Parenting, Uncategorized

Donuts and Discipline

Andi Meade

I recently had a discussion with a friend about how frustrating it is to have to repeat the same instructions, warnings and threats to my children time and time again. I said, with a touch of righteous indignation, that I know they are bright children, and I don’t understand how they can keep making foolish decisions. Of course, they are only 2 and 3 (Eli doesn’t count yet, plus so far all of his decision have been spot on :)), so the choices and decisions I’m talking about are choosing not to share, not thinking about anyone else except themselves, getting into things they know they shouldn’t, etc. Trying to remain calm while explaining to Callie Grace and Justus, yet again, that they cannot jump from the top bunk to the floor, or take all the clothes in my closet off the hangers, or take the toy that someone else has simply because someone else has it, is exhausting and trying, and I’m sorry to say that at times the tone of my voice during these discussions does not denote love and patience.

The morning after this conversation, as I’m drinking my Dr. Pepper and eating my donuts (despite the donut intervention that has been staged, but that is another story), I’m planning my day and preparing myself for all the day holds with a 3 month old, 2 year old and 3 year old. I’m praying for the wisdom, joy and patience (always a dangerous prayer, and yet again another story), and it hits me: I am so often the spiritual equivalent of a toddler! Only it’s really so much worse, since the choices and decisions I make often have greater consequences. How often does God give me the same instructions, in writing, in a song, in wise words from godly people, only to have me nod my head in agreement and go right on ahead and do what I want? And how often does He have to discipline me in love, sometimes severely, just to watch me step in the same hole over and over and over again?

The Lord taught me an incredible lesson that morning. His patience is never-ending. He disciplines me because He loves me. He will not give up on me, and no stupid choice I make will ever change His love for me. I surely grieve Him with my sinful heart, but day after day, He continues to stay right by my side, walking with me and teaching me. His grace and mercy are new every morning. And through His grace and mercy, this is exactly how I want to be with my children, Of course, I’m human, so my patience will fail and my own selfishness will get in the way, and there will be days that I feel certain I’m failing my children by not being a godly mother. But Christ picks me up, and we start over again. And again, and again, and again.

Uncategorized

Back in Time

Andi Meade

Can anyone relate when I say that I recently had an experience that catapulted me back to my high school/college self? It was weird and shocking how quickly it happened, I felt almost like I had time-traveled. I thought, how can this be? I’m now a mom of (almost) three, I have a masters degree, I’ve been in ministry with my husband for 6 years, I’ve worked as a therapist for 7 years, I’m not that same girl!

Only… am I? How much do we change as we “grow up”, and how much of the change is actually just a mask, a coping skill we’ve picked up to hide vulnerability?

I know that in many ways, I have changed. My knowledge has increased, my walk with God has deepened, my ability to face life, to embrace life, has been sharpened and strengthened. I’ve had mountaintop experiences, and I have been humbled, knocked to my knees and forced to come face to face with my own flaws and weaknesses. That experience alone changes you.

I also hope that there are aspects of me and my personality that remain the same. My teenage/early 20’s self was cheerful, positive (possibly annoyingly so at times), excited about the future, highly emotional (possibly annoyingly so at times), and not afraid of new experiences and challenges. So in some ways, I very much want to be the same girl.

Regardless, I was not prepared for my Back to the Future moment. Can anyone relate?

Home Life, Parenting

Sleep, Interrupted

Andi Meade

Philip and I have been blessed to have two great sleepers in Callie and Justus. Not that I think it was all luck, we definitely established early routines and expectations that have helped, and Callie and Justus both go to bed easily and sleep through the night, getting up around 7ish. I know Eli’s arrival will blow this all apart for a while, especially since we will be moving Justus into Callie’s room to make space for the baby.

