With Valentine’s Day approaching, I have been trying to choose books about love for my daughter, Juliet, and I to read together each night. I want her to know how deeply and unconditionally I love her and also how God’s love for her far surpasses my own great love.

As I looked at our shelves the other night, The Runaway Bunnyby Margaret Wise Brown jumped out at me. “That’s perfect!” I thought to myself. We’ve read this book a million times before, but we’ve never had a conversation about how God loves us as unwaveringly and as fiercely as the mother bunny loves her little bunny.

If you’ve never read the book, it begins like this:

“Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, “I am running away.” “If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny, “I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.” If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother, “I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

The story continues in this way with the little bunny coming up with another and yet another thing to turn into and his mother responding with how she will chase after him and find him NO MATTER WHAT. It’s a beautiful story of unconditional love.

As I thought about the picture of love presented in this book, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the love stories of the Bible such as the book of Hosea, the story of the prodigal son, and the greatest love story of all: Jesus coming to earth and becoming human just because He loved us so much. No matter how far we ran from him, and no matter what we became, He was willing to leave heaven behind and give up His life because we are His children and He loves us.

I thought to myself, “This is going to be great! We’re going to read a great book together AND have a meaningful spiritual conversation!”

It didn’t exactly turn out that way. Here’s what happened:

As we began reading the story together, Juliet asked me, “Mommy, why is that bunny running away? and I said, “Why do you think he is running away?” and she said, “To join the circus!” (Towards the end of the book, the bunny tells his mother he will join the circus.)

I took this moment to tell her that I was like the mother bunny and that if she ever ran away, I would always go after her because she was my little bunny. She just sort of nodded and then we continued reading.

A few pages later, Juliet suddenly jumped up, and exclaimed, “I’m the little bunny!” and ran away. I put the book down and proceeded to chase her down the hall and tackle her in my room.

I again reminded her that I would always catch her because she was my little bunny. She smiled, giggled, and then announced, “I’m a butterfly, I’m going to fly away from you!” and ran down the hall. I responded with, “I’m a net and I will catch you!”

We played this spontaneous little game over and over again—she was a little bird; I was a nest. She was a lady bug; I was a little girl with a bug-catcher. She was a roley poley, and I was a pile of dirt. Again and again, she ran away from me, and again and again I caught her.

Then we sat down, finished reading the book, and got ready for bed. As I tucked her in, I said, “God is like the mother bunny, too. No matter what you do, no matter how far you run away from Him, He will always come after you because you are His little bunny and He loves you.”

And she said, “Hey. You have hair in your nose.”

So maybe we didn’t get the meaningful spiritual conversation in, (we did have a discussion about the benefits and purposes of nose hair) but we did make some memories and invented a fun, new game! Even though she wasn’t really ready to talk about God’s love for her, I think the seed was planted.

And like that mother bunny, I’ll keep chasing her down and telling her tirelessly about God’s love, over and over again. And the best part is, I don’t have to do it on my own. He won’t stop His pursuit of her either.

Vanessa is a regular contributor to Impress Your Kids. She is a stay-at-home mom to an energetic three-year-old, Juliet. They spend their days together reading books, attempting crafts, and occasionally beating tree trunks with large sticks. You can read more about their adventures at Silly Eagle Books.

It has taken me a whole month to even begin my New Year’s goal of waking up before my kids. Asa regularly wakes up at…wait, he doesn’t REGULARLY wake up. Some days its 5:30, sometimes 6:00 and when we’re really lucky it’s 6:30. Nonetheless, I was feeling grumpy regardless of when he woke, I was taking showers at 5:45pm and not getting my day started until naptimes!

So, I bit the bullet and decided I had to wake up early. I wasn’t so deluded to think that I’d shower, exercise and make breakfast before the kids woke up. Oh no, I just decided I had to get up early enough to do ONE of those things. I didn’t care which one.

I’m going to be completely honest and say that this is only the 2nd day I’ve woken up early. I was staring at my clock at 5:59 this morning. Begging it to stay there. Finally at 6:02 I crawled out of bed, grabbed a blanket, my Bible and a notebook and sat at the kitchen table.

I wrote a little, read a little and then decided I’d make a list of people and situations to pray for. Then I remembered! I have a calendar of prayer points—to pray for your children. And who else do I want (NEED) to pray for than my kids? You’d think as a mom, you’d pray for your kids all the time, right? Sure, I pray for them. But mostly it’s, “please let him stop crying.” OR “please help me figure out how to help her obey” and “God is great, God is good…”.

Today’s prayer was labeled: SALVATION.

*sigh*

Isn’t that my goal? Isn’t that the reason I stay home? Teach my kids Bible stories? Do crafts? Play games? Sing songs? I do these things to show them Jesus so they will look for and receive SALVATION from Him! And I thought this getting up early thing was going to be so I could get a shower in! The prayer was a simple one based on Isaiah 45:8 and 2 Timothy 2:10…

Lord, let salvation spring up within my children that they may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

So. Now my goal in the morning is not to get a shower, to make breakfast or to do yoga. It’s to pray for my kids. It’s to read that little prayer, get it into my heart and mind so I can focus on it the rest of the day. So I can do my “job” of being a mother with the leadership of Jesus.

