Transcript Season

(Shared with the IAHE blog, too)

It's transcript season at our house, and I've been reminiscing.  One of my dear girls has started her last year of high school.  We have been through so much and learned so much together.  And most of it could never be reflected on a transcript.

Oh, yes, she has learned to balance chemical equations, to make bread and berry pie, to use imaginary numbers and subordinating conjunctions.  She can play the piano and tell you who Thaddeus Kosciuszko was.  But a transcript could never reflect who she has become.

In the progress of gathering up samples of her work for a portfolio, I came across a notebook wherein lay perhaps some of her most significant work.  It was work that went far deeper than history facts or geometry proofs.  It penetrated her heart and ignited something inside her.  This work hadn't been assigned for an official class.  It was what she had done during the time she devoted to God's Word at the beginning of the day during one of her school years.  The notebook contains the notes she made as she read through the Old Testament books of Joshua and Judges.

As I read through tears of joy, I saw that she had carefully catalogued, verse by verse, what was taking place, grouped the verses into logical divisions, and summarized the content.  She made observations on the overarching themes, and then applied them to her own life and the life of our nation with incredible insight.  God challenged her to align herself with His priorities, and she said, "Yes!"  He spoke, He revealed His faithfulness, and her faith grew.  And mine grew, too, as I read what the Lord had taught her.

Contrary to popular opinions of some, studying God's Word is no dry, meaningless, intellectual exercise; it has been a living and powerful shaping force in her life.  As I observe her attitudes today and hear her speak with passion, I know that the living God who revealed Himself in those passages has molded her faith with His own hand.

As we spend each passing day with our children, let's not forget that the most relevant things they will ever learn are the spiritual truths from God's Word that will anchor them long after they've left home and long after we have moved on to heaven ahead of them.

And more rewarding than anything that could be recorded on a transcript is knowing that our children's names are recorded in the Book Of Life.

". . . You know in all your hearts and in all your souls

that not one word of all the good words

which the LORD your God spoke concerning you has failed;

all have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed."

Joshua 23:14b

Do Not Attempt This At Home?

It stopped me in my tracks.  Surely this couldn’t be for real.  But there it was, right there on the shelf, no figment of my imagination.

What was the puzzle?  Well, I had been walking that curiously crooked way that I usually walk when I’m in the library, in a forward direction, generally, but with my head turned left and tipped over on its side so I can read the book titles as I walk.  But this one was so big I’d have had no problem reading it standing right side up.  At nearly two inches thick, it had a title that arrested me; it was of the irony of it.  This massive book was titled An Introduction to the Gospel of John.

You can’t be serious, I silently remarked to the author, who, of course, couldn’t hear me.  An introduction?  Okay, just how many pages are there in this book?  I hoisted it off the shelf because I just had to know.  There were over three hundred.

It’s no wonder so many people don’t read the Bible.  It’s no wonder they’re intimidated out of even cracking it open.  Someone’s writing books they’re supposed to read first that are bigger than the Bible itself.

In my Bible, the Gospel of John spans merely 29 pages.  You could read the whole Gospel of John ten times before you’d finish that Introduction book, and, with the Holy Spirit’s help, you’d have a better understanding of what the book’s all about than you would by the time you slogged through the Introduction.

The Bible is meant to be accessible, user friendly.  John actually limited the size of his book.  He ends the book by saying, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books which were written.”  John 21:25

But what was included was enough.  John explains,

“Many other signs therefore Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not in this book; but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”  John 20:30-31

If there were more that we absolutely had to have, God would have given it to us.

That’s not to say there isn’t a place for commentaries or study notes, but don’t be afraid to jump right in and start with God’s Word.  And don’t be afraid to turn your children loose on the raw Word of God either.

Your Bible carries no warning label, no “Special knowledge required; do not attempt to read this at home!”  Yes, there’s mystery, but He means for us to know Him.  Yes, God’s ways are masterfully and intricately orchestrated, but His message is no less masterfully communicated.  

In Earnest

". . . Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men . . .

Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ,

as though God were making an appeal through us;

we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God."

II Corinthians 5:11a, 20

I was convicted and inspired all at once.  This taking it to heart*  business is contagious.  Read on, and I'll explain.

Our son, Ben, had written a short story that he was excited for me to read.  A few nights ago, I was sitting on the bean bag in his room, reading his story aloud, as he put clean sheets on his bed.

