A Few Links…

Don’t miss these good links- all of them are short but worthwhile.

Weakness “I have a friend who often reminds me that we as a church body should be encouraging each other’s strengths and protecting one another’s weaknesses.  I told my children that.  I have been seeing far too much teasing of weaknesses, or annoyance at each other’s annoying traits, rather than gentle forbearance and patient protection of hearts….We are family.  We should be joyfully encouraging the strengths and boldly protecting the weaknesses.  I don’t mean excusing the weaknesses.  I mean that we should be patiently, lovingly, gently understanding that something is a weakness in another person rather than allowing that trait to get under our skin.”

Funniest Engagement Stories from Posie Gets Cozy- So cute!  There are 10  short and funny stories.

Family Bonding from The Common Room “The more experiences, words, anecdotes, jokes the family have in common, the closer they are bound together….  Humor is one of those spiritual values which will help tide us over the years when the children are young. But that is stopping short of the truth, for humor and gaity and merriment are a never-failing benediction.”    From Mrs. Moffett Benton’s At the Pace of a Hen.

Streets With No Kids “Adults don’t even know how to feel about children anymore, because we spend so much time away from them. We view them as burdens, messing up our personal goals and desires. We look forward to the time we can lock them back up in their age-rooms. The separation makes it easy to overlook their bad behavior and their bad behavior makes the separation easier.”

Links

A Few More Links…

Married With Friends Love this post, especially this last bit:

You need to guard your friendships with your girlfriends, too, wives, and watch your tongue on those girls’ nights out. Even, or perhaps especially, “Ladies’ Bible Studies” can be places where ‘sharing prayer requests’ quickly become male bashing evenings where you are all rolling your eyes and mocking the foibles of the opposite sex, and before you know it you are sharing some silly story of something stupid your spouse did, exaggerated slightly for effect, making a fool of your husband to other women. And gradually you nibble away at the edges of your marriage, build up your inner whiner, and become quite the malcontent. This is wrong. It is not fidelity in words. It is not the way to a healthy, stable, marriage.

My Problem With Christian Movements, Part ONE

When did the Bible itself cease to be enough for the church to follow?

My Problem With Christian Movements, Part TWO

If our adherence to a conviction keeps us from loving our fellow Christians and having compassion for their plight, we need to check ourselves. How do we know if this is the case? If we find ourselves judging a sister for violating one of our core convictions…we need to examine ourselves. If our first impulse is to criticize rather than pray, there’s a problem.

I’m reposting this one because it’s just so fabulous.  They Are A Handful

Somehow the woman who holds a full time job AND tries to manage a home AND leads the Girl Scout troop AND does whatever else she does never gets the barrage of “but it’s so much work!” …Or the student working on his PHD while waiting tables at night…it’s a noble thing he does, so we pat him on the back and say “good job”….Please tell me I’m allowed to be tired, or stressed out, or weary, just like the full-time working woman, or the over-studied student.

Mama Said There’d Be Days Like These Another Good One from Mt. Hope Chronicles!

Links

Linkys….

PINK DOLPHIN Wow!  I’ve never seen anything like this- very beautiful.

Thoughts on Letting Yourself Get Overloaded ” I’ve been thinking about how much I use modern technology (mainly artificial light) to push myself way past these natural limits — how I abuse the fact that I can add more hours to a day or week simply by keeping the all lights on until midnight or blowing off Sunday as a day of rest — and I realize that I do it to keep myself from having to make painful choices about what I can and cannot realistically commit to. As I’ve said before, saying no and setting limits is difficult for me. I don’t like to do it. So I tend to say yes to everything and just keep pushing and pushing to find more hours in the day when really there are none.”

I REALLY, REALLY want this! I entered in the drawing to win it but if I don’t win, I seriously think I might order one.  How great would it look in my brown kitchen?  And as much as I love family and have all sorts of family pictures framed around the house, I don’t have a nice family tree framed.  I think it’s time I do that, don’t you?

BEST.WEDDING.DANCE.EVER!

A Generation Who Doesn’t Like Their Children “I see it all the time…mother’s who *love* their children but don’t like them at all, and spend their time surviving and passing the time until the day they can send the kids to someone else.”

Lots of Links

Here’s some really excellent reading…

Hail to the Chief is the most excellent thing I’ve read in ages.  It so perfectly describes how I often feel.

The Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Metallic Silver…. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.   Short but oh-so-funny.

Saying No: the essential gesture of stewardship A powerful reminder to me not to get to caught up in the “busyness” of life.

When You Call Yourself Names Simply beautiful.

Engraved Uniques LOVE this!  What a great gift.   I’m bookmarking it to order one for us at a later date and I think it’d make a great gift for someone down the road.

39 Lessons, 20 Tips and 10 “Don’ts” for Parenting There is a lot of meat in this list.   I’ve printed it out to look through and ponder of the next few weeks.

Putting A Little Peace in Your Christmas I love the concept of creating “space” for our children- space between events, toys, etc.

When we never seldom deny ourselves our children the things we merely want (not need), we create jaded appetites. If we want to foster a sense of contentment with what we have, a sense of appreciation for the extras in life rather than a sense of entitlement to them, we’ll give ourselves and our children the gift of space.

