EP 91: Changing Course When You’ve Done It All Wrong

A listener wrote me recently to say she’s made more mistakes that she can count. She wanted advice as to how she could get back on track. “How do I change course when I’ve done everything wrong?”

She had lots of other great questions, too, so in Episode 91, I’m tackling all of them. I hope you’ll listen in and be blessed.

How to Change Course When You’ve Done Everything Wrong

complete transcript from episode 91

Hello, friend.

Welcome to Episode 91 of Loving Life at Home. This week, I want to talk about some steps you can take when you wake up one day and realize you made a wrong turn somewhere in your past and are feeling lost and unsure of how to get to the place you’d originally intended to go – or to start living the life you’d originally hoped to have.

I got a message recently – actually, I think it was several months ago, but it resurfaced in my inbox this week – written by a young mother who is raising a large family of many young children. I won’t share her name or the specifics of her situation, but I do want to read you her letter and respond to it here, because it could have easily been written by any number of my listeners.

Best I can tell, with the exception of my own, sweet, 87-year-old mother who faithfully tunes into every episode I post, most of my regular listeners ARE mothers with children still at home.

Many of them are caring for very young children, others have teens, and some are on the verge of having an empty nest and navigating what their lives are going to look like once their last child leaves home.

But I suspect almost all of us can relate to some of the sentiments expressed in this particular young woman’s letter. She writes:

Well, as much as I would love to hug this sweet mama’s neck and offer her a hanky to wipe away her tears, I can’t do that. All I can do is pray for her and offer some words of encouragement via email, blog post, or podcast – so that is what I’ll attempt to do today.

First off, Mama, I want to encourage you to keep writing as the LORD gives you opportunity to do so, because you’ve done an excellent job of expressing the frustration and anxiety that many mothers feel.

They earnestly want to be excellent wives, mothers, and homemakers who are good stewards of all the various responsibilities God has entrusted to them:

• They want to be a loving and devoted wife to their husband – a close friend, companion, helpmeet, and teammate to the man they married. ,

• They want to joyful mothers to their children. They want to be patient and nurturing and help their kids grow into capable, intelligent, and emotionally stable adults.

• And they want to be good housekeepers. They want to create and maintain a beautiful, orderly, warm, and welcoming home that is a haven of rest to the family members who share it and a beacon of hope to its guests.

However, they often feel lonely in these pursuits. They lack good role models who are successfully pursuing the same goals. They may not even have close friends who share similar visions. They are subjected to a constant stream of conflicting parenting advice that suggests their kids will be hopelessly jacked up unless they get onboard with the latest child-training trend — trends that are often promoted by charismatic influencers who don’t necessarily have any kind of good-fruit-bearing track record but are merely reacting against whatever past failed parenting trend was popular and/or the method their own parents used.

Which is sad, because in general, the present generation of children seem to be far less happy, physically and emotionally healthy, confident, well-adjusted, and resilient, than the children of all those backward parents of the past who did everything wrong according to the current, enlightened standard. But that’s a different episode for a different day.

Today, I want to talk about how to change your ways when you feel like you’ve done everything wrong and you’ve lost confidence in the modern parenting mindset’s ability to deliver the kind of joyful, purpose-driven, soul-nourishing, calm and peaceful homelife you crave.

Well, the mom who wrote this letter is already off to a good start – because she recognizes her profound need for God to effect the change she wants to see in her life. So let’s start there, and tackle her message question by question and point by point:

1. How do you move forward when so MANY things need changing?

You start by praying for wisdom. James 1:5 tells us, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him [or her] ask of God, who gives to all freely and without reproach, and it will be given to him [or her – this promise isn’t just for men, but for all believers, male and female].

So pray for wisdom in deciding what to tackle first. The wonderful thing about your situation is that, when so many things are off, then whatever areas you choose to work on have the potential – by God’s grace — to change for the better in ways you’ll be able to see and appreciate fairly soon.

That’s the beauty of finally reaching a place where you recognize big changes are necessary and warranted. It’s kind of like when I found out I had breast cancer last year. It served as a wonderful wake up call for me.

