I don't know about tomorrow,
It may bring me poverty;
But the One Who feeds the sparrow,
Is the One Who stands by me.
And the path that be my portion,
May be through the flame or flood,
But His presence goes before me,
And I'm covered with His blood.

"Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you!"   Peter 5:7

As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.  Isaiah 66:13

My husband has a tradition at our church of letting me present the sermon on Mother's Day.  Below is an excerpt of my sermon.  I will post the other parts of it later.  I'm sorry for the formatting this time.  I'm not sure why the margins and fonts are all funky.  I tried to fix them to no avail.

~~~~

When I was young -- and more stupid than I am now -- I swore I would never be a parent.  I had helped raise my brothers and sisters and I had had enough with dirty diapers, screaming uncooperative kids, and the mess that comes with it.  I never realized or had been taught in public school that children are a BLESSING not a BURDEN. 

        "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord:  and the fruit of         the womb is his reward"  Psalm 127:3.

Of course, that changed when I got married and became a step-mother to the most adorable three-year-old girl I had ever met then or now.  She was captivating. 
 

I also started working with other people's children as a Kindergarten teacher.  I soon realized I loved children and wanted children of my own.  We waited three years before deciding to have a baby, and I didn't expect to have fertility issues.  But I did.  My oldest son came along, and though we wanted more children sooner, more kids didn't come along until five and a half years later when I went on fertility drugs to have my second son.  Four years and several foster children later, because of my difficulties bearing children of my own, we adopted the twins. 

I loved being a mother then and I love being a mother and grandmother now.  Motherhood is the most important job I've ever had.   

Has it been hard?  It's been the most difficult thing I've ever tried to do. 

Did I do it right?  Do I do it well?  Probably not.  That's been hard for me to accept.  I wanted to be Mother of the Year.  I wanted to be the kind of mother that people write about in poems and famous people talk about in interviews with Oprah.

I wanted to be that mother spoken of in Proverbs 31:28:  "Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. '

I wanted to be the Queen of all Mothers.  But instead, I discovered that I was the Queen of all imperfectness. 

If there was a mistake to make in mothering, I probably made it.  If there was an opportunity not to be missed, I probably missed it.  But one thing I did do was try.  I tried with all my heart to be a good mother just as most mothers do.  And I have no regrets for trying.  So here are a list of things about my experience with motherhood that I do not regret:

1.  I don't regret being a home school mom and being home with my children.  I have a vast storehouse of precious memories to comfort me in my lonely hours.   I have told this story before, but I'll share it here again.  When my oldest son was three years old, he came into the house with a stick.  He asked me to plant it as a tree beside where he was working on his tricycle so the birds would come and sit on it.  I explained to him that birds are scared of people and wouldn't come.  But he insisted if I planted that stick, the birds would come.  So, I planted the stick.  A few moments later there was a little sparrow sitting on it, right beside where my son was standing.  I tapped the window gently to get his attention -- he hadn't seen the bird yet -- and pointed to the little bird.  He smiled at me and went right back to his work.  It wasn't a miracle to him.  He already had enough faith to believe that if he planted a stick, a bird would sit on it.  But it was a miracle this mother ponders in her heart to this day.  And because I was home, I didn't miss it.

2.  I don't regret going without fancy things so I could stay home with my babies. 

3.  I don't regret wearing the same shoes for ten years or driving an old, beat up, loud car so I could watch my children learn to read and write and memorize scripture.

4.  I don't regret being a foster parent or adopting children who are cognitively disabled.  Sure, I regret, perhaps, how I handle the stress sometimes, but do I regret being their mother?  Have you seen how those boys love me?  How could anyone regret getting that kind of love?

 5.  I don't regret bringing my children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord.  It's a tough world out there.  I don't know how anyone does it without having their kids in church and in the Word of God.

6.  I don't regret making my children go to church every time it was time for church. 

7.  I don't regret that people thought I didn't have a "real job" because I was a home school mom.

8.  I don't regret graduating from being Karla to being "Noah's Mom," or "Jesse's Mom."  or "Isaiah’s and Isaac's Mom" or Melissa's "Step-mom."

9.  I don't regret keeping my marriage together even when it was very, very difficult, only because I wanted my children to have their father.  The tough times passed.  We made it through.  And, as long as abuse is not involved, I do believe that children are a very good reason for a marriage to remain intact.  Sometimes that's what it takes to get through the hard times. 

10.  I don't regret leaving a career behind that would give me an ego boost in order to be "just a mom."  There is nothing more important that I can possibly think of doing.

11.  I don't regret being home to see all the firsts that my babies experienced:  their first tooth, their first word, their first steps, their first reading book.  I relish all those memories and ponder them in my heart.

12.  I do not regret reading my Bible often and teaching the Word of God to my children in the comfort of our home.  I have many wonderful memories of our long Bible study discussions while snuggled up on the couch in our pajamas.

