Do Your Life With Courage

So girlfriends, I brushed Madeline's hair into pigtails this morning (the best way to deal with the tangles in her hair this week) and watched her and Caedmon walk outside to preschool, backpacks on, holding onto each of Daddy's hands.  Then I quickly grabbed the high chair, positioned it in front of the tv with favorite finger snacks, slid Xavier into the seat and got my little stairmaster machine out from beside the futon.  I clicked the TV on to Life Today and I'm exercising next to Xavier and the further Beth Moore gets into her talk, the faster I'm working my little machine.  By the end of her prayer, I'm breaking a sweat, hands are raised and I'm crying out, "Thank you, Jesus," like a good Pentecostal.  Anglicans can recognize the Spirit too!


I have been listening to this one talk of hers from the archives for a week and they ran it again today!  I don't care what you think about her accent, past teachings, even her gender, if you listen to this talk, You Will Be Encouraged, Changed, Strengthened by God and Transformed!


She said, and I'm paraphrasing now: "Live your life with confidence.  Do your life with courage.  The Spirit of Christ is within you.  He has enough courage for everything you are going through."


The powerful, fruit-filled, Spirit-filled life of the early church apostles is available to us today!   Our God has not changed!  The Spirit is not less powerful than He was 2000 years ago! 


Romans 8:11 (New International Version)



11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.


Seriously?  The same Spirit who (Ephesians 1:19-20) raised Christ from the dead is within us?  If we are attached to the Vine, abiding in Him, and are being continuously filled with the Spirit, His lifeblood is flowing within us. 


Boy, some days I feel and act like the opposite.  Some days I'm walking with the Spirit in strength, listening, hungry for the Scripture and being transformed.  Other days I'm walking eyes down, defeated, muttering while I clean my house.)  What I forget is how close the Creator of the Universe is!  He is here. Present in my home.  Even within me! 


This is the truth.  If Christ's Spirit is within me, His wisdom, strength, healing power, joy, AND PARENTING ABILITIES are right here for me to call upon, for Him to work into me.  Once you have tasted a life, Practicing the Presence of God (like Brother Lawrence), filled with the Spirit, empowered by Him for your everyday life.  I promise you, you are not going to want to go back! You will know that the Kingdom of God is upon you and you will be the mother you were created by God to be.


(If you want to hear more about this, listen to my sermon on the left, "Epicenters of the Kingdom." And if you do anything today,  you must get yourself over to http://www.lifetoday.org/ You can watch or listen by pressing going to the left hand side and clicking under Beth Moore's picture on flash/quicktime to watch or MP3 to listen.  She's always on LifeToday on Wednesdays and there are archives of each of her talks over the last year.  Almost all of them are worth your time.  I promise you.)

He is Fierce for Our Freedom

An Eastern Starling flew down our chimney sometime in the night and started fluttering around our firebox, enclosed by the brick in the back and a glass front .  She kept fluttering around, getting herself stuck around bricks and trying to fly back up the black Alice in Wonderland hole where she came from.  I couldn't take it any longer.  I was having a birthday brunch for a friend in about an hour and I just couldn't imagine enjoying ourselves with a bird in captivity clanging around in the room adjacent.  Or at least, that's what I told myself.


I could tell that Andrew didn't care.  He was ok with the bird dying in the flue and then carrying his dead body out to the ravine to a "resting place" once he was at peace.  Andrew came from a hunting family and I've gotten very comfortable with that lifestyle.  I was quickly assimilated after seeing newly shot, skinned rabbits in the sink on my first morning sleeping over at my in-laws.  Even my children are fairly comfortable with the death of animals, watching what we call "circle of life" nature shows on the Discovery Channel.  Somehow, I could not bear the thought of this bird dying in my house, I dared to beg a very exhausted pastor husband who was Monday-morning-tired.


He came to my rescue.


Andrew got out his largest salmon/steelhead catching fishing net, opened the glass front and positioned the net over the front.  The bird walked in and then, unconvinced her freedom came in the form of black plastic netting, she promptly walked back into the firebox. 


Hmmmm. Time for a new plan of attack.


