Battle-times are painful times. But they also are defining moments, providing opportunities to identify more clearly what we stand for…and what we do not. When we’re challenged, truly challenged, to fight for the things we deem most important—faith, family, friendship, life itself—we recognize that everything else is transitory, temporal. And we also recognize our dependence on God as our ally, our strength, our shield (Psalm 28:7).

As parents, we’re tempted to shield our children from every strife. The bully. The bad teacher. The pain of false accusations and unfair decisions and attacks on their faith. We

want to protect them when we really should be teaching them how to protect themselves—to truly utilize the weapons of God’s Word, prayer, truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation. Are we helping them commit Scripture to heart? If so, God can bring those verses to mind, helping them respond to the enemy’s strike. Are we teaching them to rely on prayer as an honest conversation that often results in answers? Then they’ll know to seek his direction as they discern truth from lies and fight injustice. Are we teaching them how to settle into God’s own peace in the midst of the most fearsome storm? If so, they’ll be able to stand strong, even when confronting difficult circumstances.

If we want our kids to be battle-ready, we need to help them train with the weapons God has given us.

Excerpted from Upside-Down Prayers for Parents by Lisa Bergren

I’m a step-parent so Mother’s Day always holds some bittersweet moments for me. I’ve learned through 36 years how to step back, step-aside, step-away and even step-up to support my husband and to honor the mother of his children as well. Mothering didn’t appear the way I had always imagined it would — as a Hallmark Card.  It’s been more like the cards that make you laugh or even tear up with the honesty of sentiment. My step-children have always remembered me on mother’s day often giving me the greatest gift which is to share their father with me through the years.

Dorothea Dix, a social reformer of the 19th Century was never a mother nor was she a step-mother. Her own mother may well have been mentally ill. At least she was "unavailable."  Dorothea tried desperately to adopt a distant cousin when the girl’s mother died but other relatives intervened. Her students often became her family as she opened several schools for girls, something rare in the Boston area in the 1820s. She maintained relationships with these young women after they married and sometimes traveled with their families finding herself an honorary aunt or grandmother.

Yet she found a way to be a mother. Some of those she helped were children locked up with a mentally ill parent in a jail or a back room where so many suffered sitting against cold brick walls in the dead of winter without heat. Some of those for whom she worked were adults but whose ability to understand their plight was like that of a child. It’s said she had a soothing yet powerful voice that calmed the distressed. However she brought comfort, she mothered others, giving of herself and modeled the mother in each of us.

Original devotional from Jane Kirkpatrick, author of One Glorious Ambition

As parents, we don’t like to see our kids fail—even if failure might provide just the reality check they need. I’m no scientist, but I think we’re biologically programmed to try to protect our children from the hurt and pain that failure brings, even if it means pushing them to persevere in something that lies outside their strengths and long-term interests. We make the tone-deaf kid practice piano. We book time at the batting cages for a child who’s better suited to the library than the ball field. We insist on the advanced-placement class, thinking it will aid on college applications, even though the pressure makes the child (and therefore the whole family) miserable all year.

Factor in the reality that we somehow think a child’s failure is a reflection on us—What will people think of me if my child fails?—and we actually exacerbate the problem. We pressure our children to achieve success at all costs, sometimes to the detriment of something more valuable. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t encourage our kids to do their best and to follow through on their commitments. I’m not advocating dropouts. I’m advocating dropping things that don’t matter and really winnowing down to the things that move God, the things that should move us too. I’m challenging us to weather the

What Will They Think of Me storm in favor of trusting—truly trusting—the Father with our kids.

Excerpted from Upside-Down Prayers for Parents by Lisa Bergren

As Christians, we’re called to take the lead when hard times hit. To stand and be counted among those who place their confidence in a God who is completely good, even when life feels bad. Yes, life is rough. At times, brutal. But it’s also amazingly, achingly beautiful. Full of hope and potential and possibility. And if we want to raise children whose faith can thrive in difficult circumstances—children who live in a loving, wholly trusting relationship with their God, who are able to see the beauty even in the midst of the fire and smoke, who remain alert for signs of hope amid the rubble—we have to model that kind of relationship with our God. Come what may. As parents, we want to equip our children to be strong and courageous disciples. But we can only teach them what we already know for ourselves, right?

…It’s understandable and right to pray for our children’s protection, health, and well-being. But too often, we slip into spiritual timidity. We like to stay in that safe zone—and we definitely prefer to see our children in that happy place, right? But if we wish to be warriors for Christ, resilient disciples of the Way, we’re after more depth in discipleship, knowledge of the Holy, and a full-on trust of the One who loves our children best. And if we’re to trust him with everything in us, we have to lay our lives—past, present, and future—in his hands. Perhaps most challenging, we have to lay our children’s lives there as well.

Excerpted from Upside-Down Prayers for Parents by Lisa Bergren