My best friend gave me this book for Christmas 2010.  She read it and told me I just had to read it, too.  “It’s different from every other parenting book you’ve read,” she told me.  I fully intended to begin it right away.

It only took me a year.

The premise of the book is that God uses our children to shape us; that “parenting is a school for spiritual formation and our children are our teachers.”  Wow!

Reading the first page was emotion-filled and thought-provoking for me.  Thomas shares when his daughter was two she called him Papa God.  Realizing how our children first see us as “God” is nothing less than humbling!  It also causes me to regret my inadequate parenting skills when my children were toddlers and preschoolers, and wonder how I’ve affected their faith.

And their psyche.  I can hear the therapy bills cha-chinging.

One of Thomas’ observations profoundly resonated with me:  we help shape our children’s passion and hunger for God.  He recounts how he realized the more time he spent with his toddlers, then preteens, then teens, “the more open they seemed to God’s presence in their lives.” And the converse also seemed true.

This inspires me to remain faithful in reading my Bible and spending time in prayer.  When I do this, it is easier for me to parent my children more lovingly, patiently and with respect for them as people.  They have value and worth and deserve my respect. They need me to parent them out of reverence for God.

Parenting my precious kids, now teens, is not about me; it’s about Him.  I must purify myself from “everything that contaminates body and spirit” (2 Corinthians 7:1).  And that covers a whole lot!

I’ve read many how-to parenting books and they have helped me see where I need to make changes in myself.  But most of those books do not discuss the why of parenting.  Parenting my children for the glory of God never occurred to me, yet it’s so simple to understand.

So, how about you?  How do you view your role as a parent?

*Note:  this post was originally published at The Eclectic Woman on January 1, 2012.

In 2011, WordPress challenged bloggers to post daily or weekly. I started out thinking I could do it daily, but life got in the way and I had to switch to posting weekly. That eventually turned into once-a-month and then once in a while and then not at all.

This year, the challenge, Project 365, is to pick a topic and blog about it for an entire year.  I was intrigued and excited to have a new year to start over with my blogging goals.

One of my resolutions for 2012 is to do more of what I’m passionate about doing.  Reading and writing are two of those passions.  I enjoy reading for pleasure and self-improvement.  I guess I can say the same about writing.  I like writing for fun and journaling for myself.  Whether reading a book or magazine, or writing a blog post or journal entry, I am committed to taking time for myself.

I have stacks and shelves of books that I am partly working through or have yet to begin reading.  Most of my books are non-fiction and don’t have me devouring them in one sitting like some of my favorite fiction.  I’ve always thought if I just read one chapter a day, I could finish many of my half-finished books.

Project 365 is the perfect motivator for that endeavor.  So, every day I will post my thoughts on one chapter from a book I’m reading.  I do not intend for these to be in order of any one particular book, but they might.  I don’t like to be boxed in that way.  And I’m just too ADD for that.

I hope you enjoy reading about what I will be reading about and maybe you’ll be inspired to read more too.

Blessings,

Mel

P.S. Since there are 366 days in 2012, I will start posting tomorrow.