A few minutes later, the bird herself flew out from around the net and into the office/playroom, furiously beating her wings on the windows.  Over and over, Andrew kept flushing her out of corners where she would get herself stuck.  After that, she flew behind the huge computer cabinet and then into the corner behind the fish tank.  Stuck again.  I ran to get the broom and tried the help flush her out.  Again she kept flying from corner to corner.  We were adamant she had to go before the brunch...and then the kids would come home from preschool.  I wanted this bird to get out alive! 


The entire time, I'm getting seriously emotional...(and I am not even pregnant, a clear indication something else was going on here. )


I remember saving a songbird from the mouth of the neighbor's cat and making her comfortable in a shoebox until our friends' vetrinarian dad could come home from work and diagnose the problem.  More weapiness.  (I swear I'm not usually such a drama queen!)


The bird flew across the small room into a bookcase and got stuck there.  What now?  Do we reach in?  "I'll get some gloves for you," I said.  Plastic, too thin.  "My canvas ones are out in the garage," Andrew said.  I'm nearly crying by now.  OK. I got the gloves and brought them to him.  Protected, Andrew reached into the bookcase, brought out the starling and carefully carried him out the backdoor, saying to the bird as he released him, "Be free!"  I dissolved into weeping.


Oh.  That's what this was about.  A bird being freed is the theme of my sister's healing...and Freedom has been the theme of my Lent.  "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free." Galatians 5:1  It is an immediate sign that God has a word for me.  It's been happening constantly for six weeks. 

Then it hit me.  This is just a tiny picture of the kindness and fierceness that Christ has for our freedom.  He wants us to be healed of the gangrenous deadness in our spirits and be resurrected new creations.  He wants to fiercely show our other lovers (as the Old Testament prophet Hosea teaches) the door, kick them out for good, afraid to slink back into our lives when we're vulnerable.


My sister wrote about her healing in a memoir in which she talked about a word that I've always had trouble with: "wrath."  She wrote that she once gave God permission to send his wrath against everything that was standing in the way between herself and God.  Wow, now that's gutsy.  I looked inside myself, do I have that kind of guts?  Am I fierce like the Living God for my own freedom...or do I kinda wanna be free. 


If Andrew and I had kinda wanted the bird free, she would still have been fluttering around in windows that looked like the way out but were new dead ends, albeit pretty, sunshiny ones.  We had to be fiercely focused on the end goal.


I'm thankful our God is fierce for us, fierce for our freedom and for the women He made us to be.   I can't imagine not growing, not getting mature.  How depressing!  How depressing to still be dealing with the same STUFF thirty years from now.  I never want to leave my learning empty-handed.  God, thank You for loving me enough to be fierce for my freedom.  Help me to become fierce too.

Luminous ones, becoming more luminous all the time, what is it that our God wants to free you of?

Hot Tuscan Sandwich For An Easy Weeknight Meal

Yes, a trip to Tuscany is preferable, but traveling to Italy through culinary means, I believe is a close second.  Maybe that's why I usually feed my family as if we live in an Italian/American Restaurant. :)


Whenever I've traveled to Italy, the most memorable meals have not been the large elaborate ones but oddly enough the end-of-the-trip-we're-out-of-money ones.  We collect the pesto and thinly sliced ham at the butcher, the crusty bread from the baker and the cheese at the market, and find a beautiful square to sit down on a stone curb.  We rip off hunks of fresh bread, our fingers digging into the soft interior and dip it into the oily pesto, chunky with pinenuts.   We might chat about that day's museum or just watch the beautiful Italian people gesticulating wildly as they walk by.    


This is a meal we can easily remake at home.   To make it simple, I spread pesto on croissants or whole wheat subs (as it was this last Wednesday), layer the ham, add some provolone, wrap the whole sandwich in foil and stick it in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.  With a croissant, I often roast it open faced without the cheese and add toasted walnuts.  Easy...and the meal comes complete with sun-drenched memories. 

Released to Create Beauty

I love the Nancy Meyers' houses in Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday, and now in It's Complicated. (I must say I went to see the movie with crazy anticipation for Alec Baldwin's quick witted humor and views of the house.)  The painted It's Complicated kitchen has an achievable look for all budgets.

