Becoming Real

Dreamwalker

Originally uploaded by ~ Aaron Reed ~

I love this picture. It makes me feel peaceful.

This is a blog post about a friend who is an amazing woman of God with a big vision for helping orphans, especially those with special needs. She needs more space in her home so that she can help even more children. She keeps adding more children, and she needs more space and better accommodations for some of their special needs. Please take some time to nominate Renee for an extreme home makeover.

Any of you who have read my blog for any length of time, know that my sister -in- law, Renee' and her beautiful children tragically lost their husband and daddy in 2009 just 2 days before Christmas in a car accident. Renee and Derek worked together trumpeting the cause of the orphan. They not only spoke out in defense of the fatherless, they put actions to their words by bringing children into their own home. Renee and Derek's first son, Josiah w … Read More

via From the Heart

Here is the next installment in Barbie’s series about how she was changed by the Holy Spirit so that she could disciple her whole family, including her husband, and teach them how to speak the truth in love and truly walk in love.

Over the past several blog posts I’ve been remembering and recounting how the Lord set me free from allowing my husband to control me. I began this part of my story with Peeling Bananas in Secret. The situations I’ve been recounting happened in February, March and April of 2006. Over the next 5 months I continued to allow the Lord to change me. I was learning how to relate rightly with people around me. I learned through conversations with Marily … Read More

via Influential Parenting

This is another post in the series by Barbie Poling about how the Holy Spirit led her to disciple her husband. What an awesome testimony!

My repentance and freedom from my self-centered ways of being motivated and controlled by my husband’s accusations and anger brought even more changes to our lives. I realized that since I had been receiving Tim’s blame and believing that I caused his anger, I had taught my children the same. I had directed them to rush around with me trying to fix things in an attempt to keep him from getting angry, and I had modeled to them a general fear of Da … Read More

via Influential Parenting

To me, this is unbelievable, but Barbie was actually able to disciple her husband and bring him out of his sinful angry habits and controlling behavior toward her. She begins the story of how the Holy Spirit led her to do this here:

I remember when the Lord first spoke through my conscience to me about the way I habitually related with my husband. I was standing by my bed in my room folding some laundry I think. I heard the crunch of the gravel in the driveway, drawing to my attention the fact that my husband was arriving home. As usual, I was unaware of the time of day. I began to make a mental note of the state of the house combined with a sinking feeling that it wasn’t go … Read More

via Influential Parenting

This is the latest post that Barbie Poling has written about unconditional self-sacrificing grace-filled truth-telling love and the dramatic effect it has on our relationships within our families.

A few months after my whole family’s life was radically changed through the events that I’ve been writing about in my recent blogs, I was sitting in my friend’s living room visiting as my kids and hers were all in the family room playing together after having finished off the pizza we had brought with us.  Her 13yr old son came in to get something around 7:30pm. She called him to her and said, “Go tell your sister that it’s 7:30 and she needs to … Read More

via Influential Parenting

I am so impressed with these blog posts by Barbie Poling at Influential Parenting that I keep passing them on here on this blog.

She covers such basic ideas that most of us Christians think we have understood, but we have missed the full meaning and application to our own lives. Do you really know what the Ministry of Reconciliation really means?

Read Barbie’s post and find out how you can fulfill this important ministry in your own home.

I’ve been writing in my blogs lately about my memories of the beginning of my process of learning the principles of Influential Parenting. My memories are over the backdrop of the incredible miracles that took place in my mom’s life due to the obedience and instruction of Marilyn Howshall. You can read about these miracles on the Influential Parenting website. As it became more and more obvious that the miraculous changes in my mom were not going … Read More

via Influential Parenting

This post goes back to the concept of False Personality that is formed when young children are left to themselves in a group of their peers and not given direct instruction in the formation of their character or taught how to relate to others in love.

After I took my kids out of band and choir as I wrote of in my last blog, many opportunities for Christlike character development surfaced in the kids. These were things that I know I wouldn’t have seen or been able to address if they’d stayed in it. In the band experience Rachel had wanted to play the hardest and most infrequent instruments. She realized after leaving the band that she wanted to play them because of the glory and attention it wo … Read More

via Influential Parenting

This post comes right before the Becoming Mature post by Barbie Poling. The story of the way God miraculously changed her mom is inspiring. I’m being changed as I read these posts. I hope they are helping you, too.

Several moms have been saying to me something like, “It’s sure great to read your blog and see what my family could be some day, but could you write about the days when your relationships were still struggling and about your process of becoming the parent you needed to be and about learning how to work in your children’s hearts?”  So in this blog post and probably in a few more to come, I’m going to write memories from my early stages of learning … Read More

via Influential Parenting