When Mother Teresa received her Nobel Prize, she was asked, “What can we do to promote world peace?” She replied, “Go home and love your family.”
god’s little devotional book for moms
Chapter 6
I Loved My Children and Their Daddy
That they [the older women] may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children.
Titus 2:4 nasb
A year and a half after Roland and I married, our first child, Melanie, made her entrance into our world. I was totally unprepared for what was to come. I had never fed a baby a bottle nor changed a diaper.I had never done much babysitting. There were no babies in our family or neighborhood to provide those experiences. I was a first-class greenhorn! I felt a lot like author Anne Tyler, who was quoted in God’s Little Devotional Book for Moms, “I remember leaving the hospital . . . thinking, Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies!”1
When I got home with Melanie, she had colic, which continued for six months. Added to that frustration was the fact that she developed a respiratory infection when she was only a week old. For the first four years of her life she was sick nearly every other week. Our son, Alan, came along when Melanie was two and a half years old. He also had colic, but not for as long.
I had very much wanted to be a mother, but I was totally baffled at what to do with sick and colicky children. To make things worse, no one seemed to have the solution to these problems. “What should I do?” was my frequent question. With the help of a loving heavenly Father, a wonderful husband, and two sets of long-suffering grandparents, we made it through those difficult years. I learned a great deal. Although it would take too many pages to enumerate all God taught me, please permit me to share a few of my insights—or hindsights (with a little humor thrown in for good measure).
Insights and Hindsights
1. It is necessary for a mother to give huge daily doses of love to her children, but it is not necessary for her to have a lot of sleep. I averaged only five hours of sleep a night for more than four years. As Shannon Fife, another sleep-deprived mom, states: “Insomnia [could be described as] a contagious disease often transmitted from babies to parents.”2
2. There is no one answer to colic that I have ever found. Taking the baby riding in the car, swinging her in a baby swing, letting her sit in her infant seat next to a running clothes dryer, laying her on her tummy on mommy’s knees, or giving colic drops may all work for some, but sometimes nothing works. You just have to love the baby and pray, pray, pray.
One night our baby daughter was awake all night long. She cried and I cried. I prayed, and she kept on crying. I did not want to disturb Roland, so she and I stayed as far away from the bedroom as was possible in our small apartment. I walked the floor with her, rocked her, laid her on her tummy on my lap, put her in her swing—all to no avail. Finally, about five o’clock in the morning, I was ready to “throw in the towel.” Instead, I threw a cloth diaper across the room and then I woke up my husband. In my great frustration and exhaustion, I declared, “You have got to help me with this child! She has been awake all night!” I shall never forget what happened after that. He very calmly and lovingly took her from my arms, placed her beside him in the crook of his arm, and she immediately went to sleep. Needless to say, she has always been Daddy’s Girl.
Just remember, the colicky stage will pass before you know it (but giving money for research into finding a cure for colic might also help).
3. One of the best ways to demonstrate your love to a sick child is through focused attention. Children want your focused attention when they are sick. They want your “all hereness,” not your “all thereness.”(I read that in a book somewhere.) One night I was sitting at the foot of Melanie’s bed. I was not “all here”; my mind was miles away. She caught me at it, and I was embarrassed. I realized that night the importance of giving her my full attention. It is not enough just to be in the room with our children. As much as possible, we must give them our focused attention. That communicates true love.
4. Childhood illnesses may be traumatic and frustrating, but you can always look around and see someone else’s child who is much worse off. Our children overcame their illnesses and moved on to healthy lives. Some children never do. Others are born with handicaps that they and their parents must deal with all their lives. Be thankful if you have a “most of the time” healthy child. If you have a very sick child, God should be praised in this situation too. God is good all the time. He knows just what you need. He will never give you more than you can bear. Receive the children God gives you. Love them with all your heart. He always gives us what is best. And as you go to your heavenly Father in prayer, he will provide the grace and strength you need to care for your child, no matter how great may be his or her needs.
5. I discovered I could not love my children as I should unless I fully depended on my heavenly Father. Throughout my children’s growing up years God taught me valuable lessons about love. My children were so dependent on me during that time I sometimes got tired of trying to meet their needs. But my God never tired of meeting my needs—and how very much I needed him! He didn’t want me to seek to make it on my own, and I learned quickly that I could not. I had to look to the Lord. I desperately needed his daily and hourly help. I could not love my children or my husband as I should if I was not walking with his enablement. I could not make it on my own, in my own strength. When I neglected to come to him, he would draw me back to himself—through whatever means it took to get my attention.