I’d known for years that I really needed to make some lifestyle changes for the sake of my health – you know, I needed to eat better, move more, stop burning the candle at both ends. And I’d give it a half-hearted attempt every now and then, where I count calories every single day and lose 20-30 pounds by being super vigilant.

But I wasn’t really changing WHAT I ate… only HOW MUCH. And as soon as I stopped giving that effort my full attention, my weight would start to creep back up.

It wasn’t until things reached the critical mass that resulted in my cancer diagnosis that I got serious about making sweeping changes to my life and health habits. And once I adopted those new and different habits – like cutting out all refined sugar, all refined flour, all ultra-processed food and eating a mostly raw, whole, plant-based diet instead, plus consistently walking a mile or more every single day and fasting once a month – that my excess weight fell off and stayed off — almost effortlessly in the sense that I didn’t have to count calories or track steps or spend hours at the gym. I lost around 60 lbs and have kept it off for several months now, and I feel like I have a new lease on life. It’s amazing.

And it’s God who’s given me the strength and will power to stick with it. Every time I feel tempted to eat something I know I shouldn’t or to skip my daily walk, I am reminded of Deuteronomy 30:19, where Moses charges the children of Israel: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.”

You could memorize that same verse and use it to motivate you to stick with the changes you need to make. You deeply desire life for your family. You want God to pour out his richest blessings on your home and for your relationships to thrive… so purpose to make changes that will facilitate the process and stick with them.

Which brings us to the second question:

2. How do you create a culture of honor when you have a horrible habit of being short-tempered?

First, you repent. Acknowledge your anger problem to God, confess that sin, ask for and accept the forgiveness He freely offers, pray for His help in overcoming the struggle and establishing better habits, then address the problem with the family members most affected by your short temper. That may be all of them. Or maybe you’re just inclined to butt heads with one or two. However, if you are blowing your fuse in front of the children – then, guess what? They’re affected, even if they aren’t the one you are yelling at.

So you may need to sit everyone down for a family discussion and let them know that God has convicted you of your bed attitude and that you are going to try to do better, but would like their help, too.

It’s important that you don’t just try to erase the bad habit.

Jesus explains the reasoning behind this in Luke 11:24-26. “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’  And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.”

That’s why, if you only make it your goal to STOP losing your temper, you’re going to continue to struggle. You’ve got to replace the bad habit with a good habit. Otherwise, there will just be a big void that the anger will eventually rush back in to fill.

SO replace the harsh, angry, demeaning words with kind, loving, encouraging words. It isn’t enough to just NOT lose your temper. You’ve got to train yourself to do the opposite.

Proverbs 14:1 tells us, “The wise woman builds her house, But the foolish tears it down with her own hands.”

See how the wise woman is actively doing the opposite of the foolish woman? The verse doesn’t say the foolish woman tears down her house but the wise leaves it alone. No.

So let your family know you’re turning over a new leaf and ask them to give you a gentle reminder every time they see or hear you beginning to slip back into your old ways.

There was a time in my life when I fell into a bad habit of saying, “Shoot” or “Darn it” when I got frustrated with something. I know a lot of people may not consider that particular expletive a big deal, but when I was little, my parents drilled home the idea that we will all have to give an account on the day of judgement for every idle word we speak (as Jesus warned us in Matthew 12:36) – and I got in trouble for even saying gosh or golly gee when I was little. So my conscience definitely pricked me every time I let those minced curses cross my lips as a young wife and mother.

So, I apologized to my children for the poor example I was setting and enlisted their help. I told them that if any of them caught me saying shoot or darn it, and brought it to my attention, I would give them $1. I’m pretty sure it cost me less than $20 – possibly less than $10 – to completely break the habit.

I guess, depending on the kids, you might need to specify that they can’t intentionally try to provoke you in an effort to earn more money, but mine were all young enough at the time that such a thought didn’t seem to occur to any of them.

