Tag Archives: parenting

Laudable Linkage

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I’ve discovered some great reads around the Web recently. Here are the latest:

Treat Yourself to the Voice of God. “We’re prone to take one of the single greatest gifts available to us and treat it as a life-sucking obligation rather than a life-giving opportunity.”

After my post about Principles For Interpreting the Bible, I was pleased to see “Contending For Old School Hermeneutics” said some of the same things but also said some things I didn’t.

The Whole Sentence Matters. An illustration of the above, how one “popular” verse changes meaning a bit when read with the verse above it.

Kindness Changes Everything, and it’s different from just being “nice.”

Waiting to Die, HT to Challies. Working through the dark thoughts and emotions that come with a terminal diagnosis.

On Empty Nests, Christian Mommy Guilt, and Misplaced Identity by Jen Wilkin. “It’s as if our love is a cosmic batch of heart-shaped cookies we must divvy up. Give anyone more cookies than Jesus and your identity is misplaced. But shouldn’t there be a way to give Jesus all the cookies without depriving our families as well?”

A Prayer For Kindred Spirits. “The nurturing of just one kindred spirit can be enough to keep the voices at bay. It’s as if this secret I’ve been carrying around, afraid to share, has been loosed into the world, and it’s okay. There’s nothing like the deep, soul hug which takes place when realizing you’re amongst those who know the kind of person you really are. And it’s okay.”

3 Reasons Your Small Group Is Not the Church.

4 Practical Guidelines For Reading Old Testament Stories.

Do’s and Don’ts For Visiting Someone With Alzheimer’s.

Everyone Can Do Something.

9 Things You Should Know About Mother Teresa.

[Food and the Bible] When Eating Is Sinful.

Spelling Out Unconditional Love.

The High Calling of Bringing Order From Chaos. Sometimes I feel frustrated that this is such a constant battle, but this helps give it perspective.

Old Books, Disagreements, Loving People, HT to Worthwhile Books. Reasons to read books that contain things you disagree with.

Permission Not To Change a Thing. With all the nice photos on Pinterest and plethora of decorating and house-flipping shows, sometimes we feel a constant urge to do something to our homes. It’s certainly not wrong to redecorate or freshen things up or even do a grand remodeling. But it’s also ok not to.

With the 15th anniversary of 9/11 tomorrow, there are a lot of articles about it. I’ve only read a couple in depth so far: “We’re the only plane in the sky” about the president and those with him the first 8 or so hours (warning: a bit of bad language) and The Story Behind the Haunting 9/11 Photo of a Man Falling From the Twin Towers.

That’s it for today – hope you have a good Saturday.

Laudable Linkage

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It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve been able to share interesting reads I have come across, so here we go!

Do Not Grieve the Holy Spirit.

Michael J. Kruger has been posting a series called “Taking Back Christianese,” where he discusses common phrases in Christendom that may have some merit but may also be misinterpreted or misrepresented. I particularly enjoyed “God Is Always Pleased With You” and “The Christian Life Is All About Being Transparent and Vulnerable.” I think the HT for sending me to these goes to Challies – I forgot to note it.

Lay Aside the Weight of Irritability. Ouch! One of my besetting sins…

STOP! Read This Before You Post Another RIP on Social Media. It’s so easy to share news so quickly, but we have to stop and ask ourselves if it’s our news to share. It can cause problems and hurt deeply if something is whisked through social media before the family involved has even had time to contact the rest of the family and close friends.

How to Help Your Children Walk Away. It’s kind of a sad truth that part of our training of our children is training them to ultimately go away from us. It’s good and right that they will ultimately live on their own, and it’s exciting to see how God leads, but there is a wistfulness about it for moms as well. This is about some of those smaller times apart as training along the way.

Does a Husband Have the Authority? deals with taking a husband’s authority in the home way farther than the Bible instructs.

Rosaria Butterfield: No Free Passes. Interesting interview about life since the publication of her book, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, particularly dealing with protesters when she speaks at colleges.

Self Publishing a Book? Read This Strong Warning.

And finally, I am not a big fan of the organ, though an occasional Bach suite on an old pipe organ that I can watch, and not just listen to, hits the spot. This isn’t a pipe organ, but it’s mesmerizing. As the Story Warren said, the organ is a ” full-body contact instrument.” I can’t fathom being coordinated enough to do this:

Happy Saturday!

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some good reads discovered recently:

Women: Trade Self-Worth For Awe and Wonder. Yes!

Trouble, We’ve Been Expecting You. Excellent.

Stop Trying to Make the Bible Relevant to Teenagers, HT to Challies, by which he means, you don’t have to present it in a way to try to make it “cool” to them. Its truth relates to all of us: just show them how it speaks to their needs.

Back to the Early Church? Excellent. Sometimes people idealize the early church in Acts, but it had its problems, too.

On Bible study:

What Is Bible Study?

