Ruth Simons

When God Takes You Where You Never Intended To Go In Motherhood

April 12, 2013 By Ruth Simons

As our family anticipates the arrival of baby boy #6, due in just a few short weeks, my mind often wanders to what this little addition will be like? Who IS HE? What will his personality be?

He may have similar traits as one of his brothers. He may have similar features of another. He may struggle with math like one of them, and be a super great sleeper like yet another.

Or he could be nothing like any of them.

And I find myself wondering if I’ll be fit for the job.

Have you felt that way when you find that God’s seen fit to give you a child that you don’t quite relate to or understand? Do you question your ability as a mother…

…When your child is struggles developmentally?

…When your child defies correction and discipline?

…When your child shows little interest in your interests?

…When your child is introverted and you are extroverted?

…When your child struggles to try anything new?

…When your child doesn’t learn the way you do?

It’s so easy to respond with fear and inadequacy, rather than trust and anticipation of God’s faithfulness. We so often doubt and ask, “Why me?” instead of belief in his sovereignty: “You know best, Lord.”

The Lord has made us perfectly suited to be the moms our kids need. They were chosen to be our children! Our God is aware of your personal strengths, and even your weaknesses. He knows what it is that he seeks to accomplish in and through your abilities and inabilities as a mom.

There are no surprises when it come to Jesus.

So, whether you are anticipating the unknown (like I am), or are currently in the midst of living out the story of faith the Lord’s written in your life in ways you never anticipated, trust God to be more than you expect, faithful as he’s promised to be.

“God will take you where you never intended to go in order to produce in you what you couldn’t achieve on your own.”

-Paul David Tripp

Grace and peace,

Ruth, www.gracelaced.com

12 Comments | Filed Under: Following God, Parenting, Special Needs

Better Than Employee Of The Month

March 22, 2013 By Ruth Simons

I could tell it was going to be a terrible home schooling day from the moment we sat down with pencils out and books open. It wasn’t lack of cooperation from the kids, though there is occurrence of such on a regular basis. It wasn’t the difficulty of teaching math to a concrete learner, though that is a frequent challenge as well. No, it was off to a bad start because of my attitude.

I love teaching my children, but sometimes I have a bad attitude about it. The work seems tedious and the rewards of diligent daily effort rarely experienced. That’s how it feels on those days.

I can so easily think of motherhood as that beautiful calling to nurture, complete with moments of affection, deliberate words of affirmation, and abundance of quality time. I set my expectations upon an idea of motherhood that appears in misty paintings and memoirs. But the day to day of my own life is simply not so fragrant; not so sprinkled with giggles and snuggling.

Don’t get me wrong– there’s plenty of frivolity and fun; but, there’s no getting around daily life–the routine of housework, training, breaking up fights, picking up messes, and teaching your children–formally or informally. Not all of it happens in the context of field trips, fun activities, and creative projects. Sometimes motherhood and loving motherhood is just hard work.

And work, often feels like a bad word…an enemy to my comfort and love of ease. If we love it, it should come naturally, right?

Motherhood is one of the most important jobs we will ever hold and our boss’ review of our efforts more important than our view of ourselves. Considering the great honor and great responsibilities of our jobs as moms and homemakers, why do we struggle to work just as diligently at home? Perhaps, it is because we forget that we are not motivated by the the incentives that drive the world:

We won’t receive a weekly paycheck. We may never see ourselves on an “Employee of the Month” board with stickers all over it. We don’t get promoted to a bigger office for excelling. We don’t get a bonus for being a team player. Do you ever stop and remember what it was like to be an employee, and how hard you worked to “do a good job?”

The Bible reminds us that nothing we do, not even in motherhood, makes us more righteous, more worthy, or more forgiveable. Christ alone is responsible for our acceptance before a holy God. But, how I need to consider my faithfulness in the task as a response to His worthiness. Done unto Him. Serving for His glory. We work hard because it is He who we desire to please.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”-Colossians 3:23-24

While there is an aspect of our inheritance that we cannot fully realize until we are in His presence, the essence of our inheritance IS the Lord Jesus. He is ours today. His redemption of our souls is NOW.

Elyse Fitzpatrick puts it this way:

Releating eternal life to a future day, we must realize that we possess his life now, especially on those days when we struggle against unbelief and sin and are tempted to think that he is so disappointed in us that he has to forsake us. The gospel tells us that being forsaken is part of the punishment for sin that our Savior bore in our place. If you are in Christ, no matter what your day has been like, no matter how many ways you blew it, his life is yours.

This is why we can have joy, confidence, and perseverance in diligently working today. We come to understand our inheritance day by day in greater fullness as we strive to serve Him in love.