13.  I do not regret reading to my children.  These, too, are some of my favorite memories.  We scaled castle walls and conquered fortified cities for hours in the pages of books.

14.  I don't regret teaching my children the verse in Exodus 20 v 12 that reads:  “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee”  Exodus 20:12.  (We always joked that this scripture meant that I wouldn't kill them as long as they did what I said!)

I don't have many regrets, but that doesn't mean I didn't make mistakes.  It also doesn't mean my children turned out to be perfect angels.  Why, the nerve of them for not having the desire to run for President of these United States!  How will Oprah ever find out what a great mother I am?  (Just for the record, I never watch Oprah.)

I can waste my life pondering how I could have done things differently, or I can forgive myself and move on.  That doesn't mean I don't grieve over my mistakes and repent of them.  But God is not a God of yesterday.  That is, when we do repent and come to Him for forgiveness, He forgives us.  The Bible says that He casts our sins "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” Psalm 103:12.

And so, no matter the status of our children -- whether they are Governor of Indiana, or on death row, or by God's grace, somewhere in between, God has forgiven our mistakes as Moms.

Now, we can either wallow in self-doubt and self-pity thereby pleasing Satan himself, or we can learn from our mistakes.  All that learning is why the Bible tells the older women to teach the younger women -- because we have made mistakes and if we were teachable, we learned from them.  Now we are able to share our wisdom gleaned from the school of hard knocks with others:

“The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;  That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,  To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed”  Titus 2:3-5.

This scripture shows us that we can be TAUGHT to be good mothers and wives.  That it isn’t necessarily something that comes naturally.  What a relief!   

It is difficult, though, to teach someone who thinks they know everything.  So younger women (and older women, too) should keep their hearts teachable, ready to learn, and not so high minded to think they have nothing new to discover; or be afraid that someone will think less of them because they don't know everything.  No one can know everything.  There is always something more to learn.  I am learning all the time.  I learn everyday.
Before the twins, I was extremely self-reliant.  It was a real blow to my self-image to realize that I could not raise these little boys by myself.  I wasn't used to not doing everything by myself.  I was a home school Mom.  Home school Moms in those days were rugged pioneers.  There was no Internet, no support groups, and not even many curriculum companies in those days.  Nobody we were related to had ever home schooled.  Nobody in our community home schooled or had even heard of it.  We early home schoolers were made of tough stuff.  By golly, we were independent, self-governing, free-spirited do-it-yourself women.  My library was full of countless books on the subject of home schooling and child rearing.  I was sure there was little I did not know about how to raise kids.

But just when I thought I knew it all, God threw me two curve balls named Isaiah and Isaac.  Then, he tackled me with a little thing called Autism.

I'm so glad He did.  Because if He hadn't, I wouldn't have learned all I know today.

One of the things I wouldn’t have learned is that God really does use imperfect people.  I would have continued to think I had the market cornered on this motherhood thing.  (Of course, the kids would have grown up and then I'd realize I didn't, but back then I needed a wake-up call.) 

We are simply vessels that God works through if we let Him.  And if we are perfect, without any imperfections, light can't shine through us.  Like a perfect pot, with no cracks in it, the light can't get through.

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”  2 Corinthians 5:7.

If only we who are so imperfect, will let God shine through us, His Light will shine through all the cracks of our imperfection.  And we need to let it.  Instead of hiding how imperfect we are, we need to get out there, get real, and let people see we're not perfect, and that it's OK with God.  It's not like it's a huge revelation to Him.  He didn't die for a perfect world.  He died for an imperfect world.

It's OK for your kids and grandkids and all the church ladies and other home school moms to know you aren't perfect.  Because then God will shine through.

Matthew 2:18 says,  "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."

There are millions of mothers today weeping for their children.  Some of these children have died from hunger or illness or violence or disease.  Others weep because their children are lost -- perhaps missing, or runaways, in prison, or not serving the Lord.  Maybe you are one of those mothers. 

If you're not a mother who is weeping today, remember the mourning mothers in the world.  Remember that they need you to help them get through this season in their life.  They need your prayers.      

We have been reading BEOWULF as a school this past week and last.  We had an interesting spontaneous debate today before lunch.  We weren't even reading the book at the time!  Don't you just love it when your kids are so engaged with literature that they talk about it during the day?

Anyway, all eleven of my students debated whether or not BEOWULF fought Grendel's mother under the water. 

I just assumed that he did fight her under the water because he goes down, down, down into the lake and is attacked by all kinds of sea creatures on his way to Grendel's mother's cave.  But the kids brought up that maybe it was an underwater cave that wasn't completely full of water.  Maybe you had to swim underwater to get there, but when you got there, you stood up in the cave and there was air.

What do you think?  Send this to all your blog friends who are familiar with BEOWFULF and have them leave me a comment!  I'm curious to learn their thoughts!