In this story, the life of one Charles Wrangler, a rather bitter, disillusioned older man, Providentially crosses with that of a polite, young, Christian man, named Justin, as they find themselves on the same cross-country Amtrak train.  As the story unfolds, the reader is drawn into the ensuing discussions between the two very unlikely friends.  Justin looks beyond Mr. Wrangler's cynical attitude and obvious hurts to good-naturedly inquire about Wrangler's future, not just the retirement he's saving for and is hoping will be more fulfilling that his exhausting executive job, but the future after that--his eternal future.  Part way though the story I paused, and Ben wanted to know what I thought of his characters.  How did they come across?

I said I thought the older man seemed grumpy and gruff.  I sat for a moment in silence, wondering if perhaps he was gruff because Justin wouldn't let him maneuver around his questions.  "Justin's been pretty persistent," I observed aloud, thinking that maybe Justin's character should be mellowed a bit.

"But Mama, wouldn't you be?!"  At this point Ben had emphatically flopped himself across the bed and was hanging partly off, facing me and in earnest.  "If you knew you had only a day and a half with someone on a train, wouldn't you be trying to talk about eternity?  Wouldn't you want to see his life changed?  You might never see him again!  We need to live every day like we don't know how much time we have left!"

He had me.  And I had been willing to consider mellowing Justin. And for what?  So Justin could avoid an awkward moment?  To make Mr. Wrangler more comfortable while his life careened recklessly toward hell?  What was I thinking?

Justin hadn't been unkind or rude; in fact, he'd been compassionate and helpful even as Wrangler bordered on a being a bully to everyone.  Justin had been persistent, yes, and in earnest, like Ben was, because he understood that the stakes were incredibly high.

So I sat there convicted.  Convicted and inspired at the same time.  Convicted because I wondered if I'd have been as earnest as Justin.  But inspired by the call to make the most of every opportunity.

*"It is better to go to a house of mourning
    than to go to a house of feasting,

    Because that [death] is the end of every man,

    and the living takes it to heart."

    Ecclesiastes 7:2

To read the previous Taking It To Heart posts, click here.

Taking It To Heart

(I shared this post with the IAHE blog, too, this week.)

I wasn't yet a mother when I first heard of the 'Terrible Two's'.  I have to tell you I was really troubled by the term.  It wasn't that I feared what would befall our household when we, Lord willing, would have a two-year-old of our own.  No, it was the fact that the term was being used in the very presence of the two-year-old personages being described in such terms.

What must the little ones have thought?  Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've always been inclined to think that our little ones comprehend far more that we often realize.  I determined then and there never to use the term to describe children, in or out of a child's presence.

And I determined that, if, Lord willing, we should be blessed with a two-year-old, we should refer to that year as the 'Treasured Two's' instead.

Granted, there are particular days with children, or even phases of life, which may present more challenges, shall we say, than others.  But it's amazing how much our own attitudes can affect the entire atmosphere of our home and imprint permanent messages on young hearts.  Even in the context of challenges, the valuing of our relationships should never diminish.

It's in this context that today I am 'taking it to heart'  (as I wrote about in the previous post titled The House of Mourning).  None of us knows just how many days we will have on this earth, but the number is indeed finite.  The question becomes, then, as we take that to heart, "What do I most want my children to remember?"


Will their memories of preschool days be of a mommy who was continually checking her watch to see how many minutes were left to 'endure' until nap time, when her relief would surely come?   Or will their memories be of a mommy who obviously treasured each moment her children were awake, openly grateful for the sweet conversations and chances to pour truth into their little hearts and minds?

Will the children who attend school outside the home hear their mommy singing 'It's The Most Wonderful Time of The Year' when she can't wait to get them out of the house at the start of each school year?  (I've actually heard this.)  Or will their mommy be even more excited than they are for a school-cancelled snow day to spend together?  (Thankfully, I've seen this, too!)

Are our homeschooled children conscious that we are just checking off a list of stuff that must be done together for school?  Or do they know that their mama, though exhausted at times, would gladly choose their life of learning together over anything else she might be doing with her time?

In the context of what I want my children to remember, what should I be communicating?  How should I be saying it?  By what actions?  How often?  In what tone?  How does what I want my children to remember translate into daily practicalities?

Yes, indeed, the living takes it to heart. . .

