2012 at 5:28 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
52home
2012 at 4:05 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
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Biblical Womanhood Series Current Series
So often, we moms evaluate our own mothering by our worst days and compare ourselves to other moms on their best days. But both measurements are wrong and can result in a whole lot of unnecessary (not to mention ungodly) anxiety, false guilt, and self-pity.
When we get back from that awful trip to the grocery store with three small fussy children, or endure an entire day of teenage sullenness we conclude that this “worst day ever” is the measure of our mothering: total failure.
But then we go online—where a whole lot of mothering “best days” are to be found—and assume other moms have it altogether.
We read a mom-blog with gorgeous photographs of a creatively decorated, perfectly clean and organized children’s room and we assume this must be what this woman’s entire house looks like all the time.
Or our Facebook feed is full of parental reports of children’s latest sibling-loving, super-adorable, mature-beyond-their-years comments and we assume that this is what conversations in those homes must sound like all the time.
Or we pop over to Pinterest only to conclude that every other woman must serve fresh, delicious, beautiful, organic meals to her family all the time.
What we can’t see online are the ten messy-house, fussy-children, cereal-for-dinner days for every one Pinterest-perfect moment. So we must be alert to our temptation to compare ourselves to a false standard—a picture that someone else is trying to portray, or that we have filled out in our own minds based on a single snapshot.
And if browsing routinely leaves us prone to compare, overwhelmed, and guilt-ridden, then it may be a sign we need to cut back online and return regularly and ruthlessly to Scripture: to remind us that each day (for every mom!) has enough trouble of its own (Matt 6:34), but also that “as your days, so shall your strength be” (Deut. 33:25) and that if we do not grow weary in doing good, in due season we will reap if we do not give up (Gal 6:9).
2012 at 10:48 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
52home
2012 at 5:19 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
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Biblical Womanhood
Kathy Keller provides an important and insightful critique of a new book by Rachel Held Evans entitled A Year of Biblical Womanhood. Your discernment will be sharpened by reading this review:
Rachel, I can and do agree with much of what you say in your book regarding the ways in which either poor biblical interpretation or patriarchal customs have sinfully oppressed women. I would join you in exposing churches, books, teachers, and leaders who have imposed a human agenda on the Bible. However, you have become what you claim to despise; you have imposed your own agenda on Scripture in order to advance your own goals. In doing so, you have further muddied the waters of biblical interpretation instead of bringing any clarity to the task.
As a woman also engaged in trying to understand the Bible as it relates to gender, I had hoped for better.
2012 at 1:49 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
It’s that time of year when Christmas begins to creep up on me faster than I expect—only eight more weeks!. And while I haven’t even begun to think about shopping and baking and decorating, things are already looking very Christmasy over at 52home. Janelle has rolled out a bunch of new products that make fun and creative Christmas gifts for family and friends. She’ll be featuring some of her new products this week on the blog, and I will be adding them to my personal Christmas wish-list!
2012 at 12:42 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Fun Stuff Friday Funnies
Mike and I have a new best friend. It’s the man that drives this truck. He just crawled under our house and removed a dead and decomposing opossum. Unpleasant thought, I know. And while that is a terribly unpleasant thought, let me just tell you, “unpleasant” doesn’t even begin to describe the smell. By this morning, the odor had spread through the entire house, making it impossible to even stay there anymore.Thank you Lord for Chik-fil-A and a mom and two sisters who let your crazy family crash at their houses. Our new best friend did give us some good news as he was leaving- the smell should only last a couple more days. Seriously?!?!
2012 at 10:34 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
6:15 p.m.
52home
2012 at 7:06 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
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Biblical Womanhood Living Intentionally Motherhood Series Current Series
Before we get to some more specific thoughts on gospel-centered parenting, we want to talk about a few sources of discouragement for moms. Unruly children aren’t the only cause for despair; a big source of temptation can also come from comparison with other moms.
Meagan sent is this insightful comment about Janelle’s post:
It was nice to be assured that some one else has children who throw themselves on the floor and cry as if the world is ending when they don’t get their way and that I’m not the only one who doesn’t get around to gourmet meals every night. So often all people post about or share are the great, creative things they do. Like gourmet meals and hand sewn clothes and perfectly dressed kids. And all the status updates are about the latest adorable thing their child has done. (No one posts about the latest tantrum their kid has thrown.) And please understand, I’m sure I am guilty of the very things I am complaining about! But one can walk away from all of these posts/updates thinking that everyone else has there act together and this is what it must look like to be a “good” mom and wife. And when one doesn’t measure up to these standards one’s heart can be sorely discouraged and guilt laden.
As one pastor recently quoted Will Farrell (not someone we ever thought we would be quoting here on girltalk!): “May your life one day be as awesome as you pretend it is on Facebook.”
Now I don’t think most of us mean to “pretend” or even to be fake. But this raises an interesting point—both about what we as mothers post and how we interpret what others post on social media.
