Building A Home Is The Work Of A Lifetime

To build a civilized home life is the work of a lifetime, not achieved in a short period of time or without great effort and perseverance. This is what makes our role, as we raise and mentor and love our children, so profoundly important.

Make your home and your home life, always and forever, a place of welcome, refuge, fun, comfort, and delight. You will find the work inside its walls will hold influence for a lifetime. You will never stop "making home," because there will always be people in your world longing for the life that you have created there.

Read more about this in Awaking Wonder.

Tea Time Tuesday: We Are The Lightbearers

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

Tea Time Tuesday: Well Lived Book

“Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” - Matthew 5: 16

The battle is still raging.

Many of you precious ones are heartbroken, discouraged, alone, and deep into the battle of faith. I understand. I am praying for you. I wrestled with my faith over years, but in doing so, I came to a deeper understanding of this fallen world, the nature of evil, that God’s light was stronger than the darkness, that we are all heading to a kingdom that cannot be shaken. It is not “bad” to doubt, it is the pathway to understanding. Of course, as in the garden, Satan is there to whisper lies. My children doubted but eventually became strong in their faith, too. I walked beside them with love, encouragement because I understood.

Building faith came by creating a beautiful life where they could better imagine God’s goodness, His love, His justice. It is not in lecturing or giving a harsh moralistic standard, but in showing unconditional love, giving grace through gentleness, "showing" love of God in daily moments of life.

Why did I sacrifice my time, make space to develop deep friendships? Create a beautiful place for all to dwell? Cook delicious meals, light candles each night, and play music all day long? Why late-night back scratches, reading literally hundreds of books about heroes, courage, sacrifice, love? Why daily devotions, bedtime prayers? The hundreds of tea times, talks, and comfort given over endless stages of life for countless hours?

Because beauty, love, serving, encouraging, living out my faith in mundane moments of days was my defense against the darkness, my defiance to the world’s lies and fears. It gave them scope to believe in God’s goodness, to hope for his justice in a broken place, to believe and wait for His redemption.

My granddaughter awakened in darkness of early morning. She wanted to go to “our special place” to have our tea time together. I lit candles, made tea.

As I was doing so, she actually said softly, “Queenie, You are a light-maker in the dark this morning.”

My friends, go be a light-maker where you are.

More on my podcast.

Choose To Live A Supernatural Life

Jesus has chosen you to be a picture of Him to your world. He loved you so you could share His love with everyone you meet. He forgave you so that you could extend grace to those who need to experience the forgiveness of a real, ­flesh-covered person. He lavished your world with beauty so you could reflect His beauty to those in your life. You may be the only Christ follower with access to your neighbors or coworkers. Every one of them needs Jesus, and they need to see His reality through you.

God desires to work super­ naturally through normal people who are willing to follow Him wholeheartedly and reflect His glory.

Choose to live a supernatural life! When Christ gets ahold of one’s life and the Holy Spirit lives through an ordinary person like you or me, the redeeming power of God bubbles over and touches every aspect of life.

Read more about this in Own Your Life.

What Should We Let Our Children (And Ourselves) Watch?

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

Have you ever struggled with this issue of what to (or not to) watch?

The moments we celebrate life with our precious ones pass so quickly. I can hardly believe we took this picture a decade and a half ago, right before Nathan left home to become an actor and filmmaker in Hollywood! It was no surprise that Nathan wanted to be an actor, as he had spent most of his childhood playing pretend, wearing costumes, and making films in the backyard. It was something we had encouraged when we saw it in him. 

Clay and I believed that good stories about great heroes deeply mattered, and we couldn't have been more proud when Nathan wanted to embark on that worthy journey. 

But today, so many of the stories and messages that come across our TV screens aren't ones of beauty, goodness, or redemption, like the ones we raised our children on. They often normalize and encourage unhealthy, destructive messages in the hearts and minds of our children and ourselves. But stories can be powerful conduits to inspiring goodness, revealing truth, and even connecting us more deeply with our Creator.

So today, I invited Nathan, now an experienced actor and filmmaker, on to a special podcast episode to talk about how we can decipher what stories, movies, and TV shows are beneficial to let into our hearts, minds, and homes.

