Make your family meal table a place of happening. It’s not only a place to fill hungry tummies but to feed your children, body, soul, and spirit. Make your family table an exciting place of interaction and fellowship.
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Above Rubies Daily Encouragement Blogs
Through the weekly and daily devotionals you can be constantly encouraged in your great role of parenting, the highest career in the nation. You can also stay updated on what's happening with the Above Rubies ministry.
It’s not your circumstances but your attitude to every little thing that determines the atmosphere of your home. What kind of atmosphere are you creating?
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That’s why we must know what God’s Word says rather than what society says. We must seek God’s ways for us as women and mothers. Our current world system doesn’t always line up with the Scriptures but who are you prepared to believe?
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Death could not hold his preyJesus my Savior!
He tore the bars away
Jesus my Lord!
He is risen. He is alive forevermore. And He will come again to escort us to our eternal home. What glory!
Are you ready?
Trust you had a wonderful resurrection Sunday with your family and fellow saints.
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Marriage and building a family is made up of love, Laughter, fellowship, fun, heartache, suffering, overwhelming tiredness, challenges, joys, and multitudes of blessings. Through them all we keep our vision to build! To daily build into our marriage. To daily build into our children’s lives. We keep pressing on. We keep praying. We keep overcoming. We don’t give up. We build to the end. We believe for a triumphant end! M
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You are the watch dog of your home, dear mother. Keep good watch.
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Duty is part of life but you can turn your duties into delight. It all depends on your attitude. Make your home a wonderful and exciting place to live.
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It’s a dreary life with a quarrelsome wife,
I’d rather be out in the rain.
Her nagging words drip out from a constant spout,
I feel cold and drenched and in pain.
The corner of a roof is where I’d like to be
To escape the constant war.
It’s safer and warmer and more comfortable,
Why should I come down for more
Of that complaining and discord and conflict and strife
From that woman You gave me to keep as a wife!
Or maybe I’ll live in a hot, dry desert
Wandering and dying of thirst,
Since in my own home my needs are not met,
Living there is definitely the worst.
The home I dream of holds a wife who’s content;
A woman placidly happy would be heaven-sent.
She’s satisfied, loving, and usually unruffled;
Her infrequent criticism she tries to keep muffled.
This wife brings me good; I feel understood.
I jump down from my roof and run in from the rain;
To be apart from this woman would just be insane!
~ Kim Newhouse
“Better to dwell in a corner of a roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife”
(Proverbs 25:24 TLV).
“Continual dripping on a day of steady rain and a contentious wife are alike”
(Proverbs 27:15 TLV).
“It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome, worrisome wife”
(Proverbs 21:19 TLV).
Read also: Proverbs 19:13 and 21:9.
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“Mothers, be especially careful to regulate your daughters well . . . Be watchful over them, that they may be keepers at home. Above all, instruct them to be pious, modest, despisers of wealth, indifferent to ornament.“For if you form them in this way, you will save not only them,
but the husband who is destined to marry them,
and not the husband only, but the children,
not the children only, but the grandchildren!
“For the root being made good, good branches will shoot forth, and still become better, and for all these you will receive a reward.
“Let us do all things therefore, as benefiting not only one soul, but many through that one. For they ought to go from their father's house to marriage, as combatants from the school of exercise, furnished with all necessary knowledge, and to be as leaven able to transform the whole lump to its own virtue.”
St. John Chrysostom (347 – 407).
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Dear mother, God does not intend for you to be groveling under the cloud of self-pity, grumbling and complaining, and all your household tasks on top of you. He wants you to reign. Rise up to your calling and manage your household well.
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You are raising children for God’s glory! Do it with all your heart.
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Did you know that God wants your home to be holy? Wow, that’s a huge undertaking isn’t it? Especially when our homes are filled with sinners. We are sinners and our children are sinners. And even though we are sinners saved by grace, we are still prone to sin. But as we invite God to come and dwell in our lives and our homes, He woos us to holiness.I love Hebrews 9:1: “Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary.” What is this Scripture talking about? It is King James language. Let’s read it in the J. B. Phillips’ translation: “. . . and it had a sanctuary, A HOLY PLACE IN THIS WORLD FOR THE ETERNAL GOD.” Don’t you love those words?
Back in those days, God dwelt in the midst of His people, Israel. God dwelt in His Shekinah glory in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle, and later the temple. Today, God does not live in a temple, but He still wants a dwelling place on earth. Now He wants to dwell in our hearts and in our homes (2 Corinthians 6:19, 20).
On this bit of earth, in the neighborhood where you live, you have a great commission to make your home a holy place for the eternal God! What could be more powerful? Can you seek to make your home a holy place for Him?
But there’s more. God not only wants our homes to be holy, but all the area around our homes. Talking about Ezekiel’s temple in Ezekiel 43:12 it says: “This is the law of the house; Upon the top of the mountain THE WHOLE LIMIT THEREOF ROUND ABOUT SHALL MOST HOLY. Behold, this is the law of the house.” You may only have a little backyard, or you may own many acres. Whatever God has given to you, He wants it all to be holy.
We not only guard what goes on in our homes, but what goes on around our homes. Who hangs out with our children? What is happening on the inside? What is happening on the outside?
God wants every material thing in our homes to be anointed with His presence. Yes, even our pots and pans (Zechariah 14:20, 21). Fill your home with everything that promotes holiness and cast out every evil thing.
Holiness begins with us wives and mothers. We are the heart of the home, and it is our responsibility to make it holy. Let’s make holiness our vision.
Hebrews 13:14: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”
Have a beautiful day with your family,
Nancy Campbell
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Don’t you love this picture? Of all the animals in the world God chose to call us His sheep. Sheep cannot survive without a shepherd. nor can we.
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A smiling mother changes the attitude of her home.
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It is the devil who hates submission.
1 Corinthians 15:28 tells us that God has put everything under His Son and then Jesus puts everything under the Father. Neither are vying for power but submission.
If it is the nature of God why don’t we want it to be part of nature?
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Here is the second part for you today:My children fight with each other. What's wrong with me?
I know, I know. I, too, have read the home school magazine articles about families that love each other all the time and never fight. I've even talked to a family that said this was the case in their home. Mums, they just aren't being honest with us! Or else they aren't aware of what their children are doing when the parents aren't within eve or earshot.
We can have a zero tolerance of unloving behaviour toward one another. This means that if we hear the children bickering, name calling, etc. or see them beating the stuffing's out of each other, we can put a stop to it, referee the difficulty, and insist that they ask forgiveness of each other. We can instruct them in kindness, selflessness, and serving others before they serve themselves.
However, we can't keep them from initially getting into squabbles. Our children have sinful natures and will sometimes (many times?) choose to act in wrong ways. Each one of them has a free will of his own, just as we adults do, and sometimes they blow it, just as we do. The difference is, by the time we reach adulthood, hopefully we have learned how to settle differences more calmly, and hopefully we are more deferent to the desires of others. Our goal is to train our children in being loving and kind to others. It takes persistence and consistency. And sometimes we will feel like giving up, or just won't feel like dealing with it right then. Determine to do your best at dealing with the squabbles, but don't beat up on yourself if you aren't 100% consistent. None of us are 100% consistent. Over all, they will still learn to behave rightly.
I can't get organized.
Every year millions of dollars are spent on self-help books and closet organizers by women with this guilt trip. I suspect that the majority of us are not "Cleanies" by nature. How we envy those who do have a gift for organization and a forever-neat house! They are the exception, not the rule, ladies!
Let's be realistic. Before you had children, your house was cleaner than it is now. That's because there were less people in it to help dirty it up. When you began home schooling, the house took another slide. It's about priorities and the time available. It's hard to teach the children for several hours a day, and still get all the cleaning done that you used to do in those same several hours. Get the children to help as much as they are able but expect the house to be somewhat shabbier than it used to be.
It is a good thing to be disciplined, orderly, and neat. We shouldn't just throw up our hands in defeat and quit trying. We do want to teach our children to be orderly, and model it for them. But sometimes our standards are ridiculously high, and very often we are basing those standards on how we perceive some other person's neatness to be, or on a “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine, rather than on what God would have of us.
I don't cook wonderful meals.
We try to follow the old "Four Basic Food Groups that I learned as a child, try to get enough fibre, and don't worry a whole lot about whether the food is fancy anymore.
Don't let food obsessers lay false guilt upon you. Eating healthy foods can become a god. However, if God is speaking to you about getting eating habits in order, neither should you brush Him off and automatically assume it is false guilt. The watchword is balance.
In summary.
So, how do we deal with guilt? The first thing we need to do is ascertain where the guilt is coming from. Is it conviction from the Holy Spirit that we have sin in our lives? If so, we need to repent, and then leave it at the cross of Jesus. Once a sin has been repented of, it is washed away, and any guilt attached to it from that point on is a false guilt. If the sin comes up again, we can repent again, determine to deal with it until we have a complete victory, and look to the Lord to help us conquer it. "Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ . . . ” (2 Corinthians 2:14).
Most of the time, when we feel guilty about our mothering skills, it is an exalted, idealized notion in our own minds of how we should be, rather than a realistic picture of how we can be. Many times the unattainable standard of perfection that we set for ourselves has nothing to do with holiness verses sin. It’s just an idea that we have, and something that the Lord is not expecting of us. We need to discern the difference between our own ideas and God's standard for us.
We are not alone in the guilt battle. I am speaking to myself, sisters, as much as to any of you. There is comfort in understanding that we all struggle with this problem. Not one of us is a "freak" because we suffer with guilt.
Jesus has enough mercy, grace, and all-sufficiency in Himself to more than make up for our parenting mistakes. If we humble ourselves enough to ask our children to forgive us when we err against them, they will forgive. If we pray diligently for them to grow up right in the Lord, He will hear our prayers and faithfully answer. His love covers a multitude of our sins, weaknesses, and failings.
May Jesus give us grace to go on in Him, be the best mums we can be, and leave the results in His hands.
© 2002 by Lee Ann Rubsam. All rights reserved.
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Does anyone relate?I thought you may be blessed by this article. I will print half today and half tomorrow.
You've probably experienced it. Most of us have. The Guilty Mum Syndrome.
It gets its grip on us in a variety of ways, sometimes expected, sometimes taking us completely off guard— the Mother's Day sermon; the sentimental poem about what it means to be the perfect mother; the home school magazine with the elegant, smiling mother on the front, surrounded by her happy (and equally elegant) family; the home school conference with the “I've-got-it-all-together-and-I'm-going-to-help-you-get-it-all-together-too speaker;” the Character Building for Families book that you hope will solve all your family's problems—but instead makes you feel like more of a failure than you already suspect you are.
Guilty Mum Syndrome is one of my weaknesses, and if what I frequently hear from other women is any indication, I would guess that hardly any mother in America is completely immune. There is comfort in knowing that we're not alone, that others have been there—
and still go there frequently.
No, the Character Building for Families lady isn't perfect. Neither are her children. Yes, I do struggle with the concepts (still!) that we have laid out in our books. Our girls still get sloppy about obeying promptly the first time they are told, so we work on it again. I still haven't got the “Mum-isn't-going-to-yell-anymore “thing down. But I'm working on it, and repenting when I fail. Every time we go through Character Building for Families again, I get convicted, and I get my character built a little bit more. I hope the children do, too.
My husband, wonderful man that he is, puts the balance in my life. When he sees me down in the dumps about what a terrible mother I am, he reminds me that our children love the Lord with all their hearts, that they are well-adjusted, happy people, that they aren't neglected or abused. And he encourages me to pick up the pieces of my emotions and go on. He doesn't understand why I go through Guilty Mum Syndrome, but he helps me deal with it.
