Parenting in the Pew

If you didn’t make it to MOPS this month, we missed you!  But we don’t want you to miss out on the wonderful message we had from Nancy Hicks -Women's Outreach Coordinator at COS- on engaging our children in the worship experience, so read on for a little recap!

Nancy has been married for 20 years and has two teenage sons.  She has a great deal of experience in music and a history of leading worship.

She shared that her prayer for her children has always been Deuteronomy 6:5:

⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Because we can do things that work against our prayers for our children, we need to pay attention and establish a philosophy on how we’re going to introduce our children to God.  The two ways our children learn about God at this point are:

1.  You and your marriage

2.  Worship Experience

Nancy feels that we should focus on providing an age-appropriate, meaningful worship experience for our children.  When it comes to including our children in “corporate worship” or church service, she’d like us to address our children’s heart instead of focusing on trying to fix certain behaviors.  She’s less concerned that our children behave perfectly in worship service but that they are having a meaningful worship experience.  While we don’t want our children to be a distraction to others during worship, we also want to be careful that they are not tuning out from the experience.

Nancy has five suggestions for making the most of Sunday worship:

1. Prepare!
1. Worship begins Saturday night!  Avoid a late night if it will interfere with Sunday morning.  Lay out the kids’ clothes the night before.  Keep Sunday morning as simple as possible so you can keep the Sabbath day holy.

2. Worship Together
1. Keep your children with you during the worship service.  Nancy stepped down as worship leader when her children were little because she wanted to train her children to worship.

3. Engage Your Children in Worship
1. Instead of just trying to occupy them with a toy and keep them quiet during the service, work on engaging your child in the service.  Nancy gave a great example of how to do this.  During a song, Nancy would instruct her children to squeeze her hand every time they heard a certain word, such as “He”.  This helped train the children to listen and pay attention. 
2. Tithing is another way to engage the children.  If your children are old enough for an allowance, teach them to contribute their own funds to the offering plate.  Otherwise, just let them drop your offering in the plate as it comes around. 

4. Model Worship
1. Some Sunday mornings we’re frazzled or just not into it for some reason.  Nancy reminds us that in the Psalms, David coached his soul to worship.
2. Do your children see you worship during the week?

                                                              i.      Consider doing devotions with your children.  Make them age-appropriate and interesting. Nancy recounted giving her children pots and pans and telling her children to “make a joyful noise to the Lord.” 

5. What do you do when you blow it?
1. When we lose our cool or hurt our example in some way, if we come to God with a broken spirit our worship experience is usually more authentic

Psalm 51:15-17 (King James Version)

 ¹⁵O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

 ¹⁶For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.

 ¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Nancy left us with the following reminder.  Pray, pray, pray for our children and thank God, humbly, whenever we see our children exhibit excitement toward God.  Ultimately, it’s all in His hands. 

The Comedic Wisdom of Julie Barnhill

We all know the mama that has it all together…she’s got her make up on, her children are properly dressed, and she has the tissues you forgot to shove into your handbag as you rushed out the door 17 minutes late this morning.  BUT…

The woman you think has it all together may not.

A surprising idea about yourself as a mother is your potential to cause harm.  Even the mama who looks to have it all together may have lost it this morning.  We may think of “causing harm” to be physical, but there are many ways in which we have the potential to cause our children harm.  Physical, spiritual, and mental/verbal harm can stick with a young one for a long time.

The put-together mama needs grace and forgiveness the same as those of us who feel like we are constantly disheveled and running late. 

Parenting issues bring on anger.  If you are struggling in a certain area, make yourself AWARE of that weakness and make the effort to overcome that downfall.

Anger leads to guilt and guilt piles up.   Julie spoke briefly about depression, poignantly stating that there are not Christian and non-Christian diseases.  Depression is NOT a non-Christian disease, and if you feel that you may be suffering from depression SEEK HELP from a pastor and/or counselor.  It may be the best thing you could do for your family and yourself.  Remember that “NOTHING you have said/done/thought is beyond HIS grace.”

The background of your life helps explain where you are.

Julie had abandonment issues stemming from her father and stepfather.  Therefore, that showed up in her parenting and became an issue.  During times of difficulty Julie thought about abandoning her children thinking that they would be safer without her, trying to run away from her anger instead of dealing with it and overcoming it.

YOU ARE A SUPERSTAR—you are so complex…realize and appreciate it—you are amazing!!!  Think about all that you do for your family.  Julie tells us about a moment where she was cooking, discussing finances with her husband, keeping a child away from the hot stove, and answering another child’s question.  In that moment it dawned on her, she is (and you are) a SUPERSTAR!!!  Give yourself a break, don’t hold yourself to standards that are too high for you and your family.

Thoughts on kids or “Things we try to change”

The way they are

Many of you may be trying to change a child that is actually just like you.

            Do not to change your child, God gave you your child.

            Find and use strategies for change rather than having to deal with regret.

                        **Know yourself and know your children. 

The things they do

            They break things.  They say things—they are children!!  You can’t hold them accountable for every little mishap.

What they say

You get mad and stuff comes out of your mouth and they repeat it—sometimes we have to hear it in order to see what we are doing to them.   This can turn into verbal abuse.

The meaning of abuse: improper or excessive use.  This can be true with words, not just actions!

Julie tells a story about her sister-in-law speaking to her son.  The SIL makes a snide/degrading comment to her son and Julie hears it.  She then repeats it to her SIL in the same tone and voice in which the SIL originally spoke.  It was only then that the SIL realized the harm she was causing her son with her words.  Sometimes we have to hear it to understand the possible effects.

Improper situations we may find ourselves in:

Spiritual: We say to our child “God is watching…” in order to illicit the proper behavior.

Physical: You may grab your child.  Realize that you are out of control.

Strategies for change:

Understand that you cannot get there without God.

Apart from God, changing out heart it is impossible.

Note the characteristics of the child that make you angry     

            -you may find the same character in yourself

            -How can you learn to love that in them?

Physical situations

You lose your temper.

            -Find the source: for example, is there a lack of sleep?

Choose one thing that you are going to work on. 

Julie decided that her words and sarcasm were well worth working on in order to help build up her family.

Changes take time-be patient!  You may slip here or there, but changing one thing at a time in order to stop causing your family harm is SO worth the effort!

Focus on TRUTH: Children are a blessing.

TRUTH: “You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.”

Truth changes us—our thinking, our heart, our life.

For yourself:

-Realize you cannot “do it all.”

-Find space for yourself with girlfriends.

-Find a girlfriend who makes you laugh.

-Seek/show authenticity, realness, and vulnerability.

-Go to someone to help you make peace with your past (and move on to a better future).

Books by Julie Ann Barnhill (all can be found on Amazon):

She’s Gonna Blow!: Real Help for Moms Dealing with Anger

Motherhood: The Guilt That Keeps on Giving

Scandalous Grace

Exquisite Hope

Radical Forgiveness

‘Til Debt Do Us Part