Tea Time Tuesday: Attentiveness Reaches Hearts

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Tea Time Tuesday: Oxford photos coming!

“My child, be attentive to my words; to my sayings incline your ear.” Proverbs 4:20-22

When my children’s cell phone numbers come across my texts, or I see they are calling me, I still get so excited. I drop everything because I cherish talking to them, sharing life, encouraging one another, being intimate companions. It is something I treasure.

I think this close relationship started when they were infants. I read everything I could about babies, attachment, care. I stumbled across research that said when babies were attended to quickly upon crying, they learned their needs would be cared for and they would become calmer babies, more responsive, because their brains told them they would be cared for.

After much seeking and praying, I became a mama who nursed on demand. I would hold them with their cheek touching mine and sing lullabies into their ears, while rocking them from side to side, kissing their sweet heads. A couple of my children had bubbly tummies and would take longer to soothe, but still I would hold, kiss, sing, comfort. I was an older mama when I started and so I did fall deeply in love with them, having waited. It doesn’t mean all of my moments were easy or calm, but we moved in that direction.

It was the model of God’s parenting for me, through Christ, that captured my heart in this philosophy. God longed for the companionship of His children. He walked in the garden to be with them.

Jesus came not be served, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many.”

He befriended His disciples, fed them, taught them, loved them, modeled faith, healed, spoke comfort and forgiveness. He was attentive to their needs and ultimately sacrificed His life on the cross for them and for us, that we might receive wholeness, forgiveness, eternal life. He was the servant king. I learned to become a servant mama, copying His ways.

And training would happen this way as well. The words wisdom, obedience, love, forgiveness, truth, honor and more were regularly heard day to day.

Immediately responding to a situation that needed some training or instruction, like Jesus, I would teach and train all day — high love, high training. Often, I would hold them close when they would hit another child and saying, “You may only use your hands for gentleness. You may not hit.” And teaching them to ask for forgiveness, and as they were older, writing a paragraph about what they learned in Our 24 Family Ways about forgiveness and how it applied.

They learned to expect love through encouraging words, attentiveness, listening to their words and hearts. I did not do this perfectly, but my ideals led to a pathway of practicing what I believed was the pattern of the love of Christ. My adult children still respond to this sort of love.

Much more on my podcast, At Home With Sally.

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Shaping Lives Through Dinnertime Discussions

“Here’s what I think,” was heard every day, every night as our children sharpened their brain skills and built intellectual muscle.

It was a night just like any other, which is to say it was another evening of rousing discussion. Soup spoons suspended in midair, quizzical brows, the thumping of a printed-out article on the table.

The article in question had been the source of that evening’s discussion. I can’t recall the topic of debate, but it likely had something to do with a current event, a book, an important idea or theological point. And everybody—everybody!—had an opinion about it.

Once a learning exercise that Clay and I established and encouraged, dinnertime discussions grew to be the pulsing heartbeat of the Clarkson table. It seemed dinner had two purposes—to eat and to discuss.

When our kids were young, I would ask each of them to share the most interesting thing they had learned that day, where we had gone on a field trip, or talk about what they had done with their friends. Their simple but enthusiastic sentences would tumble over each other. In those days the table was a place to practice manners, especially the arts of listening and asking.

As they grew older, sometimes Clay would bring a book or article, read or summarize part of it, and then ask their opinions. We sought to validate the thinking process in order to strengthen the muscle of thinking and engaging in ideas.

These days, we still enjoy the ease of conversation. Fostering mealtime discussion has been vital to the spiritual, social, and emotional growth of all the individuals at our table. Our lively dinnertime discussions are one of the things that most positively shaped my and my children’s lives.

Discipleship must reflect the fact that God values our voice, thought, and will. Dinnertime discussions reflect and enact this value, making a place where everyone can be heard, be exposed to truth, and have the space to develop convictions. Through dinnertime discussions, convictions can be formed, confidence can be gained, conversation can be practiced, and consideration can be taught.

