Nine out of Ten
Understandably, many families must utilize the services of a day care center, but some Americans use such centers merely to increase their buying power by putting both parents in the workforce. A comprehensive study of American families discovered that “even among dual wage-earning couples, nine out of every ten believe that children are better off being raised with a mother at home rather than in a daycare setting.”—Family Research Council
”That they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers” Titus 2:4–5
Smile
Married life can be frustrating. In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens. In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens. In the third year, they both speak and the neighbors listen.
1 Corinthians 13 for the Home
If I live in a house of spotless beauty with everything in its place, but have not love, I am a housekeeper not a homemaker.
If I have time for waxing, polishing, and decorative achievements, but have not love, my children learn cleanliness but not godliness.
Love leaves the dust in search of a child’s laugh. Love smiles at the tiny fingerprints on a newly cleaned window. Love wipes away the tears before it wipes up the spilled milk. Love picks up the child before it picks up the toys.
Love is present through the trials. Love reprimands, reproves, and is responsive. Love crawls with the baby, walks with the toddler, runs with the child, then stands aside to let the youth walk into adulthood.
Love is the key that opens salvation’s message to a child’s heart. Before I became a mother, I took glory in my house of perfection. Now I glory in God’s perfection of my child.
As a mother, there is much I must teach my child, but the greatest of all is love.
“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” – 1 Corinthians 13:4–8
No Charge
Our little boy came up to his mother and handed her a piece of paper. After his mom dried her hands on an apron, she read the following:
- For cutting the grass: $5.00
- For cleaning up my room: $1.00
- For going to the store for you: $.50
- Babysitting my kid brother: $.25
- Taking out the garbage: $1.00
- For getting a good report card: $5.00
- For cleaning up and raking yard: $2.00
- Total owed: $14.75
His mother looked at him standing there, expectantly. She picked up the pen, turned the paper over, and wrote:
- Nine months I carried you while you were inside me: No Charge
- The times I’ve sat with you, doctored, and prayed for you: No Charge
- For all the tears that you caused through the years: No Charge
- For all the nights filled with dread, and the worries I knew were ahead: No Charge
- For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose: No Charge
- And when you add it all up, the full cost of love is: No Charge
When the son finished reading what his mother had written, there were great tears in his eyes. He looked straight at his mother and said, “Mom, I sure do love you.” And then he took the pen, and in great big letters he wrote: “PAID IN FULL.”
