What's with the title?

Before Jake was born I read Monte Swan's book Romancing your Child's Heart. Although there were a few things i didn't agree with, the book really challenged my thinking about being a mother. He challenged me to out-romance the competition for my children's hearts. Over the last 4 years this has become a very deep conviction in my life, not just for my children but also for my husband - the whole flock. This world is full of so many enticing things that woo us to it. Often, we aren't even aware that it is happening until we are sucked way in. Satan is very clever at his job. I long to create a life for my family that is a bigger YES than all of those others. God put in all of us a heart that longs to be wooed and we are all going to search out those things that ignite our souls - our children are no different. I want my family to find it here, at home. Ultimately, I want them to find it in the Lord because he is were the satisfaction is found. My purpose for wanting my family to love being together is that it provides me unsolicited time to train their hearts and till the soil for the Lord's good seed.
In Gladyse Hunt's book, Honey for a Child's Heart she talks about how most parents give their children milk. This is the daily substance of life that is needed for survival...food, water, shelter but they don't supply them with honey. This is the sweetness that makes life sing with enjoyment for all it holds. Things like traditions throughout the year (not just at Christmas), going to the park together and playing as a family, going out of my way to make our home warm and cozy for each individual resident, to name a few. If you remember God told the Isrealites that the promise land was flowing with milk and honey. Substances and sweetness!!!
I have made it one of my top priorities to woo my flock with milk and honey. I am far from perfect at this task but oh how i long for a family that loves to be with each other more than anyone else. In our 4 walls there is acceptance, companionship, fellowship, a longing to help each other reach God's fullest potential for their lives, and rejoicing in the process. I do not think that this is unrealistic or dreamy. I do, however, think it is the hardest task of being a mother and wife. It means that I must think and plan and pray and serve and wake up and do it all over tommorrow. Just providing a family with milk these days is a struggle but honey takes so much more sacarifice.
Just a few weeks ago, I was talking to my friend April about the fact that i don't have time to blog...well that hasn't changed. I am not a multi-tasker so it is a little more challenging for me to accomplish all that one of those people :) can do in a day. But as I have thought about why I would blog, if I did, it would be to encourage others to go the extra mile for their family, as well as to be encouraged by those who want to join this journey with me.
Most of my friends have small children now and most days we think that they will never not want to be where we are - even the toilet. But they will and very soon. Spend some time around most teenagers, even those in your local church and you will see that they find acceptance, companionship, fellowship, a longing to help each other reach God's fullest potential for their lives, and rejoicing in the process in their circle of friends, not at home with their brothers and sisters and parents. I am convinced that these relationships won't just form - most days my boys try very hard to kill each other because their personalities are so very opposite. This kind of home takes training and cultivating. It takes being creative and thoughtful and it has to start when they are little and want to be home with you. I have been told that it will be 100 times harder to woo them back than to contiue wooing them when their heart is all yours to begin with.
This is the desire of my heart - hence the title Wooing my flock...with milk and honey

The Perfect Romancer

Recently, I have spent some time thinking about The Good Shepard and how he cares for His flock (me). It amazes me how He goes to great lengths to care for us. As I think about His love for me and all the ways He expresses that love to me, it makes me fall in love with him even more. This love affair is unlike anything I know. In the 10 years i have been a Christian, he has yet to stop wooing my heart. Of course, life gets busy and i sometimes don't notice but that doesn't mean he has stopped. And every time in those quiet moments when i see my child smile or a beautiful tulip on my kitchen sink or even smell the grass on the playground after a rain, He is there patiently wooing me to see Him more, to experience Him deeper. For those few seconds, I long deeply to drink in all that He is and I usually have a discussion with myself about spending more time with the Lord. Two minutes later, something ,usually a scream for help, brings me out of my blissful moment with my hearts desire back into the reality of daily life.
Don't get me wrong, I love the reality of my daily life (most days). I am a wife to an amazing man and a mom of two beautiful boys. But I abosolutely adore being wooed by my creator. If us girls are truly honest we all long to be wooed into a great romance. That's because our creator made us that way and He is the only one who can do it GREAT!!!