food processor. You want salsa, not soup. 🙂

This will make a whole lotta salsa! Enough to feed a crowd. Maybe it’s time to have some friends over… !

Enjoy!
Heidi

No More Moanful Motherhood

Becoming MomStrong

 

My friend Jamie Erickson joined me on the podcast last week. Today, she’s sharing her heart on a topic may of us moms can relate to. I want to encourage you mom, hard times come – but they’re not here to torture us; they’re here to teach us. We either learn from them or we don’t.  I hope you’re encouraged by her words. xo, Heidi

I saw a meme on social media the other day that made me snarl. Perhaps you’ve seen it too. It said something to the effect of “Wine is the epidural of Motherhood.” It’s not the only pithy bit of mommy humor to surface on my screen lately. There have been others—plenty of others circulating the interwebs reminding us all how tough it is to be a mom and how motherhood has earned us the right to drink heavily, hide in the bathroom, eat all the chocolate, and buy all the things. The messages are all different, of course. But they all have one singular aim, to get us all to weep and wail about our sad plot in life—to laugh and then cry over the fact that we are mothers.

Ten years ago when social media was the new hot thing, a lot of moms, myself included, fell into the comparison trap. We felt that we had to do more and be more—that we were never enough. The curated highlight reels of everyone else’s lives had us all striving for perfection. But then one day, when we realized that this pervasive perfection was not actually possible, we let the pendulum swing in the opposite direction, landing us in a very failure-centric place. Moanful mothering became a cultural epidemic that continues to rob society of the joy God intended motherhood to be.

We want to blame our kids for the life that we’re not living—for the time they take away from our plans, the sleep they deny us, the noise and mess they bring to our days, and on and on. We’d obviously never say any of this out loud, especially not in front of them. No, we’re too well-mannered for that. But we’d gladly plaster these harsh, albeit funny, criticisms all over social media.

But before you re-share any of that sarcastic drivel on Facebook or Instagram, Mama, think about this for a moment. Would you want to go online and see the exact same meme posted about you? Would you want your friend, co-worker, or mom to tell the world that they have to drink a whole bottle of booze at the end of the day just to survive your relationship? That they can’t wait for the school year to start again so that you’ll finally be someone else’s problem? If the answer to either of these is NO, remember the words of Matthew 7:12 and be drawn toward kindness. Treat others how you want to be treated, even your children. Admittedly, your kids might not have any social media accounts today, but they probably will someday. Start developing the habit of praising in public now so that one day when your children become your online “friends,” it will be second-nature for you to affirm them there with your life-giving words.

Motherhood is hard. That’s true. Somedays, parenting might even leave you limp, but children are not problems or sand in the gears, they are gifts—even yours. Especially yours. Yes, you’ll have bad days because your kids are imperfect. But, then again, so are you. So am I. Will they do anything today, next week, next month that will grate on your nerves or send you into another room to count to ten in order to regain your composure? Probably. But here’s the thing: the daily struggles of motherhood are holy ground. The hard things are often what God will use to make us all more like Him. Sanctification almost always happens when we have to lean hard on God. It’s so easy for our moanful-motherhood culture to say that home is where our children become more patient, more kind, more fill-in-the-blank. But it’s also where we, mamas, become MORE too.

If we all start changing the narrative and start casting a vision for success in our kids and speak words of life and love over them both on and off the screen, maybe we can help change the trajectory of the whole world. Maybe we can launch adults out into it who have learned to love by our example.

Jamie Erickson is the daughter of the King, wife to “Mr. Right,” and the mother to five blissfully abnormal kids. When she’s not curating memories, hoarding vintage books, or playing ringmaster to a circus of her own making, she can be found encouraging and equipping a growing tribe of mothers all across the globe on the Mom to Mom podcast, through her blog The Unlikely Homeschool, at national conferences, and in her book Homeschool Bravely: How to Squash Doubt, Trust God, and Teach Your Child With Confidence.In addition to writing and speaking, Jamie loves talking faith and family over a cup of Starbuck’s finest, collecting calories around a table full of friends, and taking grueling hikes with her formerly homeschooled husband, Dain (because alas, calories don’t display very nicely on a shelf like other collections).