. . . ONE YEAR LATER . . . The View From The Top

It’s been one year.  One year since the day our son, Ben, went running at top speed across wet grass after a runaway kite and slipped and broke his hip.  Ever the optimist, his verbal reaction in the emergency room, to the news that he would be having surgery to repair the break, was, “It’s hard to keep a cheerful personality down for long.”  Cheerful he was on the outside, but it still wasn’t easy.

Yes, thirteen years old, and broke his hip.  Who does that?  I’ll tell you who—the one for whom God had an out of the ordinary plan to refine his character.  Some lessons were learned right away.  He wrote about eight pages in the first six weeks about what the Lord was teaching him, and more in the next few weeks.  I shared some of his insights earlier on this blog.  However, the perspective that a year brings has highlighted even more character changes we’d have never foreseen or even guessed in a million years.

Earlier this week, we saw Ben’s orthopedic surgeon on the one-year anniversary of his fall.  She was very impressed with the healing.  In the new x-rays, you can’t even see where the break in the bone was, except, of course, for the three telltale screws, which bear testimony to something out of the ordinary.  Humanly speaking, there had been a moderate risk of part of the bone dying and crumbling, requiring a hip replacement.  We are so grateful for the Lord’s gift of adequate blood supply to the bone, keeping it alive.  Ben thanked the surgeon for her good work, but she said that his body did the healing, to which Ben responded that it was actually the Lord who did that.

After we got out to the car to return home, Ben remarked that, if he had it to do over, he wouldn’t have it any other way.  His sister’s reaction to that was that she wouldn’t go chasing the kite.  But Ben was serious.  We asked him to elaborate. . .

“Can this really be happening?” I thought, when I heard the news at the hospital.  “Why me?  Why Now?  Why did this have to happen?”  Well, some might call it being unlucky, but I call it Providence.  God decided that I should break my leg, go to the hospital, and spend the next several months getting back on my feet.  But it wasn’t just some random decision on God’s part.  He says in His word that He knows the plans He has for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us.  I believe that God used this time to really grow me, and teach me.

The first thing God taught me is that He always has a reason for our difficulties.  So, back to my original question, “Why did this have to happen?”  Well, I believe that God brings into His children’s lives these little things called trials.  Now the word “trial” has a natural negative connotation it, but that really shouldn’t be.  We think of trials as very hard, difficult times in our lives, something like climbing a huge mountain that never seems to end.  But we learn through God’s word that God thinks of trials as a way to grow us and show us new things, something like the amazing, beautiful view off the top of that mountain.  To sum that up, man mostly thinks of trials in terms of the climb and difficulty, or the view from the bottom, but God sees trials, not only as the climb, but also as a way to grow us and show us new things.  In other words, God views our mountainous trials from the top, seeing both our climb and the view.  He always has a reason for our mountains that is for our good.

            Something else that God taught me is that He is faithful.  You probably can’t imagine the size of the inward gulp that I had when we heard the results of the x-rays. A broken leg—that meant surgery.  Now I don’t know about you, but I think most people my age aren’t in the business of having surgery.  I’m not!  So when 8 o’clock rolled around the next morning (the scheduled time for surgery), I was quite nervous.  But after we had prayed, and gone down several floors, and into the surgery area, I had a lack of fear that I can’t explain, other than it being God’s peace.  I woke up after surgery and all was just fine. God is faithful.  This really had an impact on me, because if God can get me through the most scary and difficult time in my life so far, then, of course, He can get me through my math lesson!  God is faithful.

            Lastly, God taught me something regarding work.  Long difficult math problems, working outside pulling weeds, and doing chores were not something I used to enjoy at all.  And now I will use my two favorite words…but God changed me while I was sitting down!  Not being able to do so much for so long made me want to be able to do work.  I mentioned earlier the second thing God taught me, and it applies to this, too.  If God can get me through my experiences at the hospital, then God can certainly get me though my everyday life!   God has changed me.  Now I like work, I know that it is a good thing that God has given us to do, which honors Him and parents, and I know that God can get me through anything (and that includes every kind of work under the sun).

            Someone could say that I’ve had a very unlucky year full of difficult times and climbs, but I say it has been a wonderful time of refining by God.  Looking back on this year, I can see both the climb and the outcome, and I know that it was worth it.  If I had this year to do over again, I wouldn’t have it any other way!   ~Ben

"Consider it all joy, my brethren,

when you encounter various trials,

knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

And let endurance have its perfect result,

that you may be perfect and complete,

lacking in nothing."