Read more about this in The Lifegiving Table.

Why I Cultivated Teatime Discipleship As A Foundation

The most significant influence comes through an atmosphere of unconditional love, through pleasant experiences shared, through trust and conversations. It’s because of the commitments we cultivate over time and the willingness to be vulnerable and authentic that we bring about support and encouragement, communication and connection, respect and understanding — all the blessings true friendships have in common.

This is why I cultivated a teatime discipleship experience as a foundation. I met with my children individually over tea and over many years to invest these treasures in their hearts. Over many years, I built heart-to-heart connections with my children through words of grace, rhythms of shaping thoughts, convictions, and imagination of God's goodness, beauty, and love. These intimate friendship times were the space where I was able to build in them a sense of the truths that they could build their lives around.

Truth, beauty, and wisdom must be intentionally passed down. Rich souls do not exist by accident. Pouring into your child requires a commitment to what you most want your children to hide inside their hearts and souls and how you can encourage that to happen.

Read more about this in Teatime Discipleship for Mothers and Daughters.

Tea Time Tuesday: Who Are The Giants In Your Land?

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Rocking Chair Discipleship: The Colorado trees are turning radiant green, aspens are filling out and shimmering in our yard. Finally, our family is keen to sit in our rocking chairs for one more cuppa tea or coffee, another homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookie and delightful chats about everything in the world. How fun to have Nathan and Keelia back home with us for a while.

 My kids lives have been more formed on our front porch while rocking than any place else except the dinner table. Often we sat together talking about the issues of life, sharing secrets, listening to hearts. Thousands of conversations did not look “holy” or “sacred,” yet these produced more lasting fruit in their overall lives. It is where mentoring, discipleship took place one hidden moment at a time.

Influence comes primarily through time spent, relationships developed, conversations giving birth to dreams over a lifetime.

An advocate parent is one who champions each child’s personality, seeks to encourage, pour in love, and is willing to go the long road to walk beside their child in every situation. It is what Jesus was like with us, His own children — an advocate, a lover, a shepherd, a savior.

We were far from perfect parents. We encountered all of the challenges and dark clouds of stress, pressure, mysterious phases and exhaustion that accompanies parenthood, but we learned to champion our children through every phase of life. How dear it was to hear these thoughtful words from a Clarkson child:

“Mama, you never ever gave up on believing that I would make it in life, even through all the ups and downs. You made me believe that I could actually do something that mattered with my life, and you are still doing it.”

I loved hearing these words because I didn’t always feel like I was doing this. There were those times where life seemed long, impossible, and challenging. Yet in all of those times, choices were made, words of hope were invested and they blossomed into lives that grew and flourished.

May God grant each of us strength to face our giants, to take one more step, to believe forward that God is at work even when we cannot see. Choosing to keep going through all the paths is a gift from God.

Walking With God In His Providing Love

When the Israelites were going from Egypt to the Promised Land that God had prepared for them, spies were sent into the land to see what it was like. They did indeed find that the land was flowing with milk and honey. It was filled with abundant fruit and cultivated pastures to be an incredible provision from God. Yet the men also saw that there were “giants in the land,” and so they became “as grasshoppers” in their own sight (Numbers 13:33).

Instead of focusing on God’s provision, ten of the men focused on their fears and what seemed to them like an impossibility. The Israelites chose to listen to the voice of discouragement, and to reject the wonderful place that God had prepared for them. They complained and even wanted to appoint a leader who would take them back to Egypt. Because of their grumbling spirits, God rebuked the people and condemned them to wander for forty years in the desert wilderness.

What a magnificent lesson this is to us as moms! There will always be giants in our land. There will always be things that could potentially threaten to overwhelm us. We have to make the choice to believe in God, and in His ability and desire to provide for us.

