shaping your children's vision for life.

I love the title of this post taken from an excerpt  of an Elisabeth Elliot quote.


You know, if we are honest, I think we are too smart for our own good. No other time in history have people had so much at their fingertips. In an instant you can get a taco from the nearest fast food place and not even get out of your car or you can find out (as I did recently) how to grill the perfect burger or why my forsythia bush isn't blooming. Little to no effort is needed these days. And it's made us lazy and indifferent.


That said, we tend to look at life in compartments. We are a culture that practically worships knowledge and education and so we think best when we learn through a class or book. If we live out our faith according to the Bible, we can also fall prey to looking at life through the lens of a lesson. "Oh, God is teaching me patience"... we may find ourselves saying.


Well, I don't see life lessons anymore. And I don't teach them to my children. Because God isn't American and He doesn't appeal to our intellect alone. He is shaping us. 


In the Bible, God told Jeremiah to go down to the potter's house and watched him shape clay on the wheel.  In context, the story was regarding the Israelites and God's determination to do with them as a potter shapes clay. 


In the book of Isaiah, the scripture says "does the clay say to the Potter, what are you making?"


So we see another way of thinking. We see shaping. And that is what we are doing as mothers. We are shaping our children's vision for life.


See, everyone has a world view; how we "see" life. And how we are conditioned throughout our childhood and yes, even now as adults, effects how we think, what we say, what we do. And mothers set the tone or provide an environment for that shaping. It's not going to be a perfect home. It's not going to look exactly like someone else's home. It's your home. And you are the right mother for your children and you will know how to shape them for life.


Be confident and be yourself. Books and classes have a place in our lives as we endeavor to learn. But don't disregard what I have come to believe is more important than a lesson learned through a book, class, or even the consequences of an action. It is the heart of the Father who is continually shaping our lives with patience, compassion and lovingly orchestrating our wrong moves with tender guidance.


Be that kind of mom... and shape your children's vision for life.