Why We Pray

As I look out to the beautiful flowers that are blooming outside, I get pleasure from their beauty. But they didn't just accidentally happen. Someone had to take the time to plan the garden, buy the seeds and the bulbs and the bushes and trees. Then someone had to take the time to dig up the yard, plant the seeds, water them, and wait for them to grow. Now, I'm enjoying the fruit of that hard work.

Prayer can work like that too. We have to take time to pray, to go to God day after day. We praise him for his beauty and wonderful character, acknowledge that he is King of the universe and in control of everything. We ask him to take care of our needs, and we tell him our desires. We take the time to plant seeds of faith with God in heaven.

And we don't always see the fruit of our faith right away. But if we wait, we will see the answers to our prayers. We will see the great works of God in our lives. But the results of our prayers will be a whole lot more than just wishes granted. We'll have a picture of beauty in our hearts and in our relationships and in our work for the rest of our lives, because we took the time to do the faithful work for God's kingdom that he asked us to do.

Read more about this in The Ministry Of Motherhood.

Tea Time Tuesday: Lifegiving in Real Time

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

Tea Time Tuesday

The first moment I held Sarah, my oldest child in my arms, I knew that she was a treasure from God — a real live human being He had entrusted into my arms, my life, to steward for His glory. Somehow I knew that He was entrusting me (and Clay) to pass on a legacy of faith, truth, love, virtue in all the ways we could imagine so that our own dear one would understand and live in the love and goodness of God.

The glory of God through me as I am fully alive in His love, reflecting His grace in all the ways I live. After giving all that I could to my own four children, I understand that now I get to manifest Him to my grands as a part of my design as a “life giver.”

I consider the wonder of my grandchildren, full of life, fun, running toward me when I come to visit. All of my grandchildren, must behold the glory of God in ways that I love them: kissing their sweet heads, pretending with them, listening to their questions, and engaging in real conversation. I live the beauty of Christ in front of them, given intentionally. My giving is amidst hundreds of normal, daily moments from serving meals, putting together a puzzle, giving a good night blessing, telling stories that bring giggles or inspire. These are given in the rough and tumble of life. Impactful moments come with no great spiritual announcement that says, “This is a very spiritual moment.” Spiritual influence comes hidden in daily life, whether with a child or grandchild.

Clay wrote in The Lifegiving Parent:

“If lifegiving parenting is about giving our children real life in God so they can be fully alive in Him, then, someone’s got to give. That transfer of the life of God to our children does not happen just by good intent or by accident. It happens for one reason only — because we decide that we are the people to give. Not another person, group, or church; not an organization, resource, or influence, but us. We are the lifegivers. We are the ones who will give the life of God to our children. When we can get our heads, hearts, and hands firmly around that reality, we’ll be on the path to become the lifegiving parents God designed us to be.”

More on today’s new podcast.

Education Shapes Young Souls

People all over the world write to me asking how to best prepare a young adult to do well on their pre-entrance exams for university. Contemporary education has convinced us that real learning involves primarily studying to a test, covering only certain subjects, and focusing on right answers in textbooks and precollege tests. By age seventeen, many teens are disinterested in learning.

True education is beyond tests, grades, and standardized measurement. Perhaps teens are bored in high school because sometimes it is boring and pedantic in nature, perhaps requiring little of their ability to engage, to think, to explore ideas and philosophy.

Yet, learning how to think, to understand the rise and fall of civilizations, the reflection of a culture’s history through its art and culture, develops deeply intellectual people. When we submerge ourselves in vastly important thought life, the natural consequence is that test taking is accomplished more easily. If a child is not raised to think and dive into the context of a culture and understand peoples and philosophy from the beginning, it will be hard to develop that muscle later on.

Read more about this in Awaking Wonder.

Growing A Heart Of Joy

I must water and feed those things that I want to grow. If I want to grow a heart of joy, then I must plant the words of God and his truth. I must feed joy daily to ensure that it becomes a healthy fruit of my heart. I must be vigilant to pick and demolish the weeds of doubt, despair, sin, complaint, and selfishness, which threaten to overcome this joy. A hedge of protection should be in place so that nothing comes in to destroy the very place that God designed for me to cultivate faith, truth, beauty, and joy.