And for the record? This morning I read my Bible, exercised, took a shower AND made breakfast before the kids got up!

:: :: ::

More amazing and totally worth your time resources to help you pray for your children:

Prayer Calendar from Mom and Loving It {scroll down, it’s a pdf on the bottom of the page}

The Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian {her blog is filled with resources, too!}

Inspired to Action blog and free ebook, Maximize Your Mornings {you MUST click and look around. such good stuff.}

Seven Prayers a Day at Bring the Rain

Lifting Hands {a prayer-a-day blog. it’s not updated daily this year, but you can use the previous years!}

Praying for Our Children by The Other Mama

i encourage my kids’ imagination year round. Halloween is an especially fun time of year for dressing up because everyone is doing it. however, there is a lot of other junk that everyone else is doing this time of year that we don’t do. we keep the focus on dressing up, pretend play, painting pumpkins, and good, clean fun.

the only ghost we speak of is the Holy Ghost. there is no such thing as witches or goblins. pumpkins are friendly, skeletons are human bones, bats are nocturnal, and spiders eat mosquitos. Halloween, in our home, is a time for dressing up and eating candy with friends. no evil connotations. no spooky stories.

God hasn’t given us the spirit of fear but of power, love and a peaceful mind. (2 Tim 1:7)

this is Bubba’s 2nd Halloween and i’m taking full advantage of his inability to tell me what he wants to dress up as on the occasion. for as long as i can get away with it, i’m dressing my kids in {relatively} themed costumes. they make such a cute little duo!

last year, Bubba was a puppy and Big Girl was a giraffe. theme = sweet animals.

at a costume party last weekend, Big Girl was a princess and Bubba was a dragon. theme = storybook fairy tale.

on Halloween night, when we take them out to collect sweet treats, Big Girl is dressing up as Jasmine and Bubba is dressing up as Abu. theme = Disney’s Aladdin.

can’t you just see my little monkey wearing this? it was custom made by Kiki’s Things on Etsy.

and that’s how the Halls do Halloween.

how do YOU do Halloween?

:: :: ::

MamaHall is a wife and mama of two, sister and friend, daughter of the Most High, writer and reader, Jesus follower, dessert eater and coffee drinker, Gorbella’s founder, marketing gal, craft-aholic, homeschooling mama, picture-taker, coupon clipper, hugger, glass half full, easily distracted, Bible believer, and queen of her domestic domain. She is also a fabu blogger who is “making the most of motherhood” (Ephesians 5:16). She blogs at MamaHall.

Lydia and I love audio books. When we go to the library we hit up the picture books, the I Can Read Books, any books the librarians have put out on the top of the shelves for easy access AND the audio books. We’ve listened to so many “classics” that I never read as a kid. It just makes driving in the car more fun when we have an exciting book to listen to.

We live right in the middle of two different libraries, so while we were at one of these libraries the other day, I noticed a slew of Adventures in Odysseycds in the audio section. SCORE! As I was deciding which one to get I found another Christian book–NIrV Little Kids Adventure Audio Bible. I was curious to see how a 3 year old would respond to an audio version of the Bible. And even more curious to see how cheesy the recording might be. (You know its true!)

However, we are onto the THIRD cd and we both love it! The other day she said, “Mommy can we pleeeease listen to the Bible?” Here’s what I like about it:

1. It’s read by several actors. They are all children. I know it sounds weird to have Jesus be an 8 year old boy, but for some reason it makes for nice and easy listening. Plus some of their little lisps are just cute!

2. It’s organized well. Is that weird? What I mean is they say the chapter headings and chapter numbers. And since most of the Bible is separated into small sections, it’s not hard to follow along.

3. There are some cute extras throughout. For example, during the story of Jesus’ dedication at the temple, there was a little ditty and an adult’s voice came on to explain why Mary and Joseph offered a dove for the sacrifice. It kind of breaks up the story and gives some good insight. They also do book intros to let you know what each new book is about.

4. We just started the book of Romans today. They aren’t reading the entire book because honestly, how long would that take? But they are hitting the high points. I clicked through the rest of the tracks and I could tell they were taking the BIG and FAMOUS passages: love chapter, fruit of the spirit, etc.

5. It is in chronological order. For example, for the story of Jesus’ birth, the chapter heading was Luke 2 and Matthew 2. Great idea!

I’m really surprised at how much we like it. I think I’m going to buy it because today we skipped ahead and listened to Galatians 5 where Paul talks about the Fruit of the Spirit and Lydia was amazed! I think it will be great to stick in the car and listen to when we’re in between audio books or when we are trying to learn a verse or when she is particularly interested in a certain Bible story.

Get thee to the library and see if you can find an audio Bible of your own!

A few weeks ago my dad began an almost year-long medical treatment for Hepatitis C. Every Friday he gives himself a shot and then every day after that he takes oral medication. His liver is in the final stages of Hepatitis C and without this medication, his liver will stop functioning. And of course, that would mean death for my dad. For Daddy.

