Can you Give-up a Tub of Quality Street to help the Homeless this Christmas?

I wrote in my other blog recently how I'm going to be helping at a pop-up winter night shelter over the next few months. It's not something I've done before and truth be told I don't feel that equipped to do it but I know that after I've attended the training I'll feel more confident and to be honest, with God by my side I'll be able to do anything that is required of me.

Whilst I'm focusing my (small) helping efforts here, others have it so much worse. Can you imagine having no place to sleep and then the temperature drops to minus 9 and stays at that temperature? Back in 2012 I travelled to Minsk in Belarus for a week with the charity campaign Operation Christmas Child. Our remit there was to deliver shoe box gifts to those in need and as such I saw a great deal of poverty and met many children living in orphanages.

As I read some of the stories that MissionWithout Borders (MWB) have shared with me for their Street Mercy Project I was transported back to my time in Minsk and meeting all those gorgeous kids who were living in homes with holes in the roof (literally) and having to deal with the issues of abandonment and neglect by parents who have been driven to binge on cheap home brewed 100% proof vodka.

They Don’t Know What’s Best For Them

It’s funny how children often think they know best. So sure of themselves and their decisions. Not wanting to open their minds and try something new but just wanting to go along with what they know and what is easy. It’s to be expected though, right? Kids grow up far too quickly and want to be the boss but of course, it is our job as parents to rein them back in and to present new opportunities to help expand their minds.

The worry comes when you see parents that never challenge their kids, they just fall into step and go along with whatever the little one is asking for. How does that end up? With children so spoilt and used to getting their own way that they have no grip on reality and no resilience to deal with the set-backs and rebuffs that will come when they go to university or start to work.

Our job as parents is to help our children grow up to be well-rounded adults. That won’t always be easy and it certainly won’t always be fun but our guidance and correction will help them so much in the long run. I think there is a lot to be said for tough love; us being consistent and carrying through on a consequence when we have issued one is super important.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,” Colossians 3:23

If we teach our children that it is OK to be flaky and to say something one minute and then not to carry through, what happens when they have that first paid job but are too tired to get up in the morning? Well, they just choose not to and instead of working for their money and feeling good about a proper days work, they just ask us for a handout as they lost the job because they couldn’t be bothered to turn up.

I was really sad the other day when I read a post on Facebook about how a company is having trouble recruiting for their esteemed graduate programme. Why were they having trouble? Because it is an early morning start and the graduates don’t want to get up at that time of morning. My word, what kind of world are we now bringing our kids up in? One where they are so pampered and pandered to that they don’t have to make any effort anymore and they are not willing to put in a hard days work.

They are missing out on so much satisfaction and personal growth. I used to love falling into bed after a 12 hour day on my feet when I was a hotel trainee manager. I knew I had worked hard, learnt loads and achieved a real sense of satisfaction with the service I had provided. My JJ is 12 now, coming on 13 and already he knows what it is like to work and enjoy it. I have to admit that I do feel proud that my 12 year old willingly volunteers at the local food bank warehouse every other week. He also helps out with many different tasks at the conference centre where we live – marshalling races, being a parking attendant, helping in the tea room, joining the maintenance team or stock taking in the kitchen.

The girls want to be involved too, even though they are still only 8 they are happy to pick apples or price items in the bookshop. Of course the tasks they can be involved with have to be age appropriate but they love to help out. Kids like to feel useful and when we don’t allow them to do the simple things like prepare dinner, make their bed or hoover the lounge we take away their learning and rob them of their self-satisfaction.

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Acts 20:35

Acts 20:35 reminds us that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’ and I want my children to be in the business of giving, to be generous in spirit and worldly goods. When we choose to focus on others, to serve, to work hard and to give away what we have then we will find true satisfaction.

In this age of instant gratification and sky-high expectations we have to ensure our children understand that things have value and they have to be earned and that means work in whatever form it takes.

Are you with me? Will you help your children to learn a strong work ethic?

We Can't Let Them Win - Love is Our Response!

I'd love to credit this, but I have no idea where it is from. I shared it from a friends FB post but it is not hers

What happened in France Friday is devastating and the outcry from the public is of course understandable. As a Brit I painfully feel the tragedy as Paris is a city I have been to, I have fond memories of and I currently live with a few French people. Living in an international community makes my heart stretch and want to embrace the world and no, not just the white developed world.

I want to embrace and care for all parts of the world. Currently there are 23 nationalities represented within our community, that is people from the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and South America. Each one of those people adds something just a little different, special and unique to the lifeblood here and I do not value any one of them more or less because their skin is white or because they speak English as their first language.

Yes, we are all Christians, I live in a Christian community but I suspect every one of us has friends of other religions and none. I will not ostracise people because they are Muslim.

Guest Post: Jesus is my Friend

Helping Hands by Shutterstock

Another guest post for you today in my series 'Why am I a Christian?'. This time from Nicola -

I keep trying to write this piece on why I'm a Christian and I keep getting stuck, or sidetracked! It's not that I haven't ever thought about it before - I've probably thought about it too much - it's that there are just so many reasons.

Firstly, I come from a place of philosophy - it's important that what I believe makes sense to me.  And I just can't believe that there wasn't a creator of all this intricate creation.  I see it this way - I'm a mother and I'm pretty convinced that my 'creations' cannot have things in them that I don't have myself - so if I, as a thinking part of creation, can love, then my Creator, God, must be thinking and loving...