For now though, sleep routines have been great and easy, so when nights like last night come a long, it really messes with me, and reminds me how fortunate I am! Callie Grace had a hard time going to bed, due to Philip not getting home until hours after her bedtime. She really thrives on routine and both kids do better when both mom and dad are home to participate in the bedtime rituals. She finally went to sleep and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that at least she would sleep in this morning. Around 1am, I hear her get up, open her door, come into our room, and ask for daddy. Philip immediately gets up and gets her something to drink, and tucks her back into bed. 30 minutes later she’s up again, and Philip goes back to put her in bed and comfort her. She comes out an hour or so later and I take over, causing her great distress – “Is daddy ok?”. It takes a few minutes to comfort her, tell her that daddy is fine and that we will have snacks and watch Dora in the morning (both requested and really not appropriate for 3am). She asked that the door be left open, so I go back to bed for about 20 minutes, and hear her calling for me. I go back, and she asks me if daddy is going to get her a puppy dog, and tells me that she wants to name her puppy Chocolate Chip, and that she doesn’t want to go to bed. By this time it’s 4:30am, and I haven’t seen 4:30am with Callie Grace in probably two years!

As far as I could tell, nothing was wrong. I think she must have had a bad dream and it woke her up, then she wanted to see daddy, and then she was awake and ready to start her day. The funny thing was that by the time I was certain she was back to sleep, it was after 5am and I was awake with baby Eli doing his early morning gymnastics! It’s now almost 8am and Callie is still sleeping, however Justus is up and trying to get into Callie’s room to play with her. It has the potential to be a long day!

Home Life, Parenting

Pregnancy Woes!

Andi Meade

I’ve reached that weird stage of pregnancy where you don’t physically feel like doing much due to movements being awkward, ligament pain, etc., but at the same time feeling a great need to organize and clean my entire house, top to bottom. These two desires, to sit around and do as little as possible or to do as much as I can fit in, war with each other and often leave things looking half done, mostly because they are. Today I got crazy motivated and started cleaning out my kitchen cabinets, then felt tired, hot and uncomfortable and sat down with my glass of water (another story) and my pile of current books from the library, leaving my kitchen looking like Callie and Justus got a hold of it (which really is not a good example, because when I go to find them, they are cleaning their rooms, putting up their toys, and “dusting” with a container of wipes half gone!).

I’m at 32 weeks now, and have decided that I’m really done being pregnant. That being said, I pray that baby Eli waits to make an appearance until he’s good and ready, but feel that with the amount of food I’ve been eating (I think Philip has some concern about this, probably due to the number of trips he’s made recently to Taco Bell, and the number of grilled cheese sandwiches he’s had to make me at midnight!), Eli’s going to set some kind of record for birth weight. I’ve left that cute, 2nd trimester behind, and have entered the last weeks where I can’t sleep, wear Philip’s clothes instead of mine, and can no longer get Callie and Justus in and out of their car seats without serious issues, which aren’t pretty!

These last weeks will go by fast, this I know, and there are so many wonderful things going on in the Meade household that I hate to wish the time away, but we are ready to make eye-contact with Eli, and I’m ready to get back to my Dr. Pepper diet! (Tomorrow’s story).

Spiritual Disciplines

Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. I Timothy 4:7

Andi Meade

I am easily distracted. I’m distracted not only by the things around me, but often by my own plans. I have plans to change my blog into a more interactive website, and while it’s under construction, I’ve been distracted and ready to move on from this current format, leading to a lack of posts in the past month.

So while I’m waiting to start the next phase of my writing, I’ve decided to work on a series on the spiritual disciplines. This is a topic dear to my heart because, frankly, I stink at them. I always assumed I would get better at practicing the disciplines when I was home more, when I had children and the stakes got higher, as I got older and wiser, etc. The problem with this is in the topic – spiritual disciplines. It turns out, being in my 30’s has not made me any more disciplined that I was before. Neither has having children. If anything, my free time has been taken up by more selfish pursuits, like sleeping, or reading totally useless novels, or sleeping.

