The past month or so I have spent being anxious to be more involved in “ministry”. Being pregnant in addition to having 2 little ones in the middle of winter has caused me to stay home when I would have liked to go do what I thought was “important” ministry work. Things such as visiting with elderly believers to encourage them, taking food to the homeless, witnessing to women at an abortion clinic, assisting at my church in some way, etc.  As I have grown more restless in this desire, I have felt like the Lord is showing me something.

While all of these things are not wrong and, in fact, I should make time for them, I was allowing myself to believe that I was not active in ANY ministry work. I fell into the trap that many Christian wives and mothers can fall into. However, I am seeing that my focus is on that which is a wife and mother’s first and greatest ministries: her spouse and her children.

Your Spouse

“Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” – Genesis 2:18

We as wives were made to aid our husbands.  There are several ways in which we can do this. I would like to list some of the ways I have found to be a help to him even when I cannot be out with him ministering by his side. 

• I pray for him. I ask God to protect him as he goes on his outreaches and to give him wisdom. 
  

• I have found little jobs I can do from the comfort of our home that he wants, such as recording audio for his radio show or making up flyers or formulating our monthly newsletter. This takes some of the pressure off him to try and get these things done while preparing bigger things.
  


• I tend to the children at home so that he can focus on proclaiming the gospel. While this will not always be the case when the weather is warmer and we seek to train our children in this area,  it does help my husband to have times when he can go focus solely on sharing the gospel with others 
  


• Taking care of the home is very pleasing to my husband. His work commute, time at work, and ministry commitments causes him to be gone a lot. Because of this, his time is best spent at home relaxing and enjoying time with his family. Coming home to a house where he doesn’t have to cook and clean is a big help to him (as he often will tell me so gratefully). Yes, he does do work around the house, but I try and do as much as I can to lighten his load as much as possible.  
  


• I assist him with offering my advice and opinions to ministry ideas or writings he comes to me with. While I have learned to improve on how to handle this appropriately (and indeed I am still growing in this), my husband enjoys hearing my thoughts on certain things and will take my thoughts to heart, whether or not he decides to go with what I have said.
  

There is much that a wife can do to help her husband in his pursuit of serving God. One great way to learn how you can be of better assistance to him is to go to him and ask. My husband loves it when I do that and will share with me all the ways in which I can be a great help to him.

Your Children

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” –Deuteronomy 6:6-7

Scripture commands that we teach our children God’s ways. He says that we need to teach them “diligently”. This is no small task. We need to teach them about God’s nature, man’s nature, what God requires of man, and more. God has given us authority over them for a very important purpose.

How do I “minister” to my children? (Ryan is very active in all of these ways listed but I merely listed myself because I wanted to show mothers how they can minister to their children)

• We have “sermon time” every day where I am sitting with my children as we listen to a sermon on the computer for about a half hour. This is training them to sit in a church service and worship together as a family. I emphasize that this is one of the most important times of our day, to learn from God’s Word.
  


• We do “Family Worship” daily in which we sing praises to God, go through a catechism with them including verses for each question and answer, and we read from a children’s bible storybook. This is laying the foundation for them to know why we believe as we do and training them to praise God.
  


• I pray with the children several times a day. Meal times, Family Worship time, and most recently we’ve started training our oldest to pray for different things herself. I then do a bedtime prayer with both of them. We want them to seek God in prayer continuously for different things from praising and thanking Him to petitioning on behalf of others and ourselves. 
  


• When my children do something wrong, I try and share a verse with them that will help them know what God’s Word says on the matter. I am hoping to begin working on memorizing Scripture with them as I see they are ready for it (Sarah through repetition has memorized Ephesians 6:1)
  


• I try and let my life also be an example to them. They have seen me praying, reading my bible, listening to praise music and sermons. 
  

We want to show them that being a Christian is not merely going to church on Sundays and then living like the rest of the world the rest of the time. It is about absolute surrender to Jesus in every aspect of life and it is a joyful thing.

I just want to encourage all the wives and mothers out there to invest in their two greatest ministries. While not many may see all the work you do, it is so beneficial to your loved ones and brings glory to God. Remember, Scripture teaches that we are not to do our good deeds in order to be seen by man (Matthew 6). Serve your family even if no one notices. God will reward your efforts.

It has been about a month since we began potty training our oldest daughter and there is much I have learned in this short amount of time that I would like to share with all the moms out there.

1. Pick the right time. I have learned that there are signs to look for which help in the potty training process. If your child is staying dry for long periods in their diaper, if they can pull their pants down by themselves, if they have the ability to verbalize their needs – these are all good signs that a child is ready to start going on the potty.

2. Pray for patience. Potty training is not easy at times. There WILL be accidents. We have had many accidents and there have been times where I could’ve been more gentle in how I responded to those accidents. Our response to our children with any wrong behavior should always be an example to them and should glorify God.

3. Practice. Don’t wait for them to tell you they have to go! They need to be trained first by taking them several times to the potty (we did every 30 minutes for a while) before they begin to catch on to what signals to look for.

4. Persevere. There will be times you want to quit and throw a diaper back on your little one. DON’T! Don’t give up. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. We tried potty training a couple of times before this and gave up at the littlest difficulty. Now that we’ve seen her progress as we’ve kept going, we realize that we surrendered too quickly.

5. Practice some more. When they have an accident, do practice potty runs. We do it 3 times when our daughter has an accident where we’ll run from the living room to the bathroom and sit on the potty. Then we have her practice telling us she needs to go 10 times.

6. Praise and Perks Works Wonders. Always praise them when they go on the potty. This is a new step for them and they need you to affirm that what they are doing is good and that you are proud of them. Also, we did a candy reward for each pee or poop as well as a sticker chart for our princess and once she got a certain amount of stickers, we gave her a “potty party” at her favorite kids’ hangout. She loved it and we loved celebrating with her.

7. Parental Support. Find other parents who have been through this before to glean wisdom from and just for moral support. It helps with the persevering part immensely.

I have found each of these to be helpful in our potty training escapade and hope they will help other moms out there who may be unsure about the how of potty training a little one.

**Potty Training Status: After a month, she still has her accidents…BUT, she has learned how her body signals that she needs to use the bathroom and to tell us of that need, she is staying dry through her naps and most nights, and it has sparked an interest in her little sister who likes to pretend to go potty when her sister is using the big potty. We are very excited about the progress she has made and grateful to God for His help in giving us strength to endure the harder times and for putting people in our lives who have helped and encouraged us throughout this process.