What Are the Traits Of A Good Woman

What are the traits of a good woman? If you look to the Bible to find the answer to this question then the answer is written out and crystal clear for you. God even supplies you with examples of each trait. The traits that I found that apply to a good woman are:
1. Obedience (1Peter 3:5-7)
I believe that every woman has trouble with this one. There is something in our nature that has to question whether or not we should listen to our husbands. I mean, sometimes he makes the wrong choices, right? But here's the deal. You chose him to be your husband so you must have put some faith in his intelligence at one time. More than likely he has your best interests at heart. After all, he did marry you because he loves you and cares for you.  So listen to your husband ladies and let him wear the pants in the family.
2. Concern for children (Exodus 2:2-10)
If you look up the scriptures that I've given, you will see that it is the story of Moses and how his mother protected him from being slaughtered by Pharaohs soldiers. I believe that this is one of the best examples ever of a mother that cares for her child more than herself or her own feelings. She could have tried to keep Moses hidden for years but she knew it wasn't safe. So she did the best thing that she knew to do. She hid him until he couldn't be hidden any longer and then she gave him up for his own good. I know that it had to have been heart wrenching to have placed him in that basket. Even in her sacrifice God rewarded her. Moses sister followed the basket and when Pharaoh's daughter found the baby she told the princess that she knew of a woman that could nurse the child. So in the end Moses' mother still had an instrumental part in his formative years.
3. Loyalty (Ruth 1:14-18)
A good woman is loyal and can be counted on.
4. A desire for children (1Samuel 1:9-28)
I find it interesting that the desire for children should be listed as one of the traits. I don't find it interesting because it doesn't fit in but because it  blends with every other trait so well. From the call to obedience (God commanded mad to go forth and multiply) to tenderness which is self explanatory to any mother. I find women that have not desire for children awkward to be around. They are often very selfish and narcissistic. I find them very unfeminine even if they are the most made up and best dressed woman in the room. There is something very natural about women and babies. When Amberly was a baby I would sometimes bring her to my sister in laws pep rallies and the teenage girls would go crazy over her. It was very natural. I still have a desire for more children though God seems to have something else in His plan for us so I am trying to be patient and see what that is. :-)
5. Modesty (Esther 1:10-12)
Women are naturally more beautiful than man. God did that on purpose and I think that we are supposed to put our best face forward modestly. I'm not going to get into the argument here about pants vs skirts or long hair vs short hair as I think that is something that is a personal decision for everyone. I try and get my girls to dress modestly and for us that means that they are to wear clothes that cover them properly. The clothes cannot be too tight or low cut. Amberlys make up must be minimal and only used to accentuate her features. You want to highlight what God gave you not put a clearance sticker on it!
6. Industry (Prov. 31:10-31)
I think that every good woman works heard and that is what this verse is talking about. I also think that most mothers meet this standard easily. Wives and mothers are industrious any way you look at them.
7. Complete devotion (Luke 7:38-50)
Complete devotion is a hard thing to find in this day and age. These verses tell us the story of a woman that was a sinner and how she washes Jesus' feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. She then annoints them with ointment. A Pharisee saw this happen and thought to himself, if this man (meaning Jesus) were a prophet, he would know that this woman is a sinner. (He thought it and Jesus heard his thoughts. Just think about that for a moment. Jesus can hear your thoughts.) Jesus turns to this guy and says, "Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head." That is devotion folks. I know that it would be easy to say that we have devotion for our husbands and children but how easily could we say that we actually practice devotion to them daily?
8. Tenderness (John 11:20-35)
John 11:35 is the shortest verse in the Bible. It simple says, "Jesus wept." He wept for Mary and Martha after they had lost their brother. He knew that Lazarus was going to be raised from the dead. He knew because He had told them that it would happen. He was crying WITH them. Just because you know that a situation is going to be okay, doesn't mean that you shouldn't be tender with the person that is immersed in that situation. Women need to be tender. Period!  A mother needs to have tenderness and practice it daily. All the boo boos and hurt feelings will pass. You know they will and it will be something new in 10 minutes. For right now though, that boo boo is the most important thing in that childs life. Care about it because it has lasting benefits. When your children get older they will know that you care and come to you with their hurts.

I fail daily in at least one of these areas. It is hard to fight the flesh and do what the spirit is supposed to do.

God Bless you all!