I'm going to leave that one there, otherwise I'll get sidetracked into philosophy and that seems to go on to be something in the nature of a 10,000 word essay.

5 Reasons We Do Not Celebrate Halloween

Image used with permission

I’m not a big fan of Halloween, I never have been. However as a child I was desperate to dress up and go out trick or treating with the hope of a night of fun with friends and a bag of booty at the end of it but as for the scary and ghoulish stuff no thank you.  I never did get to trick or treat as my Dad was adamant that no child of his would go begging door-to-door and I didn’t understand what his issue was when I was a child, I just thought he was a meanie. I get it now though.

I wrote a post about Halloween back in 2011 which was a bit controversial as I said if you celebrate Halloween you were worshipping all things evil including the devil himself. It was purposefully provocative to get people to think about Halloween and what they were doing. I wasn’t actually saying that I believed many of my readers were devil worshippers, because who am I to make that judgement? I‘ve always been a live and let live kind of woman so I do feel it is your choice as to whether you and your children celebrate Halloween or not. We are all answerable for our own decisions and as long as we make them rationally and with all the information available to us then it is no-one else’s business.

I do worry however, that many people just go along with Halloween as they have never really thought about what it is or what it teaches our children. This is when it becomes problematic. I have heard Halloween referred to as ‘harmless fun’ on so many occasions, just look at the 59 comments on my earlier mentioned post. Yes there were a few people that agreed with me that it was dark, best stayed away from, over-commercialised and teaching our kids the wrong things but most people thought I was a party-pooper. That's right, I'm the up-tight Christian woman who doesn't know how to have fun!

Guest Post: Why am I a Christian?

Close up Wooden cross necklace from Shutterstock

I'm sharing another guest post today, in my series to find out what inspires other people to be a Christian. over to Naomi -

I think the simple answer to the question ‘Why am I a Christian?’ is ‘Because of God.’ I did, I admit, go looking for Him, and He found me. I know that sounds confusing, and probably a bit over-spiritual, but I’ll share a bit of my story.

Having grown up in a Christian home, with Christian parents, going to church every week, I never really questioned the existence of God. What I did question was what I saw as a fairly restrictive lifestyle: a lifestyle where my teenage version of having fun was disapproved of; a lifestyle where my friends (none of whom were Christians) wouldn’t fit in; a lifestyle which looked very much about duty, and very little about joy.

I think a big factor in that way of thinking was that I didn’t have any friends my own age who were Christians. I was pretty much on my own in my parents’ church. Now, I look at groups of teenagers from my own church, and hope that they are actually friends, that they do hang out together. Anyway.

Guest Post: Praising God even when it Hurts

“All our troubles and, all our tears, God our hope, He has overcome. All our failures and, all our fear, God our love, He has overcome. All our heartache and, all our pain, God our healer, He has overcome. All our burdens and, all our shame, God our freedom, He has overcome...”

 ~ Take Heart, Hillsong United.

It’s 2011. I stood in the balcony of our church, arms outstretched to God, tears streaming down my face, overcome by grief, unable to utter the words of the song that everyone else was giving their all to. He has overcome? God our hope? God our healer? God our freedom?

The previous Sunday morning I hadn’t been in church. Laying in A&E, I had stared at bloodstained ceiling tiles while a consultant picked the remains of our twelve week old baby from my insides. I had awoken that morning, finally at week twelve, the safe zone, only to find that I was bleeding. The following day, the day I was actually booked in for our twelve week scan to check our baby’s health and growth, I was having a scan to check that the baby had been removed successfully.

Guest Post: God wants You to Win at Life

Love Heart Hands from Shutterstock

I've got another Christian guest blogger today, it is going to be a regular thing on a Wednesday for the next few weeks. Here's a little intro to today's writer Emily -

Emily is a super-short (4’10”) kick-ass mummy to three fabulous (and loud!) children who are 5.5, 3.5 and 1.  Married to a Student Pastor of a city-centre church their house is often filled with extras coming to ‘do life’ in the midst of crazy but beautiful family life.  In her spare time (pah!) Emily paints and has been known to pick up the mic from time to time to share from her passion, the Bible. Emily also blogs at Emily's Blog.  

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You know the setting, trying to have an in-depth conversation with another mummy friend in the midst of children charging around noisily, interrupted by a nappy change, a bang to the head, an argument that needs to be resolved and then continue as if nothing had happened.

It’s in this context that I am imagining one of my mummy friends say – “So why are you a Christian anyway?” 

What Does He See When He Looks At Me?

Just look at that picture. Is there anything as gorgeous as a child fully at rest, peacefully sleeping? It's all the more precious when that child is a live wire and you have had to coax and train her to be able to fall off to sleep without a fight.

Last week dh and I went out for the evening and when we got back I went in to check on each of the kids as I always do, but this time I stopped and really looked at Miss M and captured this picture. In that moment I remembered how important it is to focus on the good in a person, every person.

It goes without saying that I love Miss M, adore her in fact. She is so like me but that doesn't necessarily make things easy. It makes them harder if anything, as all those little traits I don't like about myself, well she has them too and all those rough edges I've been working on and smoothing out over the last few years since deepening my relationship with Christ, yep they are evident as well.