Last Saturday I shared a message at a Mother Child Tea. The topic of the event was based on 1 Samuel 1:27-28

For this boy I prayed, and the Lord has given me my petition which I asked of Him. So I have also dedicated him to the Lord; as long as he lives he is dedicated to the Lord.” 

As I prayed about what God would have me share and how he would have me share it, I did as I always do when praying and preparing… I went to the context of the verse that the event was planned around.

As I  pondered the historical context of 1 Samuel 1:27-28 several things hit me. One was the value that was placed on having children. Another was the character of Hannah. Another was the character of her husband and his confidence in the character of his wife… the woman he loved.

We live in a day where woman are fighting for the right to kill their unborn children. Even going to the point of videoing themselves having an abortion and unabashedly promoting it as a beautiful thing aligned with giving birth.

I have always found the societal outrage over the woman who hacks her newborn child with a butcher knife quite hypocritical since that is the EXACT same thing that an abortionist does… and yet our society celebrates it.

I talked with a friend several months ago that was sharing with me the story of a woman who lives in San Diego, California. Her husband is Philip Rivers. He is currently the quarterback for the San Diego Chargers. He and his wife have seven children. His wife shared with my friend that when she went to the doctor to confirm she was pregnant with her 4th child her San Diego doctor, upon giving her the confirmation of pregnancy also entered the room with abortion info and replied that she knew she would be wanting this for baby #4.

It took Mrs. Rivers a while to find a pro-life doctor in California… but she did.

Mrs. Rivers does something that blows the minds of the other woman around her at in her California home town. She shared that one day she was having lunch with her children and she noticed a table full of other women staring and snickering at her…  and finally one of them got up the nerve to come to her table. The woman stated that her and her friends were watching her with all these kids at the table and were baffled that she was smiling. This woman asked her how in the world could she be so happy?

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Psalm 127:3

There was a day when children were valued. I looked at Hannah and her plea and prayer to the Lord to bless her with children. Children were the future of the family. Children carried the promises of God to the next generation. Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel… Hannah, these woman longed for children (some doing unthinkable things to try and get them) and they celebrated them and praised the Lord when He heard their cry.

These woman also had an enemy that made them feel less of a woman because they did not have what they so desired… of course at the root of the instigation was Satan, for Sarah there was Hagar, for Rachel there was Leah, and for Hannah there was Peninnah. It’s interesting to me that the name Peninnah comes from the Hebrew word pinnah and it means corner.

I have learned that the enemy, reveals himself many times as a rival of women of righteousness, and uses these rivals to try and back us in a corner and mock us. Women were once mocked and ridiculed for having no children and now today once you pass that third child… well if you are on baby #4, #5, or #10 you know what I am talking about.

Today woman are often ridiculed and attempted to be made to feel weak and powerless and not a “real” woman because they refuse to bow to the backwardness of modern feminism.

Yes, the rivals are real and they are loud and they can hurt with their vicious words… but so can we if we turn and respond to those who hurt us in like manner.

Hannah chose to keep her mouth closed and her heart opened. She didn’t yield to the mockings of Peninnah and turn to her own connivings to manipulate and twist and worm her way into getting what she desired.

Yes, she lived in a day when children were valued… and she greatly desired a child of her own, yet she also knew to keep them and her desire for them in their proper place of priority.

More on that later…

I am trying to stay in a reasonable word count limit 😉

I read a post the other day about a mom’s opinion on the horribleness of Mother’s Day. She posted about this holiday was so horrible because it hurt and excluded women everywhere who either were not mothers or had lost their mothers… and she claimed this holiday benefited no one but Hallmark and that it was just another Hallmark Holiday.

However, here is the history of Mother’s Day…

The modern American holiday of Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother in Grafton, West Virginia. Her campaign to make “Mother’s Day” a recognized holiday in the United States began in 1905, the year her beloved mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died. Anna’s mission was to honor her own mother by continuing work she had started and to set aside a day to honor mothers, “the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world.” Anna’s mother, Ann Jarvis, was a peace activist who had cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the Civil War and created Mother’s Day Work Clubs to address public health issues.

Due to the campaign efforts of Anna Jarvis, several states officially recognized Mother’s Day, the first in 1910 being West Virginia, Jarvis’ home state. In 1914 Woodrow Wilson signed the proclamation creating Mother’s Day, the second Sunday in May, as a national holiday to honor mothers. In a thank-you note to Wilson, Jarvis wrote of a “great Home Day of our country for sons and daughters to honor their mothers and fathers and homes in a way that will perpetuate family ties and give emphasis to true home life.”
~ Wikipedia

That’s right. The campaign for Mother’s Day was campaigned for in 1905 by a woman who had lost her mother and wanted to honor this woman who was no longer with her in this life. It was not until 1914 that this became an official US Holiday.

