Mirror, Mirror on the wall....pt. 2

' This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel says; Reform your ways and your actions and I will let you live in this place.' (Jer. 7:3) Jeremiah saw all kinds of sin infiltrating the church in his day and no one showed remorse. It seems that even today as a church not only do we not show remorse, but we justify, defend, and with greater purpose continue in that sin. 

Matthew 7:1-2 is where Jesus is teaching the sermon on the mount. A vast majority of his listeners were Pharisees who created their own laws and regulations and strayed from the scriptures and rejected the teachings of Christ. "Do not judge or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Perhaps the Pharisees used even great standards (or so they thought) than what was given in the scriptures.

From what I've heard, and learned, we can and should be judging or speaking the truth according to the absolute truths presented in scripture, nothing else. Yes, there is a lot of stuff that can be interpreted differently so maybe those interpretations are not the absolute truths? 

Here are a few questions the authors brought up in Moments With You, emphasis mine because it hurt:

- Why is the divorce rate inside the Church nearly identical to the divorce rate outside the Church?

- Why do so many Christian men perform aggressively at work yet remain disengaged and passive at home?

- Why do so many Christians say their secular job is their ministry but then show so little fruit for their efforts?

- Why do Christians talk about family values while their lifestyles are virtually identical to the average non-Christian?

- Why do so few Christians possess confidence that they are on a divine mission?

- Why do less than 10 percent of all Christians regularly tell others about God’s forgiveness through Christ?

- If Jesus really changes lives, why do 50 million Americans claiming to be born again have such a marginal impact on society?

Why are we so afraid to hold each other to the standard God has laid out for us? Aren't we to be fulfilling the Great Commission? Yes we need to offer compassion and grace so that should be incorporated within sharing the truth. People are not going to notice us, more importantly Jesus in us, if we don't live to the standards of the Bible. Church, let's grow up, get out of our comfort zones, and allow Jesus to change lives through us!

Are you looking in the mirror? What truth do you need to hear? What truth do you need to share with someone else? 

Mirror, Mirror on the wall....pt. 1

Our life group (aka bible study group) is going through a couples devotional book, Moments with You. I have to admit some of it is a bit cheesy and includes your classical "churchese" topics but I will say it has held the couples in our group accountable to spend time with their spouse discussing, reading and praying about what God has in store for their lives and marriage, DAILY.

One topic that was recently discussed in the book is speaking the truth to friends, or holding a mirror to them. This one has really stuck with me as I've been convicted the more I grow in my faith we are to hold each other accountable for our thoughts and actions as Christians. I don't mean passing judgement as I feel judgement is followed by a consequence and condemnation. Being truthful to your friends requires love, patience, and gentleness, but it also requires a certain strength. The motivations of speaking the truth is to bring about transformation so the other is brought closer to God. Although after I write those last few sentences I wonder, "are we too afraid of judgement to allow ourselves to judge each other (within the church)?" Yes God is the ultimate judge, but aren't we the children of God, the heirs to his throne? Should we not be keeping each other in line so as not to bring ruin to the family, especially (and only if) those standards are clearly biblical? This is a place I need to explore more scripture on.

I've always been afraid to speak the truth to others for fear of rejection and offending them. However, as I've grown in my knowledge of who God is, who he wants his children to be, and the revolution he wants to see started by his kingdom I've learned a few things. God wants us to care about each other and help each other grow, offense is the bait of Satan, defensiveness is immature, love knows no bounds, grace is sufficient, change is good, being uncomfortable is great, relying on God to work through us is even better.

I haven't always been good at listening and acting upon the truth others have brought to light in my life. I feel like I'm getting better and hope that my friends and family present the truth to me in areas where I might need to work on. I always hope their motives are to bring me closer to God and not just to point out the annoyances so I work to do the same for others. I certainly have learned becoming defensive or angry about what they say makes me a worse person and if I'm confident I'm following scripture what is there to defend?

Where are you in your journey to speak the truth to yourself and to others? What about others speaking the truth to you?

More to come tomorrow.....

Sewing

I've been interested in focusing more on sewing lately. I've got a few quilts in mind I'd like to work on and some dresses for Hadley and/or her friends. I'd really like to get to a point where most sewing situations whether fixing seams or creating something new, is like second nature. I'm not really sure why. I think some times it has the stereo type of being an old lady thing to do, but I enjoy doing it. I think it's a useful skill to have. I always think it would be fun to create stuff and sell it but then I feel like there's not really a big market for hand-made stuff anymore. Target sells nice stuff for much cheaper than I can make it usually and that's just comparing the price of the fabric, it doesn't usually include labor (which I don't always charge for anyway, I just appreciate the practice). I definitely appreciate the friends and family who have humored me as I've passed on some of my projects as gifts.