James 1:2-4

Note from Carol:  By the way, if you haven't heard the song God gave me to write and share with our family only about 36 hours before this storm in Ben's life, you can listen here.  I want you to see what God did!

Parenting By Heart

Okay, I confess; I'm too often task-driven.  I find myself frustrated around those who are so wrapped up in their "to do" lists that they can't entangle themselves long enough to stop for a bit of conversation beyond the surface, yet I fear I subject my precious family to the same frustration at times, by my own behavior.

Yesterday, I read something that has made me pause to re-evalute, as I often need to do, my modus operandi.  Our adopted daughter, Vera, whom we adopted from an orphanage in Ukraine just before she turned fourteen, is working on a persuasive speech about adoption.  Yesterday afternoon, I read her first draft, and I would like to share a few lines with you.  Speaking of math class at the orphanage, ". . .When you don't get it, and everyone else is waiting for you to finish, the teachers scream at you that you are dumb and will never get it.  Can you imagine hearing that almost everyday for four years?  You start believing that they are right.  No one in the orphanage sat down with me to lovingly explain to me how to get it done. . . .I was wishing that I could belong to someone who would call me theirs and not be ashamed of who I was."

Wasn't there someone who would take the time to minister to her heart, to listen to her heart and to give, without reservation, the abiding reassurance, the safe refuge, the patient encouragement, and the tender love she so desperately needed?

She no longer lives at the orphanage.  She came home with us in 2006, to join a younger brother and sister.  We wanted to give what she needed, and we resolvedly rearranged our lives to attempt to supply it, yet real life can get awfully hectic, and in the hustle and bustle of life, I find I have to keep asking myself, "Am I still listening to their hearts?"  All three of their hearts have urgent and weighty needs every single day.  Every heart in every one of our homes does.

Do I really know what my children need most?  Am I tuned into their hearts enough to sense when they desperately need a tender encouraging word instead of a stern reminder from a task-oriented organizer?  Oh, Lord, forgive me!  Give me Your eyes to see their deepest needs.  Show me how to minister to their hearts as You would.  Love them Your way through me!

Slow me down, sit me down, with a smile, and not a frown, that I would love with no reserve and no regrets.


"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it."  ~Proverbs 3:27

Blameless and Barren

I am concerned and grieved over an attitude reverberating through parts of the home school community that has the potential to be very emotionally and spiritually harmful, especially since it is not Biblical.  Here it is:  the more spiritual you are, the more you trust God, and the more you "do 'Biblical femininity' right", the more ‘blessings from God (i.e. children)’ you will have.  Well, maybe nobody actually states that idea as blatantly or explicitly as I just did, but it does get voiced subtly, is often alluded to, and it ends up making precious people feel like second class Christians/parents, on whom God has not dispensed His favor, if they don't have lots of children.

Trusting God with everything is the right thing to do, but the number of children in a family is not a manifestation of how godly the parents are or how much they trust Him!  There is so much more than number of children that factors into God's plans.  I invite you to consider Zacharias and Elizabeth, who had no children for a very long time, even though they were righteous and walking blamelessly.  It wasn't about the number of children, but about God's perfect timing and the fulfillment of God's centuries previous prophecy concerning John, forerunner of the promised Messiah.

The parents of John the Baptist were righteous and walking blamelessly we are told in Luke 1, but barren and old.  That’s right—righteous, but old and still barren.  (Luke 1:6-7)  Right at the beginning, God sets out to make it clear that number of children doesn’t correlate to spiritual maturity.  He’s God, and He chooses to work differently with each of us.  His plans are executed on His timetable.  His plans are executed for His purposes.  However much we may pretend we are, or however much we would like to be, we are not the one in charge.

In John’s case, first of all, the older his parents were, the more miraculous the birth of this child would be.  You know how people will talk about these things; and he turned out to be one very talked about baby.  Combine the parents’ age with the prophecy and with Zacharias’ voice loss and miraculous recovery and you see that God engineered a situation that put everyone in anticipation of what He would do next with this child.  Check out Luke 1:57-66.

