Image by …-Wink-… via Flickr

Yesterday we talked about instilling the importance of diligent work in our kids. I said that in our next post we would discuss how much they learn from their mothers modeling this trait, and to give backbone to this discussion we’re going to flip over to Proverbs 31.

Wait, wait! I see your eyes glazing over… stay with me!

Proverbs 31 is probably the most quoted, most referenced, most discussed passage on being a godly wife. I must confess, though, that every time I study this chapter I come away feeling defeated and discouraged – this woman who apparently never sleeps, is completely organized and can spin and sew and cook and organize and run a home-business while managing her home in a way unmatched by the rest of the feminine world (oh, and she helps the poor and plants vineyards in her spare time) is completely and totally intimidating to me.

A few months ago in our class at church, we had split men and women and the guy who was teaching that day gave us a list of verses to look up. He was wanting to encourage us, apparently, by having us read Proverbs 31. We were supposed to read it and feel good about all we do. Unlike what he intended, we read it and felt like big fat failures!

Because of this history of feeling like a loser every time I picked up this chapter, I found it refreshing and liberating to learn that this chapter is more than an impossible to-do list for a woman who wants to honor God and her husband. The fact that this amazing chapter is written in an acrostic form (each verse begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet) is so important to understanding what we are being told here! I will quote from Dr. Seuss and Bible Trivia:

Another form of Hebrew poetry is the acrostic form, where each line of poetry begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It carries the idea of totality, ie: “As we have exhausted the alphabet, so we have exhausted the subject.”

This section of Proverbs 31 is the last portion of the book of Proverbs, the premier book about living wisely. Written in an acrostic form, this poem is not just giving you a to-do list. This poem is describing a woman who is the quintessential wise woman. As you read through the preceding 30 chapters of Proverbs and glean all kinds of nuggets of wisdom, you might wonder what a wise woman would look like. How would she act? How would she manage her time? Well, you are invited to take a seat and watch her – this Proverbs 31 woman is wisdom lived out.

I take comfort in that. Why? I still want to learn to be a diligent, skilled, capable woman like this woman described for us in chapter 31. But, instead of focusing on the particulars of her habits and trying to be just like her, it shifts my focus back to fearing God and searching for wisdom like a hidden treasure.

Ladies, no matter how hard we try to copy this woman and be just like her, we will fail. And we will feel defeated and never want to look at it again. But the search for wisdom is a life-long quest. And the best part is, the Proverbs tell us that if we search for it, we will find it!

James 1:4-5 says, “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

Feeling defeated? Ask God for wisdom. Submit to His teaching. Search it out, find wise women to learn from, ponder on His Word, develop your skills.

Now, with that said, let’s take a look at our Proverbs 31 woman. I think of all the aspects of wisdom that we find in Proverbs, none is so vividly illustrated in this ultimate wise woman than the trait of diligence and hard work. Consider the following verses:

•She selects wool and flax
and works with eager hands. 31:13

•She gets up while it is still dark;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her servant girls. 31:15

•She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks. 31:17

•She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night. 31:18

•When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
for all of them are clothed in scarlet. 31:21

•She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come. 31:25

•She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness. 31:27

She is a busy lady. She works hard. She doesn’t waste her time. She is the definition of being “busy at home!”

So much of what I share on this blog is simply an expression of my own journey, my own learning, what God has challenged me about. I’m going to ramble for a bit – know that this is coming from my own process of learning wisdom. PLEASE don’t get the impression that I have this mastered. Yeah, right!

Over the past few years since I started my job as a full-time homemaker, God has really challenged me in the area of being busy at home and developing skills to truly be a home-maker. I think many of us look at our job as “keeping the kids out of daycare” rather than being homemakers. There is a big difference.

My job is not to be an activity director, supervision that allows us to legally keep our kids at home.  Taking on the mantle of being a home-maker is a huge, HUGE task.

Honoring our husbands and being wives that they can trust in as their capable help-meets is time consuming and humbling – for me, that means that I take seriously my ministry of creating a safe haven for him, making sure he has a nicely ironed shirt to wear to work, a delicious and healthy lunch to eat, a nutritious meal and an peaceful home to return home to. It means that I am his biggest fan, the one he can count on to listen to him, pray for him, and notice and be proud of his hard work. If that makes your skin crawl, I understand- like I said, this has been a journey God has had me on! (and I don’t always do it well!!)

Managing my home takes time and skills that I am still learning. It takes time and discipline to clean when I would rather watch Bonnie Hunt, and I have found that the “quick” way is not usually the best way! It takes time and discipline to plan our meals, carefully watch our budget, learn about nutrition and “bring our food from afar.” I use cloth diapers, bake bread, make yogurt, clip coupons, etc not because it is easy, or even because it is fun (although, sometimes it is!) – I have begun to do these things because I have found them to be the better, although harder, way.