Have you felt the crunch yet?  With oil over $115 a barrel, gas prices have increased 81 percent from 2003 to now, and according to the World Bank, global food prices have increased over 83 percent. I don't know if you've experienced high food prices where you are, but I have where I am. 

I am not a farmer's wife.  My husband is a pastor and we don't live on a farm.  We get our meat and groceries at the nearby grocery store.  Sometimes we make a run to Wal-mart.  I would like to go to Aldis more often, but there is not one nearby.  The nearest Wal-Mart is 30 minutes away, so I don't make the trip unless it's once a month to do a big monthly purchase of supplies.

I still have three teenage boys living at home and a husband with a healthy appetite.  (Not to mention my own!)  It is costing me $200.00 a week right now to feed them, and trust me, we ain't eatin' steak.

Now, unlike a lot of other families, my family eats all three meals each day from food from our house.  So I feel that I do a pretty good job of feeding us on that amount of money each week.  But it is beginning to get harder and harder to do.  Prices in rural Indiana are sky high. 

What do you pay for a gallon of milk?  Here a gallon of milk ranges from $3.25-$4.00 a gallon depending on which kind of milk you buy.  I can remember just one short year ago that I could get milk at $2.49/gallon and I thought THAT was high!

Cereal:  $5.00 a box.  So, we don't buy cereal unless it's on sale.  We usually eat oatmeal.  Not the flavored kind, the kind you measure out and make yourself.

I am learning a thousand different ways to make a potato and a thousand different ways to make an egg.  We will not starve.  I grew up hungry, and I know how to make a meal stretch.  Americans will probably not go hungry, but I worry about other people in the world. 

Did you know that the USA is importing WHEAT now!?  US!  The breadbasket of the WORLD!  And if we are importing wheat -- what are other people in the world going to eat?  Do I trust wheat grown elsewhere?  No, but I don't really trust any food grown anywhere to be honest, unless it's grown by a local organic farmer.  And even then -- there is no guarantee the food is safe.  (Which is why we pray for God to bless our food, right?)

Dan Glickman, the former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture says that "global wheat supplies are at their 30-year low, and U.S. wheat supplies are at their 60-year low.  Now, I don't think we're going to run out of food in this country, but I do think there are going to be severe shortages outside the United States." 

Hmmm.  Am I the only one who can hear the strains of "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" in the background? 

"A piece of bread can buy a bag of gold....I wish we'd all been ready..."

Jesus said in Matthew 24:5-8:  "Take heed that no man deceive you.  For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.  And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.  All these are the beginning of sorrows."

Doesn't all that sound familiar? 

I'm curious.  What are you doing to get ready for a food shortage?  Anything?  If you're like me, you might not have disposable income to store up anything at all. 

But I am not afraid.  I know that the Word is clear:  "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread"  Psalm 37:5.

I really and truly believe, that if we put our TRUST IN THE LORD, He will not forsake us.  He will deliver us.  And who are the righteous?  Nobody.  That is, unless you have Jesus as your savior.  Then, when God looks at you -- He sees His son and not your sin.  Oh!  What blessed hope!

In the meantime, if we are compelled by the Holy Spirit to store up dried goods -- we would be disobedient not to.  Perhaps we as believers should pray about buying dried goods now before the prices go up even more so that we can share with those who don't have anything to eat later.  It's just a thought.

What have I done?  So far, I have one medium sized rubbermaid tote and in it I have some water, beans and rice.  I don't have anything else yet.  A pastor doesn't make a boatload.  But you know, my Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  And I have no doubt, He will take good care of me, no matter what my situation.  As long as I do my part, am a good steward, and obey Him when He tells me what to purchase -- we will be just fine.  And if I miss His voice?  I still believe that God will make a way when there is no way.  If He could provide mannah in the desert, then he will care for me, too.

The Clothesline Said So Much 

A clothesline was a news forecast 
To neighbors passing by.
There were no secrets you could keep 
When clothes were hung to dry. 

It also was a friendly link
For neighbors always knew
If company had stopped on by
To spend a night or two. 

For then you'd see the fancy sheets
And towels on the line;
You'd see the company table cloths
With intricate design. 
 
The line announced a baby's birth
To folks who lived inside
As brand new infant clothes were hung
So carefully with pride. 

The ages of the children could
So readily be known
By watching how the sizes changed
You'd know how much they'd grown. 

It also told when illness struck,
As extra sheets were hung;
Then nightclothes, and a bathrobe, too,
Haphazardly were strung. 
 
It said, "Gone on vacation now"
When lines hung limp and bare. 
It told, "We're back!" when full lines sagged
With not an inch to spare. 

New folks in town were scorned upon
If wash was dingy gray,
As neighbors raised their brows,
And looked disgustedly away. 

         Author: Marilyn K. Walker