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On Greeting our Children and Becoming a Better Parent
Confession: There are times when I parent poorly. There are times when I put my needs ahead of my children’s needs. There are times when I’m more interested in what’s on Instagram than I am in my own kids. There are times when I allow my frustration with them to lead me to say harsh words that harm them. There are times I ignore them, and in doing so, devalue them. I am not a perfect parent. I make mistakes. And there are times when I hurt our relationship by how I treat them. I am guilty of this sad reality. I think, at some point, we all are.…
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Faith in a Good Father
A little over a year ago, a few short days before Lucy was due, I received a phone call I will never forget. “I just lost my job,” my husband said into the phone. I felt my face and heart fall simultaneously. We knew the day was coming. Things were unsettled at his job, and though he had been there for ten years, he had been warned that things weren’t looking good. Still, when word came that they were eliminating his position, it still swept our feet out from under us does an unexpected, violent wave. Days before a baby’s arrival, that old companion Worry began to unpack his bags.…
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Is Spanking Biblical? An Extensive Exegesis by a Skeptical Mama – Part 3
This is final installment of a three part series. Read part one here, part two here. The Punishment for Sin God will punish his disobedient children. It is the natural consequence for sin. Yet, God always does it in love. It’s clear in Scripture. Consider Psalm 89:30-34, in which God speaks of David’s offspring: “If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the shebet and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness.” Those terms “iniquity”, “transgressions” sound familiar, don’t they? They’re…
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Is Spanking Biblical? An Extensive Exegesis by a Skeptical Mama – Part 2
This is part two in a three part series. Read part one here. What is “the Rod”? The Hebrew Shebet The word “rod” that we see in the aforementioned proverbs is the Hebrew shebet. According to Strong’s concordance, shebet can be translated as a staff, stick, or rod “used for beating or striking…and chastening” but also as a shepherd’s crook (as translated in Psalm 23), the “scepter of a king” or ruler, and, oddly, the tribe of Israel (perhaps alluding to the idea of a branch). In fact, you can see here that the term shebet is mostly translated as tribe, not a physical rod at all. So already, it’s clear…
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Is Spanking Biblical? An Extensive Exegesis by a Skeptical Mama – Part 1
Once, before we had kids, Kevin passed me a strip of leather. About two inches wide, ten inches long, and a quarter of an inch thick, it resembled an extra-large bookmark. “What’s this?” I asked. “My parents went to a Growing Kid’s God’s Way conference and came back with this leather strap.” My mouth dropped open. I imagined the welts that could be conjured up by such a thing. “They got this at a Christian parenting conference?” “Yup.” “Did they use it on you?” “I don’t think so,” he said. He did recall the many times his dad reached for his belt when he or one of his brothers were…