What is Gods Will? And How Will I Know His Will From My Own?

I have been doing a lot of "soul searching" this past year or two. A lot of it has to do with the fact that we have been trying to pay off all of our debt and that comes with sacrifices that many would never fathom. I mean how many times a week can one family eat beans and rice without the house exploding? :-)  How long will we have to live in this trailer that really could double as a nice duck blind? Get my drift??? I mean, sacrificing and doing without is not anybodies idea of a good time. There have been times when I would've love to seen Dave Ramsey (author of Financial Peace University) drawn and quartered. (Sorry, Mr. Ramsey but I bet I'm not the first to think something like that since this debt free stuff isn't for the faint of heart.)  There have been many days that what I wanted was to throw out the idea of a debt free lifestyle, go get a credit card, and go hog wild buying everything that I thought that we needed. Then I would come back to reality and realize that if I did that, then we would have to pay bills for the next bazillion years.  We are on the precipice of debt free living. We can reach out and touch it. Our passenger van is paid off now. WOOOHOOO!!!! It felt great to hold that title in our hands and know that our hard work and sacrifice had paid off, literally! So yes it has been worth it and I look forward to the post where I can write that we are truly, completely debt free.

Back to my original thought. (Sorry, just ask my husband, I am prone to straying off on a tangent or twelve.) Some of my soul searching has been from dealing with past issues in my life that I needed to deal with and let go of. A lot of it has led me down a dark path that I didn't want to go down, but I know now that I needed to go down that path to teach me some very important life lessons that I can hopefully pass on to my children. I only hope and pray that they can learn it early on from me and not have to take as long as I did to make the same amount of progress. 

So the title of my post today asked a couple of very important questions:  What is Gods will and how will I know His will from my own?  I still don't know the answer to this since I am still studying and I don't know that I will ever truly know Gods will from my own every time I am faced with a decision or a desire. But I am trying and I do think that counts. The first thing I did to find out Gods will was to open my Bible and a concordance. I have the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and it is easy to get sidetracked but I feel that anytime that you are studying the Bible and your eyes are drawn to something different than you were searching for that it is probably something that God is trying to draw your attention to. My eyes were searching through the concordance for Gods will when my eyes landed on the word WOMAN. The index defined woman as the female sex and then it gave all the references in the bible that applied. I started skimming over the descriptions and found this. Woman- described as: beautiful, wise, widow, evil, foolish, gracious, virtuous, contentious, adulterous, honorable, silly, and holy. These words made me wonder, so I looked up the scriptures that were posted next to each word. I began to read descriptions of good women and bad women and I began to question which of those women that I could compare too. Don't ever do this unless you want to step on your own toes. And that is not very easy to do since as human beings we usually find ourselves blameless of pretty much everything. 

In the next column it said, Work of. The first thing listed was kneading meal (Gen. 18:6) which of course is the making of the bread. I don't think that every woman has to literally make bread in order to be following Gods will but I do think that it shows that women are basically the cooks of the home. I know that men CAN cook and some even enjoy it and I am not arguing that point. My point is that women have always been the ones that gravitate towards meal preparation.  Next listed was drawing water (Gen. 24:11, 13, 15) which looks at how Isaac met his wife Rebekah. She drew water for him to drink when he showed up. The women were always the one at the well getting water for things so this is listed as another duty of the woman of the house. This is also how Rachel met Jacob.  Next was tending sheep (Gen. 29:6). Now I know that most women don't have livestock to take care of although a few of us do. :-) Since sheep were a source of food, milk, clothing, and income for the family back in those days, it stands to reason that the woman of the house had a vested interest in making sure that they were tended to well. Making cloth (Prov. 31:13, 19) was on the list as well. Now the modern day woman tends to make cloth (i.e. provide clothing/blankets) by going to a store and buying these things. Some women still make clothes but not the majority. The point is that she provides the clothing and linens for her home and hopefully does it smartly. The last duty that was listed but in my opinion is the biggest duty of all was caring for the household (Prov. 31:27, 1Tim :14) simply put, she guides her home and takes care of all the needs of the home. 

Remember how at the beginning of this post I said that I was looking for Gods will. I think that he led me to it. If we live the way that he has said for us to then His will can be seen and felt. I think that it is when we step outside of what God has given us as priorities, that is when His will becomes cloudy.  I want to talk more about this but I also have other things on my mind that I need to spend time on so I will conclude here and continue this sometime soon. 

