“We need heroes. I mean genuine heroes, authentic men and women who are admired for their achievements, noble qualities, and courage. Such people aren’t afraid to be different. They risk. They stand a cut above. Yet they are real human beings with flaws and failures like anyone else. But they inspire us to do better.”

— Chuck Swindoll

I love being around people who inspire me to be better.

My friend Robyn is always inspiring me to read the Bible and stay close to grace. My friend Soleil inspires me to trust the work and guidance of the Holy Spirit that is alive within me; she always reminds me to go to Him when I’ve got questions or pain or confusion. My friend Amy inspires me to make homemade meals and go slow and steady and believe the truth of God’s gentleness. My mother-in-law inspires me to trust God with anything that comes our way, knowing He is faithful to complete the good work He has stared in us. My friend Robin inspires me to read good literature and to teach my children the gift of story and drama and beauty. I have more friends I could list here, but the point is, through the Lord’s kindness (I prayed and prayed for these kinds of friends) He has surrounded me with a  group of dear, close local friends that help me to be a better person. And I want to be better; I don’t want to stay the same year after year; I want to grow.

I know that if I want to be faithful and have integrity and keep on in the Word and following God by faith, I need to surround myself with faithful people who are after the same goal. That doesn’t mean I don’t have other friendships, it just means that my close friends, my inner-circle group who know me inside and out and who love the Lord and humbly follow Him, they are the ones who I “yoke” with.

The Lord has brought different people over the years who have profoundly impacted my life. Cathy Bowman from the Navigators, Kimberely Knockel and her work in teaching Core Lies, and Ann Kradel Gale as the woman who gently guided me through abortion counseling. You probably don’t know any of these women, but they are the heroes in my life and in countless others lives. They are the unsung heroes; the hidden ones who change souls without fanfare. I am deeply indebted to each of them.

And then there is Sally Clarkson, the gift of grace God brought to my life as a dear friend and mentor.

Sally has changed my life so profoundly that I often wonder what I’d be like if it weren’t for her unwavering investment in my life.

Sally not only inspires me in faithfulness and integrity, she has taught me to be a better woman. She keeps me accountable to my word; she holds me to a high standard because she cares about me. And I’m grateful. It’s easy to just float through life, but she teaches me to dream and have ideals and to be excellent in what God calls me to. She encourages me to hold fast to truth and beauty and good things and not go the way of culture because it’s popular. She has called out my selfishness in the past (always with gentleness and grace), and at first I didn’t like it, because who likes to be disciplined, but now I look back and I thank God that she helped me, that she trained me in righteousness. I thank God that she was willing to have uncomfortable conversations in order that I might grow strong in character and faithfulness. She is a rare one for sure, a cut above the rest, a hero. A flawed hero to be sure, because she’s just so human like the rest of us, but a flawed, faithful, inspiring hero.

Who can you insert yourself around that is wise and kind and faithful? Don't put it off.

Love, SM

“Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross. But easy street is a dead-end street…”

— Philippians 3:17-19, The MSG Version

The day almost always starts out so promising.

I make my coffee, start slow, the kids get up and play together for awhile, and I get some time in the Word. I love our mornings. But then, almost without fail, I hear the first harsh tone. And then a yell. And then I can almost feel the hearts being hardened.

I’m trying to concentrate on reading my Bible, but before I know it I shout, “Why don’t you all just beat each other up and get it over with!”

Yea, not exactly a holy response. I cringe after I say it because I know it’s just a sinful impulse and I let it fly. My son says, “We don’t want to beat each other up.” And I say, “Well your hearts do.”

Oh man, I’m blowing it. {Deep breath.}

“Lord help me.”

I go into my oldest daughter’s room and sit on the floor and begin to rub her feet. I ask her how she is feeling. She talks, I listen. I call in her brother. She tells him how she feels, he listens pretty well. He tells her how he feels. She listens pretty well. We talk, we work things through, we say we’re sorry, we forgive.Hearts are tender. They hug and move onto playing again.