My children don't understand either. When I am less than kind, they forgive and keep on loving me. I, on the other hand, may beat up on myself for days, or dredge it all up again weeks later. They think this is weird. They are right.
The funny thing about Guilty Mum Syndrome is that it doesn't just hit us when we have actually sinned against the children. It is also triggered by comparing ourselves to exalted ideals we have created in our own minds, or that other people try to put on us.
Here are some of the main areas of guilt that I hear about from mums:
My children aren't motivated.
No, and neither are most everybody else's. Think back to when you were a child attending school. Did you like school— every class, every moment? Probably not.
Let's face it: many things we have to learn in life are not fun. Many children don't like math. Many don't like language arts or music lessons. Some don't like any of their school subjects. It isn't your fault. Doing schoolwork takes self-discipline and perseverance, most admirable character qualities to develop in our children. Our sinful nature is basically lazy. Developing self-discipline and learning to say "no" to our flesh is a life-time growing experience, so why should it surprise us that our children don't like to do things that take effort?
Tell your children that it doesn't matter if they like their schoolwork or not. They are going to do it. It doesn't hurt to gently remind them that schoolwork is their job for Jesus, and that they should do it well for His sake. There have been times when I have reminded my children to get back at their studies about every five minutes. It is a frustrating thing for a mum. Sometimes it makes us want to sit down and bawl.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. Keep after them, and by the time they reach young adulthood, they will show signs of maturity, responsibility, and (gasp!) even motivation. Honest! I've seen it happen in my oldest daughter. I have this theory that the love of learning kicks in after we become adults.
My children aren't perfect in public.
Every parent has felt the embarrassment of Johnny doing some stupid thing in public. And it is always worse when it happens at church. It is even worse yet if you are a home school mum, trying to prove to the world that your child is not a social misfit due to home schooling. (In fact, you might just be trying to prove to the world that your children are better than everyone else's because you do home school!) You know the kinds of things children do (and these are just the "church" infractions) - a sudden bout of disrespect that leaves you with your mouth hanging open (guaranteed to happen in front of the pastor's wife or the Sunday School superintendent), kicking little sister until she yelps (at the precise moment that the pastor pauses for emphasis in his sermon), spitting on another child just as Deacon Jones walks by. It makes a mum want to cry. Dads take this stuff in stride, but mums . . . well, we just wonder where we've failed.
Children do dumb things. All of them. Some more than others, but still, all of them. It isn't major crime, it's just immaturity. But we mums tend to beat up on ourselves about it. Maybe children's immaturity is one tool that God uses to keep us humble.
© 2002 by Lee Ann Rubsam. All rights reserved.
I’ll post Part 2 tomorrow.
~ Nancy
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Hidden BeautyI know a busy mother
With a thousand daily cares,
Who says each time I meet her,
“I’ve just found some more grey hairs!
It’s the housework and the children,
That are turning my hair grey,
All these problems and pressures,
Are just wearing me away.”
And I wonder as I listen,
While she frets about her curls,
If she had ever looked at a diamond
Or admired the glow of pearls.
If an oyster had a problem
And some sand gets in its shell,
If it covers it with beauty
And makes a pearl as well.
And a worthless lump of carbon
Hidden deep within the earth,
Changes form because of pressure,
And a diamond is given birth.
Without problems and without pressure
They would both have been sand or coal,
So let’s be thankful that our problems,
Can help to make a lovely soul.
~ Author unknown
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The attitude you have to your husband will affect the attitude he has to you.
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Dear mother, as you tend to your children in your home you are right where God wants you to be. You are in the perfect will of God. Be content and rest in the glory of your high calling from God. Did I say rest? And yet you feel as if you are overworked and underslept! Maybe you are feeling overwhelmed but as you embrace your calling and relax in it you will experience God helping you. When you have the right mind attitude it changes everything.
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