-
The Important Role of Daddy
This weekend, Levi came down with a fever. It was a strange one; no other symptoms or complaints, just sore eyes, a bit of lethargy, and an elevated temperature. I don’t do great when my kids are sick. It’s a rare occurrence, thankfully, but when it does, I become an anxious mess of a parent, the kind that imagines and prepares for every possible scenario and has terrifying visions of febrile seizures and the like. So it was an amazing gift to me when Kevin stepped up and said, “I’ll take care of Levi. You take care of Lucy.” Kevin sacrificed his own sleep to hold Levi for most…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Breastfeeding is Great; Breastfeeding On Demand is Even Better
Two days after Levi was born, I was in that strange place where sleep-deprivation, physical exhaustion, and blissful elation coincide. We had been home for about twenty-four hours, and we were adjusting fairly well to breastfeeding, but I was feeling unsure about how often and when to feed him. Scheduled Breastfeeding? When I was pregnant, I had been recommended a book that advocated for scheduled breastfeeding. It was important, the book argued, that the child adhered to the parents’ schedule and not the other way around. Having known very little about breastfeeding, I thought, sure, that sounds like a good plan — feed the baby every two or three hours…