Now, in the interest of transparency – I must admit I haven’t kept a perfect track record. Several months ago, I was lying on my back with my head under our kitchen sink trying to fix a jammed garbage disposal and I let a frustrated “darn it” slip after my third or fourth attempt at resetting it failed.

I thought I was alone in the kitchen until one of my adult sons piped up, “I heard that! Does that mean I get a dollar.”

I honestly don’t remember whether I gave him one or not after I finished the repair, but his gentle reminder was much appreciated and prompted me to do what I should’ve done at the outset, which was to pray, “LORD, please help me fix this garbage disposal.” Which is exactly what He did.

3. How do you regain the trust and attention of your children when you have parented poorly?

Here again, you apologize, ask their forgiveness, tell them you want to do better, and brainstorm with them what “better” should look like. Then rinse and repeat.

Every single time you fall short, confess it again and ask for forgiveness, both from God and from your kids, and walk through the preferred response so that you’ll get practice and will simultaneously establish new neural pathways doing things the way they should be done.

We did this with our little ones all the time. One snatches a toy away from the other. We have them practice apologizing, then asking nicely for a turn playing with the toy when the other is finished with it. Or when the timer goes off, if the sibling is inclined to hogging that particular plaything.

So you can run through the same kind of training session for your own sake. I’m so sorry I was impatient with you, son. Let me try that again. And rehearse a better way to handle whatever triggered the irritated tone in your voice.

Of course, sometimes parents lose it because they’ve trained their kids not to listen until they’ve said something 15 times then finally blow up. The behavior you need to repent of in that case is not only blowing up after the 15^th time, but not following through with reasonable consequences the first 14 times your child ignored your instruction.

So part of the retraining will be letting your children know what is expected of them and then being consistent in follow through from the very beginning. If your homelife has been operating on the 15 reminders before obedience is required rule for years, you will probably need to extend some grace as you transition to doing things differently.

By this, I don’t mean give 5 or 10 reminders instead of the full 15. But rather, come along beside your little ones to help them obey immediately. If you ask them to pick up the toys, stay in the room and help, or hold the basket for them to toss the blocks in. Make it a game. Help them succeed. You will be creating new neural pathways for each of you, and eventually, if you stick with it and remain consistent, then the new habit will be even more deeply ingrained than the old habits.

4. How do I redirect their attention to reading and productivity when I have used the television to cope with all the chaos and am not sure how to NOT use it for very long?

When I was growing up and my parents decided my sister and I were spending too much time watching TV, my mom told us we could only pick one 30-minute program a piece per day. But we were allowed to watch each other’s program, too, if we picked different ones, which of course we did. Since there was only 2 of us, that meant an hour of TV a day.

But now parents have to contend not only with broadcast programing, but cable, YouTube, social media, smart phones, tablets, and computers, so it becomes even more of a challenge to give our kids a screen-free childhood – or at least a childhood that is not dominated by digital media.

I know I’ve told the story before, but my husband and I got a television as a wedding gift and watched so much of it the first couple of years of our marriage that the thing actually blew up – presumably from overuse. We couldn’t afford a replacement, so we went without, and were so thrilled with the positive changes doing so had on our overall happiness, life satisfaction, and time management that we never got another one.

Well, we did eventually get a TV set, but we never programmed any channels or paid for cable or satellite, so you would only see a plain blue screen if you tried to turn it on. We did use that to watch videos for many years, but we found that even that was too easy to rely on for babysitting, so we ditched that one too, and now we just have the projector my husband bought for me to use when I speak at events, so when we want to watch a movie, we drag that out, take the artwork off the wall, push the furniture aside and project the movie on that large, resultant blank space.

It’s a huge hassle, so we don’t do it very often – which is perfect. So, if you don’t want to be tempted to watch too much television, I’d recommend making it as inconvenient as possible to indulge.

Of course, setting reasonable limits on screentime is much more of a challenge these days when almost everybody carries a digital device in their pocket 24/7 – and I’ll try to do a dedicated podcast on that topic soon, but this mother is talking about very young children (all under 10), so she still has almost total control over when and how much and what kind of programs they watch.