Second, we know, looking back, that John had to be a contemporary of the Messiah, so if John had come any sooner, the timing would have been all off.  God knows what He’s doing.  What a relief, and what a good thing it is, that we are not the one in charge!

Have you ever puzzled about the timing or circumstances of your own birth or of someone’s in your family?  Have you ever thought about the possibility that you or your child may have been born at just the right time to make one of you a contemporary of a certain someone else in order to fulfill God’s plan?  Centuries ago, Esther’s uncle challenged her to consider, “And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”  (Esther 4:15)

Sadly, for some, 'trusting God' has produced  more guilt and stress, not less, as they worry that their number of children means they have somehow failed to live up to some man-made formula for a man-made definition of God's blessing.  Yes, children are a blessing, but children are not the only way God blesses.  It’s too easy for us to slip into worry and second-guessing when we see only from our limited perspective.  Meanwhile, God sees each of our lives from the perspective of His eternal perfect plans, where each life intersects with the others by design and in just the right rhythm.  His executive planner extends all the way to eternity.  Our calendar may only go to December 2011, or perhaps 2012, but He can see—and has planned for—forever.

Don't be tempted to buy the discouraging lie that the most godly will always have the most children.  It just isn't so, and Zacharias and Elizabeth are proof of it.  Abraham and Sarah are proof.  I repeat:  there is so much more than number of children that factors into God's plans.  A delay could be essential to His precise planning.  One or more of your children may need some special level of time-intensive care or discipleship that He desires you to give in a less crowded setting.  He knows your unique needs, the unique needs of each one in your family, and the unique needs of each one to whom you are called to minister.  Some of the circumstances of your life may not be about you at all, but about someone else whose life will be transformed because of the way He ordered your particular circumstances.

Trusting Him means we choose to be content in Him, period.  We do not compare our lives to someone else’s and expect that God will do the same with us.  We are not to make our own assumptions about what God will or won’t do for us when we submit to Him.  Our calling is to seek Him alone, and, in His wisdom, He may grant us children.  But if we seek children ahead of seeking Christ, we're on the wrong train.  And even if he doesn't grant children, He loves us no less.

In God's plan, we have two biological children.  Pregnancy did not come easily.  Our third and oldest child is actually our newest; we did the unthinkable, from the world’s perspective that is, and, at God’s direction, adopted a teenager who was older than our biological children.  It’s possible that, had we had more biological children, we’d not have been open to adoption when she was in need.  It's also possible that we could not have ministered to her needs, had our family been any bigger.  God knew that a dear, lonely girl needed us and that we needed her, in His way and in His time.

Family design is ultimately not a function of our spirituality but of His sovereignty.  When we forget that, we can become proud and unwittingly wound others for whom Christ died.

The older our children get, and the bigger and more complicated the life decisions become, the more I find myself needing to rest increasingly in His wisdom and sovereignty, seeking His direction at every turn.  With every turn of the pages of His Word, I see anew that He is worthy of our trust—both for the circumstances of our own lives and for the lives of the children we have, don’t have yet, or may never have.

He’s still God and He’s still good. He has perfect plans and the perfect power to fulfill them.  Oh, that we would be content in His arms.

His Word in Our Hearts

God's been working on me about something for the last couple weeks.  I'm wondering if you can relate.


About ten years ago, we had just moved to a new community and were visiting churches, looking for a new church home.  I walked into the four-year-old class to pick up our son when I looked across the room to see him standing in the midst of some kind of dispute; I supposed it was over some toy.  I arrived just in time to hear him say to the other children, "Don't you know what the Bible says?  'Do everything without complaining or arguing!'"  Seriously, that's what he said.  I knew exactly where that came from, and, if any of you have had the pleasure of listening to or watching the Steve Green Hide 'Em in Your Heart Bible Memory songs on CD or DVD, you know, too.


Over the years, our family has certainly reaped blessings from memorizing Scripture, yet I am both firmly convinced and convicted that we still don't do it enough.  God tells us we should know His Word, and I'm sure He knows far more about the benefits for us than we've ever comprehended.  Looking back in our family, one result is that, even at a very early age, our children had an internal guide to godly behavior, based on memorized Scripture, even before they more fully understood the theological reasons.  Did it guide their behavior all the time?  No.  Of course, our children weren't perfect, but Scripture was being laid down as the authority and a foundation worthy of building a life upon.  Filling up their little heads and hearts with Biblical truth is the kind of start Deuteronomy 6 is talking about.


