Parenting

Toddlers and very young children are marched outside the Portland federal courthouse. They carry signs and say, “F— the police” on cue from the adults. One toddler does the black power fist. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/Xr4ubMrKZs

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) July 23, 2020

Prankster

Colleen took our three teenagers to a bookstore yesterday. When they got home and unpacked their goodies, we noticed that our 16-year-old had slipped this one in just in time for the cashier to ring it up.

I am sure he got it as a prank (he actually is very funny, but don't tell him I said that), but we will get the last word, because we will actually read the book and get some ideas about how to parent these little angels.

Parenting 101

Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant don't want to accept the invitation to visit the White House in honor of their NBA championship, so Trump has rescinded the invitation. It is about time someone parents those two.
Read more here.

A fine line

This morning my 17-year-old son said something to me that I treasure. I can't remember his exact words. He was acknowledging that I allow him to say whatever is on his mind. It was an unexpected compliment because I don't really think I do that well, but it meant a lot to me for him to say it.

Ace of Spades writes today,

No matter how hard it is for a parent to do, at some point he must permit his child to make his or her own decisions. Only when he is granted some degree of responsibility over his own life will he begin to exercise, well, responsibility.

...What do teenagers do when they chafe under what they perceive as a too-heavy hand in parental control?

They rebel. They do all the wrong things, either subconsciously or full-on consciously.

At some point you have to just allow people to make their own decisions. Like teenagers, they will often make bad decisions. Or, rather: They make decisions you disapprove of, decisions which may be objectively bad by any reckoning, or which might actually be decent decisions given their own circumstances, preferences, and aspirations. Or, even -- they might be good decisions, and you cannot see they are good decisions, because you yourself are married to your own bad decisions.

But anyway it shakes out, the only way people make good decisions is by first having the capacity to have a (mostly) free choice of actions in the first place.

Enforced morality is not actually morality; it is no more than an amoral rational scheme to avoid punishment.

True morality only arises from a free choice: You could have chosen good, or evil, but you chose good. You could have chosen benevolence or selfishness; you chose benevolence. You could have chosen self-improvement or self-destruction; you chose self-improvement.

Read more here.

Love is not enough

Today Bookworm has some thoughts on parenting.

Children thrive in a home in which, beginning as early as possible, they are instructed in the ways of the family. These are the families in which the parents say, “In our house, we don’t pee on the floor, throw food around, hit each other, torture animals, have screaming temper tantrums, etc. In our house we do speak politely to each other, clean up after ourselves, do well in school, treat people and animals with kindness, and so forth.” The kids, having crossed the border into the family, whether by birth or adoption, are expected to assimilate. The good parent encourages each child’s unique qualities but makes it clear that the children have to get with the family program.

What got her going on this subject were the many articles being written about the Brangelina split.

As the Brangelina experiment perfectly illustrates, when parents reject their children’s assimilation into family norms and, instead, allow the children to retain their own childish norms, you end up with a dysfunctional war zone. No one is happy, least of all the children.

Read more here.

The strength is in the struggle.

Julie Lyles Carr is the author of Raising an Original, She guest posts today at A Holy Experience.

The strength is in the struggle.

Hard as it can be to watch. Fearful as it can make us.

Fear, when fed, grows.


Once fear grows, it becomes contagious.
 And once it becomes contagious, it can limit the scope of a life.Once fear grows, it becomes contagious.
 And once it becomes contagious, it can limit the scope of a life.
But we can’t let that happen.

...Even when it seems easier to intervene in every schoolyard conflict.

Even when it seems easier to protect and buffer and bubble wrap and round off all the sharp edges of life.

It’s time to trust.

We can never clearly see the threads of purpose in our kids if all we can see is the risk, the scary, the unknown. We can never clearly see the threads of purpose in our kids if all we can see is the risk, the scary, the unknown.
We can’t raise an original if we raise them on a steady diet of worry.

For our original kids to reach their full potential, we need to model vision, courage, and daring. We need to show the way.

Ask yourself, Am I parenting in this situation, this challenge, this circumstance, from a place of raising my child’s strength and capacity, or am I wrapping him up to defensively buffer my own anxious heart? Am I enabling or empowering?

Be strong and courageous. Fear not. God commands us to do so (Deuteronomy 31:23).

Originality is not the provenance of copy cats and scaredy cats.

It’s the territory of the brave, the visionary, the bold.