This is the hard holy work that happens every day. This conflict? Par for the course. My sinful response? A constant reminder that I am in process right along with my children. We are all in process, and our hearts can only be molded and matured by Him. I can’t fix their hearts. I can’t fix my own.

But forgiveness. And grace. And new days with new mercies. This is how we get through.

Here are some things I’m learning that might be helpful to some of you out there.

Have Coffee, Take a Deep Breathe, Invite the Holy Spirit In

When I begin to feel the tension of the morning, or I feel myself getting angry, I think, “Get the coffee stat!” And then I sit, breathe, and pray. “Holy Spirit come. Be with me, with our family. Help us.”

I also tell my children to never let me begin homeschooling them until I’ve had my coffee. Seriously. They know.

When you feel like you’re going to lose it, go somewhere and breathe. If you haven’t had your coffee or your tea, get it. And pray. If you’re kids try and interrupt this time, tell them, “I’m getting my heart in order. I’ll let you know when I’m good.” If they’re younger and wouldn’t understand that, go into the bathroom. Or your closet. Or hold them close and breathe and pray. But do stop. It’s in the getting still and quiet – a quietness of soul – that you will be able to gain composure in order to keep on.

Ask Forgiveness, Give It

I’m pretty certain I ask my children to forgive me every single day. Because every single day I blow it. I remember Sally telling a story where she says she woke up one day and told her daughter Joy that she would not sin that day and Joy said, “Oh just give it up mama, it’s bound to happen!” Because WE ALL SIN. We all blow it. We all are desperately in need of Jesus.

When you lose your cool, or tell your children to beat each other up, or sigh loudly when they can’t do something, or whatever, go to them and humbly ask for forgiveness. They’ll give it. Kids are pure grace.

And when they blow it, which they will, forgive them wholeheartedly. Look in their eyes and say, “I forgive you, and I always will.”

Without the tenderness of forgiveness, hearts become hard and bitterness grows. Pay attention to the heart, yours and theirs. Work towards tenderness.

Don’t Ignore It

It is so tempting to ignore the conflict because you’re just SO SICK OF IT. I know. Lord knows. We all know. But ask the Lord for the strength to keep on dealing with it. Be in the Word. Ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom. Talk to your local girlfriends about how they deal with sibling conflict; talk to older women. Listen for wisdom and truth and grace.

“Indeed, if you call out for insight
    and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver
    and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
    and find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom…”

Proverbs 2:3-6

Talk issues through with your kiddos. Work it out. Listen. Don’t let it go.

Letting sibling conflict go will likely cause bitterness to grow, especially when one child has take offense to the heart.

Don’t just try to mask the conflict with good behavior or right words, but really dig into the roots. Ask the Lord for help in seeing the truth of what’s going on. Yea, sometimes you just have to say, “Work it out.” But there is a time for intervening, especially when you see hardness. I tell my children, “God gave us to each other, and relationships are hard, but they’re worth working on.”

Keep working on relationships, in love. This is great practice for their marriages!

Pray for Their Hearts

You can never fix your kids sin issues.

You can guide, teach, correct, love, forgive, and prepare the “soil” for them to believe and receive the gospel, but you can’t fix their hearts. You must pray. Pray that your children will stay tender, that the love of God would fill them so deeply and profoundly that they would follow Him forever. Pray that they would submit to the power of the Holy Spirit, because only that power can change a person; only that power can fix a heart.

Know You’re In For the Long Haul

Raising children is a good work that takes YEARS of loving, training, correcting, forgiving, over and over and over and over and over again. The prayer is that one day it will all click and your hard-fought efforts will have sunk in deep to you children’s souls.