(And by the way, Hallmark didn’t start making Mother’s Day cards until the 192o’s and they weren’t even Hallmark then… it was 1954 before the name Hallmark was issued.)

This year is the 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day… all because one woman loved her mother and wanted to see her memory and life honored and wanted to make sure that other’s realized the value of the women in their lives who served as their mothers.

So this rant…

But Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.

The illusion is that mothers are automatically happier, more fulfilled and complete. But the craziest, grimmest people this Sunday will be the mothers themselves, stuck herding their own mothers and weeping children and husbands’ mothers into seats at restaurants. These mothers do not want a box of chocolate. These mothers are on a diet.

I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark

is ridiculous.

I am a mother and this holiday has never made… I repeat NEVER made me feel superior to anyone. What it has done has taken this woman who feels like a failure EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE feel for one day that there is a glimmer of hope that maybe just maybe I have done something right and have not scarred my children for life. Maybe just maybe, thirty years from now they won’t be laying on a leather couch one day telling some counselor how I am the cause of their instability to exist somewhat normally in society.

This holiday makes me appreciate all the more that I still have my mother here with me… when so many don’t. Since when is a day set aside to do what God has commanded us to do anyway horrible. Have you ever done a word study on the word “mother” in the Scriptures?

Here you go, I’ll make it easy for you: mother

In the NASB the word mother is used 304 times… It was through a Mother that God sent the Savior to the world. Your Savior and mine.

I don’t know about you, but I know many times… MANY MANY MANY times… my mother has provided my “salvation” from things in this life.

What I know in my own life… my personal opinion and lessons learned… is that I had no clue what my mother meant when she said she loved me until the day I delivered my daughter and held her in my arms… I did not realize my heart was capable of that… and I think I have spent the last thirteen years in repentance for what I put my own mother through in my days of selfish rebellion.

As a matter of fact God says…

‘Cursed is he who dishonors his father or mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

Deuteronomy 27:16

There are many holidays I can see that might justify a rant, but not Mother’s Day and not Father’s Day. If you got them, or if you had them, or if you so badly want to be them. It’s a day to remember, and a day to hope, and yes… a day to grieve if needed.

Since when did grief become a dirty word anyway?

I have never felt forced to buy my mother an expensive gift, nor have I felt I deserved them… but let me tell you when I have the opportunity to put into words my thankfulness for my mom and tell her that I love her with no side request attached… I take it.

The fact that this day purposely allows that time to cause me to stop and breathe and do that… Yes.

In my house and in my family thankful arms and sincere eyes have always been enough. What I see when my children have looked at me and shouted their Happy Mother’s Day is that they are just as excited to say it as I am to hear it.

And if they bring me chocolates… it’s one day… even if I am on a diet, I will eat at least one and share the rest with a grateful heart. And so what if I drag kids in all grimmy on Sunday morning to commemorate this day… that’s life… is that any different from any other Sunday? Nope… except today I get to actually hear that it’s okay that I am covered in spit up, pancake syrup, and my morning coffee, and forgot to shave my other leg in the shower.

And if you get the chance to go see Moms Night Out… go for it.

I went through my stage as a young mother and young wife, when I didn’t think I was going to make it through this thing without a homicide charge.

I had a three year old who had just now started sleeping through the night, a newborn, a teenager, and a husband who worked twelve hour swing shifts. I would be up all night alone with the non sleepers, then waking them up at the crack of dawn to drive the teenager to school, and not be able to go to bed the next night because at 10:30pm the bus would just now be pulling back in from a basketball game and I would be dragging the toddler and newborn out to go pick up the teenager.

Those years were not always filled with good days… Did I mention I was completing a college degree during that time?

I feel like I was an emotional wreck most of the time. I remember being angry with my little ones because my heart was hurt because of something or someone else, but they caught the lashes. Their childish spills and moments of messiness would catch my overreactions due to my own built up anxiety.

I wish I could go back and do those years over again.

My youngest will be ten tomorrow. Ten. All my babies are in double digits. The years have flown by so very fast. Did I say that they have flown by fast. Because just in case I didn’t, they have. Fast.

What I learned almost too late… was that it was not them… it was me.

