Top 5 Posts of 2011

As we often do at the end of the year, I've been reviewing 2011 and what's happened on this blog. Most notable to me, what started as my lectures to myself has become something that seems meaningful to many more people than I ever expected to reach. The blog has over 2000 subscribers, and that makes me think. I am literally a pajama blogger, sitting in my housecoat right now listening to my boys playing in their bedroom as I type this. Who am I, and why do people want to read what I write?! My husband tells me regularly (so I don't get distracted by the larger, often irrelevant debates that go on around conservative evangelical blogs) that the key to this website is authenticity and honesty about the real issues facing women who love Jesus and His Word while living in a fallen world. I note that articles on these topics are the ones that seem to resonate with you, the reader. It's significant to me that the #1 post this year was on the pain of singleness, and the #2 post was on the need for gospel grace for mothers of infants and toddlers.

Here are the top 5 commented posts of 2011 (along with two articles that included free book giveaways--book giveaways skew results). I've enjoyed rereading them and contemplating why they resonated with readers. Hope they bless you as we enter the New Year!

#5 Protection or Inoculation?
... My other friend noted that, while growing up, his parents often had destitute people in their home for a season. He remembered watching a prostitute doing drugs in his home. And he noted the marked difference in his heart from learning of sin by witnessing firsthand the ugly consequences verses learning of sin via entertainment forms that usually sanitize it of its ugly consequences.

That conversation has provoked much thought for me. My children are going to be exposed to sin. Plus they are sinners themselves. I actually feel fairly equipped to navigate the sin within. I understand how the gospel equips us to face that head on. But now that I've gotten that biggie settled in my mind, I'm thinking anew about equipping them for the sin without. I have enough experience with cloistered Christianity to know that it is no savior from the sins of society. Yet I'm not naïve about the effects of unbridled exposure either.


#4 Counterintuitive Words of Comfort for the Hurting
I am beginning to see that the primary point of long periods of silence by God during our earthly sorrows and suffering is that we show His worthiness of our belief and trust based fully on who He is and not on what things He gives us. Satan can't believe we would trust God just based on His character and not on the blessings on earth He gives us. That's Satan's taunt--"They only worship you because you are good to them. They'd never worship you if you didn't answer their prayers and take care of them like they expect." The truth is that true faith doesn't worship God because God is good but because God is God.

#3 For Moms, Former Moms, and Wannabe Moms
Mother's Day is a tricky holiday. Like any holiday, it is sweet for some and bitter for others. For some, it’s both. I remember feeling on the outside looking in on Mother’s Day, first as a single woman and then after I miscarried our first. Our church had an entrance near the nursery called the Family Entrance. Could I use it? Were we a family? I finally just used it regardless, almost as an act of defiance. Now as the mother of a 4 and 6 year old, I can deeply appreciate someone setting aside parking near an entrance that kept me from having to walk my toddlers across a busy intersection. But at the time I was dealing with emotions that weren’t swayed by practical realities. I just wanted to be a mom. And that sign at the church entrance reminded me I wasn’t.

#2 Give US Grace – parenting advice for moms of infants and toddlers
I wish someone had told me years ago that the person that most needed grace in those early years with infants and toddlers was MYSELF. The baby and toddler years are TOUGH. They are very different from the early school years, though they too have their struggles. The toddler years are crazy, and we need different expectations of our parenting in those early years.

#1 It isn't Good to be Alone
My experience is that there comes a moment as a single woman where it just stops being fun. Where you are done with the single scene, worn out by meat markets, and frustrated by well meaning but insensitive friends or family who keep suggesting the wrong guys to you. I remember feeling like I needed to talk myself into marrying someone that friends thought was good for me but who made me feel like dying inside personally. Was he my last chance at happiness? Being a Christian single woman is hard!

***(These next two got lots of comments, but perhaps that was because of the free book giveaway)

The Myth of the Biblical Parenting Method
... In contrast, I have read many great gospel-centered parenting books, but the really good ones seem to understand that a gospel-centered approach doesn't lend itself well to specific, quantifiable methods. Examples are different than methods, by the way. A good author who understands the difference in the gospel and law guards themselves from breaking down the line between what worked for them (example) and what will work for you (method), between what they found helpful and what they project onto you that all good parents should do.

Review of Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James
James' books always provoke me to think, and this book does it as well as any. If you're a complementarian conspiracy theorist, this book is not for you. I know some folks think James is out to undermine complementarian teaching, but I actually have benefitted from some of the push back she subtly gives. She married later in life and had problems having children. I can identify with sincerely valuing and longing for marriage and children, yet being thwarted from each by the sovereign hand of God. That experience opened my eyes to the flawed ways we present women's issues in Scripture, which I've talked about many times on this blog. I think James' experience is similar.