When we do, we will be freed to celebrate His goodness. We can trust Him to lead us into His generous provision, or else we can allow life to demoralize us. If we choose the latter, we will give our children a model of complaining and grumbling, rather than faith and trust.

When we choose to practice praise, joy, and love, we then find that we experience the love of God to a greater degree in our own lives. He is there, walking in the garden of our lives, looking for us to see Him and to respond and walk with Him in His providing love.

In order to see Him, we must turn our eyes and hearts to Him, and seek to listen to Him in our souls. When we do, we validate for our children and ourselves the reality of His joy.

A mother who gives her children a heart to celebrate God’s life and beauty gives a gift of life. She is helping her children draw joy from their lives and memories that will bring them strength and pleasure all their days.

Read more about this in Your Mom Walk With God.

Finding God's Presence Amidst The Fog

Very early one morning found me and my four little ones creeping along the freeway towards the Denver airport on the busy freeway near our mountain home. Clouds of steamy fog hovering and moving mysteriously along the pathway of our car meant we had almost no visibility. I strained to keep us on the road.

In the foggy darkness, one of my little ones was confused by the scene outside our car as we drove in the muted darkness of twilight just before dawn. "Mama, lift the curtain so we can see the mountains."

This little one knew what was real and what he could not see, because the mountains graced our little home every day. He was sure of what his eyes had seen and his feet had walked—the purple mountains just outside our back door. But this day, the snow, steam and fogged covered over so that our eyes could not see behind the curtain of mist.

This scene pictured for me what life felt like at times. I believed that God was real, by faith, I had learned to believe in His goodness and love. Yet, sometimes His reality was veiled from me in my day to day life because of the life-fog and the snowy mess of life whirling around me.

Each of us is born with a spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical capacity to live vibrantly into vast potential for accomplishing great feats, to love deeply and generously, to know and understand great intellectual and wise knowledge.

He created us to know and experience so much because He is great, infinite, transcendent, and dazzling. But we must learn to see with the eyes of our heart and find that His story for us, right in the middle of our messes holds purpose, beauty, celebration, love and life.

Today, amidst life messes and circumstances that seem impossible are the exact places where our own Father is building our character, strengthening our spiritual muscles, teaching how to love more, giving us the grace to leave all the burdens of life in HIs hands.

This is the day, this day, that God has made. We, as a act of our wills will choose to rejoice and be glad in the moments we have been given.

Tea Time Tuesday: Dinner Table Feasts and Fantastic Fun

“The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.” -William Temple

Tea Time Tuesday: I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the “Clarkson’s” background are Hobbits because we have so much in common with them. Eating was a recreation for us.

Second was discussion and debate. In this way, we are related to the Inklings, the group Tolkien and Lewis were in for years, co-mentoring one another through feasting and talking and being friends who sharpened one another’s lives.

The daily habit of eating together while being intentional to talk, discuss, teach, encourage, debate, and share rousing stories was one of the most profound rhythms of our family life. Our children are today, as Temple says, most shaped in their education by the purposefulness of our meals and talk times.

Imagine, even if you just eat together 365 times each year, one meal a day, and start out with prayer of thanks to God, talk about truth, virtue, and take time to encourage, how in a lifetime, it will be over 7000 times that you and your children will practice remembering God as the center of your life together before you eat and during the meal. It will place patterns in our brains with the habit of being grateful to God every day together and cultivating intimate community as a family value.

Last week, I hosted some local friends from my membership and asked them, “What do you wish I would talk about on my podcast in the months ahead? What topics?” How to cultivate discussion at the dinner table was the question I answered today. For even more suggestions, pick up a copy of The Lifegiving Table.

They had so many ideas, questions and suggestions.

Would you please tell me what subjects you would like for me to discuss in the year ahead in the comments?
What have been some of your favorite episodes of my podcast, At Home with Sally?

