Father's Day

Like Mother's Day, Father's Day brings much emotion for many people, regret, sadness at the passing of a lost loved one, for each of us it means something different. I am so blessed to have a man in my life now that I can honor on Father's Day. I do not know my father, have never met him and know only very little about him so this is not a day that I have childhood memories or traditions built on. I could ramble ad nauseum about how wonderful and what a blessing The Principal is to our family and my son in particular. I will spare you. I did want to take a moment to publicly thank my sweet husband for the man he is and the living example of what a godly husband and father looks like in his daily walk with God. Thank You Lord for giving The Principal to us that WonderBoy and I might know what it is to have the love of a good man with a kind and humble heart in our lives.

Sweetheart, thank you for taking on the role of father with such grace, character and honor.
Happy Father's Day
I love you deeply!!

Ten Years of (Wonder)Boy Joy!!

May 1st, 2011 WonderBoy turned 10 years old. We were without power due to the storms that came through our area April 27th. For that reason and lack of a properly functioning computer, I was not able to do a post for his birthday as I would have like to, so this is that post....Happy Belated Birthday Sweetie!!
The words whirlwind, wow!!,tornado, one man show and full steam ahead all parade across my mind when describing my sweet boy. He is FULL to overflowing with life, energy, curiosity and a live life large spirit! I was recently blessed by my sweet husband with a new laptop for Mother's Day and in the process of going through files on the old laptop and transferring and cleaning out files I had a very teary eyed stroll down memory lane. The 21 Days of Prayer for Our Sons is just about halfway completed now and I thought this was an ideal time to share with you some of the moments from the last 10 years that will be forever etched in my mother's heart of the gifts that WonderBoy has brought to my life. I am so grateful to Brooke for this prayer challenge by the way - it has given me new vision and perspective that I knew I needed just wasn't great at getting in my own efforts.
Everyday as I pray, I see new ways to pray, new areas that would benefit from prayer and even where prayers of the past and been answered and where God is moving in WonderBoy's heart. Beginning with Day 1 I prayed that God would give me His eyes to see my son through - what an amazing view and perspective I am seeing emerging, my heart is being softened and I find I am not as quick to pounce on some things as I may have been in the past - just being real ;-) I pray that God will continue to work in me as I lift WonderBoy to Him in prayer, afterall a learning, growing and healing mom is a blessing to any son!
Take a minute with me if you will and allow me to share some of my favorite moments from the 10 years that have moved as he does - in a flash!
Dear God, Thank You for these 1o years of motherhood, these 10 years of love, laughter, tears, craziness, confusion, struggles and triumphs.
Thank You Father for guiding us through the dark places when our flashlights were out of batteries.
Thank You for the heart of joy that you have given this child. Thank You for his good health and for his infectious smile!I pray Lord that he will know you and seek you all the days of his life.I pray that your ways will become his ways.I pray that Your approval will be the only approval he will come to seek in this world.I pray that he will know and hear Your voice and allow it to be his guide all the days of his life Father.
I pray he would honor you in word and deed and seek to be a man of honor always.
Thank You God for my son - Bless him today and always in the name of your precious son I pray.Amen.

I'm linking up with other 21 Days of Prayers for Our Sons moms here, take a minute and visit some of them if you can!

Matters of the Heart

I just completed my morning quiet time of prayer for WonderBoy. This is Day 3 of the 21 Days of Prayer for Our Sons that I am so excited to be part of. Today's prayers are centered around Avoiding Foolishness. This is good stuff - meat and potatoes that you can sink your teeth into prayer! I am loving it!!
Day 1 started things off with Obedience - is there a child (or adult for that matter) that does not struggle with issues of obedience? Nature of the human condition regardless of age and why prayer in this area is SO important - only God can change hearts.
Day 2 was a logical progression from Obedience to Submission to Authority. This dear readers is a hot topic in our home! It continues to amaze and confound me how this whole thing works. Let me give you a little history/insight....curtain is down on this, this is the real deal raw truth. My sweet son has some pretty major issues with Submission to Authority. My husband and I have little to no challenges in this area of our lives, we have our share of issues in other areas rest assured and I intend to be as transparent as I can be about those too in the interest of full disclosure ;-)
As you may or may not be aware from reading my ramblingsin the past, I am a survivor of divorce. WonderBoy's dad and I were together for the better part of 10 years all total, our marriage dissolved right at a year after WonderBoy was born. The reasons and gory details of all that are best left for another post entirely which, by the way has been brewing in the background of my thoughts for a while - so far I'm so sure how to put it all together - but I am thinking a series of posts about marriage (feel free to pray for me on this one).
Onward. Dad is not an ideal role model of Submission to Authority on any level but does provide many excellent examples of the consequences of what being out the God's Will in this area of life will produce. So how is it then, that the people you spend the most time with, the ones that are training and guiding, the ones sowing seed and watering growth, encouraging, sacrificing, grooming and doing all they know to be what a child needs to grow to the man of God they are called to be, have the least amount of influence? It leaves me downright flabbergasted. Onward. This is an area of prayer that we need to meet on our knees in full battle gear on an ongoing daily basis. The thing is that until WonderBoy's heart is changed little of what we do or say will have any desired impact. Only God can change a heart of stone.

