A few weeks ago I attended the Orange Conference as a blogger! I live-tweeted* a lot of the sessions so if you were following me, you may have had a peek of how great it was. The Orange Conference is for pastors, leaders and volunteers in children, youth and family ministry. Their main philosophy is that the red love of the home should join with the yellow light of the church to make this fabulous orange ministry.

I love the idea and feel like that’s where my life, passions and philosophy have really come, too. I hope this blog is an asset to you as you partner with your church to raise your kids for the Lord.

Anywhoo. Most of the sessions at Orange were for the full-time pastor or volunteer. However, so many of the principles could be applied to every area of your life. OK, my life!

One of my favorite sessions was by my pastor, Andy Stanley. He was talking about creating a positive, healthy, fun-to-work-at staff culture. The more I listened, the more I realized these tips were perfect for MY family!

As Andy talked about his staff, the way their team works and what it’s like to work there, all I could think was, “I want this for my family!” Don’t we want a healthy, encouraging, life-giving, loving family environment? Don’t we want our kids to WANT to be with us? To be part of the family?

Andy’s first point and biggest suggestion (and the one I’m going to chat about today) is: mutual submission. Wow. Submission is a hard word for us. We’ve heard people argue about women submitting to their husbands; children submitting to their parents.

But what about mutual submission? Husbands submitting to their wives? Wives submitting to their husbands. Children submitting to their parents. And what? parents submitting to their children?!

How does this work? How do we submit to everyone in our family?

Andy answered the question, “Mutual submission says, ‘How can I help?’”. This hit me so hard. I feel like I have to be The Parent. Make sure I win and I’m in charge. I have to help my kids learn to be self-sufficient in life, their faith and school. My children are here to do and learn from what I say, right?

Saying, “How can I help?” is not just hard, it’s a focus-shifter. It takes the blame (or focus) off of the other person and puts it back on ME.

“Lydia, how can I help make your chores more attainable for you to complete?”

“Asa, how can I help you be confident when Mommy is not around?”

“Les, how can I help you ease your workload?”

These questions might not always come out of your mouth exactly that way. But when I am focused on, zeroed in on and engaged with each family member (and NOT myself), I will be able to look into their lives and find ways to help make them better, stronger, more productive and able to follow Jesus more purposefully.

Jesus’ Example

Remember why Jesus said he came to earth? “Not to be served but to serve.” As parents, we should be serving our children. As wives, we should serve our husbands. As husbands, we should serve our wives. Jesus is Master of all. King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Yet, he served us–even unto death.

It’s more than serving meals, picking up after our kids or reading a book for the 100th time, it’s when we engage and look into into our family member’s heart and do what they need over what we want.

When that plays out in our marriage, our children will copy it. When it becomes the culture of our family to serve, our children will serve back to us, to their friends, their church and eventually their own families.

When was the last time you asked your family, “How can I help?”

*Speaking of Twitter, I’ve been doing some thinking about my social media-ness since I put my personal blog to sleep. I’m going to keep my @impressyourkids twitter account as a blog update only. Kind of like a blog’s RSS feed, so you can see our newest posts as they publish. My @oohamanda account is where I’ll actively tweet about my life, fun finds for you and basic weirdness that happens on Twitter. Please make sure you’re following both accounts–and say hi to me on Twitter if you haven’t before!

disclosure: I was given a ticket to the Orange Conference to attend as a blogger/media.

both photos by Poppy Thomas-Hill. additional text by me.

We went camping over Spring Break and got bitten by the bug–the Camping Bug! We had such a great time–no showers and all!

We set up at a walk-in site at a semi-close-to-us State Park. We had to keep our  food in the truck so the Black Bears wouldn’t come to our campsite and eat it. (Whoa!) We all slept in one tent, cooked food over the campfire (mostly thanks to this fabu book), played cards on the picnic table, hiked to a waterfall and even caught a fish!

Inside our tent the kids slept on mats with sleeping bags while my husband and I had inflatable mattresses. Halfway through the first night, my mattress was about 40% inflated. I think I slept about 2.5 hours that night. After a full day of fun in the woods, I was so ready for bed the next night. I still didn’t sleep well and when Asa woke up whining at about 7:00am, I could not handle it. He wanted breakfast.

Breakfast! Breakfast meant hiking down a rocky path to the truck and back up and starting a fire and cooking and dishing it up while I stand there unshowered in the same clothes I wore the day before! I was not happy to hear his demands!

The more my sleepy boy whined, the louder he got. And the louder he got, I knew the more campers could hear him in their own tents. So, what to do? Give in to a whiny boy when I’m barely awake? Spank him and have someone think I’m beating my child in a tent? Or let him run around in the woods by himself?

