I had a funny conversation with my wife last week. She hasn’t been able to wear her wedding ring for the last two weeks because her pregnancy has caused her fingers to swell a little. We were at the store when she showed me a much cheaper ring that she wanted to buy to at least have something on that finger. She found one a couple sizes bigger and asked me if I liked it.

I concluded that she wanted to make sure everyone knew that she had a husband and I took this as a compliment. Clearly, she was proud to be married to me. After I said this to her I realized by her reaction that this was not remotely what she was thinking.

Rather, she wanted people to know from a values point of view, that this mother with two kids under three (and a pregnant belly with a third) was doing that within the relationship of marriage. She told me she had been wondering what people were thinking about her the last few weeks.

Not exactly what I had concluded. Relationships have a way of doing that though. It’s a good reminder for us to support the needs of our wife, even if we think it is for a totally different reason!

I recently came across this article asking moms about their secret confessions when it comes to their kids. They included things like:

• Nearly one in five moms admits medicating their child to get through a special event like a plane flight; one in 12 does it just to get some peace and quiet on a regular night.
• Half have knowingly sent a sick kid to daycare or school.
• 85 percent use their kids to get out of social obligations.
• Nearly one in three uses work as an excuse to avoid taking care of the kids.
• One in ten wishes their child was the opposite sex – and of those moms, 60 percent have boys.

Continue Reading…

I’m going to break the rules here and post a link to a fantastic blog I read… about motherhood.

The post is from Rachel Jankovic, a mother of five, and offers a powerful, cross-cultural view on raising kids. And I think it easily applies to us as dads as well.

Here are a few teaser paragraphs below, but you an read the whole article here.

“Christian [fathers] carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another—and laying down your life for another represents the gospel.”

“Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.”