Chapmans Bring New Hope from Sorrow

Chapmans Bring New Hope from Sorrow

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Check out this great clip about Steven Curtis Chapman and family's work in Moriah's home province!

Summertime!

It has been a busy summer so far. We started off in June with a trip to Washington DC and Pennsylvania. We felt like it was important to go to that part of the country to visit with Andy's great aunt who lives in Pennsylvania. We travelled with Andy's parents. After spending three days with her, we drove down to DC to spend about a week. Several days were spent visiting with family on Andy's dad's side and several days were spent seeing the sights. Andy spent the first eight years of his life there, so it was fun to see the house where he lived and some of his favorite places from childhood. It was a busy, exhausting trip, but a good one. Many of the relatives had never met the kids, and it was fun for the kids to meet their second cousins for the first time. There is so much to see there. It seems like we barely touched the surface, but hopefully the kids got a little taste of some of our country's history. They were all good travelers, but it sure felt good to get home!

We had dinner in Alexandria at a tavern where

George himself used to eat.

The boys with Abe

Aunt Ruth, 94 and still charming everyone she meets

Hot kids in front of the Washington Monument

When we got home, it was almost time for Josiah's 7th birthday! Hard to imagine that he could be seven already! He wanted a big cookie instead of a cake. We had both sets of grandparents over for cookie and ice cream and his cousin Stephen spent the night. The next day, we went to see Night At the Musuem 2, which was especially fun after having just been in DC. Josiah is a great blessing to our family. He has a gentle spirit which endears him to everyone he meets. He shows a lot of spiritual insight and makes all of us laugh. 

July 2nd, just one week later, was Caleb's 9th birthday. I guess as a mom it is always surprising how fast the years are ticking by. I found myself thinking that our time of parenting Caleb is now half over! (At least in the formal sense of him being a child in our home.) For his Birthday, we took cupcakes to a huge park and met some friends for a little party. We played a couple of games and let the kids run around a lot. They had a great time. We also tried to make a cake to have with the grandparents in the evening. But it was a complete flop, so we ran to the bakery and grabbed a beautiful and far more delicious cake than I could have ever made. It is handy to have the best bakery in town less than a mile from our house! (Even better that the owner is a friend from church). Caleb is quickly becoming a young man. He shows initiative and leadership with his neighborhood friends. He is concerned with doing the right thing. He is creative (quite a lego designer) and kind. 

What a blessing these boys are to our family!

We have also been taking swimming lessons, trying not to forget everything we've learned in school, playing with cousins, and generally enjoying a beautiful Colorado summer.

Happy Birthday, Caleb!

Caleb and birthday friends at the park

Happy Birthday, Josiah!

Moriah's Favorite Things

Nine months ago, Moriah was placed in our arms. She was so small and vulnerable. She was brought to the door of our hotel room by people she hardly knew and given to people she didn't know at all. God's grace has been so abundant to all of us in this process. I am amazed when I think of all that He has done in her life and in all of our lives in the past nine months. To remember how far our little one has come in these nine months, I would like to share some of Moriah's favorite things.  

1. Having a forever family! She has definitely found her place as the baby of our family! 

2.  Eating yogurt. "Yogi," as she calls it is her favorite way to start the day. We had quite a few tears last week when we ran out. No other breakfast is quite as satisfying.

3. Playing outside.  Moriah knows how to open the screen, so if we don't lock it we are risking an escape. If the boys are outside, she will head on out. Last night we sat down to dinner and everyone looked around and said, "Where's Moriah?" She had followed Josiah out, but had not followed him back in! Yikes! Thankfully, she was still in the yard. Not one of our most glorious parenting moments!

4. Sleeping with sister. She always goes to sleep in her own bed, but every morning we find her snuggled up with sister in her bed! She gets up and goes over to Kimberly sometime in the night and says "up, up" until Kimberly puts her in her bed. Thankfully, Kimberly doesn't mind. But if she keeps this up, they are going to be pretty crowded in Kimberly's twin bed!

5. Mo Mo. This is our family's word for pacifier. Kimberly started calling it that when she was little and it stuck. Moriah's first full sentence was, "Mo, Mo, where are you?" Moriah did not come to us with a pacifier, but when we got pictures from her time in foster care in China, we noticed that she always had a pacifier. Andy bought a variety of types trying to match the one in the pictures and she was hooked (again.) Is this a good thing?? 

6. Bath time. She would take several baths a day if we let her. She doesn't mind getting water in her eyes and could stay in forever. For some reason I have always sung a bumble bee song to the kids when they get out of the tub. The song has nothing to do with the bath, but somehow it became the bath song. So now she begins to sing "bumble bee" when she gets out. 

She is growing and learning so much each day. She brings us great joy and many opportunities to rely on the grace of the Lord.

Happy nine months in your forever family, Moriah Mei!

More Parenting Tips

9. Train them to a habit of obedience.

"Parents, determine to make your children obey you, though it may cost you much trouble and cost them many tears...when you give a command let them see plainly that you will have it done."

This point is made clear multiple places in the Scripture. Ephesians 6:1 and the fifth commandment are two that come immediately to mind. This is exhausting, often discouraging, work. It helps to remember, as Ryle reminds us, that training them to obey you goes a long way toward training them to obey God.  "Teach them to obey while young, or else they will be fretting against God all their lives long, and wear themselves out with the vain idea of being independent of His control." 

A happy child is one who knows that Mom and Dad are in charge. 

10. Train them to a habit of always speaking the truth.

God is often presented to us in the Old Testament as "the God of Truth."  Surely it is an attribute He would have us cultivate in ourselves and our children.  Ryle also points out that being able to trust your child's word goes a long way toward your own comfort and assistance in dealing with him. I would rather have my child confess his wrong than to find out later that he lied about it. The children have some friends who like to tell incredible stories. The boys know that a lot of what they say is not true. The problem is that it has come to the point where they don't really believe anything these friends tell them. And, as Caleb told me the other day, "one lie always leads to another and another." 

11. Train them to a habit of always redeeming the time.

Oh, yes...this is a struggle at my house. I get very frustrated when my children come to me and say that they are bored. They have healthy bodies and minds and more than enough toys, but they are bored. I don't know why they even come to me with this complaint, because it almost always gets them at least two or three chores to do immediately. I like Ryle's reminder that all creatures were made for work. The angels in heaven work as they serve the Lord. A horse is never so healthy or happy as when he has work to do. Our bodies whither when they do not have regular work to do. I have found that we are all much happier when we have enough work to do that, when we have free time, we are thankful for it. I want to meet this challenge head on as summer approaches. We will have less school work but, by God's grace, we will have lots of things to keep our bodies and minds busy. 

All of these "tips" remind me again of my utter dependence on the grace of Christ. It is only by His grace that we can train the little ones that He has entrusted to us. It is also only by His grace that they can learn to do what is pleasing to Him.

The Boys

  Pikes Peak...how I love this view.  Our house is

in that little valley.

This hill is just a block or so from our house. 

It is the entrance to a wonderful, natural park 

with trails for hiking.

Best Buds!

On top of the world!
Hiking with Dad is great fun!

A quick break from parenting hints to post a few pictures of our boys. Caleb and Josiah went with Andy for a hike on Saturday in the hills behind our house. They had a great time and Andy got some good pictures. These two are best friends. It is fun to see them enjoying one another as they explore God's world. They love to be outside checking out the bugs and rocks and whatever else they can find.  We are looking forward to doing more hiking this summer. 

Duties of Parents: Part III

The previous two posts  contained the first four "hints" for training children by R.C. Ryle. I love his practical, timeless advise. Sometimes it is encouraging to read things written long ago. It is good to be reminded that the parenting joys and challenges we face today may look slightly different, but Biblical truth never changes.

5. Train your child to a knowledge of the Bible.

"See that they read it reverently.  Train them to look upon it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God." 

"See that they read it regularly. Train them to regard it as their soul's daily food." We have struggled over the years to have consistent family worship. Sometimes it can be discouraging when the busyness of life seems to prevent us from spending that time together as regularly as we would like. But it is encouraging to remember the cumulative effect of all of the hours that we have spent in God's word as a family.

"See that they read it all. Children understand far more of the Bible than we suppose." It is amazing what kids can understand and retain. I fear that many children see the Bible as little more than hero tales. The characters can easily take on fairy-tale proportions. When we teach the Bible to children, we must always emphasize the gospel and make the glory of God the focus rather than the feats of men. 

6. Train them to a habit of prayer

"Prayer is the simplest means that man can use in coming to God. So long as you have a tongue to tell your soul's state, you may and ought to pray." We can teach our children to pray long before they can read. We can teach them what to say and how to say it.  And we can encourage them not to be hasty, irreverent, or careless. I love to hear the children pray. It is always a blessing to my soul to hear them open their hearts to the Lord. 