A Never-to-Be Forgotten Lesson
Near the end of these difficult preschool years, God really spoke to me in a way I shall never forget. Because I had attempted to take care of sickly, colicky babies and keep up with everything else I wanted to do, once again my priorities got out of whack. This time I found myself not only physically exhausted from so little sleep, but also emotionally drained and mentally whipped. And, although I did not realize it, I was spiritually depleted. All this “came home to roost” the morning after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968. Although it was a long time ago, it is a morning I shall always remember.
My children were at home with the housekeeper. The stay-at-home moms on our block had gathered at a neighbor’s house for coffee to discuss the terrible events that had taken place in our city the day before. For about an hour we shared about the distressing times in which we lived. I must have been especially vocal, because all at once a neighbor turned to me and exclaimed: “Sarah, for a Christian, you sure are miserable!” Those words were like a dagger piercing my heart. I could not believe what my ears had heard. As quickly as I could, I excused myself, ran out of the neighbor’s house, and hurried back to mine. When I was safely inside, I dashed up the steps, shut my daughter’s bedroom door, and fell to my knees.
Wouldn’t you know that just the week before, my mother had sent me a wonderful new book—Go Home and Tell, by Miss Bertha Smith, missionary to China. Obviously, this was God’s perfect timing for me. I had only gotten to read a few pages in the book, but at that moment I remembered something Miss Bertha had suggested. She advised that any time you come to a crossroads in your life, knowing something has to change, take an inward look. On your knees before the Lord, with pen and paper, list everything in your life that you know is not right. Confess each sin to God and ask his forgiveness. First John 1:9 says: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (nasb). Then she suggested: “When all sins that can be recalled are listed, it is good to pray the following prayer: ‘Lord, You are light. Shine into my heart and show me anything which should not be there.’”3 It reminded me of the prayer that the psalmist prayed: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me” (Ps. 139:23–24 niv).
For the next few hours I followed her advice.I spent that time in confession, asking for God’s forgiveness and cleansing. It was one of the most painful, and yet most freeing, experiences I have ever had.
But the process was not to end there. Miss Bertha had gone on to share that after we have followed her suggested procedure and have received God’s forgiveness and cleansing, we must dethrone “self” and enthrone Jesus Christ, asking him to fill us with his Holy Spirit. This had to be done, she said, “by a definite act of my will and of faith.”4 I spent the next few moments seeking to follow this godly admonition.
I then disposed of my list of forgiven sins by tearing it into tiny pieces. (Today I would shred it in an electric shredder.) This significant act was a symbolic way of reminding me that my sins had been forgiven—no longer to be remembered by a loving heavenly Father.
As I walked down the stairs of my home, I felt the greatest peace I had felt in years. God had gotten my attention that day so that he could reveal to me what was wrong in my life. He clearly showed me that my basic problem was not physical, emotional, or mental—it was a spiritual problem. He showed me that during this difficult time of my life, I had failed to deal with some negative emotions that had emerged and had subsequently been submerged. I also came to see that I had put everything else ahead of spending time with the Lord. I had left very little time for him. “Self” was on the throne of my life. Sadly to say, my love for Jesus had grown cold.
That was a long, long time ago. Since that day, whenever I find myself starting on a downward spiral—when I’m exhausted, overwhelmed, discouraged—I take an inward look. I ask God to reveal to me if there is any unconfessed sin within my heart. If he reveals something to me, I confess and forsake it, asking for God’s forgiveness and cleansing. Then I ask him to “create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. . . . Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Ps. 51:10, 12 niv). What a freeing experience it always is. I have found that it is the only way to live! It’s the only way to love!
I cannot live a victorious Christian life on last week’s spiritual food any more than I can eat once a week or once a month and expect to function physically and mentally. No matter my age or stage, Jesus Christ is to have first priority in my life. If he does not, everything else will suffer—my own life and certainly the lives of my family members. If I do not spend time alone with God, I will not be filled with his love. If I am not filled with his love, I will not be able to love my family in the way I should. You and I can have a deep desire to truly love our children. But if we are not truly loving the Lord and allowing him to pour his love into us, his love—the love they need so desperately—cannot flow out of us to them. There must be an in-flow to have an out-flow.
Agape Love
God’s love is agape love. It is unconditional love—love that is given regardless of the worthiness of the recipient. This is the kind of love we are to give our children. It is clearly delineated in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. A portion of this chapter states: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (vv. 4–8 nkjv).