I would totally love to help people sew things for their nurseries or kids bedrooms or whatever would be useful but I know it's hard to pay the money for an amateur. So off I go to get more practice and hone the skill.

Seriously though....if anyone reading this would ever like something done, just ask and we'll see what we can do! I would totally love to do it! I'll hold off on doing anything like a wedding dress though. ;)

It just might work

This potty training thing. We've continued to let her run around in her birthday suit while we're at home. Just today she went #2 for the first time and then twice she was playing in another room and took herself to the bathroom unprompted. She did the whole process by herself and didn't call me in until she was washing her hands. Awesome!

Now the big conundrum.....how do we help her keep her underpants dry? We've let her wear her cotton ones around the house a few times but she inevitably wets them. I think she still has this mentality of I can pee of I have something covering my butt. I'm thinking we may try getting real underwear instead of the training pants since they are a little thinner and see if that helps. She'll let us know when she's peed in her training pants so she definitely doesn't like it but I'm still at a loss as to how to transition. I guess maybe you just do it and they'll get it.

Onward and upward!

Mumford and Sons

I really enjoy the music of Mumford and Sons. Not just the melody of their instruments playing together but also some of the lyrics in their songs. I've probably overplayed their songs on my ipod and anyone who has to ride in the car with me is probably sick of hearing it. But alas, here is one of my favorite verses in their song Sigh No More:

Love it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be
There is a design, an alignment, a cry
Of my heart to see,
The beauty of love as it was made to be


I've seen different articles and discussions on whether this band is Christian. I sometimes wonder if we Christians like to take bands with christian-like messages and just say they're Christian because after all what human would sing about how love can set you free if they weren't Christian? Aren't all humans born with the same basic needs? I believe God created us to have certain basic desires like a need to feel and know love, a need to belong, a need for relationships with others. Unfortunately, not all people look to God to fill those needs, but it doesn't mean the need is not there. 


I can't find anything that clearly states their spiritual standing, if I had to go out on a limb and guess I'd say no. It doesn't really matter. Some of their lyrics do bring me to a place of remembrance, thankfulness, and worship of who God is and what He has done. 


They're a talented group, which seems rare these days. You should listen to some of their songs if you have never heard of them. Although I will warn you, Little Lion Man has the f-bomb in it (which might cause you to think why would a Christian band have that in one of their songs....I have my reasons for thinking they would), so if those kinds of things bother you then stay away from that song.  


What kind of music have you been listening to lately?

Uncharted Waters

*Sorry for the long post, the details are really for myself to remember, but hopefully they will be of help to someone else.

Jon and I decided it was time to get serious about potty training. I had read a few things here and there about different methods and taken several "readiness" quizzes to make sure Hadley was ready. According to all the quizzes she was showing signs of being ready. The only thing we weren't real sure of was her physical development as far as being able to control it all herself. I don't think a parent can really know that before trying things out though. This was one area of parenting I felt like there had to be some specific secret formula. My biggest hurdle was figuring out how to teach Hadley to listen to her body, so to speak. It seems like such an abstract idea to teach a toddler. So off we go.

We decided we'd start real slow and just have her sit on the potty like three times a day, wearing pull ups. We were careful to give a statement, "Let's go sit on the potty," instead of asking a question, "do you want to go sit on the potty?" Because inevitably she would say no if given the option, she was too busy playing. She hardly EVER put up a fight when we just said it. We also got a bag of M&M's as a reward (or rather motivation) for sitting on the potty. She got 1 M&M for just sitting there, then if she actually went we'd give her a handful. We'd keep her there as long as we could usually 2-3 minutes by reading books, singing songs, talking, anything we could think of.

I had read about the method of letting the child run naked, allowing them to feel more of what was going on, thus training them faster. A lot of friends had also recommended this method with success stories to back it up. I was leaning more toward trying this, for some reason drastic methods seem to work well for our family, like our sleep training did. However, just to feel things out, Jon and I decided to take it slow, besides the naked method suggested blocking out 3 days of staying at home and focusing on only that and this month (of our own accord) has been packed full of things to do so we weren't sure how we'd do it.