I angrily sat up, grabbed Asa, threw his clothes on and roughly said to my husband, “Either we ignore him or someone–NOT ME–is going to have to start a fire to make breakfast.” My husband looked at me (at least I think he did, I wasn’t wearing my glasses) and said forcefully, “Lay back down, Amanda.”

I did.

In fact, I covered my head with my sleeping bag. I turned away from my family and seethed on my partially inflated mattress. My husband kindly got dressed and took the kids outside to start a fire and visit the bathroom.

Meanwhile I’m throwing fiery darts at myself, “Why are you such a bad mother? Your husband has to reprimand you because you can’t even speak civilly to your own children? What is wrong with you? You know Asa’s tired. He is in a tent. In the woods. What’s he supposed to do? If the kids lashed out that way, you’d punish them! What are you thinking?!” It may have even been a little meaner than that. I felt absolutely horrible.

While they were still in the bathroom, I rolled out of my sleeping bag, pulled on a hoodie, some jeans and my glasses. While I walked to the truck to get food, I prayed. Something really spiritual like, “God. What is wrong with me? Help!” Then I remembered a verse I learned in 6th grade,

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, My Strength and My Redeemer.
(Psalm 19:14 NIV)

Not only were my words harmful to my family, my thoughts (I-want-to-sleep-I’m-not-getting-up AND I’m-a-terrible-mom) were harmful to me!

I said the verse out loud as I gathered eggs, cheese and bacon from the truck. I hiked up the hill still muttering it to myself. Then I quietly walked to each family member (they didn’t say much when they saw me arrive), looked them straight in the eyes and quietly said, “I’m sorry for getting angry and yelling this morning.” I even asked my husband twice to forgive me.

As usual, apology became a lovely perfume. We laughed and talked and enjoyed one another as I made breakfast. The rest of our day was without (much) drama. We were sad to see our time in the big woods come to an end.

I walked away with two smoky bags of laundry, a cooler full of mostly warm and soaking wet food and a renewed purpose to speak God’s Word. My heart was so stubborn, so selfish and so upset that morning there was NO WAY I could have found it in myself to be nice, happy or humble. I can see myself spending the rest of the day arguing (at least in my head) with my family. It would have been easy for me to justify my behavior, ignore their feelings and simply excuse myself from guilt. The only way I was able to ask for forgiveness, swallow my pride and enjoy the rest of the day was through speaking God’s Word. I must have said Psalm 19:14 a hundred times that day. It was a constant prayer that trained my spirit, my heart and mind to line up with God’s Word.

For the word of God is living and active.
Sharper than any double-edged sword,
it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow;
it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
(Hebrews 4:12)

Have you seen God’s Word come alive in your life?

linked to Titus 2sdays and Women Living Well

The following post is from one of my favorite people in the world, Jill at Diaper Diaries:

source: pinprick

I love Impress Your Kids. It is in my reader, I absolutely adore its author Amanda, and I am committed to raising my kids to know God. But can I be honest with you? Sometimes I read it and it just makes me feel like a failure as a mom.

Now I know that is the last thing on earth Impress Your Kids is meant to do. It is meant to encourage and bless moms who desperately want their children to grow up with a foundation in Christ.

But I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I have done crafts with my kids. Just thinking about doing them gives me hives. I read about all these adorable crafts Amanda does with her kids, and meaningful crafts with deep spiritual lessons no less, and think…. well honestly I think, just shoot me now.

Is it possible to be a great mom and hate doing crafts with them?

Here is the deal as I see it (so you can take that for what it is worth). I have read a decent amount of the Bible nowhere have I found a verse that says “Thou must be crafty.” I know the Proverbs 31 woman sews clothes, but it never talks about her taking egg cartons and turning them into caterpillars to teach her children about the resurrection.

There is so much mommy guilt to go around. Working vs. Stay at Home. Breastfeeding vs. Bottle. Let’s not add crafty vs. hopelessly unable to use glue without losing it. I am pretty sure if it is my job to represent Jesus to my children then crafting is the last thing I should be doing. Nothing brings out my non-Christlikeness like glitter.

So I save the crafts for VBS and Sunday school. Oh and Grandma Day. But we do a ton of singing about Jesus. We do plays and ballets and concerts. We might even do a play acting out a bible story here and there (sans puppets. Puppets are creepy). {editors note: Jill, puppets are NOT creepy!}

But it doesn’t really matter what your thing is. What matters is that we are investing quality time with our children. Spend time looking for teachable moments to point them towards Jesus. Listen when they ask questions about their faith. And most importantly all the crafts, songs and puppets in the world aren’t going to matter if our lives don’t model what we teach them about.

Are we focused on the right thing? Are we focused on the right person? At the end of the day it isn’t remotely about us and how good of a mom we are. We don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to have all the answers. But our lives should point our kids towards the One that is perfect and the One that is the answer to their every question.

How do YOU point your kids toward God?