While I was reading 1 Corinthians 13 one day,I took out my notebook and wrote:
Love endures all things
the sleepless nights
the stinky diapers
the spit-up
the first fall
the potty training
the mounds of dirty clothes
the terrible twos
the barrage of “no’s”
the annual birthday parties
the pouting and crying
the first neighborhood fight
the never-ending sports events
the emotional upheavals
the rebellious teenagers
Love is patient
with the baby who’s sickly and colicky
with the faltering attempts to take that first step
with the slow talker
with the tiresome process of learning to tie shoes
with the discordant sounds of musical instruments
Love is kind
to the child who messes up
to the child who can’t hit the ball or catch it either
to the child who isn’t like me
to the child who doesn’t understand
to the child who is handicapped
to the child who is mentally challenged
Love does not behave rudely
when my child embarrasses his family
when my child misbehaves
when my child disobeys
when my child acts unseemly
Love is not easily provoked
by the child who is slow
by the child who asks a million questions
by the child who interrupts
by the child who continually messes up
by the child who spills his milk
by the child who ruins my “treasures”
Love is not puffed up
when her child wins and her friend’s child loses
about her child’s talents or successes
Love does not promote her child above others or seek the best place for her child
Love is not envious of a friend’s child who is prettier, smarter, and more likable than hers
Love does not rejoice when a friend’s child falls, but rejoices when that child “walk[s] in the truth” (3 John 4 nkjv).
Love does not give up on her rebellious and wayward child
Love
“bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things”
because she trusts in her Lord with all her heart, leaning not on her own understanding (see Prov. 3:5).
Morning, noon, and night
she cries out to God
in earnest intercession
for this precious child she loves so much.
“And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13 nkjv).
That morning, in a new and poignant way, God reminded me of how important it is for me to love my child with the love of the Lord! That is possible only through his power, with his grace, as I am filled with his Holy Spirit. I am totally dependent on him. Major Ian Thomas once admonished us to pray in this way, saying: “Lord, I cannot; You never said I could. You can. You always said You would.”5 “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13 niv).
Love the Child, Love His Father
As essential as it was for my children to know that I loved them, it was of the utmost importance to me for them to know that I loved their dad. Experts often tell us that the best way a mother can make her children feel loved is to love their father. Dr. Van Snider wrote: To make a child feel loved, “parents first must love one another openly so that children see tender acts and hear tender words.”6 My husband, Roland, and I wanted our children to have no doubts about their mother and daddy’s love and commitment to each other. We sought to clearly convey that message to them day after day. As soon as they were old enough, we told them the story of our courtship—of how God had led us to each other as soulmates. (On our second date, Roland told me he was going to marry me. A year and a half later, he did.)
Love for a Lifetime
I praise God for giving me a fantastic Christian husband who has devotedly loved and cared for me year after year. On that day in June 1962 when Roland and I pledged our fervent love and lifetime commitment to our marriage, we entered into a covenant with God and with each other. Divorce was not—and never will be—an option. We made that fact very clear to our children. They knew their daddy was never going to leave their mother, and their mother was never going to leave their daddy. It was our sincere desire that they grow up secure in that knowledge.
What the Bible Teaches about Marriage, Family, and Sexuality
Not only did we seek to model before our children the biblical example of marriage, but also to pass down to them a clear understanding of what God’s Word teaches about marriage and the family. We wanted to prepare them as much as possible for their own marriages.
Marriage. The Bible clearly and unequivocally teaches that a “marriage” is one man and one woman joined together for a lifetime in a covenant with each other and with God. God’s plan for marriage is introduced in the second chapter of Genesis and repeated in the New Testament in Matthew 19 and Ephesians 5. Genesis 2:24 states: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (nkjv). Matthew 19:4–6 says: “‘Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? ‘So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate’” (nkjv). In God’s sight marriage is a lifetime commitment to one’s mate and to the Master, the Lord Jesus. It is a covenant—a permanent agreement—not to be severed for as long as the husband and wife live.
