Playlist songs

I keep saying that I am going to create a playlist/CD for my kids to listen to if anything should happen to me.  My father died when I was very young and his letters are so precious to me; so this idea of leaving something to lift my kids up if I was gone is close to my heart.  This song would definitely make the list!  I also really want Britt Nicole's headphones from this video.

Did you know?

This is a great video clip on the current culture and technology.  It gets very interesting in relation to how we parent at about 2:30 and 3:14 into the clip.  It is about 5 minutes long.


Can you imagine the amount of information that our daughters will be exposed to in the coming years?  Will they be prepared to process that information from a Godly perspective?

Twitter Grace

Have you become so use to certain words that they have lost their meaning?  I have noticed that I have a real aversion to using some decidedly churchy type words simply because they just don’t seem to carry any weight anymore.  I have become so desensitized to words like salvation, saved, born again, grace, Christians, sin, moral, and many others.  These poor words get thrown around left and right to the point where it gets hard to remember to take them seriously.  I can see why translations like The Message have found a niche in modern times as we struggle to reconnect with ideas that have become lost in a sea of misuse or over-use.  Christians can certainly talk the talk without walking the walk.

How do your daughters define these words?  How do we help them connect to the ideas that these important words represent?

Could you text salvation?

“God luvs u.  OMG[oodness] sinned again.  BTW He paid price 4 u 2 b rite w/Him.”

How do you twitter grace?

“So didn’t deserve it, but Big Guy came through 4 me again.Can’t believe He doesn’t hold it over my head when I sin big.So grateful 4 His luv.”

I am all for reaching out to our daughters in a language they can readily access and understand, but I hope we are still getting the message across.  I had an interesting battle of words with one of my girls yesterday.  I said she was worth the time and effort on my part to get things right; I won more of our “fights” because I worked hard to do right by her.  What she heard was me saying how great I was…hmm, nope, not what I meant.  So I asked her to look at it another way.  She is a treasure of gold to me and I don’t want to tarnish her or bend her into a shape that is not what God intended to be best for her.  She is worth so much that she deserves the best I have to offer.  I had to break her out of her pattern of thinking in order for her to hear what I truly said.

Sometimes I spell out a simple word and think that it couldn’t possibly be correct, but it is (usually).  It is the everyday stuff that we really should know and see that can become blurry and out of focus without us even realizing it.  It pays off big to check in with our daughters on what they understand about all the church-speak that gets thrown around in Sunday school or during the sermon.  Do they really get it?  I’ll be asking my kids this weekend what they think some of these words mean.  I would love to hear what faith-based words you think have lost their meanings.  Do your daughters have the same understanding of these words that you do?  Let me know in the comments section!

I had to post this. It is so funny and so true. I love it when someone can convict me and make me laugh at the same time.

How big is your but?

Till the End of the World

     I was told last year that I had wonderful hearing…for a seventy-year old.  Because I am not seventy years old the possible benefits of hearing aids were then explained to me; it might be better to look into getting them when I was younger, even if I didn’t quite have to have them yet.  “If you got a new DVD player, who would you want to hook it up and program it; your grandfather or one of your kids?” the nice audiologist asked me.  “Most people will answer that they would want their kids to do it because the younger generation knows so much more about current technology,” he went on to explain.  I can understand that.  It is easy for our kids because learning new technology is just part of the learning curve of life.  Our grandparents, on the other hand, are a bit more set in their ways.  (I think this was a gentler kinder way of saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”)  I was encouraged to think about getting hearing aids earlier (since it was highly likely I would need them later) so I could get use to actually hearing everyday noises.  “All of a sudden, you can hear the fridge humming, the floor boards creak, and all those other little noises that everyone else takes for granted so much that they don’t notice them.  It drives older folks nuts to unexpectedly hear all these new sounds all the time.   They have a hard time adjusting to the change.”

How are you when it comes to new technology?  Do you groan, hand the new phone to your daughter, and ask her to set your new ring tone?  Or are you the mom who sits down and is excited to play with her new toy?  How do your daughters see you in comparison to them when it comes to technology?  Are you regarded as wiser than herself? 

I have made it my business to know most of my daughters’ technology better than they do.  My girls can’t hide or delete their internet history to a point where I can’t find it.  I understand and can use more of the functions on our digital camera than my daughters.  My iPod is several generations newer than the one my children share (and that is saying something because mine is not new!).  However, I don’t know all the functions of their Nintendo DS’s nor am I better at playing the games on them.  My oldest can program her Lego Mindstorm robot with ease, and I have purposefully not learned how in order for that to be something that is done with Dad. 

I watch young girls curl their lips and sneer that they know more about the family computer than their moms do.  I see this young generation lose respect for their elders as our culture becomes less defined by the wisdom of age and more defined by knowledge of the latest and greatest.  Technology will get you ahead in life.  Our daughters see dollar signs flash in the (then) young eyes of the founders of FaceBook, Google, and Microsoft.  Our daughters see a culture that values the new fresh ideas of the young over the patient hard-work of their elders. 

I want my daughters to see me as wise in the ways of the world.  I want my daughters to come to me with questions of the heart and soul.  If they see me as “out of touch” or unable (and unwilling) to understand my cell phone; why would they come to me about cyber-bullying or the pressures of having (or not having) a FaceBook page?  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you have to be the cool parent…just the one they talk to about anything.  I do believe that our cultural reliance on technology has been a huge factor in the increasing lack of respect that youth have for their elders.

Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to take warning.     Ecclesiastes 4:13

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father.  Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.     1 Timothy 5:1-2