Validated and anxious. That's how I feel after having read this book.

Validated because a lot of the situations she describes are ones I've experienced or I highly expect to experience. Validated because she says, "our children sin against us, annoy us, and mess up our stuff. We want to hold it against them, complain about them (if only to ourselves), and feel put upon by their sin." With 5 kids under 6, I think her trenches might be deeper, but we both have the same sentiments of motherhood.

Anxious because she gets my hopes up with all these great ideas of how to communicate right expectations to your kids about their behaviors and attitudes, of how to discipline your children, of how to instill godly principles first and foremost. And now I have all these ideas that I have to remember and implement consistently and correctly in order to produce solid children and I don't want to mess it up.

She says she doesn't have it all together- that she does "a lot of on-the-job failure and correction."
But as I read I was thinking, 'Um. Pretty sure you're a saint if you do all these things with your 5 children regularly.' Maybe she has it together and maybe she doesn't, but I suppose who wants to read a book about all kinds of mom-fails with no helpful suggestions. That's just our real lives, we don't need to read a book to get that. The point of the book isn't to compare myself to her as a mom. We're all figuring this out as we go. I appreciate that she wrote a book to share the things she has found helpful and successful in rearing her children to be first and foremost followers of Christ. Similar to Paul Tripp's parenting books, we have to remember it's about treating their hearts, not merely modifying their behaviors.

It's a short book with short chapters. I thought she was funny and enjoyed her writing style. It's not meant to be an exhaustive book on parenting and is worth a read. It was kind of a kick-start for me, an attitude-check on how I viewed my tasks as a mother of two now. My daughters aren't old enough to do all of the things she suggests yet, but when I'm dealing with a rebellious 2 year old, it helps me take a breath and filter the situation through the right lens.

A couple more 'sound bites':

"The state of your heart is the state of your home. You cannot harbor resentment secretly toward your children and expect their hearts to be submissive and tender. You cannot be greedy with your time and expect them to share their toys. And perhaps most importantly, you can not resist your opportunities to be corrected by God and expect them to receive correction from you."

"If you accept your lot and rejoice in your toil, God will give you the kind of overwhelming joy that cannot remember the details. Motherhood is hard work. It is repetitive and oftentimes menial. Accept it. Rejoice in it. This is your toil. Right here. Those are their faces. Enjoy them. The days of your life are supposed to be full of things like this… You will not even remember the work of all this planting when the harvest of joy overwhelms you."

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