Young mother, young wife, what I desperately want you to know is that the problem is not your kids… the problem is you.

Work. On. You.

Any time you point your finger and blame someone or something else for your own actions… the problem is not them. The problem is you. Whether the emotions, hurt, frustrations, etc is valid or not… it might be very valid… but your reaction to that is on you. You are responsible for your own responses.

I learned to spend a lot of time on my face in the bathroom floor. I learned to apologize to my kids. I learned to sit down with my girls and tell them it was not them… it was indeed me. I learned to recognize the sin in my own heart… so that I didn’t spew my vile onto my kids.

Now listen… I still have my moments. Moments when it creeps up. I have not arrived by any means.

Last week we were having work men come over to do some repairs. They were going to be on their hands and knees in our bathrooms. So the bathrooms had to be clean. My husband and I see things a little differently sometimes (shocking I know). My plan was to wait to attack the floors after all the showers and hair blow drying had been done. So I was waiting…

Well my husband rolls out of bed and I hear him making commotion upstairs. I just assume he’s getting ready. He’s not. He’s cleaning the bathroom… and he’s now irritated because he thinks I ignored the job. So this leads to me getting irritated back.

I had planned to let the girls sleep to a certain time, but in my irritation at my husband I literally screamed up the stairs for the girls to get up an hour earlier than what I told them they could sleep to. They woke up scared to death.

To which my husband turns and says, don’t scream at them because you are mad at me. 

That quickly, the redheaded reaction momster reeled her ugly claws… yet my husband now quickly recognizing her, called me on it. So she was put to death pretty fast.

In our early years we were both too caught up in our own agenda’s to think clearly enough to diffuse a situation that quickly. We have come a long way.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12:21

That emotion that rises up from your gut… that makes your ears ring… your neck twitch… and puts that tingle in the back of your throat… that seems like it will only go away if you unleash it with a voice that sounds like it comes straight from the pits of hell… a voice that after you hear it with your own ears you ask yourself… was that me?

Yeh.

That.

Remember Romans 12:21. Memorize it. Begin quoting it in your mind and in your heart when that moment… that temptation arises… and don’t be overcome with evil… but overcome evil with good.

And what is good?

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8

Ask yourself is your reaction just?

Is it kind?

Is it humble?

Is God with you in it or have you stepped out of the Light of His fellowship and are you now walking in the darkness? Is pride controlling you or is consideration for the heart and mind and soul of your family?

Just because you think you can validate your emotions by the circumstances surrounding them does not mean you should react according to them. Remember you are responsible for your own response.

Christ did not die on the cross, be buried in a tomb, arise from the dead, ascend to heaven to serve as your Advocate and High Priest, and send His Holy Spirit down to dwell within you for you to remain under the control of your sinful flesh.

He promised you more.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.

Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be supplied to you.

2 Peter 1:2-11

Are theses qualities increasing in you? Or do you lack them? Are you still blind and short-sighted, trapped in the circumstantial moment?

Have you forgotten the purification from your former sins?

Oh precious one, heed the Scriptures, don’t just read them. Be all the more diligent to make certain about His choosing you.

He. Chose. You.

He chose you that grace and peace would be multiplied unto you. He doesn’t want you to lay down at night with regrets over the countless times you have lost it with your kids. He doesn’t want you to count the hours until school starts again and you can send them out the door. He wants you to be victorious. He wants you to be an overcomer. He wants you to love them with the love that He loves you.

Is it easy? No… there is a reason that diligence is mentioned twice in this passage… but as you grow in HIM… in these things… it gets easier.

I don’t know where you are in your parenting journey… maybe you are just beginning and you have the colicky 3 month old that has not slept through the night since they were born… perhaps you have the sixteen year old who thinks they know it all…  where ever you are don’t make surviving till bed time or graduation your parenting goal.

But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

1 Timothy 1:5

Let your goal be to love your children with a pure heart, a good conscience, and in sincere faith that God is able to accomplish all that He has promised in you… and in them. Don’t just love your kids because you think you have to… learn to like them. Raise them to be people that you like and not relatives that you just tolerate.

And remember that it’s not them… it’s first you. It always begins with you. When you allow God to love you… to work in you… then you will begin to see your children through His eyes and love them through His heart. Remember the promise is that in your diligence to apply what you do know and what you do have… then what you do know and have will increase and if you are faithful to teach what you do know and do have to your children and help them to apply these with all diligence as well… and teach them that they too are responsible for their own response… then it’s quite probable that you will all grow together.