by Donna | Sep 9, 2010
I am grateful every day for a husband with the same goals, similar motivation, identical work ethic, consistent parenting methods, and deep faith. I know this isn’t always the case—and it obviously isn’t impossible to keep motivated in this parenting endeavor as a single parent. There are people everywhere doing it. And I believe that God gives the grace for each situation when it is needed; thus, I can’t imagine doing what single parents do, but then I’m not in that scenario either.
If you are a married Christian parent with a spouse who also wants to do the hard work of Christian parenting, regardless of the difficulties you face, you are very blessed indeed. There are a couple of specific areas in marriage that have helped us to keep motivated:
1. Be one in your marriage, as well as in your parenting. Ray and I are seldom unmotivated or discouraged at the same time. Thank the Lord! We need each other desperately in order to keep the momentum to finish this parenting race with our last three “little boys”! We will discuss Christian marriage more thoroughly this fall and especially next year in honor of our thirtieth wedding anniversary. In the area of motivation, though, just knowing that someone is there with you, embracing the same goals and methodology, is a huge motivator. Talk about every aspect of parenting all the time. When one is down, the other can motivate and encourage. And vice versa.
2. Do not view the husband as the breadwinner and the wife as the child raiser. We are both parents—and we are in this thing together. One of the major downfalls of so much teaching on husband and wife roles in the conservative church, to us, has been the whole idea that the husband is the “head” and the “breadwinner” and the wife is the “subordinate” and the “child raiser.” Yes, the Bible does teach that a man is to be the head of the home—but why? He is to be the head of the home to serve and love his family as Christ loved the church—not to be the boss. With the emphasis on the head and breadwinning aspects of marriage, the husband is often thought of us above parenting—or too busy making a living to parent. If a wife is a homemaker, her job is homemaking. However, parenting is not part of the job description of the homemaker. Parenting is part of the job description of the parents, plural. I am so grateful that we were taught about the servant-leadership required of the husband to truly “love as Christ loved the church.” Ray has always considered us co-parents, and, yes, even co-homeschoolers. Teaching, training, talking, disciplining…these are both the husband’s and wife’s responsibilities when they have children—and should not be relegated to the wife alone. It is difficult for a mother to stay motivated in her parenting endeavor if she feels that she is doing it alone. Husbands, if you want to help your wife stay motivated in her parenting, co-parent with her.
More motivating tips tomorrow. I wish I could just reach into every reader’s heart and give you each a huge dose of motivation—along with perseverance, long-term visualization, hope, joy, love, patience—all the things I have felt so needy for in my parenting. God bless you all.
by Donna | Sep 5, 2010
After listening to Ray sit and talk with one of our kids for literally a couple of hours…just talking, talking, talking…I ran across his Father’s Day post from June, and seeing that we have almost doubled our fans since then, decided to run it again as a sort of “back to school” inspirational for dads.
Moms and Dads both have the possibility of influencing our children tremendously. Ray discusses three of these ways (three A’s!) below….I pray that you will find help in it and that you will send it on to other dads who can benefit from learning the power of availability, awareness, and activity with their children.
There are three A’s that I have found in raising seven children ages 11 through 27 over the past two decades—three A’s that can lead to being an A+ dad for your children. (Pardon the “schoolish” expression; I’m not kidding when I say that everything becomes school around the Reishes!)
1. Available—so many of the statistics above point to this factor. Dads, we just need to be available. We need to say no to the good in order to do the best. We need to look at our children’s at home years for what they are—eighteen years or so in which other things must be put on the back burner (if needed) in order to be available for our kids. Here are some ways that I have found to make myself more available for my wife and kids:
a. For little ones—large amounts of time are not needed here—just short snatches and a lot of them—a few minutes after work; stories and kisses at bedtime; start traditions with your children that cause them to realize that you are available for them.
b. Middlers—you be the driver whenever possible and talk, talk, talk. Let them know that you are driving them to their event because the few minutes that you would have in the car with them is worth more to you than something else. (If you started talking when they were “little ones,” talking with you will become second nature to them.)
c. Olders—shooting hoops in the driveway most nights when my son was sixteen to eighteen gave us an opportunity to talk that might otherwise have not been found; make time for these older kids. When my older kids were little, I had a few minutes with each one before bed that we called our “Malachi time”—based on Malachi 4:6 in which the hearts of the father are turned to the children and vice versa. Establishing “Malachi time” twenty years ago has given me relationships with my young adult daughters that I quite possibly would not have had if I hadn’t sought them out when they were toddlers—and continued to be available to them throughout their growing up years.
