In God's image

I sometimes think that I would like a "Christian Blog", the one I spend my preachy moments on. But in truth, I cannot separate the Christian from the mom , so it's all intertwined.

I've been studying for my Bible class this week. We are talking about self-esteem.

Song of Solomon 4:7 says, "All beautiful you are, my darling; there is not flaw in you."

God created us in His image.....flawless. Scott asks the little girls (and began with Chelsea and Sarah) a question, "where are you beautiful?" and they reply "on the inside". Of course we tell our children they are physically beautiful....but always keeping moderation in mind. When we read the Bible and see words from God like "flawless" we immediately think of worldly beauty....God see the true us....He sees our Souls. My soul, my beauty, the flawlessness of me that my God loves so much? It is within me and without, when my actions are lead by my soul.

As I have studied it truly has bothered me when I think about how much the world beats at our faith in ways we don't always notice. The world, in my opinion, has meshed with much of the church over the self-etc movements....you know the self-worth, self esteem, self centered, self aware, self justification, self love, self actualization, self pity stuff. As Christians, we will never find happiness or worth in self, we will always be dissatisfied, always come up short. We have to allow God to create within us the right self-image. (a brief tidbit of my 8 page lesson)

But my blog today (prompted by class study)is this:

As a parent I want my children to have faith that God is their creator and that His promises are true. That faith begins with me, with my life, but I am simply an example ...not the whole. God is the entirety, the beginning and end of life.

When Seth was born I realized the day would come when he would realize I was not his birth mom. I had adopted many many times by the time Seth came along, but my other children all knew they were adopted. It was never a secret, it was not the most important thing in life. Adoption, birth, whatever, those were just the avenues to creating our family. We talked our way through most of those. Our example, our faith, hope and very family was seated with God. But, adoption is really not sometime we talk about often. I mean, I rarely sit around talking to my birth children about every detail of child-birth and the same is true of my adopted children. It's a time and place thing.

That said, I knew Seth would believe himself "mine". I worried about his "self-esteem". I knew his life, that self-worth did not need to be in a mom or a dad. So from the time he was very very young I would say, "Do you know who gave you to me?" and Seth would smile and say, "God did!". I knew he needed his faith in the unshakable, in God.

The same is true of us all. Our lives, the quality of our lives, depends on where we root our faith, where we see our worth. If we place it in God? Then we will have the right "in Christ" image of ourselves!