God Bless you all!

Happy Birthday Lori Mae!!! (Just a few days late)

Seven years ago today, I became the mother of five. I gave birth to my third daughter and my world became even sweeter than it already was. I have been thinking about what to post for the last couple of days when it occured to me that I should write her birth story. So here it goes. Bear with me please as it has been a few years. :-)

We were living in San Antonio at the time of my pregnancy with Lori. Daniel was working for the military and I spent my days taking care of the other four children. We had went to see a few doctors during my pregnancy but we weren't taken with any of them so we decided to receive our medical care at Austin Area Birthing Center in North Austin. We had used their services with the birth of our second child and absolutely fell in love so it was well worth the drive for us.

During my pregnancy I had been put in the hospital once or twice for contractions so we were convinced that she was going to come early and we decided to go to Austin and stay with Daniels parents while we waited on her arrival. We thought that she was on her way several times during the next few weeks. I even started having contractions on Christmas morning!  She hung on past her due date and I was still pregnant when my first postnatal visit was scheduled.  We decided just to keep the visit and go in to get checked out and talk about our options with our midwife.

The morning of our appointment I was having a few contractions here and there but as usual for me, nothing serious. When we saw our midwife Jean she suggested that we allow her to check my cervix and if conditions were favourable then she would try and cause a few contractions. Sure enough, I was dilated to a 4.5 and 80-90% effaced so she went ahead and did what she knew would stir things up.  We left the birth center with instructions to call if anything started to happen or if my water broke. We went to lunch and then we went and walked around the mall, talking about the kids and what the new baby would be like. It was very calm and relaxing but there were NO CONTRACTIONS! 

By the time we arrived back at my in-laws home I was in a very foul mood since I was tired of being pregnant and my midwifes suggestion hadn't worked so I went in and took a nap. That afternoon I woke up to a few measly contractions and I spent some time with Daniel and the kids. Right as it was getting dark I decided that I would go for a walk around the neighborhood by myself. I needed some alone time with God to cry and pray. Just as I was ready to walk out the door, I felt a huge gush or water. I turned and looked at Daniel and said,"Oh my goodness, my water broke!!!".  Daniel and I started to rush at that point. Usually, if my water breaks I have only 30 minutes before the baby is born and the birth center was about an 45-50 minutes away. Daniel and I told the kids goodbye and hopped in the van before we even called the midwife. Big mistake!!! When we did call her, she told us not to come in until I started having contractions that were hard to talk through. So we went and got a bite to eat and waited. Finally I started to have pains so we called and told our midwife that we were on our way.

When we arrived our midwife checked me and found that I was around 6cm dilated and fully effaced so we thought that we were well on our way to having this baby. Boy were we wrong. I sat on the birth ball, took herbs, and walked to no avail. Ms. Lori Mae was not ready to make an apperance.  The midwife told us to get comfortable and try and get some rest so we climbed in bed and tried to go to sleep. This was harder than you might think since there was another woman there giving birth and she was making progress a lot faster than I was. I found myself laying there in bed and listening for the sounds of a baby and praying for that couple. At around midnight I heard their babies first cries and said a prayer of thanks to God for a safe delivery for them.

Soon after, my midwife came in with a coffee cup and woke me. She said in a very apolegetic voice,"Our blender is broken but I fixed you some castor oil in some orange juice. I think  if you stir it and then gulp it really fast then that will work. It worked for the couple that just had their baby." Needless to say, I was not looking foward to chugging an ounce of castor oil no matter what it was mixed with but I was was sooooo ready to hold my baby that I was willing to try anything. So I stirred visciously and then I chugged. I thought I had drank it all but to my dismay, when I put the cup down it still had a pretty good size swig left. So I repeated the whole process. All I can say is YUCK!!!! Never again. I'll just start charging rent for my womb if another one decided to go overdue. :-)

So we waited. And waited. And then the tummy issues struck and that's all I need to say about that. We changed midwives somewhere around 6 in the morning and I was up walking again.  I would progress to around 8 cm dilated and then that was it. The baby was posterior (which means she was turned facing my belly instead of my back.) and this was causing me to have severe back labor. Not fun! Finally around 9:30 in the morning, the owner/head midwife walked in and said, "Let's have this baby!". At this point I was just about ready for a c-section sans epidural if that is what it took after all of that back labor. Jean assured me that I did not need a c-section and that the baby would be here in no time. She asked me to push with my next contraction and guess what? I went from an 8 to complete! I was ecstatic when I heard this and I started getting excited to see my baby. Within the next 10 minutes I was holding her. It was such a relief! After that we just laid in bed and held her. Daniel got up and gave Lori her first bath and I went and took a shower. We were headed home after just 4 hrs of recovery. Her brothers and sisters couldn't wait to hold her.