2. Aware—we fathers need to be much more aware of what is going on in our children’s lives than we do. My wife can read our children like a book. She will often say, “We need to talk to ____ about how he is feeling about ___. I can tell something is a little bit off there and I think he is hurting.” How does she know these things? I have purposed to become a student of my children, so to speak. To be aware of their feelings, their friends, their interests, their influences, their needs, their spiritual condition, and much more. Awareness begins with questions. Asking questions about those areas in which you need to be more aware can lead to many insights that you might otherwise miss. (Also, ask your wife—she’ll know for sure!)
3. Activity—our kids make choices everyday to hang with peers, go to certain events, etc. or spend time with their families. Oftentimes, we have not made ourselves available, so our kids pick friends and outsiders by default. However, we have found that if we want our kids to want to be with us and want to stay home more (thus, affording us more opportunities to influence them in godly ways), we need to provide activities for them that are fun, healthy, family-oriented, and more. In the past ten years, when our older children and middlers were teens, we have purposely spent more money on “activity” with them than we did on other things that many of our peers enjoy. We might not have the nicest vehicles in the neighborhood, and we have a small, extremely modest home; however, our kids know that being with us is the “happening” place. That we will “do” things with them—go to movies, play basketball, swim, attend plays, visit museums, go out for dinner, take walks, and more. As we partake of activities with our children, we have more and more opportunities to see into their hearts and influence it for good.
Obviously, there are many more factors that bring about the A+ father—but some of those do not start with A! And this is a “short,” daily blog (at least that is what I keep telling my wife, the primary author of it!). However, if we would get up tomorrow and purpose to apply these three A’s to our fatherhood, I think we would all reap a harvest of closeness, opportunities for spiritual training, mentoring, and more.
Tomorrow—mega cooking resource reviews and introductions. Thanks for joining us!
by Donna | Sep 4, 2010
Today is a celebratory day for the Reishes—and I wanted to share it with our readers. Today our missionary girl takes off for her first assignment—as a health educator with the Assemblies of God World Missions (specifically with Global AIDS Partnership—GAP). I have written before about Kayla’s calling (at home as we read aloud as a family) and her preparation, but I wanted to get savvy today and attach a picture and paste an excerpt from an earlier post.
We have no idea how each conversation, each lesson, each ounce of compassion, each modeling of godly character, each decision that we make affects our children. I beg you not to underestimate everything you do in your home, everything your home stands for, everything you instill in your children. It ALL matters.
I wanted to share with our readers a little about Kayla and her upcoming mission work. I think Positive Parenting 3*6*5 readers will especially be interested in how Kayla first felt her calling to missions twelve years ago—while our family read aloud. And how did it begin and grow? Through her father challenging her to minister at home first—and to trust God to give her a future ministry. It is an amazing testimony that we thank God for continually.
 |
| Kayla with Mom and Dad at her missionary commissioning service in Springfield, MO in March–just before her six month itineration began. |
Twenty years ago (when Kayla was only four years old) we began reading about missionaries, evangelists, and other godly people who “counted all but loss for the sake of the gospel.” We told Kayla that she was destined to do great things —and she believed us.
Not only did she believe us, but she also acted on that challenge throughout her childhood and teen years. When Kayla was thirteen, she was called specifically into missions as our family read aloud from a challenging book by Philip Yancey. About that time, Ray questioned Kayla about her future, what God was showing her, what she thought she should be doing, who she was going to minister to, etc.
She told him that she was going to be a missionary to Central or South America.
Ray questioned her further: “No, I mean now. Who are you going to minister to right now in your life?”
