Daly Focus Blog
Do you know how to care for your inner world as well as you do your outer world?
That’s hard if you’re a mom. Motherhood can be a crazy time of life. You feel overwhelmed and stressed. Your work isn’t over after you get home from your day job. It’s just beginning. Even you stay-at-home moms have a full plate from the time your feet hit the floor in the morning until you collapse into bed exhausted late at night.
One writer called grandparenting “the greatest job on earth, handed to you wrapped in a blanket.”
Friends and colleagues of mine who are grandparents tell me it’s a blast.
But they also tell me grandparenting can be a challenge.
Like, how do you stay connected when you live far away from your adult children and grandchildren?
Or how do you maintain a healthy relationship with your adult children? This is a new season of life for both of you.
Greta Henry is the director of Living Alternatives Pregnancy Resource Center in Champaign, Illinois. She’s also their director of adoptions and oversees their residential program for women called Merci’s Refuge.
Last year, she asked me to come and speak at Living Alternatives to almost 1,000 workers and supporters. I was happy for the opportunity to share my heart with people who are so dedicated to standing for life.
That night, the audience, including me, also got to hear from Greta and from a young woman named Rain Pierce, who graduated from Merci’s Refuge.
As a medical student in her 20s, Dr. Kathi Aultman was convinced of two things: God didn’t exist, and women deserved the right to an abortion.
She wanted to help women who were struggling with an unwanted pregnancy. And for Kathi, “unwanted” was the key distinction. Some women wanted their pregnancy. Some didn’t. Kathi felt strongly that she was helping women. She was terminating their pregnancy, not a baby.
It was while she was caring for preemies during her neonatal intensive care rotations that she realized the babies she was caring for were at the same stage of development as the babies she had been aborting.
There are a lot of things we can learn from children.
Often, we can become so busy with the hustle and bustle of life, that we forget to take time for what matters most. For Christians, spending time in prayer and reading Scripture can too quickly become an afterthought.
I was reminded of this recently when I came across a video of an adorable schoolboy leading his fellow classmates in prayer before breakfast.
The boy folded his hands, bowed his head, closed his eyes and, with furrowed eyebrows, devoutly prayed:
“Father God, we thank you for this food.
Marriage is serious business.
But it can also be hilarious.
You’ll discover that’s true when you hear our next Focus on the Family Broadcast: “A Lighthearted Look at Wedded Bliss.” We’re airing a recorded message from John Branyan, who takes a humorous look at the differences between men and women and explains how a couple’s unique characteristics impact their relationship in serious and hilarious ways.
John also shares a poignant story about his great-grandparents’ 70-year marriage, explaining that while married life isn’t always wedded bliss, it is life’s most profound expression of unconditional love.
Parenthood is both wonderful – and wonderfully challenging.
Raising children takes a lot of hard work, sleepless nights, and self-sacrifice. But most everyone will tell you it’s also worth it.
And according to a new study, parenthood doesn’t just benefit the children at the expense of parents. It helps parents become better, more law-abiding people.
The study was conducted by two doctoral students at the University of California, Berkeley. It found that when couples first find out that a baby is on the way, the average number of crimes the mom and dad commit drops dramatically.
Genesis says that we were created perfect in the Garden of Eden. Revelation 22 describes the end of the age when God will create a new heaven and new earth, and our perfection will be restored.
There lies the rub: Between Eden and eternity, life is filled with disappointment, and we don’t always know how to handle it well. We push disappointment aside. We ignore it. We numb it. We bury it. We doubt God’s love for us.
Would you know how to answer these questions if a co-worker or a neighbor asked them?
Do all religions point to the same truth?If Christianity is the only true religion, why are there so many denominations?Why did Jesus die for our sins?
Would you know how to answer your children if they asked those questions? Answering in ways children can understand isn’t always easy.
You may feel like author Natasha Crain when she gave her four-year-old son his first swimming lesson.
The most popular word in the average parent’s vocabulary is “no.”
To be fair, it’s an important word for moms and dads. Used properly, it creates healthy boundaries for children.
But it’s easy to over-do our “no’s.” We can be too protective. Remember Dory, the fish with short-term memory loss from the animated hit movie Finding Nemo? She reminded Marlin, the dad of mis-adventurous Nemo, “You can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.”
If we build too many fences, we’re not allowing our kids to be kids or to grow.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