The words and the images we take in do leave permanent impressions.  They shape the way we will think and act for the rest of our lives.  From a human perspective, Scripture has an impact at least equal to anything else we internalize.  Far beyond that, it is the supernatural Word of God and has God's power behind it to transform lives.  It's one thing to read it, but it gets woven so much more deeply into the very fiber of who we are when we commit it to memory.  So, why do we memorize so little of God's Word, especially as adults?  Why is it that children have 'memory verse' assignments, but adults rarely do?  We can use busyness as an excuse, or the handy aging brain/declining memory line, but I seriously doubt God is buying it.


Recently I learned that someone we know has just finished memorizing the entire book of Romans.  Yes, the entire book.  I was absolutely flabbergasted.  Then I was sorely convicted.  I memorized the book of James once, but that was more than twenty years ago.  The more I thought about it, the more I, then, became inspired to seek Him even more earnestly through His Word, renewing my devotion to committing much more of it to memory.


But what if memorizing doesn't come as easily as we'd like, or as easily as it used to?  We are told by Jesus that if we pray according to His will, that we will have what we ask.  So how about praying for God's enabling to memorize His Word?  That's clearly His will.


When Vera, our adopted daughter, first came from the orphanage, she had trouble memorizing anything.  She confessed to us that, when she was at the orphanage school, she would feign illness and escape to the infirmary rather than attempt to give a presentation before her class of something she was to have memorized.  Maybe she just wasn't capable of memorizing anything?  One could make lots of excuses for an orphan who'd been the victim of less than optimal brain stimulating opportunities.


Instead, we decided to believe God.  Even though she had a terrible time memorizing anything in the past, we prayed for her to be able to memorize Bible verses.  We should not have been surprised at the result.  Yes, she can memorize Scripture, and lots of other things, too, now.


I'm not content with the way things have been.  Are you?  Will you believe God with me?  Let's ask Him to enable us to hide more of His Word in our hearts!


Next time, Lord willing...I'll pass along the song that I recently wrote to help our family memorize Psalm 63:1-8.

P.S.  If you're not familiar with the Bible memory songs I mentioned, you might want to check them out.  The blessing of the Hide 'Em in Your Heart series is that the songs were so easy to learn permanently and still remain favorites, musically, even for the adults in our house.  The added benefit to the videos is that they plant visual images of God's Word being lived out and applied that beautifully complement the flesh and blood examples we are trying to live before our children's eyes and ears.

Character Part Three--How Young Is Too Young?

Imagine with me for a moment. . .What if your child, just as soon as she could talk, informed you that for most of her life up to that point, she'd been bored to tears with the lack of significant substance in what had been communicated to her in words?  How would you feel?

A healthy sort of fear of that very thing happening is what motivated me as a young mother.  The last thing I wanted to have happen was to find out that I had wasted time and opportunities to introduce her to Jesus, to teach her what is true, to explain what really matters in life.  Not concerning myself with what scientists said about how soon children can comprehend, I began talking to her even while I carried her the nine months before we saw her face.  I determined not to waste even one day.  If I was going to err, it would be on the side of too deep and too much communication.  Heaven forbid the reverse!

So it wasn't just 'baby talk'.  I talked to her about big ideas.  Along with introducing her to the names of simple objects, I told her about the Creator who made everything, including her.  Her Daddy and I told her all about our family, how we had prayed for her, and how much we loved her.  We told her that God had a plan for her and how He sent His Son to redeem her.  We answered why questions she wasn't even asking and explained how various things worked.  I told her what I was thinking and explained what was going on around her.

Did she get every bit of it?  I suppose not, but I am convinced that she did comprehend more than anybody would have expected her to.  And so did her brother who came next.  Let either of them have engaged you in conversation when they were three, and the evidence was irrefutable.

At this point, I have to say that I'm not holding us up as perfect parents who did everything right--we are far from it!  Neither do we have perfect children.  My point, instead, is simply this--that I know for a fact that children can comprehend far more at a very young age than is generally supposed.  And the evidence has been living in our house for nearly eighteen years.

In an earlier post, I mentioned our thirteen year old son's advice to "not dumb down God's Word" for children.  This time I'd like share something the seventeen year old evidence had to say on the topic.  Her thoughts on training children included this, "Have and give reasons for what you say, and don't expect them to not be able to understand what you tell them."

