Love Is. . .

As our children have grown, the topic of love has been front and center in our home.  What is love?  How do we love well?  How is it appropriate to express love?

I have watched my kids love BIG.

I have watched them fail miserably at loving.

I have observed myself doing the same.

Though there is much I do not understand about love, there are a few things I think I do.  And when I think I know something (insert rolled eyes and laughter here), I tend to share it.  (And all my children yell, AMEN! while they groan!)

So this Valentine's month, I have been sneaking notes into their bedrooms.  Most of them have been a Bible verse on the front, and a bit of (unasked for) momma advice on the back.

 This is my favorite love passage.
Last year when the going got really tough with our oldest I asked an artist to make this verse into a HUGE sign that I have hanging in our dining room. God has used it in major ways in my heart.  Some nights when I was up with the baby and praying for my teens it almost seemed as though certain lines were highlighted.  Loving is so very hard sometimes.  He used this verse to help me focus and refocus and refocus again.

I shared this passage twice with my kids during the week before Valentine's day.  Once in a private personal way.  The second time as a family devotion.  We rarely do family devotions (yep, you heard it here first!) - but this one was good for my heart on Valentine's morning.  Talking to each child about how I am inspired by the way they love - one child is such a protector, one excels in kindness, another never ever keeps a record of wrong, one is easily angered, ALL inspire me to love bigger, deeper, and more richly.  We then talked about ways that God may be calling us to love better.  It was a time I will treasure.  I so appreciate the knowledge my kids bring to me.

This passage is one I have been circling in prayer. (Read The Circle Maker?)

Until we really grasp and accept just how much God loves us, we are incapable of  security.

Oh, how I want my kids and grandson to be secure, truly secure, because they "get it!"

I also shared this verse.

Only when we receive His love, can we give true love.
What more to any of us long for than true love?

We have a standing joke around here that I am a lot of things, but I am not very fun.  It is true.  Fun is not my top priority.  However I am working on it.  Chad recently said that laughter is one of his love languages. . . so I am trying to speak his language!

In light of that "need" one day I gave this Valentine to Chad and the teens:

Sometimes when you have teenagers, shocking them is good.

The reaction of each of them was so very funny.  And it is true. . . not?

The last year has been hard.  There have been moments in which I am tempted to stop parenting.  I become cynical and sometimes feel as though parenting is really just a crap shoot.  I am tempted to take a "why bother" approach to parenting after all you do your best, and in the end, your kids do whatever they want . . . right?!?

I feel like a failure often and an expert - NEVER.  But, by the grace of God, I have not hardened my heart.  As a mom with 18 years of parenting experience, and a kid of LITERALLY every age and stage at this very moment, I can tell you I know very little.  I have read many books, gone to many workshops, and spoken to many, many other moms.  I have done and will continue to do all I know to do to shepherd my children.  

As I parent Mataya, 18 years after having my first baby, so many things have changed.  It makes me realize anew that there is only One that never changes.

I so want my kids to know Him, to love Him, to follow Him, to serve Him.

I am learning that I have very little control over that.

But I can share Him and His word with them.  I can pray it over them.  I can hang it on my walls.  I can play it on my stereo.  I can write it in Valentines.

And I can trust that His word is living.  He will use it as He wills.  He is the author of life, and He and He alone will write the last chapter.