Ezekiel 36:26-27
New Century Version (NCV)

26 Also, I will teach you to respect me completely, and I will put a new way of thinking inside you. I will take out the stubborn hearts of stone from your bodies, and I will give you obedient hearts of flesh.27 I will put my Spirit inside you and help you live by my rules and carefully obey my laws.

This whole issue of Heart has been coming up so much that it cannot be ignored. It is, I believe, the very root of where our battles must be waged from. The Principal is currently working through Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp (a wonderful book that I highly recommend) with his men's bible study lunch group each Wednesday and gaining wonderful insight in this area. We are constantly talking about issues of the heart. I am curretnly reading The Five Love Language of Children by Ross Campbell and Gary Chapman (another worthwhile read, which mentions time and time over about these issues of the heart. I am thinking that this is the road - the narrow road I am to follow. Would you be inclined to agree? I have been praying for years that God would show me how to 'get through' to WonderBoy and I no longer believe in coincedences. The timing of all these things is in His design for a time such as this!!
And if all this is not enough, WonderBoy asked if we could spend the day painting recently, so yesterday we gathered together our supplies and with a vision and a plan, this is what my son produced......

Ok Lord, gotcha! ;-)
This post is part of a blog hop in which I will be participating each Friday during the 21 Days of Prayer for Our Sons. I am on a team being led by Jodi at Granola Mom 4 God. Please take a minute to visit Jodi and some of the other Mom's on my team and share in what God is doing in and through them throughout this journey.

What's a Mom to Pray For?

So I decided to let WonderBoy in on what I was doing in participating the 21 Days of Prayers for Sons. Truthfully, he didn't seem too impressed, not nearly as impressed as I would be if someone was praying for me for 21 days straight - such is my lot to bear....anyway, I thought perhaps it would be interesting to ask him what he might like me to be praying about. So here in no particular order is WonderBoy's Top 10 Prayer Requests

1. His relationship with his dad (not The Principal)
2. His self worth (a direct result of #1 - again not The Principal)
3. His writing (he is a creative sort...hmm wonder where that comes from?)
4. His time with God (this one makes my mommy heart smile)
5. His relationship with The Principal (see #1..are you seeing a pattern here?)
6. His creative pursuits and abilities.(this is where his passions are no question)
7. His ability to start and finish things.
8. His ability to choose good friends.
9. His pen pals. (he really has a tender heart - makes a mom proud)
10. His desire to learn and enjoy homeschooling.

What a marvelous start! Some of these were certainly on my mental check list, but it is interesting to see where he feels a need for prayer. I am honored to be able to take these requests before our Amazing God on behalf of the precious son He has given into my care. How can we not be driven to worship and praise when we have such joy and abundance of blessings in the treasures our Heavenly Father gives us?
Are you thinking about special prayers for the boys in your lives yet?

Calling All Mothers of Sons......

As mothers of sons we have a life long job and joy that comes with the birth of these amazing gifts that God entrusts to us. It is a big job that brings with it big joys. I recently in my borderline blog addiction, came across a wonderful resource to assist in the big job of being a boy mom.