Whatever it is that is in your job description today and everyday as a mom, work unto the Lord. We will never know greater reward or satisfaction in a day’s, or a life’s work.

Blessings,

Ruth, www.gracelaced.com

3 Comments | Filed Under: Homemaking, Homeschooling

Creative Multi-Tasking By Including Your Children

February 22, 2013 By Ruth Simons

Mothers are multi-taskers. We are known for talking on the phone, while changing a diaper, keeping an eye on the oven, while re-attaching the leg of a minifig casualty of war. With five little boys running around, I’ve become proficient at multi-tasking. And yet, sometimes I’m the multi-tasking mom that wants to be a one-woman-show. I forget that I don’t need to do it all myself.

The reminder all of us busy moms need sometimes is this: Creatively employing our kids is the ultimate in multi-tasking.

Training our kids to help, at any age, accomplishes all this and more:

1) Builds their skills in cleaning, organizing and other help around the house

2) In time, takes tasks off of your plate

3) Teaches kids cooperation with siblings

4) Reinforces the principle and heart behind servanthood

5) Keeps little ones (and their hands) busy

6) Provides built-in family time…that can be fun!

Is this new to you? If you tend to think that cleaning should be done when your kids are asleep or that organizing is best accomplished when the kids are at school, perhaps creatively employing your children in tasks around the house feels more like a hinderance than a benefit. However, in my own experience, making time for inefficiency sometimes becomes the most special ways I’ve learned to enjoy my kids and get things done…at the same time.

Here are some practical ways I’ve been including my kids in my multi-tasking:

1) Keep kids cups and place within reach, and have little ones unload their own dishes from he dishwasher

2) Hand a little one a swiffer mop with a wet or dust pad on it. (Maybe they won’t get the floor clean, but this entertaining task will inevitably result in some clean areas!)

3) Older siblings are great at helping with putting on shoes, and taking littles to the bathroom.

4) Teach kids to do their own laundry by partnering up with an older sibling.

5) Give the job of setting the table to a little one.

6) Plan ahead to involve your children with different areas of dinner prep that can be done in advance. Do you need potatoes scrubbed? Have a little one do that early in the day when an activity is needed. Do you need carrots peeled? Give that task to an older child when he’s ready for a job.

7) Tedious jobs like dusting blinds can surprisingly delight a little one who needs a measurable task to accomplish.

8) My kids are great paper-shredders! Just make sure the pile you give them to cut and shred are thoroughly examined as trash! They won’t think it’s work at all!

What about you? What ways do you creatively employ your children? How do you keep them busy and teach them to help out around the house?

Blessings,

Ruth Simons, www.gracelaced.com

9 Comments | Filed Under: Family Management, Homemaking

Old Books For New Inspiration

January 17, 2013 By Ruth Simons

I don’t know about you, but I look back on 2012, and wish that I had made time to read more than I did. I read my Bible, I read a book for the women’s Bible study at my church, started several books, and read books to my kids; but, sadly, that was the extent of it.

I’m so easily drawn to reading only the books on the best-sellers’ lists, or the most widely-circulated blog posts. Those are fine pieces of writing for a reason, and I’m so thankful for modern writers of influence. And yet, as a child of the fast-food-drive-through-everything generation, I regularly turn to the easily digestible, the quickly accessible, the simply affordable. I resist anything that requires more time, more effort, more dedication, and more discipline. Like so many other things in life, good things don’t always come easily, they are acquired through deliberate pursuit. I’ve been drawn to this quote by C.S. Lewis and am compelled by it:

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it. [...] The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

Just because a book is old, does not make it good. However, those that have inspired and stood the test of time…well, they offer us gifts that our peers in the modern age simply cannot.

Here are a few that are on my list for this year:

Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton (started, but haven’t finished. Free on iBooks.)

Holiness, by J.C. Ryle (started, but haven’t finished.)

The Education of A Child from The Wisdom of Fenelon 1687, by Francois de Salignac de La Mothe Fenelon (I’ve read excerpts, and is excellent!)

The Duties of Parents, by J.C. Ryle (highly recommended by my better-half!)

The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis (to read again after many years.)

We want to become better moms. Can I humbly propose that we may achieve our goal, by adding not just how-to books on becoming more efficient home managers and patient mothers, but the great minds of old. The treasures to be found through older books and writers of the past can yield fruit that will build wise character and understanding, forming who we can become today in our practical, nose-wiping, child-training, Savior-loving daily lives.

Grace and peace to you, friends!

Ruth@GraceLaced, www.gracelaced.com