Quiverfull Family Blog

Such sweet words to the ear of a bibliophile and Mother.  I’ve never had early talkers, my youngest turned 2 in April, and she is now starting to speak in complete sentences and phrases.  One of the earliest to surface, as well as one of the most oft repeated is “Readee me Mommy!”, often repeated two to three times in rapid succession if I don’t respond quickly. 

At times this request is followed by the title of a book “Readee me Mommy, JeeJee lubs bee (Jesus Loves Me).”  Sometimes it is the title of the book that is repeated several times, accompanied by book waving in the air.  The incessant demands can become a bit trying, but above all else, I’m thrilled that she has discovered the delights to be found in books, and that their value is already well established in her life.

I am a dyed in the wool reader, which makes me suspect that my parents must have read to me often as a small child, though I have only sporadic memories of this taking place.  Both of my parents love books, and I have followed in their example.  Fostering this love of literature in my own children has proven to be surprisingly simple: regular storytimes scattered throughout the day, consistent bedtime stories and devotionals each and every night, books within easy access of little hands.  Before I knew it my children were entertaining themselves by ‘reading’ books without me.  Just sitting on the floor, quietly leafing through books to look at the pictures, sometimes stopping to ask me questions.  My oldest daughter, K - 5, pointing out pictures and events in storybooks to her younger sister.

How have you fostered a love for reading in your tiny ones?  What are the fruits of your efforts that you are now seeing in their lives?  Please share in the comments of your adventures with literature and children!

Tags: Book Lovers Articles, Christian Family Living, Homeschooling, Mothering by Quiver Mamma
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Of course, by now you’ve realized that Mother’s Day is tomorrow.  Hard to miss isn’t it?  The blogosphere is abuzz with Mom’sDay contests, posts etc.  When I pause to reflect upon the most precious moments in my mothering career one ongoing theme stands out very clearly - sibling love.  How sweet it is, how tender and how helpful for mother’s!

It wasn’t until our second child was born that I could realize the immense benefits of having multiple children.  As soon as our second daughter (R) was born, our oldest daughter (K) took to her like a fish to water.  The baby was ‘her baby’.  Our oldest was so protective of our new little one, so very tender, gentle and sweet.  I had worried how she would take it - there was a 3 year difference between the two and K was used to being an only child.  The transition was so sweet and easy, we had prepared K for R’s birth by talking together about the coming baby, watching birth videos, reading stories about babies being born, and about little sisters.  The intense love between the two was just amazing to me to see, and it has only grown with time.

Do they have sibling rivalry?  Yes, they do.  A couple of years later they do get a bit pushy with eachother and need some careful instruction from time to time to avoid eruptions, but that love is still there.  Now that they are older they love to play together, and I have to say that 80% of the time it is peaceable play that requires little intervention.  These sibling squabbles only serve to teach them to put others before themselves, how to share, how to take turns and other basic skills needed for human interaction.  When I see them playing together, or laying on the floor having a cuddle it brings immense joy to my Mamma heart.

Being a mother is such a sweet blessing, and being a mother to more than one child is even sweeter.  I look forward to meeting the little one that is nearing birth in a couple of months, and any others that the Lord may bless us with!

Tags: Christian Family Living by Quiver Mamma
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In our journey to raise our children to glorify God we have used family devotions as a tool to teach our children the ways of God, the history of His people and to talk after Jesus. We are not always consistent, and in fact have gone through periods of very consistent, daily devotions, and periods of dryness when family devotions do not get done. So we are certainly not perfect in this regard, and are in fact going through a period of dryness in our home at the moment. Usually these dry times come as a result of a disturbed schedule, and since my foot has been burned so badly Larry has been taking over most of the domestic duties, and is feeling rather frazzled and distracted. Despite this, family devotions are a burden on our hearts, and something we love to do together!

Over the course of our devotions together as a family there are a few different styles/techniques of devotions that we have tried. As new believers when we first started daily devotions we used them largely as a time of learning and bible study for Larry and myself, expecting the children to just listen in on what we were discussing and to learn from osmosis. We would sing some hymns and psalms, pray, then head on into Bible study. At times we would include a story from the children’s bible story book we were working through - our oldest loved this. And sometimes we would be so intrigued we would spend most of our devotions reading from the story book! In any case, Larry started seeking the Lord as to what he should be doing as the leader of our family devotions, and he eventually heard the word that he should engage the children more actively.

