New Sunrise

I am so thankful and humbled by the grace that I receive every day from so many! First and foremost from Christ, and then from those in my life who get to interact with me daily! :)
"His mercies are new every morning!" Every morning there is a sunrise, some you can see and some are covered by grey clouds. Whether or not you see the sun, you can see and feel it's effects. 
God has taken Ben and I on some awesome learning journey's in the last 3 years of our lives. He has taught us soo much about who He is and how He wants us to intentionally live our lives! We have been taught by passionate teachers of His word, passionate friends seeking Him, and passionate family members walking closely to Him. I am thankful for each of the lessons that He has taught us, but there is one lesson in particular that has struck me right in the heart. 
The lesson that has impacted me most came in this last year or so and through a woman who I hold in great esteem and respect! The lesson is, no matter what kind of "Gospelling" you are doing, when you choose to be a parent there is NO more important work that you can do for the sake of the Gospel than the work that you do at home and in the lives of your children! I don't mean to say that being intentional outside of the home isn't important, or that meeting the needs of the people around you isn't important to being like Christ. But what I do mean is that who will be a greater reflection of how you have lived out the Gospel than the little one's who watch and imitate you daily? What will be greater proof to you of how faithful you have been to meet the needs of the people around you than how people feel when they walk into your home, or how many times a day/week they do walk into your home??
I cannot believe that I will have done my best living for and like Christ if one day when my children are grown they say, "I remember mornings with mom. We watched TV or ate breakfast and she checked facebook or worked on her blog." or "Mom and Dad loved us soo much and they taught us about God, but I don't know... I guess I never really saw how that played out, and I don't think that Christ was ever really real to me." The thought that this could be the words of my children someday, breaks my heart! The things I hope and pray to hear my children say some day are things like "I remember mornings in our house, while we ate breakfast, mom was reading her bible." or "I couldn't imagine seeing Jesus more clearly than through the lives of my parents, and how they set up our home. We had people in and out all the time and we saw what it meant to meet peoples needs and to sacrifice for the sake of the gospel. We learned at a young age that we too were called to be intentional and to live as Christ did." What a gift it would be to hear these things instead of the latter! But to be able to hear these things we have to be VERY careful at the amount of time we put into our home and family. The reason that I say this is because it is soo easy to be less intentional at home because it is the place we let down, the place we relax, the place that we can just "be." But that isn't true, right? Because "In everything you do, whether in word or deed, do it all unto the name of the Lord, giving thanks to God the father through Me." Colossians 3:17 We can't just choose to do some things in the name of the Lord and others in the name of the flesh. My mom has said that when she was a young mom, she would choose to clean the bathrooms as if Christ were gonna come into her house that day and use them. That the toilet would be clean enough that she wouldn't be ashamed for Him to sit down and use it! Because she wanted to treat the next person who used her bathroom as if they were Christ. I LOVE this! I know that my mom succeeded in making people feel like they were special and making them feel completely at home in her house, because they said it all of the time! Our home was a place of refuge for many people, from adults to our friends and that is because she was intentional to live out Christ in her home! We have to work harder at home I think than anywhere else to maintain the discipline of living out the Gospel. We cannot choose Christ for our children, nor would we want to, but how they see Him and how they understand Him, starts completely and solely with us. I find that to be a HUGE responsibility and one that I don't want to take for granted, lightly, or to sacrifice for anything else! Starting our walk at home as Deuteronomy 6:4-9 says and the impact that we have on our children as Proverbs 6:20-22 says, I think is exactly what Christ wants for us in our journey of living out the Gospel and it will bring a true example of who He is and how He loves us to those around us, it will catapult us into living the Gospel outside of our homes and it will inspire our children to join us and do the same in their own lives.
This is what "Gospel Mothering" means to me! This is the place the the Lord is starting me at and causing me to re-evaluate and become more disciplined in. These are the things that I know I haven't been completely faithful in and that I have not done to the best of my abilities. These are the things that I am excited to continue seeing how Christ grows in me and uses me!
I desire to be like the sun, whether or not you know me, see me, or have interacted with me, you see Christ in me and feel His effects in your life!