It’s possible to let them boldly go.

Read more, especially about her experience with baby sea, turtles here.

"No one wins unless they win!"

"Don't give them false motivation!" "You need practice!" Or, "choose a different arena."

Amazing grace up ahead!

At A Holy Experience Ann Voskamp figuratively tucks a note in her daughter's back pocket with some gentle reminders, as she waves goodbye to her daughter embarking on her adult life.

So — Braveheart, Beautiful Girl, quiet and lovely in a loud world — before you pack up and head out this summer to do good work in the world, this is the thing… maybe everything boils down to a handful of things?

Can I hand you handful of Brave and Beautiful Things for your every day?

Parents aren’t supposed to be the loud police voice in your head — but the gentle pastor at your side.

It’s always there — if you always listen for that quiet, gentle voice of Grace on the inside: You don’t have to get it perfect — you just have to get back up and keep going.

So maybe yeah, think of all this as a gentle note to tuck in your back pocket — and that this getting up every day and listening for His Voice, that’s Number One of the handful of brave and beautiful things for your every day:

Number One: Fall in love with the One who is The Way — and the way you’re supposed to go will follow…. as you follow Him.

You’ve got to want to be one with Him — more than you want to be a Someone.

You’ve got to want to serve more than you want to be seen, you’ve got to care more than you want to be comfortable, you’ve got to want to give more than you want to get.

You’ve got to want His approval more than all the other things that will prove to be worthless.

Number Two: Taste the grittiness of work — or you won’t ever taste success.
Every day you can get up and get scared — or you can get up and get yourself ready.

Nothing erases stress quite like preparation.

Bury all your nagging fears in your faithful work — or your fears will bury you in nagging doubts.

Promise yourself you’ll remember this because it will effect your joy: Be entirely engaged in the process of your work, and be entirely disengaged in outcome of your work. You can’t determine outcome — but you can determine to come and put in everything you have.

Let your joy always be in doing the work — not in the outcome of the work. The journey not only matters more than the destination — the journey actually becomes the destination.

Success is always showing up and bending down. Full stop.

Number Three: Don’t love your present self more than you love your future self.

...Though everywhere tells you the point of living is to avoid suffering — please: Always embrace the struggle:

You know there’s no way around pain — there’s always either the pain of disappointment or the pain of discipline.

And don’t ever, ever, ever be concerned with failing — only be concerned about failing to keep on going.

Get up every day and just do that: Volunteer to be a Giver. Never stop looking for a way to be the Giver. The world’s going around with a big sign: Wanted: GIVERS. (Sorry — The world already has enough takers.)

Be a Giver — and you will get the most.

People may forget what you did or didn’t do — but they won’t forget how you made them feel. Hearts have the longest memories. This is what makes you love people people and love life and never be intimidated in any setting: Lean in and make eye contact and simply listen to hearts.

Listening is a revolutionary act of liberation — it will liberate you from the prison of your prejudices and free you to love large.

It doesn’t matter if you have some big title — what matters is that you have a big heart. A big heart will outshine a big title every time.

Number 5: Watch your fingers so your heart can care.
Maybe the most important part of your body to control is your index finger — because it’s most like the devil: It most wants to point and prosecute.

At all costs — don’t be a finger pointer… and avoid joining packs of finger-pointers — who point and blame peers and parents and circumstances and society and somebody else.

The world doesn’t need any more finger-pointers.

It needs more people to honestly point out their own sins — and humbly point up to everyone’s Savior.

The world doesn’t need more loud people who think they have it all right — it needs more compassionate people to sit down and listen long enough to quietly realize they had some of it wrong.

The world needs people whose sacrificial giving is loudest and largest thing about them. People who quietly weep with the wounded and listen to the hurting and generously serve the Other — because that’s what it means to genuinely love one another: not to love people just like you, but to Love the Other.

The Givers and the Listeners and the Lovers — we can be part of His beautiful healing of the world….

So when you get to the end of the day, when you get down far down that road your on, when you get to wondering what it’s all about that — I don’t know, maybe it’s just this handful of 5 Brave and Beautiful Things I wanted to tuck in your back pocket in a world that’s hurting everywhere?

And maybe I just wanted to look you long in the eyes and memorize this in the midst of everything: Trust that Grace will always meet you.

Believe that when God made the universe, that He breathed Grace as the air of the universe.

