Parenting Is Your Highest Calling: And Eight Other Myths That Trap Us in Worry and Guilt

Parenting Is Your Highest Calling: And Eight Other Myths That Trap Us in Worry and Guilt

by Leslie Leyland Fields
Parenting Is Your Highest Calling: And Eight Other Myths That Trap Us in Worry and Guilt

Parenting Is Your Highest Calling: And Eight Other Myths That Trap Us in Worry and Guilt

by Leslie Leyland Fields

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Overview

In this provocative book, author Leslie Leyland Fields explores with refreshing honesty the myths that can lead to unrealistic expectations and distract us from God’s purposes for our children and for us.

Why am I not a more joyful parent? Why aren’t my kids turning out as I expected? Why do I always feel as if I’m not doing enough for my children? Is Parenting Supposed to Be This Difficult? As a mother of six, Leslie Leyland Fields knows firsthand the insecurities and questions that come with rearing children. In Parenting Is Your Highest Calling, she tackles nine myths about parenting, including:

• Children make you happy and bring great fulfillment.
• You will always feel love for your child.
• Your success as a parent can be measured by your child’s behavior.
• There is one “right” biblical model for family life.
• Good parenting will result in happy children.

Through a close look at God’s own life as a parent as well as stories from real-life families, Fields highlights the transforming biblical truths that release parents from the grip of mistaken assumptions. Fresh, provocative insights will lead you to a deeper understanding of God and yourself– an understanding that lifts the weight of guilt and fear and frees you to love your children as God intended.

Includes “going deeper” questions for individuals, couples, or groups.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307446091
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Publication date: 12/16/2008
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 807,462
File size: 398 KB

About the Author

Leslie Leyland Fields is the author of several books, including Surprise Child: Finding Hope in Unexpected Pregnancy. She has received the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and nominations for the Pushcart Prize and has written for journals such as Christianity Today, The Atlantic Monthly, and Today’s Christian Woman. The mother of six children, Leslie divides her time among parenting, writing, commercial fishing, and teaching in Seattle Pacific University’s master of fine arts program. She and her family on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xiii

Parenting Doesn't Have to Be This Hard 1

Myth 1 Having Children Makes You Happy and Fulfilled: Discovering God's Real Purpose in Giving Us Children 13

Myth 2 Nurturing Your Children Is Natural and Instinctive: Why Biblical Love Is So Difficult to Live Out 37

Myth 3 Parenting Is Your Highest Calling: How Pursuing God First Frees Us to Love Our Children More 59

Myth 4 Good Parenting Leads to Happy Children: Exchanging Shallow Hopes for God's Deeper Purposes 77

Myth 5 If You Find Parenting Difficult, You Must Not Be Following the Right Plan: Learning to Rely on God Rather Than Formulas 99

Myth 6 You Represent Jesus to Your Children: How We Trap Ourselves in a Role We Weren't Meant to Play 127

Myth 7 You Will Always Feel Unconditional Love for Your Children: How Our False Ideas of Love Burden Us with Guilt 147

Myth 8 Successful Parents Produce Godly Children: The Danger of Making Too Much of Ourselves and Too Little of God 165

Myth 9 God Approves of Only One Family Design: Why God Is Not Limited by Imperfect Families 187

The Holy Enterprise of Parenting 209

Notes 215

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