Our devotional time then transformed from a time of adult bible study into the primary means of teaching, and engaging our children in the word of God at their level. Larry started at the beginning and we started working through the bible in an interactive way. Larry discussed the scripture with the children, drew pictures (sometimes a series of pictures in a single day) of it, built models out of lego, asked the children comprehension questions informally etc. And the children LOVED it!! They were so excited when it was time for family devotions! We are now working on a set of figures that we are making to play the role of various bible characters so that we can re-enact the bible stories with them (we have been doing this with people we make out of lego!) This also sparked my oldest daughters creativity, and she would often draw her own pictures of the events that were covered that day in devotions. Of course, we also sang psalms, hymns, prayed as well as the main part of the devotions - the bible lesson as it were. At times Larry woul lightly pre-plan the creative activities based upon the upcoming text of scripture, so we might know for a couple of days in advance that a lego model of the tower of Babel was upcoming, or a model of the ark, but sometimes he just plays it by ear, and either draws or lego models as needed for the days lesson.

We are currently on a break from our creative daily devotions because we noticed our children needed some more intensive training in sitting still during church. So for a time we have now been listening to sermons (downloaded by mp3) on our computer, while we all practice sitting still on the couch. And the children have been making good progress in their ability to sit for extended periods of time - of course they get fruit snacks, books to draw in, quiet time books etc. to look at during this time.

So, these are a few of the different approaches we have tried for family devotions, and each is unique in its goals and purposes. We believe that in the long term the creative family devotions that speak to the child on their level, and actively engage them in God’s word will bear the most fruit for our family. As our children are still pre-schoolers most of their learning is taking place informally, family devotions is the core of their educational experience, and if we accomplish that, I feel we’ve had a successful day. As adults we get to experience the word of God afresh (and since we are new believers, we often cover new material ourselves) and our children will benefit from a deeper understanding of the story of Gods plan for the world.

Enjoy praising the Lord with your family!

Tags: Christian Family Living by Quiver Mamma
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Our family has greatly benefitted from the family reformation taking place within the church today. The emphasis on viewing the family unit through a literal, biblical lense, and the importance of modelling our family lives based upon the instructions found in scripture are at the heart of the family reformation movement.

Today I learned of a new conference based upon the principles of family reformation - A Puritan Family Reformation being held May 9 - 10th in Wake Forest, North Carolina. You can find all of the details, including a video at the conference website.

Here is what the conference host, Scott Brown, has to say about the purpose of the conference:

On May 9-10 we are having a really unusual conference for the reformation of family life. It is called, “A Puritan Family Reformation,” which seeks to document the biblical doctrine of the family as the Puritans understood it and to put it into practice in our times. It will be a very practical conference for the reforming of marriage, child raising and the relationship between the family and the church.

This is just the sort of instruction that the church today can benefit from - clear, practical biblical teaching to restore the family to the model clearly presented in scripture. If God has placed a burden on your heart for the retun of the family to His clear plan, this is a conference you should seriously consider.

If you would like to promote this contest on your blog, there is a contest taking place at Life in a Shoe, but the contest closes today. Here are the details:

In order to help get the word out about the conference I will be having a drawing for 3 copies of “A Church in the House” by Matthew Henry and “The Joy of Family Worship” cd by R.C. Sproul Jr. IF you blog about the conference.

Together - one of each to 3 people - The conference starts the 9th so we’ll close entries on this drawing on the 30th of April!

Tags: Christian Family Living by Quiver Mamma
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Sometimes my husband has to have a good chuckle, our children are 5 and 2, and yet, I am quite interested and indeed concerned that they are able to find and choose a marriage partner that will allow them to have God honouring marriages. And we often pray for them in this regard, that God would lead them to spouses who fear the Lord and honour Him with their lives. If you have been reading our blog for awhile, you’ll know that neither my husband nor I were raised in Christian homes. - Jesus saved us in the Fall of 2006, and our lives have never been so exciting :)! I will have to post our testimonies in upcoming blog posts.

Due to the fact that neither of us knew Christ, the time period leading up to our marriage was very typical of the sorts of relationships you find in the world. Neither of us were virgins, neither were physically or emotionally pure. I had even co-habitated with a young man on an extended basis. We had a very intense dating period, knowing each other physically after a couple of weeks, Larry proposing after 3.5 weeks, and marrying after 3 months total (Larry would have liked it sooner, but I needed to find a replacement at work etc.) No, I wasn’t pregnant, we used barrier methods of contraception until we conceived our first daughter 9 months later. In any case, now that we are saved, we both want a better way for our children - one that is honouring to Jesus, and will prayerfully result in a Godly partner for them. We long to guard their hearts from emotional entanglements, and guard their physical purity as well. As a result, we are VERY interested in courtship and betrothal, and love to read on the subject. Though of course, we don’t have all the details and plans worked out, I’m certain that God will see to that when the time comes and we seek His will prayerfully, we do tend towards a hands-off, platonic relationship until marriage is agreed upon.