Doesn't this kitchen cry out to be cooked in?  Can't you hear it, "Please, cook in me some fabulous thyme and rosemary infused Beouf Bourginon."  The oranges alone on the counter do it for me.  I think I have an orange deficiency every spring.
Love the fabric front cabinet and the shelves which somehow don't look disorganized. 
Sometimes I need to be inspired in my own house to create a more homey beauty and besides going to this lady: www.sugarpiefarmhouse.com

and some others, I love creating a home that almost calls out to me to enjoy cooking,cleaning, organizing, and blessing my family. Recently, my first step to creating a kitchen I love to cook in was to copy the It's Complicated house and have herbs in and around my window. A simple step.  Can you believe I have kept them alive for a whole 6 weeks? Unprecedented! Herb plants are seriously cheap at the superstore Meijer...$2.50 and can be reused (obviously).

Heaven is going to be beautiful.  I know that I know that I know that heaven will far surpass any image we might have in our mind (we'll be embarrassed someday by how anemic this image really is :)...and beauty is essential to our beings...God created us that way.  We can give ourselves permission to stop fighting our love of beauty as if it isn't frugal enough, saintly enough. 

Even monks know how to paint and recognize the glory of God...in gold leaf, for goodness sake!  Ever seen St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice?  You can't leave that church without having worshipped.  If God created 1000's of varieties of frogs in one forest just for the joy of it, we should glory in beauty!  In fact, I think creating beauty heals the world, brings in God's Kingdom come...in that mystical now I have to shut my mouth kind of way.  See What Beauty is For by Sara Groves


Bon Vie, my luminous sisters!

Acceptance with Joy

Tonight I confessed to my Bible study girls around our little table that sometimes my heart isn't in mothering. I was speaking from experience. Read: today. Last night, I stayed up seriously contacts-glued-to-my-eyes late. Then, my wake up call was Xavier's hungry cry...thus, no quiet time and thus, no Perspective. And all day I was tired, craving sugar and a bit short.

I DO have a point. I promise.

All that to say that I NEED my heart to be in mothering! The days I want to shut the kids up with artificial babysitters (read Tag and tv) are the days that no ones' real needs are met.

Recently I listened to John Eldredge's Desire conference which is free on his podcast itunes site for download. (Get thee hence. AMAZING. I've mentioned it in another post.) He entreated us to live with our hearts alive and to have vocations spring out of that. Yes, But. Some of us are called to vocations that are dear to the Lord's heart like mothering which sometimes is more a test of endurance and rarely makes my heart skip faster. (Though come on Summer...cuddling with the little creatures on the couch tonight was definitely a sweet moment.)

A dear older mother I know from another church listened to me last September share about the 1 and 4 am feedings. "Does he go right to sleep?" "Yes, thank goodness" "Oh" she smiled, "then it just gives you enough time for a quick little cuddle." Hmmmmm I was sleep deprived and exhausted on many levels. In response to her sweetness I have to say my not so Christian first inclination was to react snarkily and then I determined that a change in my mindset would indeed make life easier. "Take every thought captive" and all that.

I want my heart to be engaged in mothering. I NEED my heart engaged in mothering.

There's a little yellow flower that Much Afraid in Hinds Feet on High Places meets in the Valley of Loneliness (or some such place) who has grown right up under a drainpipe, catching a drink from the occassional drip. Much Afraid is surprised to find a lovely flower in a desert and asks, "What is your name, little flower?" The flower replies, "I am Acceptance with Joy."

Acceptance with Joy. That can only be a purely supernatural way of being. Acceptance with Joy can only come through the Holy Spirit, a type of transmutation of fruit, an apple/pomegranate/plaintain: peace, joy, gentleness, etc.

Yes. Sometimes we don't get to choose our circumstances but joy and acceptance I CAN choose. I can choose to lift up my heart along with my little yellow face and look for the drip knowing that if it has come from my Lord, it WILL BE ENOUGH! He is always enough.

I can abide in the Vine and He promised that He will abide in me and there...there is where my life comes from and how my heart will be engaged. And that is not optional. It is essential.

Fighting on the Winning Team

I just finished watching The Blind Side and was struck like everyone else in America by the courage of Michael Oher's white Mama. She was a Champion for her family, marching into the darkness packing heat (in a quilted Chanel purse, no doubt.)