In Donald Whitney’s book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, the author states, “I will maintain that the only road to Christian maturity and Godliness passes through the practice of the Spiritual Disciplines.” He further goes on to say, “I’ve seen Christians who are faithful to the church of God, who frequently demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for the things of God, and who dearly love the Word of God, trivialize their effectiveness for the Kingdom of God through lack of discipline. Spiritually they are a mile wide and an inch deep. There are no deep, time-worn channels of communing discipline between them and God. They have dabbled in everything but disciplined themselves in nothing.”

It’s like an arrow to my heart.

I’m not sure where as a culture we got so off track on this topic. Possibly it was to avoid legalism, to not become like the Pharisees in our approach to God, to make sure we weren’t trying to work or earn our way to heaven. Or maybe it was just laziness, a dislike for things that require significant effort, and the realization that the Spiritual Disciplines don’t come easily to anyone. Regardless, while I see the problem in my own life, I can also see it’s broader implications in society at large and the church in particular.

So over the next few weeks I’m going to focus on some of the specific disciplines, such as prayer, bible intake, evangelism, worship, serving, fasting, journaling, silence and solitude, stewardship, submission, and confession. (If that’s not a daunting list, I don’t know what is!). I would be very interested on your thoughts on this topic, as well as possible resources that have assisted you in being more faithful in the disciplines.

Biblical Womanhood

Women and Their Wierd Relationships with Each Other

Andi Meade

When we moved to Colorado from Kentucky, I was pregnant with Justus and I had an 8 month old in tow. I was in great need of Christian women who would come along side me, encourage me, strengthen me, and make me laugh. I was blessed to find this so readily in my new home church.

As I’ve contemplated this recently, I realize that I truly was blessed, and that many women don’t have that opportunity. Women, I must admit, are strange creatures. We need relationships, we thrive, like some beautiful flowers do, when we are among other like-minded women. Yet at the same time, we can be so quick to turn on each other, to wound one another with our cutting words, actions and hidden innuendos. And because so many of us have experienced this, we are rather paranoid of it happening again, and often don’t let our guards down, resulting in a lonely existence.

Having been a part of this before from, I’m ashamed to admit, both sides, I’v been at a bit of a loss as to the reasons for this. Modern psychology attempts to shed it’s light on the topic, throwing around words like low self-esteem, inferiority complex, etc., but in my heart I know the true reason – it’s sin, clear and simple. It’s absolutely sinful to participate in such behavior. And I can say this so point blank because I have had this sin lurking in my heart before. It’s ugly, insidious and dark. It ruins friendships that God ordained, it destroys bible studies and ministries, it divides churches. And yet, for some reason, it remains such a constant in the lives of women.

I’m reading a book called Spiritual Mothering: The Titus 2 Model for Women Mentoring Women, by Susan Hunt. In it she quotes the 18th century poet and historian Matthew Arnold, “If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together purely and simply for the benefit and good of mankind, it will be a power such as the world has never seen.” She then restates it this way: “If ever the world sees a time when Christian women shall come together purely and simply to encourage and equip other women to live for God’s glory, it will be a power such as the world has never seen.”

And that is this reason Satan is so intent on keeping women so firmly entrenched in this sin, I am certain. Imagine if we never gossiped about each other, if we always went immediately to other women if we had any kind of an issue, imagine if we trusted each other with our struggles and our confessions, and never had to try to read between the lines, deciding if someone was angry with us, or was betraying our confidence? And we can have this! It’s ours for the taking, if we can put aside our selfishness, or self-centeredness, and live simply for the glory of God.

I guess this is a challenge, both to myself and the women who might be reading this. Let’s see if this is true, if by doing this we can unleash a power the likes of our communities have never seen.

Recommended Reading

Recommended Book on Addictions

Andi Meade


As usual, I’m in the middle of about six books, and also as usual, I have a different notebook for each book, so that my notes don’t get confused. It’s not the most efficient way to stay organized, and truthfully it doesn’t really work, but I do love buying a new notebook/journal, especially when I can convince myself that I have a good reason!