The first week didn't involve any successes. Jon and I were still trying to get ourselves in the habit of remembering to get her on the potty and it seemed she was holding out until the pull up was back on or we were timing it wrong. It just wasn't working. I was sharing it all with my mom when she mentioned she used cotton training pants for my brother and I. They're like the next step between cloth diapers and underwear, I'd highly recommend them to anyone who is in the middle of potty training. So the next day I went to Babies R' Us and bought 6 pairs thinking the different feeling of the cotton underwear would help. The only bad thing about using the training pants for the initial days of training are they fit snugly around the legs to prevent anything from falling out (which is great) but it makes it more difficult if you're rushing to get the kid on the potty mid-pee. Yes, I speak from experience. Hadley wasn't real excited about the feeling of peeing in the training pants but it didn't seem to be enough motivation to get to the potty before peeing.

I then went to the library and picked up a book called Potty Wise, by the same people who wrote Baby Wise of which method we used for sleep training. I read through it and realized it offered a few different approaches, one being the fast track method. The one big difference between the book and our current approach was rewarding the child for staying dry instead of "using" the potty. Ugh, that makes sense, but I wasn't sure how to make the transition. She didn't seem to catch on too quickly about staying dry but we forged ahead nonetheless.

Here is where I was about to lose faith, thinking maybe we were pushing her too soon. She wasn't putting up much of a fight to sit on the potty but again, she didn't seem to care enough to get to the potty. This brings me to today. A friend came over to hang out for a bit this morning so I decided to just stay home for the day. This afforded us the opportunity to go naked! Well Hadley went bottomless at least after our friends left, but she kept her training pants on while they were over. Twice she peed in her training pants and seemed uncomfortable but still wouldn't get to the bathroom in time. After our friends left I stripped her down and let her run naked. She seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing.

It was nap time, and without any success I put her in a diaper and laid her down for a nap. After she woke up we sat on the potty and ran naked again. About two hours later she wanted to go outside so I we tried the potty again and nothing. I put her training pants on with some shorts and outside we went. Not 5 minutes later she peed in her pants again! We changed them and then she was fine. Once inside we stripped her down again and after dinner and a few more attempts on the potty she ended up peeing on the floor in our master bathroom. She definitely did not like that! Later on in the evening she started grabbing herself and holding her legs together, much in the fashion of a typical potty dance, so I picked her up and ran her in the bathroom. Nothing. She got up, did the potty dance again, I ran her to the potty again, and nothing.

Jon walks in the bathroom while she's sitting on the potty. He started running the water (which we've tried several times before with no success) and Hadley wanted to get up and play with the water in the sink. Jon told her she had to pee first before she could play in the water. We walked out to give her some privacy and not 15 seconds later I hear her, "mommy, I peed!" She's also said this before when it wasn't true so I was expecting to see an empty potty but alas, SHE HAD PEED! Hallelujah! She really wanted to play in the water. She was so proud of herself and we jumped up and down, she got a whole cookie for herself and we called Nanaw and Papa to tell them.

Who knew playing with water in the sink would be a great motivator. Hadley wanted to play with the water so much she tried so hard to pee just 10 minutes after doing it the first time. But by-golly if she didn't do it again before bed time (without us prompting her) so she could splash in the sink. That's it for now. She's no where close to being fully potty trained but the success of tonight has given us great hope. There just might a be light at the end of this potty-training tunnel.

I still plan to use the training pants as she becomes better at using the potty because they have a more absorbent middle than regular underwear, but until we're more consistent with using the potty, naked it is!

Follow up to Confidence

After reading through my last post I realized I didn't include one important point and I'd like to blame it on a certain toddler needing me while I wrote it.

One of the biggest confidence boosts I gain as a follower of Christ is knowing his opinion is the only one that matters. He made me, he loves me, and he wants me to be confident in how he works through me.

Cliche, maybe. I can go on and quote scripture of reasons we should be confident in Christ and of ourselves as followers but it's always easier said than done. We tend to make it too complicated. It becomes a choice we make. Are we going to allow others tell us what value we have or we going to allow Christ through scripture and through our own experiences tell us what value we have? I for one don't want others to control how I feel about myself. I know I'm not perfect, but who is? I don't really care what the models look like on magazine covers because I know it's not reality, and anyone who strives for that is chasing foolishness. Sure I like some of the clothes that are hanging in the storefronts, perhaps that's more discontentment than low self-esteem. But I will not walk around feeling sorry for myself, knowing God has created me to a beautiful (in his eyes) being who will do great things for him.

So I suppose this turns my question from 'what makes you confident?' to what are you striving for in life? Maybe we have lost our confidence because we have lost sight of the true goal.

I urge you yet again, figure out what your true goal is in life and reinvent your confidence to get there.