And listen here, because this is important: even your breadcrumb efforts can make a difference if they’re all you’ve got. Some of you out there are reading this and thinking, “I’m trying but I feel so inadequate. I feel like I’m failing all the time.” Motherhood is hard, and we all blow it. But here’s what the Lord does when we ask, He multiply’s our small offerings, our fishes and loaves. We do the work the best we can with who we are and where we are, and then we pray for God to multiply our efforts. Don’t let your tiredness, your bad days, your weaknesses or the constant conflict discourage you. It’s all part of the gig. Submit it all to Him, do your best, one step at a time, and keep going.

Yes, you’re in this for the long haul, but this good work of mothering was prepared in advance by God for you to do. And He will not leave you alone in the doing.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”Ephesians 4:32

With love, SM

I looked at my iPod. Which playlist should I pick to listen to while I wash my dishes.

My eyes went back and forth between my “Cleaning” playlist and my “Rend Collective” praise music list. I decided on the praise because it’s been a dark day.

I propped my iPod up on my kitchen window, pressed play, and as the words came out, something in me opened up.

I turned around, slid down to the floor on my knees and cried.

I think I’m in a bit of a depression.

And depression is this weird thing that you can’t really explain or give reason for. It just is.

“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me…” Psalm 42:5

I get this way from time to time, it’s just a darkness, and it seems to be a rhythm of my life, and I know it will lift. But it’s been a few weeks of struggling to do basic tasks, and I finally had to admit to myself that I’m in it. And I function. I’m kind of a functioning depressive, or so I told my friend this morning. I can be mostly okay, but in my home, going about the hours, everything is a mountain.

I had a class in college and I remember the professor telling us once that when you find yourself in a depressed place, that everything feels hard, and to just do something small as you can. Maybe you can just make the bed. Do that.

My small thing, right now, is writing this to you, because there is something in the writing that helps. Something about vulnerability and honesty that allows the process to take its course.

So here I am telling you that I’m depressed. But I’m also hopeful because God is with me, and He knows all of my heart and every bit of my soul, and He will be kind and tender with me through this. I’ve been here before.

So today, I’m going to be gentle with myself, and I’m going to slowly do my dishes, and I’m going to keep on knowing that I’m not alone.

I’m not going to believe the voice of the enemy and I’m not going to condemn myself. I am free, and I trust the healing in the heaviness.

If you are struggling with a dark day or days, hang in there. Be gentle with yourself. Listen to truth not accusation. You are loved, you are not a failure, you are going to be okay.

“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” Psalm 42:5

“…whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.” 1 John 3:20

“…the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” 1 John 4:4

“In my failures You won’t walk out
Your great love will lead me through
You are the peace in my troubled sea”

My Lighthouse, Rend Collective

Much love to you today,

SM

I yelled at my kids tonight.

Oh I yelled.

They were supposed to be cleaning something, and I was hot while cooking dinner, and I was hungry, and I walked in the living room to see they weren’t cleaning and I just blew it.

I blew it because I blew up.

I looked at their little faces and I yelled and I told them to clean the bathroom up and down until it was shining.

And then one of them told on the other, and that made me mad. And I told them they’d better work harder than the other.

I went back to the kitchen, a sweaty mess, and continued to stir the spaghetti sauce. But my heart clinched because I hate yelling.

Yea, I know, sometimes we moms just yell. We lose it. It happens. And, I’m Italian. We’re loud. But here’s the thing, after I yelled my first thought was that I wasn’t so bad.

My second thought was me wondering if the person who used to yell at me growing up thought it wasn’t so bad.

It was. I was scared and I used to get sick to my stomach. Tense. Anxious. I hated it.

I hated being yelled at, and I vowed early on that I would not be like her; I vowed I wouldn’t be a yeller.

But here I am, yelling at my kids, thinking I’m not so scary when maybe I am. Maybe I am scary. Maybe they tense up and their tummies hurt and maybe they are afraid of me.

I set down my spoon and my kids came into the kitchen. I got down on my knees, pulled them near, and looked in their eyes. “I’m sorry I yelled at you all. I was mad you didn’t listen, and you need to listen, but I shouldn’t yell. I don’t like myself when I yell at you. Will you forgive me?”

