WALK BY THE WAY

Today we had the pleasure of hosting our monthly "Sonflower Sisters" meeting at our house. This is our fourth year participating with Sonflower Sisters - a group of elementary aged girls and moms mentoring group, created by Deb @ As We Walk . The theme verse this month is "You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them...as you walk by the way". Deut. 11:19 We talked about how the women in the bible days walked to the well to retrieve the water for their families, and wondered what kinds of things they encountered, what mothers and daughters talked about and what they might have talked about with the other women. We compared that to what it looks like for a modern women today to "walk by the way". For most of us it looks like driving in our cars - grocery shopping, after school activities, appointments... we tend to be very much "on the run". What are our girls hearing "as we walk"? What are we teaching them? Are we complaining? Are we commiserating with other mothers about our challenges? Are we gossiping? What are we showing our girls that a woman does when in company with other women? Our girls are watching our every moves - they are forming in their minds what it means to be a wife and a mother one day. I pray that we show them to listen to each other's hearts, to encourage one another, to speak wisdom into others lives, to give hope. I know I am guilty myself of not always doing that. We also talked about how in our rushed lives we often overlook those who might be in need of our help or our companionship. We should strive to teach our daughters to look outside of themselves, and to put aside their own activities of pleasure and to see what they can do to help others. Including them in serving others teaches them the joy of giving over receiving, and how to "love our neighbors as ourselves".

A few of the girls made some cards to send some encouragement to others who were in need.

Some of the busy mommies helping with our flip-flop craft - we made cute flip-flops as a reminder of what they should think and talk about as they "walk along the way". (Hey - your feet can be cute as you walk!!)

And the girls traced their feet, and their moms feet and wrote out the verses on them that they plan to memorize over the next month until we meet again.

I so much enjoy the fellowship of these other moms as we together walk through this journey of what it means to mother our daughters in the way the Lord calls us to.