One of the books I’m currently reading is called Addiction: A Banquet in the Grave, by Edward T. Welch. It takes the reality of addictions and looks at them from scripture and from a biblical perspective. I imagine this book is quite controversial in some circles, because it does not hold to the concept of addictions being an illness or a disease. In the preface, the author says, “The basic theology for addictions is that the root problem goes deeper than our genetic makeup. Addictions are ultimately a disorder of worship. Will we worship ourselves and our own desires or will we worship the true God?”. I can only speak for myself, but this is a hard word to hear, both personally and professionally. It does fly in the face of all that I learned and studied while getting my MSSW, but I’ll be the first to admit that a program can’t get more secular than social work, and I only studied it from a secular perspective, which would never in a million years give ear or credence to the idea of addictions being a disorder of worship.

The author doesn’t ignore that genetics can influence us and predispose us to enjoy a particular substance or activity, but he argues, “There is a categorical difference between being influenced by genetics and being determined by it. Possible physiological tendencies do not mean that self-control is impossible or that personal responsibility is diminished. They simply mean that some people must be more vigilant in situations where that sin can be easily provoked.”

I’m only half way through the text, but it has challenged me greatly, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic of addiction. At the end of each chapter, there is a section called “Practical Theology”, where there are questions to answer that deal with facing our own addiction and helping others with theirs.

Home Life

Pregnancy joys

Andi Meade

After having two babies and experiencing two pregnancies, I thought I had this pregnancy thing down. So, not so much. Here are a few things I’ve learned in the last few weeks:

1. Throwing up has become such a common occurrence that neither Callie nor Justus find anything strange about it. In fact, Callie makes her baby doll throw up now, which is a little distressing…. 🙂

2. Kidney stones and infections are never any fun, but throw them into your first trimester and they become particularly nightmarish….

3. Playing the pregnancy card while at the emergency room is awesome!

4. Just because I know I’m crying due to my crazy hormones doesn’t seem to help my crazy hormones.

5. You cannot avoid smells. They are everywhere. Yesterday at Walmart they were selling Turkey Legs (?!) outside and I almost lost it.

6. The only thing that sounds even remotely good to eat is Chicken Quesadillas from Qdoba. How blessed am I that there is a Qdoba in Evergreen?

7. I’m convinced I need to buy a new baby swing for baby number three. Sorry Philip.

8. Philip has taken over cleaning, cooking (okay fine, he’s always been the cook), getting up with the kids, and changing diapers. Despite going through two pregnancies with me already, he’s still as patient, caring, and thoughtful as ever.

9. My children have never watched as much Dora, Diego, LeapFrog, and Barney as they have in the past few weeks. They think it’s awesome!

10. My memory has turned to mush. Not good. Did I pull up the sides of Justus’s crib? Did I call/email the people I needed to or did I just think about doing it? What do I need from the store? Seriously, I’m going to be an idiot by the time this baby is born. (Please no sarcastic comments, my crazy emotions can’t take it! :))

On a different note, I think Justus is left-handed, Callie Grace can count to twenty, Justus can entertain himself cleaning for hours, Callie knows how to get her way by telling you “That will make me feel better” after requesting something, and I’ve discovered the joys of the Knifty Knitter. So, life is very busy and fun and nauseating, and i wouldn’t change anything if I could. Well, maybe I would take away all the smells. :).

Home Life

Easter, laziness, and interventions

Andi Meade

I officially decorated for Easter yesterday, and while I’m happy that Easter comes late this year, thus hopefully bringing good weather that befits pretty Easter dresses, it was difficult to wait so long to decorate. Last year Philip stated that he felt certain this was the Easter Bunny’s secret residence, and this year is no different, and I haven’t even made an Easter trip to Hobby Lobby yet!

