Here I go again, over thinking my response to a book, taking forever to post my thoughts.
Part of my problem is that I want to get it right. All the emotions that I feel over The Missional Mom – and there is a lot to sort through – I’m afraid to write anything. So I’m just going to jump in and hit publish. Forgive me if this is rather steam of conscienceness. I can’t write this any other way. . .
The Missional Mom (Living with Purpose at Home and in the World) by Helen Lee is a book I’ve been looking to read for a long time. I’ve been hungry for the message found in these pages years before Lee wrote her book.
My mothering right now is in a funny place. My children need me; they don’t need me. It’s an odd place to be. My eldest will be 13 years old this summer. My youngest almost six; she’s getting good at making her own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There is still much to do here, but the hard work of caring for little babies and toddlers is over.
For a long time, I’ve looked at our days together, our homeschooling too, and wondered if there was something more I could be doing. And by more I mean doing for others in a meaningful way, things I can involve my children in as well, because I don’t want them growing up thinking being a Christian is mainly about going to church twice a week, AWANA club and saying grace at meals.
In all honesty, a lot of my Christian faith has taken on a ho-hum routine to it these past years and it’s a scary place to be. I never want to think of my faith in the Lord as boring or routine, but that’s what I’ve let it become. I know that’s my problem, not His lacking or unfaithfulness, but me being stuck in a spiritual rut.
Is any of this making any sense? Does anyone relate to what I’m saying? I’ve been a Christian for a long time and I know the correct answers for Sunday School. I can play the game.
Then I come up against a book like The Missional Mom and it makes me want to find my way back to a time when my faith was exciting and I did things. You know, those crazy things you would do because you just had to make your belief known to others around you no matter how crazy it made you look? Or you would go places and do things because you knew it mattered in the Kingdom of God?
I read The Missional Mom and it made me want to go places and do things again for the Lord. Of course, now I need get to do these things as a mom because that’s who I am and how can I leave my kids out when they need to understand Christianity beyond AWANA?
I want to be a mom who does exciting work for the Lord.
Is that bad, wanting the exciting? Life as a homeschooling, stay-at-home mom has a lot of mundane to it, don’t you think? But how would we recognize the wow if we didn’t have the dull? One of the things I appreciated about the book are all the mentions Lee gives to her own homeschooling and of other moms who successfully combined homeschooling and some sort of ministry.
Those are the moms I want to go back and re-read. If she can do it, why can’t I?
Don’t you love it when a book moves you to change?
Part 2 : Yet more thoughts on how this book has impacted my life, especially my approach to how I spend my time online.
