The little eyes that watch my me through the days. More than the way I clean, make their meals, or wipe bums, they are absorbing through their little eyes the way I love, live, worship…. these actions, small or big, are digging wells in their souls far greater than any word I ever speak to them could.

I think about the mornings when I make my bed, the twins excitedly will go make theirs without me asking! They just want to copy their mama. But the days I don’t make my bed… I find myself after breakfast is over repeating in a forceful voice, “did you make your bed?”

Mediating in Matthew 10:39 the last few weeks…

“If you cling to your life, you will lose it. BUT if you give up your life for me, you will find it.”

Just as the days when I make my bed, I ponder, Is my love for Jesus and taking up my cross – denying myself lived out in a way they see? Not just words I read to them from scripture or what comes from my mouth, rather do they flow from my heart and hands?

We live in a world absorbed with self- so focused on personal gain. I’ve personally wrestled with these questions…. how am I losing my life and not clinging to it by giving it up?

Then I look at my 3 little chicks as I affectionately call them, their eyes starring back at me, I see them following in my footprints I set before them …

How do I live in a way that tangibly teaches my girls, this is how we lose our life?

Not out of duty, but of love and obedience.
This culture, the enemy has an all out war on our hearts for obedience. Even on my children. They aren’t exempt.

I want these little eyes to see Jesus’ upside down Kingdom, above the worlds ways and then go walk in it.

I want to not just partner with God as an individual person, because that only feeds the culture’s demand of self-serving/self-absorption. Rather I want to partner with God as a family, this family God miraculously pieced together.

How can we press into losing our lives as a collective, as a family?

My heart stirs to see my girls walk in the ways of Jesus’ call to surrender to self as little girls, so that when they become older they are not swallowed by the world’s propaganda.

Love. I come back to the cross. Is it really sacrifice to lose our lives when we understand the depth of the gift we were given? The gift of life…where Jesus gave it all, his life for us?

Would our hearts be so gripped with the depth of His love for us that sacrifice and surrender comes somewhat “easy?” Meaning, there still is a cost, a sacrifice, but the prize of Jesus’ presence demands our losing our life that we can’t not obey.

Shouldn’t a surrendered life be a love gift in return? Eternal life demands everything of myself, and anything less won’t do.

I fail and I am not perfect, but I’ll sow seeds into these little baby chicks of mine, one surrendered choice at a time.

I’ll never stop talking about the Jesus who gave it all.

More than anything I hope, God-willing, they see me wrestling and fighting to lose my life in someway that they would begin to live the same- even at 5.5 years old.

I want to shelter them in certain aspects of world’s ways they aren’t ready for…..yet I don’t want to shelter them from Gods ways. I want them to walk in authority of victory now…. even when it’s hard or messy.

My prayer is, my girls find their mom surrendered as the Spirit leads us as a family to lose our lives.

In my obedience, though my heart is to God first… it’s also about my girls seeing it modeled through my life. More than mere words. I don’t want to hide my private relationship just between God and I. I carry a burden, that they may be brought in to this crazy Jesus journey… may they see joy and courage as I live upside down in this world, losing my grips on all of it and posturing my palms up.