Tag: children

Parenting

Three Words for Christian Parents

Rebekah Matt4 Comments

My granddaughter and I had a conversation recently about family while cooking together in my kitchen—a narrow galley kitchen in a house of less than 1500 square feet:

Me: “Papa and I used to have lots of children living with us in this house. We had your daddy first, and then his sister, and then two more brothers! I wonder how many people that is all together who used to live here?”

My granddaughter, a spirited, math-loving three-year-old, is now intensely interested in how this conversation is going. Her attention is momentarily diverted from stirring the eggs. “How many?” she asks breathlessly, eyes wide. She holds up her fingers to count as I say the family names one by one.

“Six!” she shrieks in disbelief. “Six people in this house?” This cracks me up because that’s the exact response I got from certain people when we announced 18 years ago that we were having a fourth child, and that no, we were not planning to move.

“Yes, six!” I smile at her, and I’m overcome, as I so often am these days, at the memories in those two little words.

Because after 30 years of marriage, of raising four children who all started very small but quickly (so quickly) grew into full-sized humans who did indeed take up a lot of space in our small house … after all those years, this somewhat crowded nest is almost empty.

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Here is God’s plan for us when we begin families of our own: that we would raise up children—human beings made in his image—all the way to adulthood, even though we ourselves are far from perfect and in need of forgiveness every day. That we would be in charge of small, vulnerable, impressionable people 24/7, despite our fairly serious character flaws. That we would provide for them in every way throughout every life stage, even when our own sinful natures are in frequent conflict with theirs. When you think of the enormity of this task that God has set before parents, imperfect and ill-equipped as we are, it’s hard not to wonder, what was he thinking?

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Parenting

“My Greatest Accomplishment”—I Get it Now, Mom

Rebekah Matt7 Comments

My mom’s 40th class reunion was coming up, and in preparation for that, she had to tell them her greatest accomplishment so they could put it in the program next to her name.

“It’s you,” she told me. “I’m going to put that my daughter is my greatest accomplishment.” Then, with matter-of-fact truthfulness, “I don’t have anything else to put anyway, but even if I did, I would put you, because you’ll always be my greatest accomplishment.”

We were talking on the phone when we had this conversation—her in a recliner in the living room of her trailer, with a book in her lap and a cat on the nearby couch; me in my tiny kitchen, tethered to the wall by a stretched-out phone cord, stirring a pot on the stove and keeping one eye on my toddler and preschooler.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard her say this, but I’d never really understood it. What did she mean, I was her “greatest accomplishment”?

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Parenting

Whose Pins Are You Juggling? A Parenting Story

Rebekah Matt2 Comments

My 16-year-old son had just gotten a job working at the local supermarket, and was attending orientation, his first day at work. He called me to come pick him up when they were done, and my 23-year-old daughter, having nothing better to do at the time, drove with me to keep me company. We sat in the parking lot together, waiting for him to emerge from the store.

Time passed. No son.

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Parenting

Unshockable Parenting

Rebekah Matt8 Comments

What will you do when your 17-year-old tells you that his girlfriend, the one you counseled him not to date because she is not a Christian, is pregnant? How will you react when you find out from another parent that for the past six months, your daughter has been going by a different name and using the boys’ restroom at her middle school? What will be going through your head when your teen proudly displays her new tattoo or eyebrow piercing at church? What will be your facial expression when your young adult son tells you that he’s pretty sure he no longer believes in God?

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Faith · Parenting

Parents, Gen Z Must Own Their Faith

Rebekah Matt4 Comments

You’ve done all the right things. You took your child to church from birth, sending them to Sunday school, VBS, and children’s worship. You gave them kids’ devotionals for Christmas and answered all of their childlike theological questions. You made sure that Jesus was the focus of Christmas and Easter. You talked about Jesus openly and frequently in your home, prayed with your child, and involved them in service projects and other outward extensions of your faith.

And yet.

And yet now they’re drifting … drifting away from the faith, heads turned by secular and worldly beliefs and temptations, questioning at least some aspects of what they’ve been taught about God, about Jesus, about Christianity in general.

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Faith · Schooling

Glue Sticks and Bible Songs

Rebekah MattLeave a comment

The sweet smiles of two- and three-year-olds … a catchy song written for preschoolers that I still sing to myself decades later … the feel of a tiny hand in mine, clutching a fat glue stick with intense focus … the shining eyes and serious faces of little ones as they hear parts of God’s great story for the first time …

In his wisdom and grace, God gives us people, situations, and experiences that we often don’t recognize as priceless gifts at the time. Some of those gifts were given to me 20 years ago, and it’s only recently that I’ve begun to truly appreciate those busy days of teaching, corralling, discipling, and loving the lively and earnest little children that were entrusted to my care every Sunday morning.

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Parenting

Overthinking Imagine Dragons: A Parenting Story

Rebekah MattLeave a comment

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are in fact two ideal circumstances in which to talk to your teen:

1. At 11:00 at night, usually a school/work night when you are tired but your teen is wide awake, and

2. Sitting side by side in the car, preferably when you (and not your teen) are driving so you can stare straight ahead and not make eye contact.

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Faith · Parenting

Finding Hope When You’ve Made Mistakes with Your Children

Rebekah Matt2 Comments

Many years ago when I was a young mom with an intense and challenging preschooler, I was getting coffee at Bible study next to an older, well-respected woman in the church. She had heard through the church grapevine that I was having trouble with my son, and  she casually said to me, out of nowhere, “Isn’t it great, Rebekah, that we can get all the parenting help we need right there in the Bible?”

That out-of-the-blue comment really threw me. Even though I was a fairly new Christian, I was pretty sure there was not a lot of direct parenting advice in the Bible that dealt with my specific issues with my young son. I honestly didn’t have a clue what she was even talking about. Feeling awkward, I smiled and nodded, and she went on her way, never mentioning it again.

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Parenting

Blue Star Mom, Times Two

Rebekah Matt2 Comments

I’m a blue star mom. This banner on my house means that I have a close family member who is currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. It was on my house from 2014 to 2018, had a break for a couple of years, then went back up again in the summer of 2020.

It’s uncommon to have a son or daughter serving in the military. Only two percent of high schoolers choose to enlist or pursue officer training. Each spring, when the rounds of “So, what’s [your son/daughter] going to do after graduation?” begin among moms, if your answer is Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard, whether officer or enlisted, eyes will open wider and jaws may drop.

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