Connect with Jamie Erickson: Website | Facebook | Homeschool Bravely | Instagram | Mom to Mom Podcast | Mom to Mom on Instagram

Transgenderism and Children: A Grave New Threat to Parental Rights

Current Events

 

A little over a week ago, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered testosterone injections for a 14-year-old girl who now considers herself to be a transgender boy, against her parents’ wishes. Even more frightening, her parents face legal penalties if they use the wrong pro-noun or dare to call her by her birth name.

John Stonestreet of  Breakpoint rightly pointed out that  “Just as same-sex marriage proved to be a grave threat to religious freedom, transgender ideology is proving to be a grave threat to parental rights.”

He’s right.

The stories that parents who are losing their parental rights in court simply because they do not subscribe to the pseudo-science behind transgenderism should send a shiver up the spine of every parent.

Recently, five mothers shared their stories for The Public Discourse. When their daughters and sons announced they were transgender, the heartbreak for their parents was only just beginning. Even though children usually make these announcements  after intense indoctrination via the internet, schools and trans-activists, the concerns of parents are ignored. Instead, they are often vilified and threatened with legal action.

The result for families is heartbreaking. Children are suffering through surgeries which remove perfectly normal, healthy sex organs while parents suffer an equally agonizing situation—being sidelined and cut out of these life-altering decisions.

Twenty years from now, when these kids are more unhappy than ever, twenty years from now, when these kids cannot have children of their own—where will all these trans-activists be? They’ll be long gone, like the dreams of healthy outcomes for thousands of children who have become prey to a dangerous and scientifically flawed ideology.

Parents, beware. Protect your kids from this madness. If you don’t, who will?

Links:

Canadian Court Rules Parents Can’t Stop 14-Year-Old From Taking Trans Hormones

  • Jeremiah Keenan  |   The Federalist  |  March 1, 2019

In Their Own Words: Parents of Kids Who Think They Are Trans Speak Out

  • Five Anonymous Moms  |  The Public Discourse  |  February 26, 2019

 

 

10 Powerful Family Traditions: Less Time On What Doesn’t Matter; More Time on What Does

MomStrong Sisterhood

 

My friend Jessica Smartt joined me on the podcast last week, and today she’s sharing a few of her favorite family traditions!

xo, Heidi

Has there ever, in the history of humans, been a more busy time in which to raise families? I don’t need to give you an exhaustive list of all the nonsense moms have to do, because you probably already have one running — all the “shoulds” and “have-to”s you’ve been sucked into or are late for, bogged down with, and overwhelmed by. Time has never been a more precious commodity for families!

Do ever lay your head on your pillow at night and wonder if you’re missing something? Do you feel regret about how you’re spending your time as a family? Are you making time for what matters?

I have all those same fears and questions. A few years ago it dawned on me that there was a solution to that “Mom Angst,” and that solution is traditions.

Traditions are anchors in our day, our week, or our year that remind us who we are and what we love. Without traditions, life drones on monotonously without any special celebrating or meaning. (Ask me how I know!)

With traditions though, family life becomes rich and full, and when your kids leave, they have a suitcase full of memories to bolster them up in hard times and root down their character.

Some traditions are “big deals,” like that all-out Christmas buffet. But some are simple, like saying a certain prayer as you tuck a little one in bed, or pulling out a red dinner plate when someone achieves something noteworthy. Very often we do not realize the power these traditions hold!