For the first few weeks, Daddy’s only side effects were fevers, a little bit of nausea and flu like symptoms. Then last week, my mom called me and said that Daddy had a bad night. He had passed out in the hallway in the middle of the night. He was minimally responsive, turning shades of grey and yellow. She called 911 and when he finally got to the doctor, they ordered a CAT scan and blood tests.

We were relieved to see the CAT scan results come back normal, liver enzyme tests return with positive results and blood tests looking better. The only problem he is now facing is about blood platelets. A normal person has about 150,000 (I think!). Daddy has about 70,000. So, this is making him very fatigued–because his blood isn’t bringing oxygen and other nutrients to his body.

As you can imagine, this has been a huge ordeal in our family. We’ve been having daily phone conversations, I’ve been emailng friends, cooking food and anything else I can think of. When Mama called me about that horrible night, I was crying on the phone. And my 3 1/2 year old Lydia was standing right there.

She has seen and heard a lot of scary things about one of the people she loves best in the world: Papa. I’ve tried to shield her from most of it. But when we’re at his house and he’s laying on the bed instead of playing with her, it’s easy to see that something is wrong.

We will be playing or driving and she’ll randomly ask me a question like, “What’s plates?” (As in “platelets”.) Or “Did Papa have a bad night?” She’s been playing doctor more than usual with her animals having Hepatitis C and needing medicine five times a day. It breaks my heart!

So, I’ve been trying to figure out how I can best reassure her and comfort her from God’s Word concerning healing for Papa. Of course, we pray for him regularly–every time we think of it–even in the middle of the grocery store. But the other night a God moment happened…

We have picked up The Jesus Storybook Bibleas our before-bed book again. We usually read a random story out of it once a week, but right now we’re reading it straight through. The story that night was, A Little Girl and a Poor Frail Lady (from Mark 5). I’m going to briefly tell you the story…because you may know the two stories separately, but when you read them together, there is something powerful about them:

Jairus had a daughter who was very ill. He decided to find Jesus and see if he would heal her. When Jairus found Jesus, he immediately left with Jairus. Now, on their way to Jairus’ house, the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and his disciples were acting the body-guard on him when suddenly Jesus stopped and said, “WHO TOUCHED ME?”

This is hilarious to me because Hello? Who says that? Much less in the middle of a crowd? Even if the crowd wasn’t big, there was at least his 12 disciples and Jairus, right? The disciples thought the same thing and were like, “What in the world are you talking about?”

But the Bible says Jesus said this because “he felt the power go out of him” (*shiver*). He turns around and there is this woman who has been sick for TWELVE years. She has been sick with a blood disease and had spent all her money on doctors—doctors that could not help. She tells Jesus her story and explains that she knew if she just touched his clothes she would be healed. Jesus looks at her and says, “Your faith has made you well.”

OK, so all this time of Jesus trying to find out who touched him and a bloody woman kneeling before Jesus, Jarius has to be freaking out! You know he’s thinking, “JESUS! Come on! My daughter!!!” Sure enough, right then one of Jairus’ servants comes to him and says, “It’s too late. She’s dead.” I cannot imagine Jarius’ shock and pain.

But Jesus doesn’t listen to the servant. He goes to the house and tells the mourners there, “I’m going to wake her up.” And they LAUGH at him. They LAUGH AT JESUS. The Bible says “he put them all out”. He didn’t want their mockery and doubt near him. So, he puts them outside and walks upstairs to the little girl. He holds her hand and says, “Get up.” She does. And then Jesus tells them to give her something to eat!

So, anyway, we are reading this story in the The Jesus Storybook Bibleand Lydia is enthralled. I don’t think she remembered ever hearing it before. When we got to the part about the woman touching Jesus’ coat she interrupted me.

I can’t remember exactly what she said or asked but she made the motion of touching Jesus’ coat. And we talked about Papa. How Papa had been sick with Hepatitis C for several years. How the doctors didn’t know how to make him well. We talked about how powerful Jesus is—that someone could just touch his clothes and be well. We talked about how easy it was for the woman to receive healing from Jesus–just by touching his coat. Then Lydia made the motion again—reaching out to grab Jesus’ coat. At a three year old level (which may be a better and more faith-filled level than my 32 year old level) she understood and believed Jesus. She knew that Jesus healed and connected it to the need of her Papa.

The story ended with, “Jesus was making the sad things come untrue, mending God’s broken world.” And ever since we read that story it’s stuck with me–the similarities of the woman’s blood disease and my dad’s. The relationship of a father and daughter. The faith of a woman. The Power and Love of a Savior.

:: :: ::

If you have not bought and read the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones, you MUST. The Jesus Storybook Bible Deluxe Editionis coming out in October and includes the complete book on audio. The audio is read by David Suchet and you can even hear a few of the stories including A Little Girl and a Poor Frail Lady on the new Jesus Storybook Bible website.  I cannot recommend this book more highly. It’s more than a bedtime story or a kids’ Bible story book. It is an introduction to Jesus and his Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.

photo from The Jesus Storybook Bible. Illustrated by Jago.