Mission and Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson

I've been on a reading kick lately. Started with the lovely trip to Cancun, and I've been devouring books ever since. And, if you know me, you know that I can go through a book in about three hours, and I've been reading every night for the last few nights, and during the day when I can, especially if I have a book on the kindle app on my phone (side note, I LOVE the kindle app and I think ebooks and kindles are great, EXCEPT for the fact that you can't share the books when you are done, and I never re-read a book and usually pass on the ones that I have enjoyed. now, they have added a "loan" feature, but the publisher has to approve it and allow it, and out of 15 or more kindle books I "own", only one can be loaned and this one for only 2 weeks to one person and that is it! so, that is my beef with kindle and I am sure the nook is the same...anyone have any ways around this? I would purchase ebooks all of the time if I could loan them to others and pass on the reading love).

So, recent favorites have been Divergent by Veronica Roth, and the "Uglies" series by Scott Westerfeld (all of these are dystopian lit of the young adult genre). In the non-fiction realm, I completed The Mission of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson shortly after Cancun, and found it to be inspiring and challenging, but also kind of unattainable and frustrating. However, I am about four chapters into the next book by Clarkson, The Ministry of Motherhood, and I'm loving this one and finding it inspiring, encouraging, challenging, and thought-provoking. My good friend, Linda, who is a prolific blogger, has started an encouragement post series on her blog http://mamamiamcmasters.blogspot.com/search/label/encouragement
and I've been trying to use the ideas to do one thing each day to encourage each of my kiddos. I've found, to my dismay, that I am issuing commands and being critical for most of the day, and I don't want to be that way, and think it is detrimental to my "mission" of motherhood to model Christ and make disciples of my kiddos and point them to the unconditional love of their Heavenly Father....so, to come back to the topic of this post, one of the chapters in the Ministry book addressed this topic, and at the end of each chapter there is a prayer...this one was spot on and just what I needed to hear and pray....

-A Mother's Prayer-
Father of Encouragement,
Thank you for taking the time to show your love to your disciples by affirming and encouraging them. Help us remember that our well-aimed words will carry life to the hearths of our children. Teach us to extol their positive characteristics whenever we can and to resist the temptation to use words only for correction. Give us lips that speak grace and that show the heart of your love through the things we say. Amen.