A week ago I met the Blind Side character's African parallel. She entered the store front Kalamazoo Prayer Clinic after us, walked in and sat down purposefully. Without much small talk she went straight to prayer and started to fight for her son. After a few minutes in prayer, we gathered that her son was having a difficult time in school and the teachers were becoming a part of the problem. Her son was losing confidence in his gifts. She prayed down all his opposition the way Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy confronted the drug dealers of inner city Memphis.

She prayed with passion and directness and a week later I still remember this:

She prayed that Christ's blood would cover her son as a protection. Christ's blood, she said, would remind the evil one of his defeat at the cross and his final defeat at the second coming. (Revelations 12:11)

She prayed against those who would try to diminish her son against the will of God. "He is filled with the Holy Spirit and with fire. I pray anyone who touches him against the will of the Father would be burned, and their work turned to ashes."

She prayed in her great African Alto voice using his long African name (that I could never quite catch) that his character would match his name.

With fervor she did battle in that small back room of the prayer clinic until she was prayed out. Her smile afterward said that she knew her Redeemer had heard and was fighting for her. "And how can we pray for you," she asked us when the hard work had been done.

My prayer partner and I got into the car and looked at eachother with triumph, "That boy is going to be just fine," we said at the same time. How could he not be, we wondered aloud with a mama championing him and confident before the throne of heaven. (Hebrews 4:16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. NIV)

I want to be her. I don't want to be caught playing the victim in self-pity or angry and cynical. I want to pray without ceasing.

I recently learned to have my husband's back, to pray for him early, as he walks out the front door, and late as he's falling asleep, my hand on his back. I've learned as another fierce mama I know advised me around Christmastime, to go to his Boss first if we are having a disagreement, then wait for the Holy Spirit to work in his heart or be open for the Counselor's work in mine.

I only hope to become like my own mama. Every morning in high school I would walk past my mama's prayer closet/office to the master bathroom to get ready for school. It was a round brick room which used to be a kiln in southern Ohio and was put back up in the same shape. I believe that many a spiritual plan of God's was fired in that space. As I tiptoed passed, she would be on her knees in her robe before her blue couch crying out to God. Often she would look up and say good morning, with tears in her eyes, the sun rising just outside the huge window beside her, putting her in a backlit profile.

These days I have her and my sister to pray with and there is no greater joy. We spend time enjoying God's presence in adoration, bust down walls with repentance between ourselves and the Lord, and then suit up (Ephesians 6:10-) and join the privilege of partnering with Him in prayer.

"The prayers of God's saints are the capital stock of heaven by which God carries on His great work on earth," says Paul Billheimer in Destined for the Throne. This quote scares the bijeebies out of me. Could it be true? It seems that many who have seen the biggest acts of God in history have lived and prayed as if it were so. (You have not because you ask not. James 4:2)

Sometimes I forget when I wake up to three kids bouncing on me at 6:30 in the morning that I need to approach the day fierce and focused. It requires

This just puts motherhood (and all of life )in perspective

" First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.

I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye.

But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.

“Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide.
“Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”
“She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?”
“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”
“And who are these gigantic people...look! They're like emeralds...who are dancing and throwing flowers before here?”
“Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”
“And who are all these young men and women on each side?”
“They are her sons and daughters.”
“She must have had a very large family, Sir.”
“Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”
“Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?”
“No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.”
“And how...but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs...why, I can't count them. And the birds. And the horses.”
“They are her beasts.”
“Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.”
“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”
I looked at my Teacher in amazement.
“Yes,” he said. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough int the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”"
— C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)

pajama party with just the girls (oh, and baby too)

What a gift tonight was. I can always tell when there's something wrong with Madeline because she starts getting whiny, talking baby talk and getting ornery with the boys. Today started out bad. The baby talk began as soon as she woke up and I knew we were in for a long day. On the way back from the children's museum I had to discipline her for continually hurting her big brother.

Let me back up. As a baby, Madeline didn't seem to bond with me right away. She was less people oriented then her brothers and I wasn't quite sure how to break through to a personality that always seemed jealous of the attention spent on anyone else. She wanted to be held all the time but would barely show me affection. Hoever, she was extremely affectionate with her nana and auntie whenever they were around. And, although she was never a "quiet" child, she never seemed to talk about anything personal. That pattern of behavior continued until I started discovering that one of the keys to Madeline's heart was quality alone time with mom and dad.