4 Reasons Why Every Bible Reader Should Do Word Studies.

On prayer:

The Busy Mom’s Guide to Prayer. Good tips not just for moms.

4 Ways to Keep a Fresh Prayer Life.

On caregiving and dealing with aging parents:

What I’ll Say to My Children If I’m Diagnosed With Alzheimer’s.

What Caregivers Know and You Can, Too.

Her New Happy.

On parenting:

As Seemed Best to Them. Yes! Parenting is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor.

Why We Don’t Punish Our Kids. Not advocating not dealing with sin, but explaining the difference between punishment and discipline.

And to end on a smile…I saw this on Pinterest and cracked up:

Lego

Happy Saturday!

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Laudable Linkage

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Here are some noteworthy reads discovered recently:

Antidote to False Teaching: Stability and Growth in The Knowledge of Christ. Quote: “The single most effective method for studying any book of the Bible is accessible to every believer.”

3 Truths to Speak to Your Temptation

Imagination and Evil. Quote: “Children’s books that scrub any evil from the story are burgeoning. The conflicts are based on misunderstandings or due to a different perspective. They are easily solved with a pleasant discussion. It’s very sanitary! But are we telling our children the truth by painting an evil-free, pain-free world? Stories are not innocuous; they convey a worldview just as powerfully, if not more so, than direct statements.”

Me Before You: Dear Hollywood, Why Do You Want Me Dead? “11-year-old wheelchair athlete tells the culture to get over itself”

Check Your Words at the Door

My Husband Doesn’t Put the Kids to Bed, and It’s Really Okay

I’m not sure why I keep reading Jess Connell. I enjoy her posts but she mainly writes about raising children, and I am past that stage. Maybe to recommend her to others? Anyway, here are three that struck a chord with me lately:

Motherhood 101: The Class We Never Got. Learning “on-the-job” while feeling overwhelmed.

How To Set Your Kids Up For Obedience.

Is Homeschooling a Safeguard Against Rebellion?

Praise Him in the Hallway.

More Weird Things Writers Say.

Imagine If Ebooks Came First.

And to end with a smile…

Cover squirrel

Husky
Happy Saturday!

 

Laudable Linkage

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It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to share noteworthy reads recently found around the Web. Hope you’ll find some of them interesting as well.

How the Lonely, Invisible, and Unnoticed Can Glorify God.

Taking the Risk With Christian Community.

Ten Reasons Why the Church Gathers.

Don’t Always Follow Your Conscience.

The Bare Essentials: What I Tell My Daughters About Modesty.

The Story of a Male-identifying Little Girl Who Didn’t Transition. “When we begin to tell boys that they must act ‘this’ way, and that girls should act ‘that’ way, and that if they don’t, they are transgender;  we put children in these tiny boxes that create confusion, frustration, and sometimes, lifelong psychological and emotional damage.”

Me, the Lord, Pizza, and Celiac Disease.

A Call For Plodding Bloggers.

The Backside Blessings of Blogging.

Brown Sugar Toast, a new-to-me blog by Christa Threlfall, has been running a series titled Dwelling Richly: An Interview Series on Studying the Bible in which she interviews various women about their time with the Word of God. I’ve just come into it recently, but I have enjoyed catching up with a few from women I know (Claudia Barba) or know of (Mardi Collier, Pat Berg, Jen Wilkin) as well as others I don’t know.

Alicia Reagan, the friend of a friend, shared this video of the new movie “Me Before You,” the trailer of which looks pretty cute, but the ending is horrible and a step backwards for disabled people. Sherry discussed the book here.

And finally, I thought this was really cute: a day in the life of a panda zookeeper. I guess it doesn’t pay to rake leaves with pandas around. 🙂 Love how roly-poly they are.

The Mother’s Hymn

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The Mother’s Hymn

by William Cullen Bryant.

Lord, who ordainest for mankind
Benignant toils and tender cares!
We thank Thee for the ties that bind
The mother to the child she bears.

We thank Thee for the hopes that rise,
Within her heart, as, day by day,
The dawning soul, from those young eyes,
Looks, with a clearer, steadier ray.

And grateful for the blessing given
With that dear infant on her knee,
She trains the eye to look to heaven,
The voice to lisp a prayer to Thee.

Such thanks the blessed Mary gave,
When, from her lap, the Holy Child,
Sent from on high to seek and save
The lost of earth, looked up and smiled.

All-Gracious! grant, to those that bear
A mother’s charge, the strength and light
To lead the steps that own their care
In ways of Love, and Truth, and Right.

(HT to Ivory Spring, where I saw this a couple of years ago).

My heart echoes the last stanza especially, even though mine are grown men now.

Happy Mother’s Day!

mothers-day-flowers-13

Laudable Linkage

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Unfortunately Delicious.com, where I have been saving links for 8-10 years now, has been down for a week or two now. I hope it gets fixed soon – I would hate to think I’d lost all those, especially some I have returned to multiple times. It may be time to investigate Evernote or a different source. What do you use to save links you want to remember and return to?