Hers is not a question of teaching them to establish their own limits and learn to exercise self-control in their own decisions regarding media usage, but to quit using TV as a babysitter and dial substantially back on the amount of programing she allows without triggering a bunch of meltdowns – in her children or herself.

She’d rather see them reading books or playing outside or doing craft projects than staring at a screen. And for little ones, and for mamas who’ve been letting convenience dictate their parenting decisions instead of thinking through what is best for all the family members involved, she may need to just go cold turkey rather than trying to wean them off screens gradually.

Put all the TVs and tablets in the attic for a few weeks, or lock them in the closet, while providing tempting alternatives. Read some good books as a family. Set up a craft station in the kitchen. Take them to the park or the playground or the neighborhood pool.

It doesn’t have to be forever. Just give those better habits a fighting chance to be formed by removing the biggest distraction. Read a fun book that has a good movie version, like Where the Red Fern Grows, Charlotte’s Web, Wonder, or The Chronicles of Narnia. Once you finish the book, drag the TV out of the closet and watch (and discuss) the movie together. Then lock the TV back up until you finish the next book on your to-read list. Let the kids color or work on their craft projects or build with Lego while you read.

Train the children to help with the chores. I have a great little chart of age-appropriate chores I’ll link in the show notes if you need ideas for ways your littlest ones can help. That way, they won’t be actively making new messes while you’re cleaning up old ones, and the chaos will be taken care of in the process of their learning valuable life skills.

This mama’s next question begins with a statement. She writes…

5. I used to say I wanted a cheaper by the dozen family. LOL That desire kinda waned by the time I got married, but now I’m thinking again, “What if God has so much more [in store for us, but], in our strife and selfishness, we [completely] miss it?”

Well, I can assure you that probably IS the case – not just for you but for all of us. Paul tells us in Ephesians 3:20 that God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us….

And Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.”

That is Christ’s express plan and desire – to give us a more abundant life than we could every imagine. But Satan works overtime to thwart God’s ideal in every way he can. He steals our joy, he steals our peace, he kills our desire to fulfill our divine purpose of bringing glory to God and enjoying Him forever, he demolishes our faith and destroys effectiveness by continually distracting us from the higher calling God has placed on our lives.

And, yes, I think strife and selfishness are two of the devil’s most frequently utilized tools for getting us to settle for less than God’s very best for our life. So do all you can to battle against those spiritual forces of darkness – and against your own flesh – by following instead the selfless example Jesus set for us in the way you love your family sacrificially, unconditionally, and whole-heartedly.

Then, finally, that sweet mama who wrote to me finished her letter with this appeal:

6. [In that you are] a seasoned mama who has found JOY in motherhood, marriage, and the things you love to do besides, I sure would appreciate your encouragement…. Perhaps a simple addendum to the above outpouring would be, how have you grown as a mother and matured [in your] 35+ years of motherhood?

Well, that’s a great question and one we should all ponder from time to time. Rather than comparing ourselves others who are all at different stages on life’s journey, it is far more instructive, if any comparisons are to be made at all, to draw them between our younger selves and present selves and to reflect on how far God has brought us from where we began.

God’s goal for all of us is to conform us to the blessed image of His dear Son, that we might have in us the mind that was in Christ Jesus (as Philippians 2 explains) and that we might accurately reflect His character qualities to a watching world, and that our lives might produce a bumper crop of spiritual fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I’m happy to report that, by God’s sustaining grace, I’ve grown in all these areas during my 37 years of mothering.

The Patience of Job

For instance, people often commend me on my patience. And they usually follow that compliment up with some self-deprecating statement about how they could never be so patient.

Yet that simply isn’t true. God equips each of us with everything we need to do what He calls us to.

But He didn’t just dump a truckload of patience in my lap because He knew I’d need it as the mother of 12. No. That’s not how He operates. Instead, He provided countless opportunities for me to grow into a more patient person while I was mothering all those little ones.

