Cynthia Tobias, author of You Can’t Make Me! discusses parenting a strong-willed child on Portland’s KATU, AM Northwest. Discover helpful tips to help in the growing process, and how to turn it from a negative in your child’s life… to a positive! Click here to watch.
My physical challenges are easy to see, yet people only have to talk to me or hear me speak for a few minutes to understand how much joy I have in spite of that. So they often ask me how I stay positive and where I find the strength to overcome my disabilities. My answer, always, is, “I pray for God’s help, and then I put my faith in action.” I have faith. I believe in certain things that I have no tangible proof ofthings I cannot see, taste, touch, smell, or hear. Most of all, I have faith in God. Though I can’t see or touch Him, I believe He created me for a purpose, and I believe that when I put my faith and my beliefs into action, I put myself in a position for God’s blessings.
Excerpted [ … ]
When I ask SWC’s [strong-willed children] who are dedicated Christians what motivated them to surrender their lives to God, I get one consistent answer: We are motivated by the relationship God offers us, not by the punishment we can avoid. In other words, it doesn’t
work to tell us that unless we surrender to God, we will face eternal damnation or hell.
[. . .] God wants each of us to come to Him and to serve Him in a way that enhances the very personality He created within us.
Excerpted from You Can’t Make Me (But I Can Be Persuaded) by Cynthia Tobias
Daily Reflection:
In what ways has your own strong will prevented you from surrendering to God’s will?
This is what “love” meant for me: I was on the lookout for a person from whom I would find fulfillment. And I thought fulfillment would arrive in terms of attraction, emotional connection, and long-term compatibility, among other criteria, including but not limited to: green eyes, a shapely face, talent, and a sparkling personality. She would need to like music, but not the wrong type; be smart, but not the wrong type of smart, and so forth. Love meant finding someone with the right attributes and ticking off the ol’ checklist.
This was not the same as Christ’s love. Christ’s love had little to do with my checklist and seemed to focus more on the poor, the weak, and the people least likely to be wanted. Christ didn’t say spouse checklists were wrong, but He did love a lot [ … ]
Rebuffed by her Old Amish Order community due to her unexplained gifts, intuitive Rhoda Byler prefers to be in her gardenalone. But when circumstances introduce her apple-grower Samuel King, life begins to open up unexpectedly. Can Rhoda escape the guilt and stigma shes carried for so long and really start over?
