I have prayed about what to write about - repeatedly reminding myself and telling the Lord that I want to enjoy blogging, but the real goal is already set, and I don't want to ignore what the Lord might have me do. And as I prayed and prayed over the last several days, I still was unsure. And then I figured out what was to come first while having a some one-on-one time with my son a few nights ago. This is, however, a subject that would require an *extremely* long post to talk about everything I have on my heart,and I don't want to bore you, or give the impression of preaching, so it will be a two, or three, part post :)
We, as fathers and mothers, have an important task ahead of us when we look for the first time at the face of a sweet little boy.
What we don't always see in those first days and weeks is that the small treasure we have now will one day have to fill the shoes of a man. He will hopefully have the responsibilities of a job, a family, and a maybe even a ministry for the Lord. As a mother, it is sometimes hard for me to know just what to do to prepare my son to be a man. How compassionate should I be? What point is it time to fore-go the compassion, and work toward teaching them that life will not always be fair and they need to be ready for it? How can I help him, and be a help to my husband, in turning this sweet little boy, into a strong, focused young man? Those are a few questions that I believe probably go through any mother's mind.
Proverbs 1:8 - My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother.
God's word is very clear, then, that a mother and a father are very important to raising a man. So we as mothers have an amazing opportunity to influence our son, and help our husband's achieve their goals as well. Because I am a stay at home mom, I have a lot of my boys' time, so I have plenty of chances to instill the charecteristics of a man in them, from a young age.
So I am going to just cover a couple in today's post: Soberness and Integrity.
1. INTEGRITY - Websters defines integrity in several ways, including moral soundness or purity, uprightness, honesty, and incorruptness. This tells me that one thing we should strive to teach our boys is honesty in both word and action, and to be a 'man of their word'. There should be a moral soundness in them, that ensures that regardless of their situation, their morals are going to withstand, even if they are shaken a bit by what they are going through. Which means we need to teach them to have convictions and standards that they are determined not to comprocompromise on. Which means that we have to set the example.
2. SOBERNESS - gravity, seriousness, calmness, coolness. I have established a rule with Hoss - 'The first time is funny, the second time is foolish'. Because he is a 7 year old that loves to make me laugh, and when he finds something funny, he will repeat it - OVER and OVER and OVER. That's just one way to teach a level of soberness. No, that doesn't mean take their personality away if they tend to be on the funny side. But we do need to teach them that there is a time for seriousness, and that they need to control both their silliness, and on the other side of things, their temper. Calmness - Coolness - it will help them in the long run if we teach them not to over-react to situations, but keep calm despite circumstances. That could save their lives, or the lives of others, and help them when they come upon things in life that are hard.
Those are just a couple of things that I have thought about when I pray about what I want to teach my boys.
I have to be clear on one point, though - I have not 'arrived' at perfection in raising boys! I am still in the trenches, and have much to learn. That is why I talk about this now - because now is when we need to start training boys to be men - we can't wait until they are grown and hope that they will just wake up one day and decide to put away childish things. They will not turn out to be what you don't decide to teach them to be. And I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on training boys, because we need all the encouragement and help we can get as mothers!
Stay tuned for part 2, coming up soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment