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My prayer for You and for Me: Kneeling at the Cross




The month is drawing to a close and I have committed to writing once a month, but oh how I feel inadequate to share words of wisdom on parenting and faith. The cold winter blahs have taken their toll. The constant desires to play IPad, IPhone, Minecraft, and computer games are slowly shattering the memories of many years of screen free play, creative endeavors, and hours of reading or coloring that once graced our daily lives. As a mom of older children, I am finding my children need me less from day to day, but truly they need me more. They need my grace, patience, comfort, wisdom. They only pretend to need me less.
It is the Lenten season, a time to draw near to Christ, remember the One who saves. I am reminded clearly that I am inadequate. I raise my voice, I grow weary and impatient. I allow the screen play for moments of solitude. I don't want to cook, clean, go grocery shopping, or fold laundry. I want to go somewhere warm, I need me time, I need a break.  Lord, I can't do it all. No one can, no matter how hard they try to make us believe otherwise. We can't have the perfect job, the perfect home, perfect wardrobe, three healthy meals a day; fit, healthy bodies; perfectly well-behaved and groomed children. Lord, it is a facade. We are inadequate, we need your grace. We need to sit at your feet and experience your love.


In this time of Lent, I open my hands to God and admit my faults. I need my Savior, for I am weak, but He makes me strong.
2 Corinthians 12:8-10 “But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 
Lord, thank you that your grace and your love are enough. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13.
As I am willing to admit my faults, my children can recognize theirs, they draw near to the Cross, to the One who takes away sin and makes us new.  Humility and not pride; gratitude and not entitlement; service and not demands; love and not hate. It is our job as parents to model these characteristics through the power of the Holy Spirit. As we fall down at the feet of Jesus,  we lead our children, our families to need Christ more and to seek after Him.

My prayer for you is that you would set aside your need to be seen as having it all, or doing it all. Admit your weaknesses, let Christ wrap you in his arms of mercy. Let your children see you needing
Christ that they would rest In Him as well. Amen and Amen.....


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