Category: Raising Girls

It’s been such a long time since I’ve really sat down and spent time here, my little room in the world-wide-web. I almost feel like a stranger, and I hate that.

This blog is my baby. She was conceived way before my precious Baby Girl came into life last year. Out of the excitement of getting married I birthed her. This is what she looked like then.

Then two years later this happened.

I sat in an ICU room, and God told me to write. I know that may sound hokie to some of you, but I remember it like it was yesterday. He told me that stories have to be shared so that others can live. Not live physically. Live spiritually. Know that they’re not alone. And that they’re loved. So that in the pain He still gets the glory. And others wonder what that’s about.

So I committed to telling that story and the others in my life. My life verse was born around that time too. Along with memories I didn’t even know I had about sitting in my room as a girl and writing. But not majoring in English because I didn’t think I was as smart as all the other English majors. I didn’t think I could do it.

For five years now I have kept plugging away at this writing thing. More really blogging thing. It’s been so hard. My perfectionism ties my hands more than makes them better. Instead of just writing, I study writing. But the more you study the more there is to study. As Jeff Goins says, at the end of the day, you just have to sit your butt in the chair and do the work – or something like that.

I went to the She Speaks conference last summer and took this.

I knew I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t done the work yet. But the sting from the three rejections hurt no less.

Then, three months later God fulfilled a desire from my eight year old heart when my mom wrote “homemaker” in my School Days book under “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I became a mom, and a mom to a girl, no less, who I secretly named years ago and her daddy and I talked about like she was in the room with us way before she came here to live. My Love.

If you were to ask me what is the one thing in life I want more than any other it would be to stay at home and raise this child for as long as possible. But my husband wants  would prefer me to work outside the home. Maybe not today but definitely one day. Even though I already got off the ferris wheel once – I mean a few times.

“I’ll write”, I tell myself. I’ll work at home and write. Which of course can be done if it’s God’s will. But right now that’s not happening.

Taking the advice of pastors and counselors and friends (yes, this has been the heaviest personal burden I’ve carried), I’m following Moses’s lead and using what’s in my hand – my degrees, my experience.

I started a blog last week that I can monetize that helps moms teach their children “right where they are”. It’s where I pour out everything I know about teaching and children from my 13 years in the classroom. Plus, there will be other motherhood stuff on there that I like to talk about. It’s called Triple Braided Kids. It’s my “business blog”.

I would love for you to stop by, and even enter a giveaway or two or three or four – there’s actually two weeks worth of giveaways going on right now, and their for really good prizes – I mean really good.

So where does that leave this baby that I started five years ago under the first name “The Rodgers Two”? I don’t know yet. God hasn’t told me to give her up, and I hope He doesn’t because I love my space here, ever so small, and it will be hard to let her go.

But it is time for my baby to grow up, and that means I need time to decorate a new room for her. While I’m praying and thinking and dreaming about that, I may not be around here as much. Sure, I’ll stop in to tell you about other places I’m writing now and again, but there won’t be a regular post schedule. Hopefully soon I’ll be back with a new passion, vision, purpose, and full of intentional wisdom from the Lord.

So I can keep telling His stories.

My Baby Girl got her first label in the hospital. She was 29 hours old.

The nurse came in to try to help her breastfeed. I say “try to help” because I quickly learned that sometimes things are just better left to a mama and her baby. Baby Girl’s mouth was only yay long, and of course she was nourished from a cord for the past nine months, so there was a bit of a learning curve for both of us.

“She’s a lazy eater”, the words came barreling out of her mouth, “You better watch her, or she’ll end up being a grazer”.

I just laid there, Baby Girl in my arms, disbelief all over my face. It had only been 29 hours. Twenty. nine. hours. and already I turned into mama bear.

I was so caught off guard that I didn’t even know what to say, then for days later I thought of all the things I should have said. You know how the perfect words come after you’ve crafted them and re-crafted them over and over in your mind? 

At 29 days old my Baby Girl had a type, she was one-of-those, she had a label. Lazy. A grazer.

Baby Girl’s next label came yesterday. It was most likely an innocent comment meant to express how fast she’s growing. But it was a label nonetheless, and it got this mama-bear’s hair to stand on end again.

“She’s huge!”, the comment said of a picture I posted of Baby Girl’s healthy and happy four-month picture.

Huge {exclamation point}, really? She’s really huge? Isn’t there a kinder, gentler expression than that? Maybe, “Wow! She’s growing so fast” or “You’re so blessed that she’s healthy!” or “I can’t believe she’s gotten so big already!”

Again, it’s all about semantics, but still the label was there and my heart broke for my perfect child.

Earlier in the day had listened to a podcast by Andy Stanley. He was speaking to middle school students, but I might as well be thirteen because I still have a lot to learn too. The whole sermon was about the labels that are put on us and the only One who has authority to be our label-maker.

God seems to speak to me in bundles. That’s how He gets my attention. A subject will come up in a conversation, then a scripture verse, then I’ll experience it, then in a podcast. Finally I’ll get it and know that this “subject” is really a lesson, and I need to listen.

Yesterday my lesson was on labels, and more specifically labels that will be put on my Baby Girl. Throughout her lifetime people will put hundreds of labels on her. Some positive and some negative, and undoubtedly I will be one of those people because I’m just that fallen and imperfect. There is nothing I can do to stop her from being labeled.

But what I can do is teach her what God wants her to do when the stickiness of the labels adheres to her person.

I can teach her that she cannot stop the labels from coming, so there is no point in trying. We live in a broken world and people are broken. We all use labels to help us cope with that brokenness. 

I can teach her that the only One who has the authority to label her is God. He is the only One who matters. He’s the only One whose label will make a difference. 

I can teach her to rip off the labels people (including herself) stick on her before they become super-glued. It’s important that she recognizes others’ labels quickly and deals with them. 

I can teach her how to replace those labels that she ripped off from other people with new ones – ones from God. Labels that tell her she is worthy and perfect and forgiven and beautiful. 

I can teach her to keep God’s labels adhered to her heart, so tight that if they are ripped off it will burn a little and she will notice. 

I can teach her that God is the only One who has the authority to label other people, too, so she needs to love others and not put labels on them herself. 

God is our label-maker. And He’s my Baby Girl’s label-maker. This is what I will teach her.

Image courtesy of suphakit73/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How do you handle the labels put on you or your family? Do you recognize them early and replace them with truth?