When you believe that the earth’s atmosphere is actually Grace:

You aren’t afraid of people or asking questions or risking big or laughing loud or believing the best or believing in beauty or loving across fences or walking up to people and taking off your mask and making every step you take into a leap of faith.

Please, always: Believe that Grace will always, always, always meet you.

Because Grace has a name. And He always meets you. In everything, through everything, in spite of anything.

Grace has a name — and He always, always meets you.

So go on, keep going on, Braveheart — you are loved more than you know, liked more than you can imagine, and are stronger than you dreamed…. so: Give love. And live large — And love larger.

You can’t even begin to imagine how there’s always amazing grace up ahead.

Read more here.

The federal government now thinks it is an equal partner with parents in raising your kids

Dave Blount writes at Moonbattery,

As Shrillary likes to shriek, it takes a village to raise a child. That is to say, it takes a bloated, intrusive, authoritarian federal bureaucracy. But don’t worry, parents — for now Big Government regards you as equal partners in the raising of your children:

The federal government is seeking to create a new bureaucracy that would intervene in family life and could even see state-appointed monitors conduct routine home visits to assess a child’s well-being.

The U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has published a draft document which outlines a plan that will treat families as “equal partners” in the raising of children, opening the door for government intrusion at all levels.

The paper describes how government employees will intervene to provide, “monitoring goals for the children at home and the classroom,” and that if parents are failing to meet the standards set, “evidence-based parenting interventions” will be made to, “ensure that children’s social-emotional and behavioral needs are met.”
The document reveals how the state will help oversee, “constant monitoring and communication regarding children’s social-emotional and behavioral health.”

No doubt this will also apply to ideological health, so advise Junior not to express any skepticism regarding the global warming hoax, the iniquity of white people, the peacefulness of Islam, etc. in front of authorities or he could end up an orphan.

The assault on the family is also taking place through language:
The document also extends the understanding of the word “family,” to include, “all the people who play a role in the child’s life,” a definition that could include not only teachers but government monitors.
Be sure to update your copy of the Newspeak dictionary accordingly.

Remember comrades, children do not belong to their parents, but to the “community,” i.e., the State.
- See more at: http://moonbattery.com/?p=68821#sthash.nssXzYlp.dpuf

Sexting scandal in Colorado

Although I live in Colorado, I missed this story. Jazz Shaw wrote at Hot Air on November 7,

The disturbing news coming out of Canon City High School in Colorado is troubling without a doubt, but the school and governmental response may be nearly as bad. For those of you who may have missed the non-stop cable news coverage of the breaking story, officials at the high school have discovered what is being described as a massive sexting ring involving more than one hundred students, some ranging in age down to 12 year olds in middle school. The big questions now are focused on what to do about it and whether any of this constitutes a federal crime. (Yahoo News)

A massive sexting ring is rocking a high school in Colorado, with at least 100 students trading nude pictures and posting them on social media, news reports said.

Some of the kids in the photographs were as young as 12, and included eighth graders from the middle school, The New York Times reported.

The students, many of whom are on the football team at Canon City High School, could now face criminal charges, reports said.

The school district announced Wednesday that “a number of our students have engaged in behavior where they take and pass along pictures of themselves that expose private parts of their bodies or their undergarments.”

So far, the only concrete action being taken has been to cancel the school’s final football game of the year since it seems that the better part of the team will probably be suspended anyway. But the “ring” of illicit activity goes far, far beyond just the locker room of the football squad. Previous efforts to “educate” students about the dangers of sexting seem to have not sunk in very well, at least in this school system. The established fact is that these photos, once uploaded to “the cloud” from a phone, live forever on the web and most of them are probably already being downloaded in mass from sites that traffic in child pornography for pedophiles. Further, surely these teens have been told that if their names are attached to the phone, the pictures will come back to haunt them in their adult years.

And how did the students respond? By installing apps known as “phone vaults” which hide their pictures from the prying eyes of parents or teachers who might get hold of the phone, making them look like some simple calculator app. (There are apparently armies of people out there cooking up phone apps that I’ve never heard of.) They obviously heard the message and knew they weren’t supposed to be doing it, but that didn’t stop huge numbers of them from exchanging naughty pictures anyway.