Spouses are to “cleave” to each other (Gen. 2:24 kjv). God hates divorce. Malachi 2:16 says this explicitly: “‘I hate divorce,’ says the Lord, the God of Israel” (nasb). Trials in marriage are inevitable, but our God is able—able to make a way where there seems to be no way, “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Eph. 3:20 nkjv). As Dr. Adrian Rogers once said: “When you get on the matrimonial airplane, throw away your parachute.”7
Family and sexuality. My husband and I taught our children that a “family” is a group of people who are related to each other by marriage, by birth, or by adoption. Homosexuality is described in God’s Holy Word as “shameful” (Rom. 1:27 nkjv) and “an abomination” (Lev. 18:22 nkjv). In Mark 10:6, Jesus declared: “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’” (niv). Establishing in our children’s minds a clear picture of maleness and femaleness was crucial to their emotional and spiritual development.
Sexual purity. With verses such as Ephesians 5:3, Colossians 3:5, and 1 Thessalonians 4:3, we tried to instill in our kids a basic understanding that premarital sex, adultery, sex outside of marriage, and abortion is wrong. Foundational to these teachings are the verses in 1 Corinthians that say: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (6:19–20 nkjv). God says in 1 Peter 1:16: “‘Be holy, for I am holy’” (nkjv). Our teachings embraced the need to continually examine our own hearts and deal regularly with any sins in our own lives. Each of us needs to heed the admonition of the apostle Paul in Colossians 3:5–6: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” (niv). Then we must follow Paul’s challenge in verses 1 and 2 of this same chapter: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
Our family was what is today designated a nuclear family—mother, father, and children all living under the same roof. Sadly, no longer is the nuclear family the norm in America. More and more families, both Christian and non-Christian, have been affected by separation and divorce. Our purpose has not been to condemn those who have experienced divorce, but to do everything possible to strengthen marriages. Many times we have asked ourselves and others: What can be done to reverse this onslaught of divorces, even among Christian families? What can we do to assure that our children have a biblical worldview of marriage and family?
I believe senior adults—older men and women—need to follow the admonition found in the second chapter of Titus. We older women need to teach and train the younger women “to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God” (Titus 2:4–5 niv). We need to be mentors and set the example of what a godly wife and mother should be. It is not necessary for us to have a degree in psychology or marriage and family. Younger women can learn much as we share our lifetime of experiences.
It is essential that the young women of today understand their God-given role in the family—that it is a great privilege to be a “helpmate” to our husbands. We need to teach them to accept, approve, and affirm their husbands in the role that God has given them—the role of spiritual leadership of the family.
Nancy Binkley, mother of three, educational consultant, and Bible Study Fellowship teaching leader, gives this wise counsel: “In this new millennium more than in previous generations, young husbands and wives are working as teams to build strong families. In this spirit of cooperation and teamwork, it remains important for their children to continue to view dad as the provider and protector and respect him as such. They need to see that their mother is still viewed as the nurturer and heart of the home—that they cherish her role. With this balanced view, children are aided as they become the men and women God desires them to be.”8
Submission: A Timeless Biblical Principle
Submission is a timeless biblical principal that is clearly laid out in Ephesians and Colossians (see Ephesians 5:22 and Colossians 3:18). It is an idea not thought up by men to keep wives in subjection, but rather comes from God himself. God’s divine plan is for the husband to be the head and his wife the helpmate of the home (see Genesis 2:18). This is by no means a popular belief in our nation. It is an idea met with scorn and ridicule, especially from the feminists. Regardless of the “bad press” the practice of submission receives, biblical submission is God’s order for the family.
The Women’s Study Bible gives an excellent definition of what biblical submission means: “Submission means to put all of yourself—understandings, knowledge, opinions, feelings, energies—at the disposal of a person in authority over you. This never means subjecting yourself to abusive tyranny, nor does it suggest mindless acquiescence to the whims of another. . . . A wife’s deference to her husband is a duty owed to the Lord. A wife’s submission is not as much to her husband, a mere man, as it is to God and his plan for marriage.”9
At the same time the women are being taught what God’s Word says to them, the older men need to be teaching the younge men what God expects of the Christian husband—to “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it”(Eph. 5:25 nkjv).
A home is to be filled with love—wife loving husband, husband loving wife, both loving their children. One expert has said, “A person who is loved at home does not need to seek proof elsewhere that they can be loved.”10 It was my deep desire that my children know how much I loved them and their father.
There are two questions every mother needs to ask on a regular basis: “Do my children know I’m crazy about them?” “Does my husband know I’m crazy about him?” If these questions cannot be answered in the affirmative, it is time to seek the Lord!
God is love. He wants us to truly love our families. He and he alone can enable us to love as he desires for us to love.
I wanted to love my children and my husband with the love of the Lord!
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