It’s not that some people are naturally patient and others aren’t. In fact, I can remember feeling decidedly impatient in my early years of mothering. I was especially prone to feeling a rush of impatience – along with annoyance and frustration and desperation – at about 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning when a hungry or sick or colicky baby woke me up for the umpteenth time since I crawled into bed exhausted a few hours earlier.

But — again by God’s grace — I spent 25 years either pregnant or breastfeeding or both, and – I’m not even sure when it started to happen, much less when the transformation was complete – but somewhere along the way, the LORD completely changed my heart and perspective. I stopped seeing my responsibilities as a burden (“I have to drag myself out of bed to tend to my cranky baby”) and started viewing them as a privilege (“I get to take care of this precious child.”)

And I can honestly say those feelings of exasperation over being woken up from a sound sleep morphed into a joyful excitement at another opportunity to spend one-on-one time with the youngest member of our family during the wee hours of the night when the house was so quiet and still and everybody else was sound asleep.

I can still picture the soft moonbeams on my baby’s velvet skin as I sat next to the bedroom window in the dead of night, nursing and praying and breathing in that sweet baby scent and admiring those chubby cheeks and tiny fingers and downy lashes. It’s been 13 years since I weaned my youngest, and I still miss those sweet moments and would happily embrace them again if God saw fit to bless me with another little one.

I know that probably sounds sickeningly saccharine to a lot of people, but to me it is a persuasive testimony to the transformative power of God to mold and reshape us when we gladly submit to His work in our lives. Because I know what I was, and I know what I am now, and the difference is like night and day.

Mind you, it’s not that I still feel impatience welling up inside me but have merely grown better at masking it. It’s that those impatient feelings have all but completely disappeared, so that battling against them is no longer a daily necessity.

But that’s enough about patience, lest I try yours by dwelling on that topic any longer.

No Worries

Other ways I’ve grown in 37 years of parenting: I don’t worry as much anymore.

For a short season when I had only two or three children, I was really fearful of the future in respect to them. That situation was doubtlessly exacerbated by the fact our oldest son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes before his second birthday, and of course, diabetes can cause all sorts of health problems down the line. But worrying about them ahead of time certainly isn’t going to help do anything but destroy your joy in the moment.  So I’m thankful God helped me overcome that tendency.

I’ve already mentioned the fact that I watched a lot more TV as a new mom than I do now. And I think there’s a connection to how much TV I was watching and how prone I was to feeling weighed down with worry and anxiety. That was especially true when I spent the bulk of my time watching the news or daily talk shows – because both those things tend to focus our attention on bad stuff: wildly dysfunctional relationships in the case of talk shows and heinous crimes, horrific tragedies, and catastrophic events in the case of the evening news.

But scripture tells us to focus our attention – not on the doom and gloom – but on the things that are “true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable…. if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

So getting rid of the TV went a long way toward curing me of my anxiety. That and my own dear mother’s admonishment that, in giving into worry, I was actively disobeying a direct command of scripture, which tells us repeatedly NOT to worry, not to be anxious, but to give all our burdens to God and trust Him to take care of us as He has so faithfully done in the past and has explicitly promised to do.

To anybody still struggling with anxiety, I’d recommend you stop consuming any kind of media that may be contributing or capitalizing on those feelings and instead memorize and meditate on several of those verses my mom directed me to. Verses like

• Philippians 4:6 – “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”

• Isaiah 41:10 – “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will surely help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

• Matthew 6:25 – “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?”

I’ll link a couple of episodes in the show notes that expound on this idea – one that is chock full of Bible memory tips and another that discusses specific verses that don’t only combat worry and anxiety, but all manner of defeating thoughts and attitudes, including anger, envy, pride, discontentment, bitterness, etc.

But while we’re still on the topic of anxiety, I want to make it clear: It’s not that I don’t understand that bad things can and may still happen, but I no longer borrow tomorrow’s troubles, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that even if something horrible happens, God will not leave or forsake me but will remain by my side every step of the way through whatever trial I must face, giving me divine encouragement, comfort, and strength.