Anyway – for now I have just been making a list of them. As you might expect, with Mother’s Day on Sunday, there have been a lot of posts relating to mothers this week.

To My Friends Who Still Have Their Mothers.

This Stage of Life? It’s Hard.

Don’t Blink.

Joy at Rejoicing in the Present has been running a series on moms in different situations. The two that stood out to me were A Letter to the Mommy-Heart Whose Dream Didn’t Come True and A Letter to Moms With Physical Limitations, but there are also posts about losing a child and having special needs children.

Coping With Verbal Abuse when a mom has Alzheimer’s.

And a couple not relating to mothers directly:

5 Question Checklist for Blog Commenting.

40 Most Valuable Toys From Your Childhood.

Susan at Girls In White Dresses is hosting a giveaway for an ESV Family Devotional Bible.

And finally, this cracked me up:

Happy Saturday!

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I’m back with my periodic round-up of note-worthy reads discovered online in the last couple of weeks:

Called Out to Gather. Good discussion of the Biblical teaching about the church.

Spiritual Drafting and the Dangers of Christian Complacency. “We all benefit from observing other Christians and seeing how they live the Christian life. This is God’s grace to us, giving us men and women who are worthy of imitation, putting people in our lives who are stronger than we are spiritually. But having such strong believers in our lives is meant to drive us to imitate them, not to simply take advantage of their efforts. Their example is meant to spur us on to greater earnestness in our spiritual lives, greater discipline in our pursuit of holiness.”

When NOT Helping Hurts. A missionary wrestles with the dilemma of when help is actually needed and when it fosters dependency.

Three Things You Should Not Say to a Newlywed.

Lessons From Little People: Life at Child Speed. Some go forward at full-tilt, some like to stop and explore and ponder.

Evolution and a Universe as Young as Humanity.

Hermeneutical Fidelity – Key Bible Passages in the Same Sex Marriage Debate. Answers to revisionist interpretations concerning homosexuality.

Why N. D. Wilson Writes Scary Stories for Children. I’ve not read one of his books, but his philosophy here reminds me of C. S. Lewis’s quote that to withhold “the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil…would be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the Ogpu and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”

And I thought this was cute, especially how much the dog’s tail was wagging all the way through!

Happy Saturday!

Laudable Linkage

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Here is a short but good list of reads discovered in the last week or so:

How We Read the Bible Matters, HT to True Woman.

5 Ways to Wound Immature Believers.

Love Ain’t Easy, Part One: Making Changes. I’ve been enjoying Melissa’s series this week on “Love Ain’t Easy,” particularly this first segment.

Bathsheba’s Legacy – The Woman Behind Proverbs 31. Loved this look into Bathsheba’s teaching to her son. I also liked the balanced way David and Bathsheba’s sin was discussed here. I’ve seen/heard the fault for it blamed primarily on one or the other, usually through speculation rather than Biblical revelation, but there was likely fault on both sides.

The Great Parental Freak Out. Loved this.

Let Them Wait: 5 phrases that are OK to use (and your child will survive!)

5 Pieces of Writing Advice from Some of The Most Influential Christian Writers Alive.

And don’t forget the giveaway for Adam Blumer’s great mystery, The Tenth Plague.

Happy Saturday!

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some noteworthy reads discovered in the last week or so:

The Christian Life Isn’t Meant to Be Effortless. Very helpful, especially dealing with a couple of ways of looking at Christian life that I thought were a little off but I couldn’t quite articulate why.

When God Gives Us Too Much to Handle.

Love and Entitlement. “But, you’re getting it all wrong, girls. Love isn’t a laundry list of behavior requirements.”

Member of the Family. Interesting thoughts about the difference between books where a child character feels like he is contributing to the family vs. the ones popular with the “misfit/outcast archetype in children’s literature. There is a strong trend in fiction for young people that consists of jettisoning of one’s God-given family and cobbling together a new one on a road trip.” I agree we need more of the former.

Expositional Imposters. Though this is written to preachers, I think the points he makes are good for general Bible study as well. We can pull the wrong lesson from a passage if we’re not reading it carefully.

I’m Done Making My Kid’s Childhood Magical, HT to Ann. Nothing wrong with a lot of what is mentioned, but I agree every day, every lunch, etc. doesn’t need to be Pinterest-worthy, and there’s a lot of magic for childhood in everyday life.

Your Middle-Aged Brain Is Not on the Decline, HT to Janet. That’s encouraging!

Bringing the Prairie to the Hood. “Black people (at least the ones I know) do not watch Little House on the Prairie.…So how did Little House on the Prairie mosey its way into my Southeast D.C. home?”

And to end with a smile:

Paper

spiderHappy Saturday!