In our recent series, The Connected Heart, we noted that there are endless ways that we as mothers can benefit from social media and the Internet. But we must also be alert to the fact that it expands the sources of temptation as well.
When I was raising my children there were only my friends and neighbors with whom I was tempted to compare my mothering. Today, with Facebook, Pinterest and the like, we measure ourselves against countless women every day—many of whom we do not know and whose “real” lives are mostly hidden from view.
So while we can glean many creative and useful mothering tips online, we can also be tempted to measure ourselves against a virtual standard of motherhood: a perfect, composite mother who doesn’t, in fact, really exist at all.
2012 at 8:00 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
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2012 at 7:23 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
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2012 at 4:00 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
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Motherhood Young Children
“Just wanted to say thanks for Janelle’s post yesterday,” wrote one mom:
“I just got home from an outrageously awful trip to run errands with my 5 and 3 year old. There was complaining, arguing, rude talk, mean faces (probably from me too, I didn’t have a mirror), a couple of “in your face” disobedience moments, a small melt-down, and a moment when I started praying for help because I literally thought my 3 year old had been taken at the post office, but no she was just hiding behind something because she didn’t want to come when I asked. On my way home I kept thinking, “what is wrong with me?” “Why am I failing at parenting?” We got home, I fixed everyone a snack, let the kids have a little TV time and sat down to read your blog. And that was when I read the post from yesterday for the first time. Thanks for being real and speaking DIRECTLY to my situation today!”
Oh my, can I relate! I can still vividly recall some of those “outrageously awful” errand runs when my girls were little! Those are days as a mother that you don’t easily forget.
As moms, we are quite familiar with the meaning of our Lord’s words in Matthew 6:34: “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Scripture tells it like it is. It doesn’t present some kind of happy-go-lucky picture of the Christian life. No, it says we will have trouble. And each day will have enough of it’s own. In other words, “outrageously awful” errand runs are to be expected.
There may be a massive dis-connect between my own expectations of motherhood and what happens in real life, but there is no disconnect between Scripture and reality. The harder life and motherhood gets the more we see how relevant Scripture is.
And because an “outrageously awful” errand trip is just about as much as we can handle for one day—not to mention that it may be on top of other, more significant, trials we are facing—Jesus warns us not to do something that me, this mom, and most all of us are prone to do at a time like this: worry about the future. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself” (Mt. 6:34).
Here’s a rule to live by: Never evaluate your mothering after an “outrageously awful” errand run. Oh I broke this rule a thousand times when my kids were little. Just like this mom, I asked questions like “What’s wrong with me?” and “Why am I failing at parenting?”—questions that draw all kinds of conclusions but offer no answers.
But in these motherhood moments we need the realistic perspective of Scripture. These things will happen. They are to be expected. And they do not mean that I am a failure as a mother or that my children will never receive the gospel and follow Christ. They are simply what Scripture says: the daily allotment of trouble.
And so my first job is not to be anxious about tomorrow or predict my children’s future based on one day’s difficulty. Why? Because I know that my heavenly Father cares for me. If you too had an “outrageously awful” day of mothering today, read Matthew 6:25-34 and rejoice in the God of today and tomorrow.
2012 at 10:41 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
“How sweet the name of Jesus…the rock on which I build, my shield and hiding place, my never failing treasury, filled with boundless stores of grace.” ~John Newton
52home
2012 at 7:39 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
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Biblical Womanhood The Gospel
So many of you faithful, exhausted, moms wrote in following Janelle’s post last week on gospel-centered mothering. We hear ya because we are right there with ya! And we’ve had several encouraging conversations with Mom over the weekend that we hope to share with you in the days to come.
Yesterday we were so blessed to have Dr. Tom Schreiner, his wife Diane, and several family members join us for our Sunday service. Dr. Schreiner preached from Romans 3:21-26 on the glorious gospel. At one point, Dr. Schreiner, spoke a word directly to dads, but it was a great reminder to me as a mom as well, so I took the great liberty of changing “dads” to “moms”:
“Moms: The most important thing as a mom is the tone in your home, that tone of joy and gladness. Your kids will know it. Your husband will know it. No matter what you say, they’ll know if you’re happy—fundamentally a happy person. You can’t fool children. You can tell them all kinds of things but they know it, don’t they? That gladness comes fundamentally not from our circumstances but from the gospel. From knowing God. From knowing what God has done for us. Then we’ll be thankful.”
As we talk about gospel-centered mothering, let’s not forget that our happiness as mothers comes not from our circumstances but from the gospel. So may God help us find great joy in the truth of these words today:
“But not the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he night be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” Romans 3:21-26
2012 at 9:36 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
Slumber party with Mom-Mom!!!
52home
2012 at 9:14 pm | by Janelle Bradshaw
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Biblical Womanhood 52home
4:15 p.m.
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