Meet the new necessity in my life. 

According to Dr. Google, this is my ailment. Although I would say I am in the beginning, relatively mild stages of it.

I'm sure multiple pregnancies combined with my unwavering obsession with flip-flops can be blamed.

I'm 29 years old, and when I get out of bed in the morning I think "my feet hurt."

Somehow I have a feeling this observation is just the beginning of the rest of my life.

I wonder if these fabulous inserts would look bad in my flip-flops??

As we explore together what it means to cultivate a heart for God, a heart for our children, and a heart for our home, I will attempt to create a complete picture of how we are called to live as mothers, so that the integrity of our own lives will reflect the beauty of God's original design.
I do not, however, consider myself to be a perfect mother. My aspirations and what I can idealize oftentimes far exceed my ability to live up to them in reality. Yet it is in being able to visualize the dreams of my heart and beauty of God's design that I have found a standard of maturity to move toward.

-Sally Clarkson
The Mission of Motherhood

Yes, I am trying to entice you to join in.

I have a love-hate relationship with parenting books. 

I don't know if I'm the only one with this problem.

Part of my problem with them is that they have a tendency to be very dogmatic, which annoys me to no end. I used to be heavily influenced by authors that told me "Do ______ with your child. It is the ONLY way.". But after much misery and a few years of experience as a mother,  I have learned to ignore the do or die mentality of parenting books and approach them with a take-what-I-want & forget-the-rest attitude.

So, that problem was thankfully solved. 

And I have since discovered there are many wonderful books on parenting, you just have to be ready to sift through and find them.

But my other problem, is the way that I read them.

My habit with reading in general is to dive into a book full-force, and not put it down until it's finished. This is a problem when reading something like a book on improving your parenting, because what happens is I'm hit with way too many ideas at once, and either 

A) try to implement all of them all at once, resulting in miserable children, an annoyed husband and a burnt out mom, OR

B) feel so overwhelmed by all of the ideas that I shut down and refuse to process and/or apply any of them.

I had a light-bulb moment today and was struck by a brilliant plan.

The plan involves you, so please decide you're interested. 

Upon request, I received The Mission of Motherhood for Christmas.

I've been reading Sally Clarkson's blog for several months, and find it so encouraging. Honestly many days it is the breath of fresh air I am so in need of.

So as you can imagine, I'm really excited to read this book.

As I started looking through it, I realized it is twelve chapters, and for whatever reason I just got the idea in my head that it would be really great to read only one chapter a month. This is obviously a different approach for me, but I'm excited about it.

My goal is simple: read a chapter each month, and really take the time to process, pray about, and evaluate how I can apply the things I find helpful in my everyday life.

My hope in doing this is of course to avoid the above pitfalls that usually come when I read a book of this nature. 

So anyway, I want to invite you to join me.

I'll post here on the 11th of every month (because it's kind of fun and catchy… the 11th of 2011 ) and share a little bit of what I've taken from the chapter I've read, then you can share in the comments your thoughts, or if you have a blog you want to share on, feel free to just leave a link in the comments. 

I really want this to be a chance to encourage one another, because I know as moms it's very easy to fall into feelings of defeat. On that note, my hope is for everyone to share what they found to be encouraging in the book. To reflect on the positive. I don't want this to be a place to pick apart every word and debate what's wrong with this or right about that. Honestly I find those kinds of discussions completely exhausting. So no negativity. Take what you like, share it with everyone, and forget the rest!

I will share every month regardless, but this will really be a lot more fun if you join me, so please do! You know you've got time for one chapter a month.  

January's assignment: Chapter 1 A Journey Like No Other