May 21, 2010

Forgive me for the brief hiatus - I was busy birthing new life. Actually, the labor part only took a couple hours on Mother's Day, May 9. Since then, I've just had a really hard time doing anything but staring at my baby. My focus has actually become an issue in my prayer life, and I would love prayer & encouragement over it.
This morning was my first real effort at prayer time since Codie was born, and it was incredibly rewarding. I was praying over certain strongholds and calluses in my heart, and just had this incredible freeing sense of exposure. The visual I had was being in the place of a slide under a microscope with God being the scientist. There's nothing invasive or nerve-wracking about it, though. Just a sense of peace that He's in control.
I was thinking yesterday about parenting methods. There are a few families in our church that have phenomenal children- obviously the product of Kingdom-based parenting. I've asked about their methods before and been directed to a book. I've never actually read the book because the title reminds me of training a dog, and it strikes me as degrading to the child.
I was also very reluctant to read Love & Respect because it struck me as degrading to wives. So I survived in a mediocre, unhealthy relationship for a year. Then I read the book and came to appreciate God's design of marriage, and his plan for Zach & me. Our marriage has been revolutionized.
The point of all this is to show how much I need to abandon the thinking of our society. The society that taught me that women don't need to respect their husbands, and deserve to be leaders over submissive husbands is the same society that can't keep half of its marriages intact. The society that taught me that children need friends instead of parents, and pardons over spankings, is the same society with more behavioral-health issues than any preceding generation (or is it simply more awareness? Touche). Abandon society thinking. There is nothing healthy about becoming more adapted to an ill world. Society is wrong about marriage. Society might be wrong about child-raising. Psychological theories come and go in trends, but the Bible is an unchanging, everlasting standard that has never failed.
Bottom line, I need to read the book.