Brooke at Warrior Prayers has begun something and some place wonderful to gather with other mothers of sons to support and gird our boys in prayer. Brooke has a book available to serve as a guide for a 21 day prayer journey for our sons which we do with other mothers around the country and world via the Internet - what a fantastic idea!! We all need encouragement from time to time! This is a marvelous way to do a few pretty spectacular things in my humble opinion....
#1 find accountability to pray fervently for your son(s)
#2 connect with other mothers who share your joys/challenges
#3 pray for your boys futures in a deeper more focused way
#4 grow closer to God while interceding for your son(s)
......and those are just random and off the top of my head - of course there are many more. What if you have only daughters? Well, they are likely to marry boys right? So.. pray for the men who will be in their lives, the men who will provide for and care for not only them but your grandchildren! Everyone can do this, grandmothers, aunts, teachers, all women have a boy or know a boy somewhere in their lives I would venture to say. If you have no children of your own, commit to a young man you know and pray for him, a neighbor boy, a boy from a family at church, or even a child who has touched your heart through a news story or magazine article - he and his family will be blessed by your prayers.
This event begins June 8th and you can read about how to get involved here. The cost of the book is minimal at $5.97, skip a coffee or 2 and invest in the lives of the generation of men who we will hand things over to....seems like a no brainer to me at $5.97!
I have my book, have signed up to join an online group and I will be posting about the process throughout the 21 days of prayer for WonderBoy, I hope you will consider joining me by committing to pray for someone special over the 21 days starting June 8th, or at the very least, check in and see what God does in our family.
My prayer is that this be used of God to encourage us in our higher calling as mothers!

I Have to Ask......Did You Know?

This past Saturday I had my hair done, I came away with more than a new do and happy roots. I left with knowledge that has somehow evaded me for almost 47 years!! I cannot keep this little nugget to myself, but it's more than that....I have to know -did you know this?? I did a little research of course and aside from earning 8 swagbucks I came up empty, not a single website that I visited said a thing about it...I was beginning to think this was not accidental!
The story goes something like this....Jill was just about done with me and giving me a once over when she noticed a little more highlighting than she was happy with on the top of my head, so she double dipped a few strands and I hung out in the corner to cure while she started with her next client. They caught up on the obligatory how is the family things and somehow the conversation led to OCD behaviors, I sat quietly (I really did) and followed along. Talk of the tag in the bottom left corner entered the conversation and I had NO clue what they were talking about, but apparently, they both had tag in the bottom left corner issues?? Ok....inquiring minds and all - I HAD to ask....they looked at me a little confused and said - on the fitted sheet. OK...??? Well apparently, the way to ensure that your bed is properly made is to place the corner of the fitted sheet that has the tag on it, on the bottom left corner of the bed. I had never given this even a fleeting thought, not to mention I probably didn't know for sure that a tag even existed on a fitted sheet to begin with never mind where it should be located. I was a little surprised to think that this was common enough knowledge that 2 women on the same day at the beauty shop could bond over an OCD related tendency!? So when I changed out my bedding yesterday I looked and sure enough, there was a tag there!! Would you like to guess where I positioned it? Bingo - bottom left it was, because of course I now had the inside scoop don't you know!
The more I thought about this the more I wondered - was I supposed to know this? I was not reared in a domestically ideal setting so getting this nugget there was unlikely, but still....then it occurred to me that perhaps this is a Southern Thing and I had entered the inner sanctum by nothing but blind luck - you know while curing quietly in the corner ;-)
I cannot tell you all the trouble this could have saved me over the years if only I had known - I am not keeping this to myself....I will tell anyone who will listen and feel blessed to save even one the frustration of the 'did I get it on right the first time' guessing game that I have been plagued by for so many bed making years!
Ladies, I beseech you, tell your daughters, tell your sons, your neighbors, this secrecy must stop! Mention it at your next Bible Study, Girls Night Out or even during a casual phone conversation - do it without fear!
So, I have to ask.....did you know and if so, who told you?
Just one last thing....is it the bottom left when facing the bed or laying in it?

A Mother's Prayer.....

I have not forgotten I have a blog, computer issues continue to keep me from posting....good news to follow....
Mother's Day is probably one of the most difficult and happiest days of the year for me.....I don't even know where my Mother is if I wanted to send a card or make a phone call I could not - that of course is the difficult part. The other side is the joy and blessing that comes when I reflect on the gift that God has given me in Wonder Boy. My Mother's heart is easily overwhelmed!! I wanted to share this with you and wish you all a gloriously Happy Mother's Day.......you might want to have a tissue near by - I'm just saying ;-)

A new laptop is on the way as I type for Mother's Day......be advised .....I'll be back!!