A recent article online (April 11th) explored betrothal: They Plight Their Troth — And Mean It that you may be interested in reading, a very brief overview that doesn’t really do justice to this biblical concept. There are a couple of areas that can be easily misunderstood until you look into betrothal in depth, such as the misconception that it is similar to an arranged marriage.

So, I would like to share some further resources that are either betrothal or courtship related for you to glean more insight from. My favourite speaker on the topic is Jonathan Lindvall, mentioned in the article. He has written a series of articles available online, as well as recorded some teachings on the subject. He has also recorded the testimony of Matthew and Marantha Chapman’s betrothal that is mentioned in the above article, you really must listen to it, it is just such a beautiful picture of the Love that Jesus has for His bride, the church.

Charity Tape Ministries also has some recordings that are more courtship focused, that have also inspired us - particularly The Overtaking Blessings of the Second Generation, where the fruit of raising children for Christ and the advantages it gives to them are explored. I cried with the beautiful vision presented in this message.

They also have a category of courtship messages that you can download and listen to, lots of courtship testimonies too! I love testimonies!

I pray that these resources will be an encouragement to you in your walk with Christ, and I hope to publish some reviews of courtship books in the future.

Tags: Christian Family Living by Quiver Mamma
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It happened so quickly, it’s hard to remember exactly how we came to our conviction of leaving the planning of our family size to God. We came to Christ in the fall of 2006, and the Holy Ghost took us and started changing us immediately, praise God! Sinful behaviour dropped away before we even realized that they were sins in our new walk with Christ. We were learning so much about God and His ways, we rolled over and showed Jesus our belly, as I like to say. Even though we did not initially understand why God asked us to do things a certain way, it was enough for us to know that He asked, we would try to obey. We know that His ways are not our ways, and who are we to argue with the creator of the universe? Of course we are still learning.

Early in our Christian walk we also learned that walking in obedience to the word of God brings blessings. People often say that life does not come with an instruction manual, but it does, and it is called the Bible! And when we step out in obedience and apply the word of God to our lives, great things happen. When we trust in Gods promises for us and our lives he fulfills them. And this was the backdrop for what became our quiverfull conviction.

I cannot remember when I first heard of being quiverfull as a believer - it wasn’t long ago, but still I can’t bring it to mind. I know that I had heard of ‘crazy Christian families with a million children’ before, and my husband had even shared stories of these families with me before we were saved. Often when we would hear of people with large families we would say, in our ignorance “They must be…religious…”. But, being who I am, I mostly likely stumbled upon a QF mamma on a discussion board somewhere, or on an email list or forum. I mentioned this new thought to Larry, and he looked into the scriptures, I looked into the scriptures as well, and visited the quiverfull.com website to do some more reading. And one day we both just agreed - well, no more contraception for us! And that was it! We burned our condoms!

Before we became believers we planned on having 2 - 3 children, at the most. We even subscribed to the deep ecology concepts of zero population growth, and felt that the world was just a terrible place to bring children into. When we were first married we used a natural family planning method until we felt it was the right time to conceive our first child. After she was born we used condoms until we were ready to conceive our second. After our second we continued using condoms until the Holy Ghost convicted us of Gods desire to bless us with more children that He could use if we raised them for Him. How Christ can change us! Larry, ever a planner, now rests securely in the fact that God has promised to provide for whatever children He blesses us with. He is only responsible to do his best to provide for us, and God will do the rest. Larry feels that such a weight and burden of responsibility was lifted from his shoulders when he surrendered our family planning to God. He claims that he would not use a contraceptive device even at gunpoint now, he is so determined that it is Gods will to raise up a Godly seed in Christian homes that He can use to stand in the gates. For myself, God has changed me in such away that I am just delighted at the thought of more children, and was so eagerly expecting another blessing that I thought we would conceive as soon as we burned the condoms! This wasn’t the case - but I think it was a matter of 6 months or so before I conceived the child that is now growing in my womb!

Psalm 127 is the first Psalm that anyone in our family memorized in song, and DH, eldest DD and I all know it by heart.

Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh [but] in vain.
[It is] vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: [for] so he giveth his beloved sleep.
Lo, children [are] an heritage of the LORD: [and] the fruit of the womb [is his] reward.
As arrows [are] in the hand of a mighty man; so [are] children of the youth.
Happy [is] the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

God has commanded us to be fruitful and multiply - let’s get to it!

Tags: Christian Family Living by Quiver Mamma
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