Whatcha Reading Wednesday: Parenting Wisdom

Yep. I knew this would happen.

I resisted starting a blog because I knew it would give me one more thing to feel guilty about. And right now the guilt caused by the infrequency of my posts is ranking greater than my guilt over not cleaning out my fridge (that no doubt contains leftovers that could be donated to science) and less than my guilt of falling behind on my scrapbooks (I'm approximately 12 years 3 months behind).

Much of my silence is due to trying to pack as much as possible in the remaining days of summer, trying to get everyone ready for the school year ahead, and also working on our adoption homestudy. So if you will forgive me for being a stinky bloggy buddy, I would greatly appreciate it. By the way, thanks for your sweet words of encouragement (written in Sharpie) on my last post.

Lately I've been praying a lot for wisdom. If I had gotten around to doing a Sunday dinner this week, the following would have been my verse.


"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him."
James 1:5, NIV


I love the first part of this verse like it's saying: "This only applies to those people who lack wisdom. All you naturally wise folks can just ignore this verse." I mean, really, don't we all lack wisdom? So perhaps the significance of this first part is that we recognize that true wisdom comes only from God. We must approach Him humbly, acknowledging our need.

I love the next part. All we have to do is ask. Then He will give us wisdom in abundance and without finding fault. He knows it is in our nature to try to do things on our own. It's like those times that I've tried to assemble something without the instructions, then after realizing that I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm making a huge mess of things, surrender to the fact that I need those instructions. Oh, how often I try to live making it up as I go, only to fall flat on my face to seek God's wisdom from His Instruction Manual of the Bible.

I love the story of Solomon asking God to give him wisdom and the subsequent accounts of Solomon using this gift to rule wisely. Every day I feel I need the wisdom of Solomon to be a parent. And never have I needed wisdom more than parenting my adopted son who comes from such brokenness.

While I find myself pouring over God's Instruction Manual and crying out for wisdom, I know the assembly required to help Daniel heal from past pain and help shape him into a young man who seeks God is relatively easy compared to many I know who are also parenting older adopted children. My heart aches hearing their stories of attachment issues and behavior challenges. I know it is by the grace of God that we are not dealing with the same level of hurt.

So on this Whatcha Reading Wednesday I wanted to share about a blog that I think might encourage those of you seeking wisdom in parenting your biological and adopted children.

The blog is written by Summer at Transformed from Glory to Glory. She is a missionary in Uganda, serving alongside her husband and parenting (soon to be) 12 children. Ten of them are adopted.

She has shared many words of wisdom regarding Christ-centered parenting. One post in particular that really made me think was "A Disorder or Disorder?"
and then there was a response to that post that I thought was wonderful-- "A Wise Adoptee." There's an author mentioned in these two posts that I know nothing about and there seems to be controversy in his views. Thus I want to say that I don't support this author/ministry or necessarily oppose it either.

But there are two books that have been helpful as I seek wisdom in parenting--"Shepherding a Child's Heart" by Tedd Tripp and "Age of Opportunity" by Paul David Tripp.

So, whatcha reading right now? Okay, now I've got to go clean out the fridge.

Happy Wednesday!
Kathie