I realize this flies in the face of some very popular ideas on child development and education strategies, which maintain, instead, that children aren't capable of much reasoning 'til somewhere around the junior high years, and that dry facts are what children crave before that age.  There is a whole lot zooming around in my head on that topic, but that will be for another day soon.  For now, I simply ask this question.  If young children can really only handle dry facts, then why do two and three year olds incessantly ask, "Why?  Why?  Why?"?

God, of course, knows, definitively, the in and outs of a child's developing mind and is not silent on these things.  I choose to trust Him rather than rely on fad ideas from folks who have never even raised children of their own.  Joshua 8:35 gives us a picture of God's intentions, "There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel with the women and the little ones and the strangers who were living among them." (italics mine)  Deuteronomy 6 and Judges 2:10, among other passages, tell us relationships and conversations, or the lack of them, will shape hearts.

How young is too young for shaping hearts?  I'm not taking any chances.  I'm not comfortable with one wasted moment.  Are you?

Character Part Two-- Hearts & Charts

There is a tragedy occurring over and over in our time.  Children grow up in 'Christian homes', acquiring the basic external appearance of ‘good Christian kids’, but end up 'abandoning the faith' by their college days.  What’s going on???

I think it may have something to do with what people call character.  When the topic of character comes up, many times parents end up talking about manners and chore charts.  I once attended an entire seminar devoted to charts. But here’s the thing—while manner books and chore charts can be very useful, they are only addressing the surface.  A child can learn to conform to an external standard of socially acceptable behavior and accomplish his chores in a timely way, especially if there is a sweet or monetary reward involved, without ever having his heart involved.  Children can be incredibly pragmatic.

The Bible calls this giving lip service and doing eyeservice (work that gets done only if the worker is watched) to please men, and contrasts it with doing the will of God from the heart, with sincere generosity, not at all self-seeking, all the while knowing we are really serving Christ.*  The difference is the attitude of the heart.  Character can’t be accurately measured with a chart, because character is a matter of the heart.  A transformed heart that wants to please Christ will likely look good on a chart and be well mannered, but external measures might also be a grand illusion.  In reality, someone could be a perfectly polite little pagan, whose heart is far from the Heavenly Father.

So what are we to do?  Rules don’t shape hearts.  According to God, it all starts with relationships.  Relationships, or the lack of them, will shape hearts.  Our allegiances ultimately determine what we will do and say.

More to come. . . .In the meantime, check out Deuteronomy 6.

* See Matthew 15:1-20; Ephesians 6:1-9; Colossians 3:20-24

Training in Godly Character

Moms have been asking me for practical ideas for training children to have godly character.  So because you asked. . . I humbly offer what I've learned.  I hope to make this a regular feature of the blog.

The heart of the matter is that character is, without a doubt, a heart matter.  Our character is who we are at the core.  We've often talked at our house about how our character is especially obvious when we are stressed.  When we get bumped or pressed, what spills out is an overflow of what's already in our hearts.  Since that is the case, what goes into the heart is incredibly important.

If our goal is godly character, then it only makes sense that we have to be pouring godly substance into our children's hearts.  I decided to ask my thirteen-year-old about his perspective on training children to have godly character.  I think you might be surprised at the answer.  My son said, "First of all, don't dumb down God's Word."  As a young person, he's convinced that even young children can relate to God's Word just as it is.  You might be even more surprised at one of the factors that led him to this conclusion.

When he was about three, he watched a video adaptation of a Biblical event recorded in the book of Daniel where, in the video, the principle remained the same, but most of the names and details had been altered quite significantly, in an attempt to appeal to children.  Already knowing something about the actual event, after seeing the video, he came to ask me a very important question, "Mama, was the statue the king set up really a chocolate bunny?"  I realized then and there that the cartoonization of Scripture wasn't helpful for him, but, instead, it had confused him.

I wonder if, in our attempts to make the Bible child-friendly, we may end up unwittingly stripping it of its power and meaning.  Scripture, just as it is, read with lively enthusiasm and not in those boring, monotone Bible reading voices I've sometimes heard, is infinitely more powerful at capturing the hearts and imaginations of young ones than any cartoon could ever hope to be.  Follow that with energetic discussion and application to life, and anything else will be a cheap imitation at best.

More to come. . .