They do, because kids forgive and are so gracious. They are grace to us so completely human, susceptible-to-sin mothers.

After they forgave me I asked them if I scared them. Two no’s, one yes (from the the littlest). We talk about it some more, and then we move on. My husband cracks a joke and we all laugh and all is well. We begin again.

In last night’s Core Lies Intensive, Kimberely said that motherhood often triggers our lies, the things we believe that have led us to make vows to protect ourselves and those we love, but that do more damage in the long run. She said that the bad part of the triggering is that is surprises and unnverves us. But the good part is that it brings light to our lies, and light breaks the dark allowing us to see and heal and trust our Father God.

I made a vow not to be like the person who yelled at me, but see vows give the illusion that we can stay in control.

When I break my vow, when I yell at my kids, it unnerves me because I see that I am just so human, so imperfect, so prone to sin. I can’t always control my temper. This isn’t an excuse to not change, it’s a reality that I am so in need of Jesus and His power in me.

Here’s the other thing: the gospel gives us permission to be radically honest and authentic.

Sometimes I yell at my kids. I don’t like to yell at them. I sin so often. But I am also so loved.

See into my life and my story and you see a real mess who is utterly dependent on a real God.

There is such a rhythm to life and parenting and we will mess up, but we can always, always move forward in humility and grace and forgiveness. And when we are locked up and find ourselves getting overly angry when the situation doesn’t call for it, we can get help; we can ask God to show us why we reacted the way we did.

As Kimberely so beautifully puts it, kids don’t need perfect parents, kids need whole parents, parents who are willing to invite the Holy Spirit into their weak places and ask, “I wonder why this is happening? Will you show me God, why, and what the truth is?” God wants to heal us so we can be whole and free. He wants us to know how much He loves us and wants us to see Him as Savior and Father.

One more thing about my yelling. I, by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, asked my kids to forgive me. I think there is a release in forgiveness, not only for myself, but for my children. They can release me in grace and not have to hold the imprint of my sin on their lives; I don’t have to live in their memory as a scary mom. I think forgiveness can heal wounds faster so there is less scar tissue in the long run.

I realize now that my wounds have taken longer to heal because forgiveness was never asked of me. But now that I’m older and I see more clearly and I’m whole, I can forgive without the asking of it. I’m free.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

You don’t have to keep beating yourself up. There is healing and freedom available to you, and you don’t have to whiteknuckle your way there.

You are loved and you are invited into a place of freedom, you just have to be willing to go there.

As I’ve been reading through different articles on the Syrian refugee crisis, one stood out to me as particularly inspiring.

Some of you might be familiar with the Greek yogurt Chobani. Well it turns out that the founder of Chobani, Hamdi Ulukaya, plans on giving most of his wealth away to help the refugees, and this is what he says about it:

“I have always planned to give most of what I had. Growing up, I watched my mother give to those who needed and it came from the most amazing place in her heart…”

“…Today, I dedicate my signing of the Giving Pledge to my mother and I am publicly committing the majority of my personal wealth—along with everything else I can do—to help refugees and help bring an end to this humanitarian crisis.”

Ya’ll, it was the influence of his mother that so profoundly imprinted on him that he is choosing to give away his money to help others.

What a beautiful reminder of the influence of a mother.

For all of you out there mothering, you matter. Your hidden work matters. Your sleepless nights and your constant giving, matter. When you feel weary and just done, know that all of your imperfect, beautiful, faithful offering is impacting and imprinting on your children. And yea, I know you feel like you’re making a million mistakes, but your little ones, they are gracious and God is kind, and the good things are getting in them. Don’t doubt that.

Keep praying, keep going, one step at a time, slow and steady. When you mess up, when you sin, confess it to God and ask your kids to forgive you. Begin again. Don’t give up.

You matter more than you know.

Because maybe one day your kids will grow up and give and serve and love so well they may make an impact that has eternal significance.

They may be the hands of God to someone one day.

Just as you are, right now, to them.

Love, SM