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