I’m trying to immerse myself in this season, focusing on the death and resurrection of Christ. It’s sad and extremely revealing to me how easily I’m distracted, and how easily I come up with excuses for why I don’t follow through with my commitment to one hour of time spent with God. I even have a book that is broken up into forty days and has journal questions and ideas for prayers in each chapter! When I’m pregnant, I like to use pregnancy as an excuse for many things (I find it to be a handy excuse, and one that I think I’ve earned, considering all that comes along with pregnancy!), but I cannot use it for not coming to God daily, hourly, with my prayers, my praise and my devotion.

My dear friend Nita reminded me yesterday what an awesome responsibility we have to our children when we consider that their souls are eternal, meaning that a part of them will exist forever. Well, crap. That is a huge responsibility, and one that I’m certain God does not take lightly, so neither should I. I don’t mean to, of course, but I do, especially when looking after their eternal souls gets in the way of something I want to do. And this is just another reason why I have to run to God every day, every minute.

So what are you reading for Lent, or to prepare yourself for Easter?

On a different note, I had to give Justus a bottle with chocolate milk in it tonight, because I drank all of the milk. With my Oreos. I also ate an entire canister of Pringles. And I barely made it through my two hour bible study this morning at church because I was so hungry I thought I was was going to lose it. This does not bode well, since I’m only a few weeks along. And also because there are three other people in this house who need to eat! Nita made me dinner on Monday, and it was this special rice and chicken, and I sort of forced her to make it again for me last night. She made an extra large portion so I could have leftovers for a few meals. It’s all gone. It might already be time for someone to stage an intervention….

I hope everyone is happy and well and ready to enjoy their weekend!

Home Life

My top ten thoughts for the day

Andi Meade

My top ten random thoughts for today:

1. Why does Dora the Explorer yell at me all the time? At first I didn’t take this personally, but now I’m beginning to, probably because…

2. My hormones are wack. (Do people say “wack” anymore?). I’ve only known that I’m pregnant for 3 days, and my emotions are all over the place. My hormones have also caused…

3. Terrible, terrible morning sickness. Well, really it can only be called morning sickness if my hormones are aware that it’s always morning somewhere, because I’ve been sick constantly for the last two days. It’s not been pretty. It’s never pretty when you throw up so much that it starts coming out of your nose. I know, I over-shared on that one, but it’s the truth.

4. Justus likes to participate in whatever activity I’m involved in, so this morning, as I’m leaning over the bathroom sink throwing up my pancakes, Justus pulled up his step-stool next to me and tried to throw up too. Precious or creepy, you decide.

5. Lent begins today, so I’m giving up soda, which works out quite well as far as timing goes, since I should give it up during pregnancy. I’m keeping my chai tea latte though. No one can take that away from me. Except for Starbucks. But that, I’m certain, would be considered an act of terrorism.

6. Philip takes everything in stride. A wife who can’t stop throwing up and who hasn’t slept in two days, a 1 year old who is teething, an incredible amount of work to do, a phone that doesn’t stop ringing, a 2 year old who attaches herself to daddy as soon as he walks in the door – none of these things phase him or frustrate him. He even made me the wonderful pancakes this morning, which were so sadly discarded shortly after consumption.

7. It’s vitally important to have close friends who love you enough to make you laugh in between being violently ill, and who aren’t afraid to say, “Dude, you look rough”. Just keeping it real. 🙂

8. My excitement over this pregnancy keeps me from being able to concentrate on anything else! Also, I do love having such a great excuse as for why I can’t remember the date, my phone number, the year Justus was born (I gave the doctor the wrong year), etc.

9. Philip just this week purchased something called a Roku, which allows us to have internet on our TV, which means I can now watch TV shows and movies from Netflix immediately on my TV. Seriously, the timing could not have been better, since there is still nothing good on TV at 3am.

10. Let the naming begin! I’ve already chosen a girl name, which Philip agreed to surprisingly fast, but a boy name – well, we all remember the Jedidiah fiasco.

There’s my top ten for the day. I’d be interested to hear Philip’s. Perhaps I’ll challenge him to it when he gets home. His blog is www.philipmeade.com.