Kayla thought for a quick moment, looked up at Ray and said, “Right now, my ministry will be Mom.”
Kayla had already been the most diligent child I had ever seen, but now she pressed in even harder. She would get up early, before anyone else was up, work in the kitchen, do dishes, fix breakfast. She never tired of it; her “ministry” was not just a passing phase. And she continued this—her ministry to her family has never ended.
Fast forward a few years later and Kayla found herself ministering to homeschooled students through speech, debate, Spanish, writing, and science classes she taught. She, along with her sister and another teen girl, wrote a newsletter for young girls for six years (and earned the money herself to mail it out—she didn’t charge the girls and wouldn’t let her parents pay for her ministry!). Kayla taught and preached at the young adults’ services on Sunday evenings for a couple of years, then she joined a Spanish church for a couple of years to further her Spanish speaking skills—and help those people right here in her own community. She continued to serve in many capacities–holding weekend retreats, mini seminars and workshops; speaking at homeschool conventions; helping us raise and train her younger siblings, and much more—all in an effort to “minister where she was planted” until her time came to “go out into all the world.”
Here we are, ten years after she was called to the mission field and practiced on this mission field known as home, and she has completed the degrees that she felt she needed in order to serve God in medical missions—RN, BSN (nursing), and BA (biblical studies). (She received her associates of nursing first so that she could work as a nurse while getting the other two degrees—and graduate debt free.)
And she is ready to go—as a health educator with Global Aids Partnership, developing materials, going into existing missions to help missionaries learn how to reach out to those affected by AIDS, and training pastors in other nations (especially Africa and Central and South America—she knew she would get there someday, even when she was only thirteen!).
by Donna | Aug 20, 2010
Another series of incidents led us to another priority purge—our eighth baby died in utero during an intra-uterine blood transfusion performed to try to save her life. In 1999, we had seven children, ages fifteen down to one. Ray’s job as a plant manager in an automotive plant was becoming more and more unbearable as he worked sixty to seventy hours a week to keep everything running smoothly. Joshua and Kayla were fifteen and twelve years old and our simple, tidy schedule of Ray teaching the kids before work, doing devotions during a late night dinner, then spending little spurts of time with each child before bed was unraveling. It had worked okay for the previous fifteen years because I stayed home most of the time and picked up the slack–and the children were younger and were not as high need emotionally and spiritually. The few minutes before bed with Dad had been sufficient. Our Sundays together, and anytime we had at all, had been maximized and adequate.
However, we began to realize the needs of teens were drastically different than the needs of ten year olds and babies. They required much more time and energy in order to raise them the way we felt that God wanted us to. Basically, we wanted out of our demanding lifestyle, but felt helpless to do so with a high mortgage and comfortable lifestyle. How could Ray change jobs and take a forty percent (or more) pay cut with the bills and lifestyle we had acquired?
So we put it on the back burner–until the weekend our unborn baby died and my life was in jeopardy (from a ruptured uterus). When that weekend was over, everything looked different. We came out of that whole ordeal with even stronger, more narrowed priorities–God and family were all that mattered.
Ray left that job and took a “normal” job in a non-automotive plant. We sold or gave away half of everything we owned, moved to a little, old country house, and had a new life. Ray went from working a minimum of sixty (but often up to eighty) hours a week to working a normal forty hour a week job.
We had hours and hours each week to devote to our new priorities–reaching and keeping the hearts of our teens. We didn’t have much money. We didn’t have many things. But we had the greatest commodity of all: time.
Again, an outside influence took us through a priority purge that we could either recognize and utilize for our family’s benefit or not. Nothing happens by accident. Watch for and learn from the priority purges God brings into your life.
by Donna | Aug 19, 2010
I have already described a couple of the priority purges we have experienced in our lives. There have been several more of these over the years. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of paying attention to the priority purging that might naturally happen in your life. These purges may very well be God’s way of steering you in a certain direction in terms of your priorities.
