I heard a sermon about encouragement a few weeks ago.
It covered a single passage of scripture, so the application was limited to what the speaker found in those few verses. As I listened, however, it occurred to me that encouragement is not always a one-size-fits-most endeavor.
I sort of missed the deadline for the “what I learned this spring” post—or maybe the fast and furious onset of summer’s heat and humidity just catapulted me right past the desire to write one.
Perhaps what I need to do is keep track as I go along these next few months, so when the times comes for the next post of seasonal learnings, I’ll be ready. In the meantime, here are a few things that I’m loving right now.
I don’t know where you are in the life cycle of raising daughters.
Maybe your little ones are running circles around the backyard as you lounge on the deck trying to read this. You might be sitting on hard bleachers at a soccer game as your 10-year-old chases a ball across a field, or perhaps you’re waiting in a dance-bag strewn lobby for your 7-year-old to finish her weekly ballet class.
It could be that you’re trying to figure out how to keep your pre-teen occupied all summer, or you’re pondering the logistics of adding another vehicle so your newly minted driver can get herself to her first summer job each day.
Or perhaps your girl is anticipating college, about to enter the workforce or struggling to understand her own teenage daughter.
I have some words for you today. I don’t know that I’d call them words of advice, necessarily. I’m certainly not going to assume every sentence will apply directly to you. I do hope, though, that what you read will help you see God’s hand on your girl’s life—and on your own.
There have been times, in my own tenure as a mom, when I dreaded what was coming in my daughters’ lives because of how that that particular season or event went in my own life. Puberty. Middle school. That first real breakup. Learning to drive. Starting a new grade (or a new school, or a new anything, really).
You get the idea.
I know they have to go through this, I would think, but I don’t want it to be as hard for them as it was for me.
Who Can Tell?There’s no way of knowing, of course, what’s going to be difficult for our girls. We might be able to make some fairly accurate predictions based on their own personalities and past experiences, but there’s always a chance they might surprise us. With their skills, their resilience, their courage, their strength and their maturity levels.
When your hunches come true, though, and you see your girl struggling in ways that you know all too well, I want you to remember this.
Because of what you experienced as a girl or young woman—the choices you made, the emotions you felt, the rejection you experienced—you will be able to help her.
The struggles you faced were not for nothing. Even if you didn’t think so at the time—even if you strain to see it now—God used them to plant seeds of empathy, wisdom, faith and perhaps even boldness in you, and you can use that fruit to help your girl.
No, your daughter won’t always want your help. Maybe even more often, you will have no idea how to help—what to do or what to say.
In the moment, though, God will give you the words. Many of those words will come in prayer—just between you and Him—and always, those words will be the most fruitful, the most powerful, the most life-changing.
I know you may not always feel equipped or adequate, but this job of parenting? You can do it, Mom.
You are right mother for your girl, no matter what you think. No matter what she may say in the heat of the moment, when she’s trying for all she’s worth to push every last one of your buttons.
She may not realize it now, but you’re the mom she needs because you are the mom God gave her.
She may not realize this until you are old and gray and possibly in a nursing home, and even then she still might not get it. But that doesn’t let you off the hook. You’re not in this for what she gives to you. You’re in it because God gave her to you.
Your girl is a work in progress, just like you. God will allow challenging people, circumstances and events into her life that will mold her character and shape her faith, just as He does in your life.
It’s a lifelong process, being her mother.
So keep loving her. Keep listening to her. Keep praying for her. Keep believing in her.
Take it from a mom who is also a daughter. This is what our girls need most—during every season of their lives.
♥ Lois
I know you may not always feel equipped or adequate, but this job of parenting? You can do it, Mom. Share on X Mom, you’re not in this for what your daughter gives to you. You’re in it because God gave her to you. Share on XP.S. I’m linking up this week with Let’s Have Coffee, Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory (with new host Mary Geisen), Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.
Dear Lord,
As we take our first steps into this new summer season, I thank you for the year just past—for 12 months chock full of opportunities to trust you. Day after day, you showed yourself faithful—in more ways than I can list here, in more ways than I even realize.
It shouldn’t surprise me that you did this—faithful is what you are, and you cannot contradict yourself, no matter how faithless I am. And yet here I am, once again in awe of who you are and how you operate.
A couple of decades ago, when I was a young newspaper reporter in Bentonville, Ark., the features editor at the next desk wrote an article about the Sandwich Generation.
This label, I learned, refers to middle-aged people who are juggling the responsibilities of caring for their growing children while also supporting their aging parents. In my early 20s and newly married, I could hardly comprehend the notion that I might be a part of this demographic some day.
When Molly was in fourth grade, I would go to her school once a week to have lunch with her. The friend she often chose to sit with us at the parent table—her best friend at the time—would often ask me the same question.
“Are Lilly and Molly sisters?”
Patiently I would explain that my daughters were born at different times and in different places in China, but they are sisters now. My words seemed to satisfy her, at least until the next time I came for lunch.
The fact of the matter is that Lilly and Molly are sisters because they have the same set of parents—me and Randy. They did nothing to become sisters. But because we adopted both of them, that’s what they are.
I don’t think about the fact that my daughters are adopted very often. This is the only path toward parenthood that I’ve experienced, and I can’t imagine my family any other way.
I know the scriptures contain weighty spiritual metaphors relating to adoption, but I don’t feel like I have any greater insight into how all that works because I am an adoptive mom. How God chooses and calls the children who end up in His family is largely a mystery to me.
I do know this, however. We are God’s children because He is our Father. Not because of anything we did or anything we brought to the relationship. He adopted us into His family because He loved us first.
Randy and I did a lot to get Lilly and Molly—filled out piles of paperwork, paid many fees, spent years waiting. But God did exponentially more to provide a way for us to become His children.
When we accept His free gift of salvation, available to us through Jesus’ death on the cross, we become part of His eternal family. But, like Lilly and Molly when they joined our family, we don’t get to choose our spiritual siblings.
My girls have always been close, but they go through their cantankerous phases. When they’re busy pushing each others buttons, getting annoyed at each other, or just not being very kind, I have a simple response.
“Be nice to each your sister,” I’ll say. “She’s the only one you have.”
Perhaps there’s a spiritual analogy here as well. We may prefer not to admit this, but as Christians, we sometimes go through phases where we don’t like each other very much. We may disagree with each other, annoy each other or judge each other unfairly.
We may be as different from our fellow believers as my daughters are from each other. We may think we have absolutely nothing in common (apart from the gift of grace we’ve all received), and maybe we are right.
But our heavenly Father still calls us to be patient with each other. To be kind to one another. To look out for each other’s best interests, even ahead of our own.
This is how people know we are His children—by the way we love our brothers and sisters.
♥ Lois
We are God’s children because He is our Father. Share on X God adopted us into His family because He loved us first. Share on X