This last fall I took her school clothes shopping to get ready for preschool and she perked up, by that evening, she began hugging me more, and even told me a "secret." She went to sleep quiet and peacefully without three trips downstairs to "go to the bathroom."

John and Charles Wesleys' mom, Susanna raised ten children and this is one of the ways she talked about motherhood to her husband in a letter:


"I am a woman, but I am also the mistress of a large family. And though the superior charge of the souls contained in it lies upon you, yet in your long absence I cannot but look upon every soul you leave under my charge as a talent committed to me under a trust. I am not a man nor a minister, yet as a mother and a mistress I felt I ought to do more than I had yet done. I resolved to begin with my own children; in which I observe, the following method: I take such a proportion of time as I can spare every night to discourse with each child apart. On Monday I talk with Molly, on Tuesday with Hetty, Wednesday with Nancy, Thursday with Jacky, Friday with Patty, Saturday with Charles."

I love that. She knew her children's emotional needs, to have mother's full attention for a period of time each week. Surely with only three children, I can do that too.

Tonight was Madeline's. We watched a girly movie, had oreos and milk and then had lotion massages...feet first, hands, faces even and ewww ears? not so good. She got to smell different types of lotion to decide which one was her favorite and then we spent time talking and having quality face to face time. By the end of the night, Madeline was telling secrets in a big girl voice again.

BTW, I love that under "Occupation" for Susanna Wesley in Wikipidia it says: Mother of Methodism. Not a bad gig for someone who didn't know they were helping to launch revival in the Anglican church. :)

Yummy Pancake recipe

I'm more of a compiler when it comes to cooking. Having three young children makes cooking from scratch too overwhelming most days. I just can't wrap my mind around juggling hot things and hungry children. AND if you have trouble getting enough protein in your life, here's a fairly balanced carb to protein pancake.

So here are the most delicious and healthy pancakes I've ever had. Truly. But they are not from scratch so no formal recipe will be forthcoming. I took an ordinary wholewheat pancake mix and added 1/3 cup ricotta cheese, orange zest, cinnamon, whey protein powder, vanilla and sprinkled in dried cherries/ or chocolate chips. Yum.

House Addiction

I have a confession to make. I love/hoard house magazines and every time I'm pregnant, HGTV literally streams into my living room. I read, watch, surf and crave inspiration to make this little yellow cottage into the perfect greenhouse for my growing shoots. (Can that really be how you spell the little green thingies poking out of the ground or do I have too many toy guns lying around?) Anyhow, I just don't believe this bologna about houses being spiritually and emotionally neutral places. "It is the people that are important," some say.

This does seem like the logical conclusion but my mystical self believes that there is something a bit more complicated going on under our roofs. I believe that our hunger for house magazines/blogs/etc. is more than just greed, but a hunger for the heart's true home. Call it a hunger for what Eden was, what heaven will be or what the Kingdom of God can become on earth, we desire more than just a neutral setting. We want COMMUNION, Order, Life, Feasting, Peace. As mothers we want our homes to be the ladder where the angels ascend and descend...a meeting place between heaven and earth, a place where our children can be taught by God (Isaiah 54:13). We want to feed our families with manna and create little Edens of beauty on our city lots. Lets be intercessors, covering our families and praying that the Kingdom would come on earth right here in our hearts, and then into our homes and then radiate out from there.

A Day of Small Things. Oh Joy.

Love these lyrics from Alli Rogers song: The Day of Small Things

‘Cause I am afraid of believing,
The plans that we make seem so big.
But you’ve shown me that we’re never alone,
and your spirit will stay by our side.
So I won’t despise,
I won’t despise the day,
I won’t despise the day of small things.

I think one of the lies of the enemy is that moms are dispensable...that what we do is small and unimportant. That's what the culture tells us, and frankly on some days that's what my heart tells me. What I used to do and sometimes still get to do feels heavy and important and hard. Somehow changing diapers and making dinner and cleaning up AGAIN feels small and in the disposable category.

