Cassia, Susannah, Leah, Jessica, Christmas 1993
My daughters are always so good about getting pictures up for their sisters’ birthday posts. They go through old pictures, scan them, and make a post, with a picture for every year.
They recently did this for Cassia, then someone put this picture as wallpaper on one of our computers.
Cassia is 3, Leah is 8 and Susannah is 5 in this picture.
Cassia, Leah, Susannah
They are now 18, 22 and 19-almost-20!!!
Mamas, they grow up TOO fast!
Jessica
I almost have bittersweet nostalgia seeing the older ones so small again! I wish I could go back and enjoy them more! Quit worrying about if I was parenting just so, or my homeschooling was up to par, or my homemaking was good enough!
Fifteen years later…..that stuff really doesn’t matter as much! Oh, yes I know, we need to educate our children and train them in Godliness, to love the Lord, and we need to keep our homes clean and orderly (well, somewhat….. 
), but….
Jessica and Cassia
I recently read a devotional by Nancy Campbell of Above Rubies about keeping an orderly home. It’s true, God does all things decently and in order, but He doesn’t expect us to keep an “orderly” home at the expense of relationships. As in so many things in life, we add rules and regulations on where He never put any. We add so many things to our “list of things to do” that we are more focused on the task needing done than the people around us.
Jessica and Leah, 1988
After awhile, our children become a means to an end, instead of the chores becoming a way to knit our hearts together! We are more concerned about being “efficient” and “good stewards of our time” and such, and we miss the whole point.
The point is not for my home to be clean and orderly, everything in its place. Surprised?!
The point is for you to have relationship with your Abba Father and to gently lead your little lambs to Him.
Dallas, Trisch, Jessica-5, Leah-3 and Susannah-4 months
Chores and school can be a part of that, but don’t ever trade “doing school” for relational matters. Marilyn Howshall has a saying:
“Character training adds time to every duty, and every duty should stop for character training.”
The problem is, we really don’t want to stop our “agenda” for character training—sometimes because it’s really our character that needs training! We can become so busy with all that needs to be done as a young mama of littles, that we lose sight of the fact that the chores will always be there….the littles will not!
Leah
Here is a quote from the devotional I linked to above:
“I would also encourage you to cut corners—not corners of cleanliness, but unnecessary tasks. I remember when I first started homemaking nearly 50 years ago; I kept to the traditions of that time. Every week, without fail, I changed the bed sheets. We used to take the bottom sheet off the bed and put it in the laundry, put the top sheet on the bottom and a new sheet on the top! That was the norm back in those days. But now we have fitted sheets and it doesn’t work that way. Plus, I don’t believe that we need to change sheets every week. I have digressed from that tradition. If children bath or shower, you can keep sheets on the beds for two or three weeks at a time. That saves a lot of laundry, especially if you have a number of children.”
Susannah and "Molly"
“What about ironing? I also started out ironing about twice a week. I even ironed pillow cases (I had friends who ironed their tea towels!). Help! How did I do that with four children under four and then six young children? I certainly don’t do that now, even though my children have grown. I have better things to do. I try to purchase clothes that don’t need ironing. I iron only what is absolutely necessary. I try to hang up clothes from the dryer immediately so they don’t crumple. I will even throw a dress in the dryer to unwrinkle if it needs an iron.”
Charissa and Bekah
“Remember, you are responsible to keep your home clean and in order, but not to do unnecessary tasks. Make the use of this time to spend more time with your children, reading to them, teaching them and doing creative things with them. That will have far more impact than unnecessary household tasks.”
Jessica--a "little shaver"! ;)
I would highly urge you to go before the Lord, and ask Him for His “pattern on the mount” for your family. So often we add to our housework, our schooling, our outside involvements out of a sense of duty that God never gave us. There were many lepers and widows in Elijah and Elisha’s day, but they didn’t heal them all. Jesus said He had completed the work the Father gave Him to do. But weren’t there more lepers to be cleansed, sinners to be forgiven, lame and blind men and women to be healed?
Jesus spent time with His Father, yes, even after a long night of ministry! I’m not advocating you deprive yourself and ruin your health, but perhaps write down what all you do in a week.
Jessica and Leah
How much time is spent running errands? Are you running more than you should? Has it become a “diversion” to avoid dealing with your flesh?
How much time is spent in cleaning that might truly be unnecessary, especially at this stage of your children’s lives?
Jessica, Leah and Susannah, Easter 1993
How much time are you spending doing formal school? Are you adding and adding out of fear, vs. what is “the one thing needful”?
Jessica and Cassia
I think one of the hardest things to realize, is how much we parent and homeschool out of fear. We as women want security, and because of the sin nature, we will try to maintain “control” of situations to help us feel secure.
But it doesn’t work!
Jessica and Susannah
Usually it stresses us out, whether it’s the way we like the dishwasher loaded, or the way we want the books to be put away in a bookcase. Or the way we want to have all the budget nicely divvied out in its place so there are no surprises….
Maybe it’s the way you do school. You can’t let go of a curriculum because you “paid good money for it” or “what will my friends/neighbors/parents/in-laws think?”
Jessica, Leah, Susannah, Cassia
I’ve learned over the years that letting go is the way to peace!
Sometimes God has had to pry my fingers off, like a parent does a foolish toddler hanging onto garbage instead of letting go and receiving a treat from the Father’s hand.
Charissa and "her" baby, Noah!
I have had to let go of a lot of “normal ways to do things”. I have been laid low with miscarriages, health issues, sick parents, a husband with a major head injury…things that kept me from being able to “just push through” and do my agenda. I had to cry out to Him, to look up for HIS agenda, His plan for my days.
Jessica and Leah
There are so many things I wish I had taken time for! What was so important, that I didn’t have time to….
*write in a journal often what we did, what we ate….things they said…..that would be so much fun to read today?
*keep up with reading to them every night?
*pray with them as much as I should have?
*take them to see grandparents and great-grandparents more often? (Oh, but we had to do school…..)
*take them to the park more and swing on the swings with them?
*keep up our hymn singing we started?
*make them more doll clothes?
*have tea parties with them?
*just sit and hold them?
Mama, my “little girls” are now 24, 22, 19, 18, 14, 12 and 10!!! This time has flown all too quickly, and although I did do a lot of things well, I have regrets. No one is perfect, I realize that.
But I also know the Lord nudged me different times to focus on relational things that would last for Eternity, and I was “too busy” with temporal things.
I wish I had made fewer issues of things, which turned into power struggles, and only made discipline for true issues.
I wish I would have quit worrying about what others thought of me, or my homeschooling, or my homemaking, or my parenting…..
….and just enjoyed them!
Mamas, take time…take time. Don’t let the tyrrany of the urgent steal your time with your little ones. Don’t be “too busy” with things God has not called you to do, and be like the parable of the servant in I Kings 20:39-43, who was “busy here and there” and his charge “was gone”.
Anna :)
As the song “Goodnight Kiss” by Steve and Annie Chapman goes:
“For I know too soon they’re up and gone, and walking out the door,
and I’ll never have a child to kiss, good-night, anymore.”
Yes, too soon, they’ll be grown up–and even though they may still be in your home, still love you dearly, still kiss you goodnight and still call you Mommy….
They’ll never be little again!
Jessica, Leah, Susannah--The Three Musketeers!
TAKE TIME TO ENJOY THEM!
Before the time is gone!
Isaiah and Charissa