7. Train them to habits of diligence, and regularity about public means of grace.

The reality (at least in our home) is that Sundays are hard days. The "day of rest" is not actually very restful for us in some ways. We love our church and our souls are always fed when we are there, so in that sense it is restful. But it is also a busy day that can leave us physically exhausted. We have kept our children with us in the worship service since Kimberly was little. It takes a lot of training at first, but the fruit that worshiping together as a family bears is great and worth the trouble. We recently got the older kids new Bible covers which hold paper, pencil, Bible and mints. This has eliminated our usual Sunday morning scramble to find all of these things. We have begun to encourage the boys to write the sermon outline in their notebooks. Kimberly can pretty much take notes on her own now. And then there's me on the end of the row wrestling with Moriah for an hour and a half. Yes, we are back in that season of training with her!  Thankfully, our church views children as part of God's covenant family and a little noise, and cheerios on the floor are expected, even welcomed. There is a real danger, I think, when church becomes a place where children must be constantly entertained. There is great gain in having them watch how their parents worship and learn to participate with God's people.

8. Train them to a habit of faith.

"I mean by this that you should train them up to believe what you say." The point that Ryle is making here is that children need to understand that you know some things that they don't. What you say is for their best whether they can see it right now or not. He warns against reasoning too much with young children. Let them just understand that you know what is best for them, and they can trust your judgement. I think this applies especially to very young children. As they get older, it is important to give more explanation for things. Haven't we all had a three year old say, "why?" twenty thousand times when a simple command was given? In our house, we train them to say, "yes, Mommy," or "yes, Daddy," rather than "why." When they continually ask for a reason to do what they have been told to do, I have been known to say, "for a reason." In other words, I have a reason, but you don't need to know it right now. 

Ryle uses the excellent example of Isaac when his father, Abraham took him up Mount Moriah. He asked only one question, "where is the lamb?" His father said, "God will provide." and that was it. He believed that all would be well, because his father said so, and he was content.  (This is where we found Moriah's name. It's meaning: God will provide. How fitting that has been for her life.)

There is a lot more that could be said about each of these, but hopefully they are at least some food for thought. If you can hang in there, we will eventually get through all of them. There are some good ones coming up!

Duties of Parents: Part II

This is part two of a series of posts from J.C. Ryle's book, The Duties of Parents. It was first published in 1888, so it definitely has time-tested advice.

3. Train your children with an abiding persusion on your mind that much depends on you.

"...all this is God's merciful arrangement. He gives your child a mind that will receive impressions like moist clay. He gives them a disposition at the starting point of life to believe what you tell them and to take for granted what you advise them, and to trust your word rather than a stranger's. He gives you, in short, a golden opportunity of doing them good. See that the opportunity be not neglected and thrown away. Once let slip, it is gone forever."

These are challenging words to me! I can hear myself in my children's words...sometimes it makes me smile. Other times it makes me wince. I want to take advantage of the opporutnity to "do them good" by filling their hearts with Scripture and Biblical truth. We have been greatly helped by teaching our kids the children's catechism from the time they could speak. It is amazing how easily they can memorize things when they are young. Of course we want these truths to be imbedded in their hearts, so we try to talk a lot about Spiritual things in every context. It doesn't seem like they are listening sometimes, but we trust that God will bring the fruit in his time.

Whether it is the deliberate things we teach them about the Bible or God, or the unconscious things they pick up from us (the way we talk to/about each other) their clay-like hearts are being shaped.

4. Train with this thought continually before your eyes--that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.

"In every step you take about them, in every plan, and scheme, and arrangement that concerns them, do not leave out that mighty question, how will this affect their souls?"

There are so many aspects to this point: schooling, friends, actvities...but it is definitely a question that bears asking often and honestly: will this affect my children's souls in a positive or negative way? We are facing this more as the children get older. When they were small, our home was the center of their universe. Sesame Street was about the most dangerous influence they encountered! But as they are getting older this is a question that we need to ask a lot. The boys have several neighborhood friends that pose a challenge in this area. The television shows targeted at their age group are questionable at best. The things they can find (without even trying) on the computer are frightening. As parents, we have to limit the negative influences and maximize the positive ones. The struggle for me is that it takes a lot of time and effort to create positive, soul-nourishing experiences. It is easier to just let them watch a show or play outside with the neighborhood kids so that I can get my stuff done. But this isn't always what is best for their souls. 

One positive thing that we have done is to purposely limit our evening commitments so that we can spend that time as a family. We have made the unpopular decision to forego baseball and softball this year in favor of having that time together. Last year, it seemed like we were all going different directions several nights of the week. It made family worship, and even dinner together, a huge challenge. The kids are disappointed, but we feel that is the best decision for all of us. We are hoping for some fun, soul-enriching times with friends from church and with each other instead. 

There are many things that are culturally acceptable that might not be beneficial to the souls of my children. Sometimes it means going against the tide and making tough decisions. Ryle says, "The time is short--The fashion of this world passesth away. He that has trained his children for heaven, rather than for earth, --for God rather than for man--he is the parent that will be called wise at last."

Again, we thank God for his grace. We cannot even begin to fulfill the task of parenting these children without his daily mercy and grace.  His mercies are new every morning.