Create space in your lives, space between events. Give yourselves time to appreciate what you are doing now, time to reminisce, and time for hopeful anticipation. Create the space that helps develop a habit of contentment.

You Should Get Out of the House More is such a great read.

Let’s be willing to say it like it is: as moms of young children, the best place for us to be is at home.

That’s just the truth. One can find all sorts of arguments about having the right to be elsewhere, exceptions (a widowed or abused single mom) and more, but the overarching, general truth is – and we all know it — children are happiest and best raised when mom is home with them and engaged in their daily lives.

But what kind of world is it, really, where women are encouraged to feel negatively about being home with the very people who need them most? Where women are encouraged to get away from moments that bring great joy and delight? Where women are made to feel that their minds are only fully used outside the home? Where women are made to feel guilty when they choose to use their intellect and passion to infuse the minds of the next generation with a strong moral foundation, good common sense, and a broad, wise understanding of the world around them?

Working Title: SAHM or Housewife? Does it matter?

We somehow thought that rebelling against home and men would lead us to our true identity as women, but what it left us was playing concierge to a legion of demanding, entitlement-mentality brats.

But the media pulls the wool over our eyes- encouraging us to continue to pour our resources into children who statistically have become little more than mass consumers (can you imagine 100 years ago, the very idea that a child was a consumer?) and to disdain the husbands and fathers. Prime Time TV in particular likes to subject fathers to foibles and leave them the butt of all jokes. Print ads and tabloids train us through careful marketing to push along this path… leading to where? Families are generally miserable.

We need to be WITH our kids

In what Christian’s world does it seem logical that the Lord would, in His divine providence, bless us with a child, give us the awesome responsibility to raise, nurture, and train said child, then find it acceptable for us to hand that child over to a stranger at 6 or 12 weeks of age to be taught who knows what in some childcare facility for 8 to 10 hours a day without good reason for doing so? I realize that for some there are indeed circumstances that demand these hard choices, but please believe me when I say that this post is not an attempt to judge those of you who have had to make that choice. On the contrary, this is a self-involved reflection of the dilemma I face as a mom trying to grow godly women in an ungodly world. (underlining is my emphasis)

The Soul Mate Myth

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a soul mate, and we set ourselves up for either a lifetime of loneliness or disappointment when we buy into what is in essence, a Hollywood created fantasy.

Like-Minded vs. Exclusive

Sometimes in our craving for community, we are drawing tinier and tinier circles, and they are exclusive and ostracizing rather than welcoming and inclusive.

The things most people who are fond of that ‘inclusive’ label believe somehow ‘prove’ how inclusive a person or group might be are externals. But genuine inclusiveness isn’t a thing of externals. It’s a matter of the heart.

Screwtape has a clue! Such a great commentary on schools.  As a former schoolteacher, I heartily agree with much of what is written.  I thought the quote below is so true- schools do this regularly.

The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be ‘undemocratic’. These differences between the pupils–for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences–must be disguised.

Sexy Sunday

Love this post.  It’s the one topic I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon preached on.   When did this become acceptable?

All of us are confronted by status and sexuality in the world all week. Shouldn’t church be a rest from all that? Why are we trying specifically to look extra attractive when we know we are going to be interacting with a whole lot of women who are continually trashed by the world’s obsession with appearance, and a whole lot men who are beaten up everywhere else they go by ungodly women trying to provoke them to lust? What if we tried to be clean and neat at church, but extra modest, even simpler and safer than usual…

A Post Full of Fabulous Links

Links You Don’t Want To Miss!

The Way They Were What a beautiful post.  Really, perfection.

Abortion and Holocaust Comparisons

Rethinking Standard Of Living

The Me Time Myth

A Fresh Start

Parenting

Why Modern Motherhood Is So Much Harder Than It Ought To Be

STOP THE SASS!

Psychobabble Parenting: From Confusion To Clarity

Big Family Know How

Playtime With Your Kids

Comparison: What is your standard for your parenting?

Three Children Is Not As Hard As You Think

The Covenental Act of Remembering

Tolerance

Making Of Heroes

Toys That I Love

Mr. Postman

Cutest Farm Ever- I’d order it in a second if we didn’t already have the LP Farm. And $35! What a steal!

Marriage/Home

House-Home

I Am A Controlling Woman

What Does A Homemaker Do All Day?

The Long Lost Art of Discretion

School

The Nature Table

What if one of the greatest strengths of homeschooling is also its greatest weakness? Something to think about for sure.

Real Men Don’t Do Workbooks

It’s So Much More Than School

Keeping Up With The Joneses

Neat Stuff

50 Strange Buildings of the World

The Best Girl’s Room EVER I just LOVE this room!  I love everything about it- the comfy Gramma type chair, the nightstand, the red chest, the rug, the wood floors, the Fisher Price dollhouse from when I was a kid, the map, the bed, the children’s book illustrations.  Everything about it is perfection to me.  It’s JUST the kind of room I wish I could do for Mary and Savannah.

Don’t Click on these Links: They will cost you money and inspire coventousness.

Anne Moze

Nifty Kid Stuff

aebaby

Do-Hickies and Thing-A-Majigs

Happy Squash Toys

Woodmouse Loves Wood