Parenting Tip #1 – Keep Your Bucket Full

Do you ever feel you’re at the end of yourself when it comes to parenting?  When my infant daughter suffered with colic, it broke my heart that I was powerless to help her. She would scream and stiffen her tiny body, even when I’d done all I could to comfort her.

One night, I was so weary I feared I might trip and fall with her in my arms. I laid her in the crib, dimmed the light and closed the door, utterly defeated. I hated leaving her alone in her pain but there was nothing else to do.

Keep Your Bucket Full

“… but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14 NIV).

Thankfully my daughter, and her mother, survived colic. What helped me keep going during the early years of parenting was placing a high value on spending time alone with God every day. And this hasn’t changed through the years of foster parenting and grand-parenting.

I imagine my life is like a bucket. If I’m not careful to keep it full, I may not have what I need to function as I wish – and that’s just miserable. I also won’t have the abundance required to share with others. That would be intolerable to me, because I want to live giving my best.

Prayer is my lifeline 

For me, this isn’t the same as needing “me time.” In fact, it’s “he and me time.”  I don’t need more me things, I need to drink from the water of life.

“Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35 NIV).

Prayer

Lord, thank you for being available to meet with me. Thank you for being everything I hunger and thirst for, and for the Bible that helps me know you better. I love you, God.

by Kathy Sheldon Davis