So what’s to be done? Officials are now examining whether or not anyone should be prosecuted under federal child pornography charges. I’m not saying we should do nothing, but doesn’t that seem not only a bit extreme but misguided in terms of the original intent of the laws in question? We have those protections in place to stop sick, twisted adults from exploiting children and trafficking in such materials. These are kids who are foolishly producing the “product” themselves and sending it around their own peer group. There may be something illegal about it when children do it among and between themselves, but as creepy as it all sounds I’m not sure exactly what sort of criminal proceeding – if any – is appropriate here.

Short of that, what are we to do? Do we simply ban children under 18 from bringing phones to school? On a gut reaction level I’m actually all for that because those phones must be a huge distraction from school work and likely cause more problems than they solve. But at the same time, mobile phone technology not only exists but it’s pervasive in our society. That genie is already out of the bottle. And even if we banned the phones at school that wouldn’t stop the kids from taking nude pics off school grounds and exchanging them anyway.

The real failure here is not one of technology nor even of the schools, really. This is a societal failure which lands in the laps of the parents who failed to instill proper values in their kids and didn’t educate them about the horrible position they were putting themselves in. I hate to wave the white flag, but this doesn’t sound like a problem that government, or even law enforcement can fix. A lot of teenagers probably shouldn’t even have phones, but that’s up to their mothers and fathers to decide, not the schools or the cops. Of course, we’re fighting against something as old as time… the titillating allure of all things sexual to younger kids who are just waking up to their own sexuality in a cultured steeped in erotic imagery and messages. That’s probably too big of a battle for anyone to win. In the meantime, I think all we can do is keep trying to drill home the message to parents and get them to beat the message (figuratively) into their own kids. Show them the stories of young women – because it’s almost always the girls – who have had their lives and careers wrecked by having such pictures surface when they’re applying for college or a job. You won’t reach all of them, but this school is a clear signal that we need to be reaching a lot more of them then we are currently.

You belong to me

Benjamin Ames writes, "The fireworks show had just ended, but she thought she kept hearing them outside. So we sang to keep her mind preoccupied. In the end, nothing competes with fireworks."

Isn't this guy wonderful?

Bearing witness

Ann Voskamp and the other seven members of her family take a road trip. Her two oldest boys decide to climb a seaside mountain cliff. Ann sits and watches, and has time to think about parenting, God, and being safe:

Jesus died to save us not to make us safe. No one ever got saved unless someone else was unsafe.

...God sees it all – and He sees to it all – and He doesn’t turn away. God is your witness: You are seen and known. Who will be God’s witness? So He is seen and known?

...Because the truth is: Life’s a trial and everyone needs a witness — someone on your front row, someone on your sidelines, someone to clap you across the finish line when everyone else has gone home.

Everyone needs a witness – someone to testify you were really here and you really tried, someone to witness your wounds and believe in your worth, someone to say even your crazy can’t stop you from being crazy loved.

Everyone needs a witness who will stand and not hold you back because if we all only lived safe, no one would ever get saved.

Everyone needs a witness — and I’ll be yours.

...You don’t become a parent by bearing a child. You become a parent by bearing witness to his life.

Read more and view her photos here.

Waking up to the here that won't be here tomorrow

Ann Voskamp writes at A Holy experience,

Why doesn’t someone tell all the homemakers: Cleanliness isn’t next to godliness. Love is.

...How could I forget that the only thing that we’re always really teaching is love?

...Grace allows u-turns; it’s Time that doesn’t. This is a grace too, to coerce us all into waking up to the here that won’t be here tomorrow.

Ann's son is 18 and going off to college. As she thinks of him, she writes,

I’m not partial to how much you remember of calculus; but it’s dire that you know that the sum of how you see the ordinary is all that ever adds up to an extraordinary life. The lessons any kid remembers are the ones his parents lived.

...More important than a clean house is a close family.

...Every time you saw me, a smile is what you should have seen first.

...By His grace and a few thousand miracles, there was good and smiles can swim through tears. Remember how we read a million library books together? I’ll never regret every page we chose over screens.

...We ate three meals a day together at a table (and don’t think that doesn’t change the shape of a soul and the world). And we never pushed back our chairs until we’d had our dessert of Scripture. Life is about one thing: Coming to His table and inviting as many as you can to come with you and feast on the only Living Food. We gave you this.

And for better or worse, your Dad and I taught you how to work hard. Make it for the world’s better, son.

...And never forget that happiness is when His Word and your walk are in harmony. Never stop keeping company with Christ– and all the sinners, tax-collectors and cast-offs. Be an evangelist and use your words with your hands because your part of a Body and never stop loving God with all your heart, mind and soul, and loving others as yourself. Make that your creed.