It takes diligence and constant vigilance to ensure that a garden remains healthy, vigorous, and strong. It requires attentive care, every day. "All gardens are prone toward ruin unless they are cared for every day," a gardener friend once said to me, "But mine is a work of love, and so I am committed to keeping it beautiful as long as I live."

These words of hers live on in my thoughts and dovetail with the proverb, "Watch over your heart with all diligence." Diligence definitely needs to be a resolve and commitment so that nothing robs me of the fruit of joy.

Read more about this in Dancing With My Heavenly Father

Tea Time Tuesday: Well Lived: A Journey of Faithfulness

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

Writers like C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, spun amazing tales but their messages came out of lives of hardship, hard work, integrity, perseverance through wars, disappointment and hard fought faith. taught me that their amazing work came from many years of diligent toil in all aspects of life. A well-lived life requires diligence, repentance, faith, humility, hard work, generous love, godly perseverance, day after day. This was the lesson from my Oxford years.

Many years ago, Nathan and Joy and I attended a national actors, singers, and dancers competition where the kids competed in a number of events. One of the perks of the competition was that the kids got to meet with real Hollywood producers, agents, and record companies, as well as some directors and marketers from Broadway.

A poised woman, perfectly styled blonde curls, large blue eyes, and sophisticated clothing was the evaluator for a performance in music and acting. She was a Broadway producer who wrote an evaluation after performances. With a poised demeanor and gentle tone, the experienced woman said,

"You are indeed quite naturally talented at acting and communicating. However, what you need the most is to be surrounded by people who are more talented and more experienced than you, who will challenge you to move further ahead in your skills. It is always wise to put yourself in the company of others who are more excellent than you."

What great advice, and how needed in the lives of my children at the time! I have adopted this principle in my own life for many years. When I read, “He who walks with the wise will be wise” in Proverbs, I began to look for those friendships and acquaintances with women who challenged me to be “more” than what I already was. I seek out excellence in most arenas in my life — not because I have it together, but because I always want to be growing.

Cultural voices tell us that we deserve a break, that it is okay to compromise. Standards of life for most people are quite mediocre. These voices give us permission to rest on the laurels of whatever we’ve already accomplished, and to stay complacent.

Yet, I believe if we understand that we have an amazing capacity and call to be like Christ, hard working, bright, authoritative, influential — because we are crafted in the very image of God to be like Him, then we will always be straining, in a positive way, to become all that He created us to be and to fulfill our capacity in life.

Intentionally placing ourselves in the company of other excellent people; reading inspiring and challenging books, studying scripture in depth, practicing anything in which we would like to become more excellent, will expand our capacity to accomplish great works in our lifetime.

God disciplines us, stretches us, and trains us that we might become more like Jesus — so our hearts might reflect more of His sacrificial life and love and when someone sees us, they will be looking at the very character of Jesus. He delights in using normal, run-of-the-mill people to do great things for His kingdom. Rarely did He choose “important” people to be the ones who experienced a miraculous life.

So, how about you? What kind of woman do you want to be when you grow up? What can you read this summer to better your mind? What can you do to shore up your weaknesses? How can you stretch yourself to become more of the woman Christ created you to be?

It is only in being intentional and purposeful about your life that you will grow. And in growing, your heart and soul will become more fulfilled, because God's will, which is that we become more "holy" — set apart for His purposes — is indeed good and acceptable and perfect.

No one but you can make you more excellent — you must want it and work for it yourself!

So, start a group, join a Bible study, make up a new exercise plan, develop a skill, take some lessons, meet with a mentor — make this summer one of growth, stretching and inspiration so in a few months you will be amazed at the progress you have made, and in conquering one or two areas of growth, others will also fall into place.

Love Acted Out

Love acted out is the adhesive that holds the whole of your family together. Constructing a strong foundation of expressed love requires work on your part to research the ground on which you are building that strong tower, to understand the special nature of each child in whom you are investing your time and attention.

By investing in love, intimacy, and friendship in a way that made sense to each of my children, I helped them know that they belonged to our little community called “Clarkson.” They could always know that in this place, they would be held, loved, and seen.

Read more about this in Uniquely You.