Many years ago, when we had five children ten and under, Ray’s plant shut down, and he was transferred to another plant in a city an hour away from our hometown. We had always lived in the same area as our parents, the community in which we were born and went to school. Moving with five young children to a community where we did not know anyone was overwhelming at first, but proved to be God’s way of purging our priorities even further.
Our move took us away from the church we had been in since our early married years, away from our families, and away from our friends. However, God used it to help us focus on the most important priority we had: our children. We didn’t know anyone in our new town. We didn’t have a church. We didn’t have extended family just up the road to go play games with or visit. We didn’t have any outside activities. It was just us–our marriage, five young children, homeschooling, and Ray’s job.
Talk about priority purging! This move forced us to bind together in our marriage and with our children more than ever. We were not distracted by outside friendships for us or the children–and our family unity, child training, and marriage were all strengthened as a result of it. We could have used this time to dig into even more busy-ness and activity or rush to find new friends, but because we took this as God’s way of making us more strongly united, and we focused on the heart-training of our children rather than outside things, this priority purge became a turning point in our family’s life. New friends and activities would come later, after the priority of strengthening our family was well underway.
by Donna | Aug 18, 2010
I am a firm believer in today’s blog title, moreso the older I get and the older my kids get. I could sit here now and tell you of literally dozens of times that my kids have done for others over the past three months exactly what their dad and I did for them, but tonight I want to share one specific thing that is blessing me immensely—and I pray that the story will show you that truly what we do for our kids and with our kids gets “played forward” many times over.
Twenty-seven years ago this fall, at the age of twenty-one with a young son and a newly-acquired college degree in education, I (along with my husband) sat out to do something extremely unpopular at that time—and something that I knew very little about except for the information I had gleaned the week before from two books by Dr. Raymond Moore. We homeschooled my younger (eighth grade) sister who was struggling in school. Now this story isn’t really about me, but about another twenty-one year old girl who is about to embark on a homeschooling adventure of her own.
Fast forward to tomorrow—the first day that one of my children will be a homeschool teacher. And just like her parents before her, she will not be homeschooling her own children. (She and her husband do not have children yet.) She is homeschooling a family of four kids whose mother died suddenly in the spring. (See my post about her death at https://positiveparenting3-6-5.blogspot.com/2010/04/day-one-hundred-two-inspirations-from.html .)
I have watched Cami with incredible pride (and tears of joy for her heart and many, many tears of sorrow for this family’s loss) prepare for tomorrow—the big day that school begins in her “nanny” children. I have watched her come alongside this family and do literally dozens of things that her dad and I did for her. From her recipe and meal plans (and cooking alongside a different child each day) to her efficient chore chart to her cleaning blitzes with them to their colorful, inviting daily school checklists. From fun times at the park to swimming days from table games to movies on the wall. I have watched her humbly receive guidance from another experienced mom who is laying out lesson plans for Cami in a few subjects—and observed her pouring her heart into these children whom God has entrusted to her for several hours each week day. I see her laugh with the kids and jokingly threaten them with “more school” as they talk about their days together.
And then I realize, once again in a dramatic way, that our children will do for others what we do for them. That they truly “learn what they live.” Whether it is homeschooling, Bible and character training, heart-reaching, fun family times, fond memories, or special gifts. Or, whether it is meanness, lack of understanding, selfishness, sin, or missing relationship. They learn exactly what they live—and they will do, someday in some way, to others and for others exactly what has been done to and for them.
I pray that my children will forget all of my mistakes, anger, and harshness but remember—and do for others—only the good they had in their growing up years. That they will learn only the positive things that they have lived. And that I can do and be what God wants me to do and be as I finish this parenting race (of children, anyway) over the next ten years.
And I pray for this precious family this school year—as an adorable little girl works through fifth grade math and fifth grade emotions without her mama, as their young son has that important thirteenth birthday, as an amazing daughter turns sweet sixteen, and as their oldest graduates from high school, blessed by the eleven years her mother spent educating her. I know that Cami will not take the place of their mom—nobody could and Cami wouldn’t even try—but I pray that she will be a blessing to this family in phenomenal ways as she does for them the very things that have been done for her.