Believe that you are His beloved – it’s only when you trust that He loves you that you really begin to live. Really, count a thousand blessings more — why wouldn’t you want joy? Sing to no one and everyone on the front porch in the rain and laugh so much they question your sanity. Pet the dog long.

Because really, none of us knows how long we have. Remember that a pail with a pinhole loses as much as the pail pushed right over. A whole life can be lost in minutes wasted… in the small moments missed.

This parenting gig’s an experiment in radical grace and the work of every parent is to fully give to the child.

And it’s the work of every child to fully forgive the parents. This is how it turns, the torch passing from one to the next.
Read more here.

Raising good human beings

Kristina Ribali writes at PJ Media about raising grateful kids. She has three main suggestions:

1. Don’t Overindulge Your Children
2. Help Your Kids Learn the Value of a Dollar
3. Open Their Eyes to the Truly Needy

Go here to read how she implements each of these three concepts.

Amazing grace up ahead

Ann Voskamp reminds us that

The whole point of welcoming kids into your life is to wave good-bye to adults embarking out on their own lives.

...Parents aren’t supposed to be the loud police voice in your head — but the gentle pastor at your side.

...You can do this thing — because you were made to do hard and holy things.
You are always enough — because You have Jesus and He is always enough.
You don’t have to get it perfect — you just have to get back up and keep going.

...You’ve got to want to be one with Him — more than you want to be a Someone.

...You’ve got to want to serve more than you want to be seen, you’ve got to care more than you want to be comfortable, you’ve got to want to give more than you want to get.

... The journey not only matters more than the destination — the journey actually becomes the destination.

Success is always showing up and bending down.

...You know there’s no way around pain — there’s always either the pain of disappointment or the pain of discipline.

...The world’s going around with a big sign: Wanted: GIVERS. (Sorry — The world already has enough takers.)
Be a Giver — and you will get the most.

People may forget what you did or didn’t do — but they won’t forget how you made them feel. Hearts have the longest memories.

Lean in and make eye contact and simply listen to hearts.

Listening is a revolutionary act of liberation — it will liberate you from the prison of your prejudices and free you to love large.

...It doesn’t matter if you have some big title — what matters is that you have a big heart. A big heart will trump a big title every time.

...You can’t even begin to imagine how there’s always amazing grace up ahead.

Read more here.

Are you encouraging your kids to take risks?

Mollie Hemingway writes in The Federalist,

When everything is a safety crisis, nothing is. So it should be little surprise that older children are less likely to heed warnings against smoking, drinking and having, in the parlance of modern educators, “unsafe” sex.

“Paradoxically,” the psychologists write, “we posit that our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.”

So to sum up, letting your child take risks allows them to conquer fear and develop “a sense of mastery.” Irrationally shielding them from risk creates phobias and psychopaths.

...Many parents just can’t accept the reality that we’re not in as much control of our children as we wish. Last week my nephew went to an outdoor camp in Colorado with the rest of his 5th-grade class. They were supposed to stay just one night. Floods hit the region, the roads washed out and filled with boulders. There was nothing anyone could do. After being stranded for three days, the parents heard about plans to airlift the kids out via Chinook helicopter. That plan was halted when some parents complained it was too dangerous. Who knew that helicopter parents would be threatened by actual helicopters?

Never mind that riding on a Chinook would be the adventure of a lifetime for a 10-year-old. Perhaps because there were no other reasonable options, the airlift commenced the next day. Every child survived and my nephew reported that “No one ever had so much fun in a natural disaster.”

...Safety isn’t even a virtue. If you’re teaching your kids more about safety than you are about honesty, kindness, respect for others, responsibility, gratitude, integrity, cooperation, determination, social skills, enthusiasm, compassion and manners, you’re doing it wrong.

...a parenting style that abjures risk at all costs may be at least partially responsible for the country’s economic doldrums. In June, the Wall Street Journal pointed out four trends, observable since the 1980s, that showed a marked declined in risk-taking psychology. “Risk Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs” notes that ongoing job creation and destruction has slowed, that investors are less willing to back startups, that startups in general are down and that the workforce itself is resistant to migration and job change.