Cultivating A Foundational Wisdom Of Faith In Your Children

"And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." -Hebrews 11:6

So often, I see younger women focusing on the temporal and being distracted by daily duties can take our eyes off the fact that the battleground for life is for hearts and souls coming to God and holding fast to him.

It is the issues of faith that need our fervent attention. I see so much how tending to the hearts and souls of my children while they were in my home has given them strength and fortitude to face the obstacles in their lives that come.

As I reflect on the ways we built such a faith into the lives of our children, so that, by God's grace, up to this point, they have held fast to their love and faith in God, was based on 3 aspects of faith.

1. All children and adults need to have a basic knowledge of the corpus of faith from Genesis to Revelation — the overall story of God as found in His word as well as the stories of those who walked with God. Read the Bible and teaching the stories over a long period of time. Little by little building your own knowledge as you build your children's knowledge.

2. Modeling the action of faith at each juncture of life is essential for believers to learn what is looks like to live everyday trusting God. The way a parent responds to a trial in faith is how a child will learn to live by faith. If a parent says, "Our God has promised to meet our needs, so let’s ask Him to give us wisdom in knowing how to approach this situation." By moving forward and trusting God, the child learns that trusting God is real in personal moments.

3. Finally, there is one last aspect: Faith is an action that moves us forward in taking risks to see God move supernaturally through our lives. If a parent tells a child to live by faith by taking his light to the world, then the parent should be one who starts a Bible study by inviting people to their home, or serving at shelters or teaching a children's class at church, etc. Faith moves a person to act for love of God. In giving, we receive — but faith is the energy that takes us to this active, engaging life with God.

Roses


I have always loved flowers. They are evidence of the invisible hands of God, reminding us that He is still creating and perpetuating life, even when we are not aware.
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When looking at a tiny seed, it is impossible to see what will bloom from this minute speck of nothing — the color it will produce, the bloom or fruit, or how large the plant will be. There is vast potential locked within, that under the right circumstances — planted in good soil, watered and covered in sunshine — a miracle will happen. The seed transforms into something more than itself. It gives birth to a plant that blooms and brings beauty, life, color.
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And so, during the waiting times, the slow times, God calls us to sow — to sow broadly, generously, diligently. Sometimes the seeds that He requires us to sow do not obviously promise anything. Yet, we are asked to believe in the potential, the latent miracles inside of these small life-seeds.
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We are to sow with a view to righteousness, not seeing or knowing totally the vast potential of what is in our hands. But ours is to be faithful to sow, by faith, the seeds of promise given to us, to cast the seed of promise into the soil of life, generously, diligently, faithfully.
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And His is to do the miracle. To take all of the planting of faith seeds, and love seeds, and integrity seeds, and faithfulness seeds, into the moments of our lives when no one else is looking; faithfulness to the gospel and spreading the good news; serving our children, and loving and helping our spouses; praying and believing when no sprout of answer is in sight.
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In time, in His hands, there will be such a bounty of beauty, a harvest from the seeds planted in life. We will finally see that He was creating the miracle right beside us.
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So, dear God, let us look at the flowers you have planted and see the potential beautiful harvest of our lives, if we will only believe in the seed potential in our lives right now, which by faith will become a harvest of righteousness beyond measure.

A Mother's Legacy Has Implications For Eternity

As a mother who has raised four children from birth into adulthood, I can affirm that engaging my life and faith in the lives of my children has been the most fulfilling and fruitful work I have ever pursued.

My investment in my children was about more than all the routine work of motherhood, and even more than my spiritual influence as a discipler. In the bigger picture of my life at home, I was civilizing my children, and shaping their hearts and lives. I was cooperating with God to mold them into well-rounded adults. I have come to believe that mothers have the power to civilize nations by taking seriously the opportunity they have to disciple their children and to raise them to be godly leaders.

Each mom has a different puzzle, but she has to keep what is a priority to God at the center of her decisions in life, and when she seeks the heart of God, her legacy will be one of faith and faithfulness and will have implications for eternity.