I'm so glad that I finally typed her birth story. Typing it made me remember lots of details that I wouldn't want to forget.

I plan on including all of my birth stories here in the near future so stay tuned!

How to get your husband to tell you to take a nap.

Apparently I have stumbled onto a marvelous way to get a nap in. I aggravated my husband. Now, I have to admit that it was not done on purpose. In fact, I, didn't think that I was cranky at all but my husband did. So when we got home from shopping he tucked me in and gave me a kiss. Did I need the nap? Yes!!! Did I know that I needed a nap? No. But after sleeping for three solid hours I woke up in a much better mood. I am very glad that I didn't do what my sinful side was telling me to do and argue and fight it. I could have fought the issue and stayed up. I could have pitched a hissy fit. I mean, how dare he be so condescending to me and treat me like a toddler? I was a grown up! (All this was played out in my head and finished off with a stomp of my foot.)

So, yes, I have found a great way to be put down for a nap but I wouldn't recommend trying it since I felt quite foolish and juvenile after waking up and realizing how immature and cranky I had acted.
I am very thankful that Daniel is the head of our home. He always has our best interest in his heart and in his head.  I'm pretty fond of him in fact.

All that being said, I came across a quote today that made a great deal of sense to me. It was this:

“It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”
― G.K. Chesterton


In the scripture it says that a woman is a help meet. (And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. Gen. 2:18)  I believe that I was created just for my husband and that he was created just for me. He watches over me, protects me, loves me, makes me laugh, supports me as much as he can in all of my hopes and dreams, sacrifices things for me, gives me a reality check when I need it and some days he even puts me down for a nap. In other words, he meets my needs.  In return I love him, look after him, make him laugh, support him to the best of my ability, sacrifice things for him, and sometimes I even put him down for a nap.  That is the way it works. If you want your marriage to work, you have to leave the thought of 50/50 behind. Marriage is both partners giving 100% each and every day.
Feminism is an ugly lie that tells women that by taking care of their home and family that they are worthless. Feminism tells women that they are only worth something if they are equal with men.  I have news for ya. God himself created us equal. We each have our essential parts to play to keep the family/world spinning. Each of the sexes have something to do on this earth or things get horribly out of balance. I definitely don't feel worthless by staying at home and taking care of the lives of everyone around me. If I wasn't around chaos would soon follow. I know this as a fact. I took a job outside of my home for a month about a year ago and our home suffered for it. My husband did a great job with the kids but the house cleaning and laundry piled up and organization went out the window. My hat is off to Mothers that have to work outside of the home. I really don't know how they do it.

And don't even get me started about the fact that there is not a man out there that would volunteer to give birth. I know that my husband would not. Just ask around if you don't believe me. Men don't even want to hear birth stories. The women that I know though, sit around and tell our birth stories like they are war stories. The men clear the room pretty quickly when the stories start. We women battle sleepless nights long before the first contraction and we do it with a grace that a man could never muster.

Men are their own miracles. They are created to protect, provide, and love. Most men are very logical and technical beings. They are serious and don't get wrapped up in all the drama and emotion that women have issues with. Then you place a newborn in their arms and they melt. They are usually soft when it counts but at the same time can be fiercely on guard. Yes they sleep more soundly as a new father than a new mother normally does but remember that he does have to wake up early and provide. He might not do things exactly as perfect as you think you do when he is caring for the kids but you have to step back and realize that he is learning his way too. It might not be your way but he is pouring just as much love into your children as you do. Men are essential just the way God created them. Any dumbing down of their manliness will not result in a better man. Just look around America today to see the example of what feminism has done to the country.

My point is this: Women, don't act bossy and tough like a man and then ask why your husband doesn't treat you like a woman. He is just treating you as an equal. So unless you want to open your own doors and carry your own heavy stuff, start acting like a lady.