But, do you know what I learned a few weeks ago and need to relearn today? Much of this feels small (though I know that in God's eyes it isn't - His economy is different :) but I'm allowed to find joy in the small things. Isn't that silly? Somehow I thought that I wasn't allowed to enjoy that which was simple - had no life or death importance. Maybe you've never experienced this. I think it has to do with that material/spirit split that the gnostics were pushing so hard in the early church. They thought things that had to do with the spirit were the essentials and everything material should be run away from at best, and killed at worst. We've still got some of this thinking in today's theology. That which is spiritual is important, clothes, houses, crocuses and shiny chocolate sheetcakes, not important. This creates a very confusing message for those of us who serve, moms, nurses, etc.

Instead, if I "remember" Eden and a God who created the miraculous milky way as well as the simple wheat and then called both good, I can learn that in God I can lift up the simple moments in my life and rejoice in them. This cuddling of the baby into my belly. It is good. This making a simple bread, bologna and cheese sandwich? It is good. All these small things can be a part of my relationship with God.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come. Come into my small things and fill them with Your Presence, Your joy. This can be Another Day in Paradise.

Mommy Vitamin about cleaning. YUCK!

The most stressful part about mothering for me is the continual cleanup/housework. It feels tedious and gets torn apart faster than I know how to yell at the little Tasmanian devils to undue their trauma. Did I just say that? You should have seen Xavier this morning go from one drawer to another, emptying the contents, spill out two baskets and start terrorizing older siblings all with that animalistic little growl of his...oh yes, and a big smile. I watched all of this while I was doing the breakfast dishes.

So, here's my encouragement of the day. Self-encouragement?

Leave a room better than you found it.

That's all.

Leave each room better than you found it.

Somehow this keeps my perfectionistic tendencies to a minimum and then gives me a little spurt of energy...all while helping me with my discouragement level.

mommy vitamin by one of our founding mothers

"Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since. "
— Abigail Adams

I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't know motherhood took such serious smarts. This was one of my pre-children feminist enlightened mindsets. Motherhood, I thought, wasted the minds of intelligent women. There, confession doesn't always feel good. I had no idea how many day-offs (because I believe that every mother needs one in order to keep her sanity) I would spend in the library and bookstore devouring books about early childhood education, nutrition, smart discipline, and household organization. I HAD NO IDEA that motherhood would take all that I had to give and more.

I believe that the most important time in a mommy's day is in scripture and prayer. There is no way that I can have the love, joy, peace, patience etc. that I need unless I am filled with the Spirit, practicing the Presence and LISTENING to the word of Wisdom God desires to give. The other day I overheard Madeline telling Baby this, "I'm going to tell you a story of a bad little girl, and that bad little girl is me." Wow. Did Madeline really believe that she was bad to the core...and that she was defined by that? I believe that it was the Holy Spirit who quickened my mind to catch those words and then to understand what those words meant to Maddie. I pulled Madeline up on my lap, looked her in the eye and said, "Madeline, you are my good girl. Jesus forgives the bad things that we do and then makes us good girls again. YOU ARE A GOOD GIRL." Her face lit up and said in a high pitched voice, "Good girl. Good girl." I spent the next week telling Maddie that she was my "good girl." Each Much of her whininess and acting out began to stop.

Sometimes it "feels" like my prayer time is empty. I haven't really connected. But, it always whets my appetite for more. It makes me thirsty. The kids wake up. I put on my favorite Sara Groves pandora station or Fernando Ortega station and I keep praying through the morning. Other times I have been given wisdom right in the middle of my prayer times for that day's mothering. Sure, sometimes it is a short 5 minutes because of baby's early wake up cry, but always VITAL to prime my listening-to-God ability for the rest of the toddler-paced day.

Mommy vitamin by anonymous writer

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England ..

Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in.

I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself.

I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, 'I brought you this.'

It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe ..

I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription:

'To My Dear Friend, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.'

In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:

No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names.

These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.

They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.

The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, 'Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.' And the workman replied, 'Because God sees'

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place.

It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, 'I see you. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become.'

At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life.

It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride.

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.

The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

When I really think about it, I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, 'My Mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table.' That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add, 'you're going to love it there.'

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals.. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right.

And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.