And that is enough to help me rest easy every single night. I do not, as a rule, toss and turn with worry or anxiety or fear. I’m out like a light as soon as my head hits the pillow. And while that has been the case for the vast majority of my mothering years, it was not the situation in the very beginning. Which I hope will give hope to anybody currently struggling with those emotions.

The World Doesn’t Revolve around Me

Another way I’ve grown as a mother in the past 37 years? Less inclined to think that the world does or should revolve around me. I was extremely selfish when I first got married. My husband and I are both firstborns, so selfishness came naturally to both of us. But while I was keenly aware of HIS selfishness during that first year or two of marriage, it took a bit longer to recognize my own selfishness.

But God used marriage and motherhood as a double lens to bring my ugly selfishness into clearer focus and to magnify it to a level that I could no longer ignore. The Holy Spirit used each successive child to chip away at that selfishness even further. The fact that I still struggle with this besetting sin at all after so many years of marriage and so many children should serve as an indication of just how terribly selfish I was to begin with.

I think both marriage and motherhood can be a sanctifying process when we fully submit to the work God wants to do in us through those facets of our life.

My children certainly benefited from my learning to “consider others as more important than [myself]” and to “not merely look out for [my] own personal interests, but also for the interest of others,” as Philippians 2 commands us to do. But God didn’t use motherhood to teach me that lesson as much as he used my marriage. I know I’ve probably told you this story before, but it is so key to the present discussion that I’m going to repeat it here:

When we got married, I got pregnant two weeks into our honeymoon, and I was so exhausted that all I could think of every single day was getting back in bed at the end of the day. And my husband was thinking the same thing, but his idea of what was going to happen once we got back to bed was vastly different from mine.

And I was just so offended that he expected me to still have sex with him when I was so overwhelmingly fatigued from being pregnant that I really thought that he was the one that was in the wrong. But then God majorly began to convict my heart.

I read 1 Corinthians 7 where it talks about a wife not having authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. And that we are to stop depriving one another, stop denying one another in this area of physical intimacy.

And I realized I’m the one that is being selfish here.

And once I made the commitment in my mind — I didn’t tell my husband this because I wanted to be able to back out if I changed my mind, but thank God I didn’t — I decided that I would just stop dreaming up excuses to avoid sex with him and would start cooperating so that when he was in the mood, I would respond. And that was one of the very best decisions I have ever made in my life. That (and the fact that we pray before we have sex) has done so much to keep our marriage solid and strong.

And I would highly recommend that to anybody — that you would let the spouse with the strongest sex drive set the standard as far as frequency goes for sex within marriage. That one little decision has caused us to reap so many wonderful benefits, not just in our marriage, but in our health and our mental clarity and emotional stability.

I ended up doing a lot of research about it and marveling over God’s design for oneness in marriage, for physical oneness in marriage. And a lot of that research I published in my first book, Love Your Husband, Love Yourself. So if you’re interested in learning more about it and changing your view from this is an obligation I would rather avoid to this is a wonderful privilege and what a great design and gift God gave us in this realm of physical intimacy in marriage, then I would highly recommend that you read that book. And I’ll link it in the show notes today.

You Don’t Have to Say Everything You Think

Another way I’ve grown: I’m less prone to think I need to voice an opinion on every situation…. I’ve learned to pray more and to weigh my words before speaking. I try to give less unsolicited advice these days. That’s probably a function of the fact that most of my children are grown now, and so my role in their lives has changed. And I’ve learned, after 38 years of marriage, that my husband is much less likely to welcome or heed my advice when I deliver it in a reactionary way or in a nagging tone than if I prayerfully and privately broach a topic of concern in a calm, quiet, non-accusatory manner.

That’s because, whether we’re talking to spouses or children, we will do a much better job keeping lines of communication open if we listen closely and ask well-chosen questions rather than reacting in an impatient, explosive, or  …..what the other person “should” have done in a sticky situation.

Eyes to See God’s Outpouring of Grace

I’m also much more inclined to see God’s gracious hand at work in everything and less inclined to feel like I’ve done anything to merit His bountiful and undeserved blessings. Or to take pride in the fact He has been merciful to me.