Being a mother takes skill and discipline! It takes discipline to, well, discipline! There are so many times when it would be easier to placate them then to insist that they obey and follow through with consequences. It takes discipline to watch their eating habits and sleep schedule and make sure that they aren’t rotting their brains in front of the TV all day instead of having engaging and creative activities to enjoy. Someone has to plan those engaging and creative activities, after all!

And you know what? Our kids are watching. If we want them to learn to be diligent workers, we have to model it. We have to be life-long learners at the hearth of the wise woman, and constantly pray, “O Lord, please teach me your ways! I long for wisdom more than silver, more than great treasure!”

Isn’t it interesting that James connects perseverance with maturity and wisdom? There is no overnight fix to gain wisdom. Discipline and skill take large quantities of time invested in order to master them.

Never, NEVER think that being “busy at home” is a small or menial task. Roll up those shirt-sleeves, girls – we have a huge job to do. Let’s do it well.

Image by ETicas via Flickr

Our next topic regarding Parenting in Proverbs: diligent work.

The Proverbs are full of admonitions to work diligently and honestly and to avoid slothful laziness. It seems to me that diligent work was a more automatic thing to teach children when we lived in an agriculturally-based society. Kids grew up working hard to help contribute to the family’s financial success. They saw the immediate connections between hard work and profit and laziness and hunger. Our society has shifted to a much more entertainment centered culture where our goal is to work as little as possible and get what we want handed to us! We want everything to be easy, and if it’s not easy, it must be bad!

[Our society's obsession with working as little as possible and yet "deserving" to be helped out of our earned consequences is showing it's ugliness clearly in the school system. I enjoyed this teacher's response to a school district's new no-zero grading policy.]

Training our children to have diligence and work hard is vital to giving them the skills they need to prosper in relationships, finances, and be good stewards of what God entrusts to them. Consider the following:

10:4-5
Lazy hands make a man poor,
but diligent hands bring wealth.
He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son,
but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.

12:11
He who works his land will have abundant food,
but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.

13:4
The sluggard craves and gets nothing,
but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.

14:23
All hard work brings a profit,
but mere talk leads only to poverty.

18:9
One who is slack in his work
is brother to one who destroys.

19:15
Laziness brings on deep sleep,
and the shiftless man goes hungry.

20:4
A sluggard does not plow in season;
so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing.

These are certainly not all of the references – notably, a great “concrete” object lesson for kids [and adults!!] is found in 6:6-11, the “go to the ant, you sluggard” passage! Take them outside and literally watch the ants and talk about hard work!

There are some obvious ways to implement the teaching of diligent work with our kids. First of all, we can start teaching kids to contribute to the running of the home when they are small!

Now, to my fellow perfectionistic mothers, this is a struggle for us, isn’t it? When my 3 year old daughter announces that she is going to make her bed, why do I want to object deep down and tell her to “help me” rather than doing it herself? Who cares if her bed has big lumps in it? She can set the table… and I need to bite my tongue if the placemats are all wonky. ;) We’ll work on doing it well as she gets older, and in the meantime, there is value in her labor!

One thing I’m planning to do with her when she gets a wee bit older is to make a “photo chart” to put in her room of step-by-step how to clean her room with pictures of what it should look like. (Step one: books on the shelf like this, Step two: toys into bins, like this, etc.) To help kids learn to set the table correctly, you can make laminated placemats with outlines of the plate, flatware, and cup. Be creative, and get your kids involved in the housework – you’re teaching them diligence and also life skills!

Courtney has an easy and creative method for teaching her kids to do daily chores, and it’s fun, too!

When the kidlets are older, I am a big believer in allowance being connected to work. The Proverbs scream out to us that work is profitable, and that slothfulness will result in want. Kids learn early on whether or not they’re going to get what they want regardless of their behavior, and this can be a powerful aspect of developing character and diligence or laziness and a feeling of entitlement.

Another deeply impacting aspect of teaching diligence is modeling it, but I will save this for a second post. Apparently I’m feeling wordy today.

I am obviously still at the early, early stages of teaching these things to my kids. Do you have any methods you have tried or great ideas you have heard to implement principles of hard work and diligence? Do share!

We were finishing up a more extensive look at foolish anger in comparison with the wrath of a holy God against sin. I never did finish up the discussion about dealing with anger in our children.

I’ve been browsing around some articles about teaching anger management to kids. Personally, one of the big takeaways that I’d like to start working on more specifically with AG is identifying what makes her angry and labeling the emotion she’s feeling. Anger isn’t a huge problem for her at this point, but she does quickly escalate from slight disappointment or frustration to a full-out angry, screaming fit! Lovely! [Hmmm... that's happening right now, actually.]

I’m planning to get one of those “emotion charts” with all of the faces and the different emotions (frustrated, disappointed, overwhelmed, jealous, etc.) written underneath to start labeling and defining, labeling and defining, and pointing out to her what is making her act out in anger. Obviously a 3 year old only has so much impulse control, but it’s one step in the right direction.

Rather than pretending to be an expert on this, which I am not, check out this article about teaching our children self-control, or in other words, how to “be angry and sin not”!

And I might as well confess, I know that I don’t always model godly anger management myself. Like when I stomp my foot and yell in frustration. Yep, I did just admit that to the world. Little eyes are watching us – O Lord may we follow closely after you, and may you continue to transform us by your Spirit and your Word.

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.
Proverbs 16:32

It seems to always hold true that whatever you endeavor to teach on from the Word of God will become an obvious issue for you.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m thinking about anger and therefore am more aware of my own, or if I’m just distracted, or if God is working on this particular area for me (most likely all of the above!), but I have found myself being impatient and easily angered as a mommy lately. Remember the Elmo underwear? I seem to have to learn this over and over again!

This morning on our way back from Walmart, I was listening to Nancy Leigh DeMoss on her radio program, Revive our Hearts. She has been doing a series on the “Beauty of Meekness,” and I thought what she had to say answered a lot of the issues raised in our past posts on anger, and it resonated with me personally, as well. You can read the entire transcript of her program today here; I’m going to quote some excerpts that were particularly applicable to our prior discussions today. (All emphasis, bolding, etc. are mine)

Meekness, according to Matthew Henry, deals with and relates to our feelings of anger. Meekness has to do with how we handle those feelings of anger. He says it doesn’t totally eradicate anger because sometimes there is justified biblical occasion for anger, but the function of meekness is to direct and control our anger so that we may be angry and sin not, as we’re told in… Ephesians 4:26: “Be angry and sin not.”

So it’s meekness that puts a bridle on our anger and helps us to be angry in appropriate ways without it turning to sin.

Henry points out in his book that meekness enables us to govern or control our anger when we are provoked by others. In that sense, meekness is like a bridle.

How does this work?

A spirit of meekness causes us to stop and think before we react…

Matthew Henry says,

Let meekness stand sentinel [let it be a guard over your heart and your tongue in your responses], and upon the advance of a provocation [when we are provoked] let us examine who it is that we are about to be angry with, and for what. What are the merits of the cause . . . what are likely to be the consequences of our resentments, and what harm will it be if we stifle them, and let them go no further?

So he’s saying meekness stands like a guard. Before you let out all this stuff, before you spew, before you say the words to your husband or your kids: “Why did you . . . Why can’t you . . . I can’t believe you . . .” Before any of that comes out, you stop and you think: “Who am I talking to? This is my husband. He is not my enemy. This is my child that God gave to me. I love this child.” Or, “This is a person who was created in the image of God.” You just stop and think, “Who am I going to talk to?” And you think, “What did that person do?”…

…Henry goes on to say,

Don’t let your displeasure against the [injustices] of another cause you to put your own soul into a hurry. Meekness is the grace which preserves a man master of himself.

That’s what keeps you in control under the control of the Holy Spirit of God… meekness causes us to stop and think before reacting.

Then Matthew Henry points out that, “Meekness will curb the tongue and keep the mouth as with a bridle when the heart is hot.” …He says, “Even when we are called to rebuke others sharply …yet meekness forbids all fury and indecency of language, and everything that sounds like ‘clamor and evil speaking.’”

I know that it is true for me, and it seems to be true for most people, that most of my ungodly anger stems from pride. Big, ugly, monstrous pride. Someone has inconvenienced me, wronged me, stepped on my “rights” or my overly inflated view of my importance.

Meekness and humility go hand in hand. It is a humility before God, acknowledging that He is sovereign over all [remember, all forms of complaining are small acts of rebellion against Him!]. It is also a humility before others, putting their needs ahead of our own, seeking to serve rather than to overpower, giving up the desire to retaliate when we are wronged.

True humility, true meekness, will bridle our anger and stand sentinel over our tongues and reactions.

So, this afternoon as I work on my “big, important adult tasks” and my daughter constantly “interrupts” me, wanting me to hold her, or play with her, or turn off the tv, or give her a snack… shall I be angry and impatient with her, letting my tongue and tone wound her when she has done nothing wrong? What if she does disobey – in my discipline, am I angrily reacting to how her behavior has affected me, or am I meekly and lovingly teaching her to do what is right? I hope that I am not the only one who feels 2″ tall as I read that.

Interesting that as we parent and disciple our children, God disciples us! Lord, you truly are slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness – make us more like You!

A man’s discretion makes him slow to anger, And it is his glory to overlook a transgression.
Proverbs 19:11