My neighborhood is in Northern Virginia, an area that has been rewarded for playing it safe and going after government cash. Many of my neighbors are government employees, lawyers and lobbyists. Many of them have found success regulating other people’s businesses out of existence, destructive acts all too frequently predicated on fears that somebody somewhere might get hurt. It’s not surprising, in that context, that my neighbors would call for regulation of the lemonade stand or lawn mowing business run by the kids next door.

In order to pull out of this tailspin, it will take a generation or more of parents raising kids to take risks. We need mothers and fathers who encourage their kids to play outside, to mow lawns, to start business ventures and to live freely. Yes, they may face danger and get hurt. That’s a feature, not a bug.

Read more here.

What does not kill me makes me sadder

Did you know that

The swashbuckling George S. Patton, who braved death in his drive to Germany and was worried about his role in a peacetime world, was paralyzed in a minor traffic accident shortly after the Allied victory — and on the day before he was to go home and leave postwar Europe for good. He died not on the battlefield, but painfully in bed in a military hospital in Germany.

Victor Davis Hanson ponders today about sadness, irony, narcissism, and learning from pain:

At best, all we can do, I think in our ignorance of causation, is to cover our bets and tread lightly and remain observant — keeping humble and modest in occasional good fortune (given so often that our blessings turn out to be dependent on the work of other friends and benefactors), while staying resolute in more frequent times of chaos and disaster, to be able to help and offer sanctuary to others.

It is wise to remember the good dead and emulate their example rather than to be caught up with the mediocre of the present. I certainly spend more time recalling the voice of my mother than listening to the televised psychodramas of our elite. Faith and transcendence in the end matter most, whether for us who believe in God and an eternal soul, or for the more agnostic humanists who trust that one’s good works now can affect others following them, from raising good children to planting an olive tree.

...As parents age, they gain perspective and calm, but also at the cost of growing pessimism or even a dangerous sense of preordination. These can be deadly pathologies as they take away the necessary spirit and audacity, so important in getting up one more morning and heading on to the next mission. (My 86-year-old grandfather was putting in new end posts in the vineyard on the day before he had a heart attack and died; my 80-year-old Swedish grandfather was breaking a young horse in his last few months.)

All the clichés that you all have heard about losing a child, and which we all of the uninitiated may have found strange or foreign — “I wished it was me,” “How unfair that parents outlive children,” “How did I cause this,” “Why didn’t I do that or this,” “I should have been a better parent, listener, friend, helper, benefactor, etc.” — I assure you turn out hardly to be clichés, but simply reflect over the centuries what is innate in every parent’s brain in extremis.

As we age and try to make sense of nonsense, we have only the solace that what is inexplicable now will be most explicable soon, and that we are not natives, as we assume, here, but refugees from home somewhere else, and that what seems all too real and hopeless we hope is a just a dream of what will be soon very real and hopeful.

I would amend Nietzsche’s often quoted line, “from life’s school of war: what does not kill me makes me stronger,” to something like “what does not kill me, makes me sadder,” and leave it to fate whether sadder in the end proves stronger or wiser.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I try to read and excerpt everything VDH writes. This is the first time, though, that I was reduced to tears, as he tells us about his grandaughter and the death of his wonderful daughter Savannah. Read it here.

Terms of endearment, or terms of endurement?

Ann Voskamp writes that

there are parenting days when the terms of endearment can get confusing and it all feels more like the terms of endurement.

When arguing can go in circles.

Whoever had the crazy idea that Lent was for the good who were forsaking some lush little luxury?

Lent’s for the messes, the mourners, the muddled — for the people right lost. Lent’s not about making anybody acceptable to a Savior — but about making everybody aware of why they need a Savior.

...In one wild moment, my disordered desires can betray how quickly I can lose my God-orientation.

...You don’t need higher self-esteem.

You need greater self-grace — that comes from the depths of His grace.

...His grace that you accept for yourself — is the same grace you then extend to others — which then graciously circles back to you.

Read more here.

Thought for the day

So much of parenting is remembering something you have learned (usually the hard way) and storing it in your brain so that you can retrieve and share it when the time comes for your child to be ready enough to be interested in seeing how that knowledge may apply to his or her life.

What have you learned about parenting?

Ann Voskamp reflects on parenting:

Parenting is about preparing children to get along with each other, to get along with you and without you, and that it’s impossible to get along without God.

The moment when you are most repelled by a child’s behavior, that is your warning light to draw the very closest to that child.

What we say to our kids in passing is what becomes their inner voice.

Anger is contagious. And so is grace.

Thank God.

Read more here.