If you’ve been looking to implement some traditions as a family, here are a few of my favorites:

  1. Vacation tradition: Many families take vacations, but there are little steps you can do to maximize the time together. We love doing a special craft, reading a book together on the trip, doing one special “big” thing together, and having “beach church” on Sunday at the beach!
  2. Special mealtimes: We love “Sunday snack dinner,” and also our family dinner night, where we enjoy a candlelit meal with extra-delicious food.
  3. Family day: Every summer we celebrate a “Smartt family day” where we make the whole day about us and our family.
  4. Reading great books – Perhaps you can read a book together in the evenings, have a reading time in the afternoon, come up with a prize for all family members who read 20 books in a year, or make a family “bucket list” of books to read before leaving home.
  5. Give your kids a Bible when they learn how to read, and a devotional book every Christmas.
  6. Have a shared family hobby that you do regularly. These are the things that give families character, richness, and bind the members together. It can be cheering for a beloved sports team, taking bike rides together, or playing Settlers of Catan.

The great thing about traditions is that you can cater it to your own family. Don’t feel the need to copy my family or any other! Choose a value you want to pass on to your kids (like faith) and choose a tradition that implements that value (like evening devotions).

To create more traditions, consider picking up a copy of my new book, “Memory-Making Mom: Building Traditions That Breathe Life Into Your Home.”

About Jessica: Jessica Smartt is a former English teacher turned homeschooling mom of three. A week after her first baby was born, she began her motherhood blog “Smartter” Each Day. Jessica and her husband live in sunny North Carolina, where she loves hikes with the kids (mostly), steaming coffee in the afternoon, family bike rides, and anything that’s ever been done to a baked potato. In March Jessica released her first book, Memory-Making Mom: Building Traditions That Breathe Life Into Your Home. Follow Jessica on Instagram: @jessica.smartt

 

Are We Living in Babylon?

Other

 

It’s starting to feel like we’re living in Babylon, isn’t it? There is a battle raging in the heavens over our worship, and we’re feeling it more intensely these days.

Of course, the attack against God and God’s people is nothing new—it’s an age-old battle—but the question remains: will we serve the gods of this world or the living God?

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the three young men who refused to bow down to the golden statue of King Nebuchadnezzar. Do you remember the story? It’s recorded in the third chapter of Daniel and is still providing us with lasting lessons about the power of God and our place in His world.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were subjects in Babylon, but along with Daniel, they were determined only to serve the living God—the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. King Nebuchadnezzar hated them for it, as he wanted their worship. And so, three charges were brought against the young men:

1. They paid no attention to the king and his commands
2. They did not serve the gods of Babylon
3. They refused to worship the golden statue which the king himself had erected.

The penalty for defying the king severe: to be thrown into a fiery furnace. Nebuchadnezzar’s pride was fueling what would turn out to be an epic story of God’s ability to deliver His people.

Quiet your heart with me for a moment and consider the profound courage these three had in responding to the king:

‘Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered King Nebuchadnezzar,
“Your threat means nothing to us. If you throw us in the fire, the God we serve can rescue us from your roaring furnace and anything else you might cook up, O king. But even if he doesn’t, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference, O king. We still wouldn’t serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up.”
Daniel 3:16-18

Their refusal to worship another god infuriated the king, and he had the furnace heated seven times hotter than normal!

Oh how we need more men and women who will trust God this way! Their unwavering commitment to the God of the Bible showed itself in bold confidence as they did what they knew was right and then trusted that God would take care of them.

Because Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego trusted God, the power of God was revealed to everyone who was there. I can imagine that it astonished unbelievers and reassured those who did believe.

Nebuchadnezzar was astonished that the fire did not consume the men, and even more amazed because he saw not three, but a fourth person in the flames! “Look!” he answered, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25).

The Hebrew number for four is Dalet, it means a door. The Bible teaches that Jesus is the Door, the way to our deliverance. We may not always feel the Lord’s presence the Lord when we are suffering, but rest assured: Satan sees the Lord by your side.

He will never leave you or forsake you!

Does your heart need some reassurance today? No matter what you’re facing, you can have confidence that God has the power to affect the outcome. Don’t be afraid! God always shows up. Rarely early, never late.