Not so much that I consciously thought, “I earned this or deserve this or brought this about by my own effort,” but God has a way of revealing to us the hidden thoughts and assumptions of our hearts, and that is what He did for me when my daughter Rebekah was born.

She was #7, and up until that point, by the grace of God, I’d been able to breastfeed all my babies for a long time. Most of them nursed until they were a year and a half to two years old. Which was such a blessing. Breastfeeding provides excellent nutrition, secondary immunity, it’s convenient, it’s inexpensive, you don’t have to leave a warm bed and go down to the cold kitchen to heat a bottle before you can feed your baby in the middle of the night. I loved it.

But in my heart of hearts, I mistakenly assumed that any mother could breastfeed if she really wanted to. In my mind, if a mom tried and failed, it probably just meant nursing wasn’t that important to her. Or she lived in an era when breastfeeding wasn’t popular or encouraged. Or before we had LeLeche Leage or hospitals provided good breastfeeding consultants.

But then… I had Rebekah, and I really, really wanted to breastfeed her, but it was a struggle from the get-go. My milk supply was insufficient, she never quite learned to latch properly, I pumped and pumped and kept trying and trying to feed her, but she never seemed satisfied or content.

Long story short, when — at 8 weeks – she still hadn’t gained back up to her birth weight, her doctor told me she was failing to thrive, which is very serious, and advised I start supplementing with formula. Which I did. And once she had her first bottle, I could never coax her to even try nursing again. The poor thing was starving, and all my effort and desire and brave attempts at breastfeeding were not enough to guarantee success in that arena.

Which made me realize (1) how utterly dependent I was – and am – on the grace of God to do anything in life… and (2) what an unmerited blessing it had been that I was able to breastfeed all six of my earlier babies. My eyes were suddenly opened to the fact that I might’ve easily struggled just as much to nourish them as I had to feed #7, but God had mercy on me.

So that event was a huge turning point in my life. Breastfeeding and the soaky-wet diapers and massive poops that come along with healthy, well-nourished babies were all things I never again took for granted. Instead of feeling exasperated or annoyed when one of my later babies had a diaper blow-out, I honestly felt elated. Because I knew that meant everything was working properly (except maybe the diaper). But it assured me my little one was getting enough to eat and baby’s intestines were functioning properly. So much so that I’d praise God every time it happened. “Thank you, Lord, that everything’s working according to Your design.”

God’s Word Is Truth

Another way I’ve matured in 37 years of parenting? I’m now more confident than ever that the Bible has all the answers we need. I do still read parenting books, but I don’t jump on the bandwagon just because some new parenting method seems popular. Instead, I always examine what’s written in the light of scripture and reject anything that doesn’t line up with God’s Word.

And I’ve stopped looking for a fail-proof recipe to ensure parenting success. Yes, what I do as a parent matters. I can’t just wash my hands of the whole affair and say, “Let God deal with them.”

I have a responsibility before Him to raise them well. To teach them His Word. To speak of it often, day and night, at home and away. And I need to point them to Jesus. I’m morally obligated to do all those things because I love God and earnestly want to obey His commands in raising the children He has entrusted to my care.

But I also know my own limitations. And I’m keenly aware of the fact that nothing I do can, in and of itself, draw my children to faith or change their hearts or convict them of wrongdoing or give them victory over sin or grant them success in any endeavor. All those things are entirely dependent on the boundless, undeserved, all-sufficient, sustaining grace of God.

So I do my part, meager and imperfect though it may be, and I fervently pray that God will do for all my children – and grandchildren – what only He can do: Which is to draw them to faith (hopefully from an early age), to keep and preserve them, to grow and mature and sanctify and conform them to the image of Christ, and to equip them to fulfill His calling on their lives, and to bless them as they follow hard after Him.

The Word of God is full of wisdom for every facet of life, but we’ve found it especially helpful in building a happy, healthy marriage. For a fascinating look at how science has confirmed the superiority of God’s design, check out my book Love Your Husband/Love Yourself.