Hi!
Thanks for visiting our blog.
We wanted to take a moment to tell you a bit about ourselves and how we came to write this blog.
We’re Scott and Cathy Thomson. Scott’s a home visit Optometrist. Cathy’s a stay-at-home mum to our 2 sons and 1 daughter. We have an imaginative and inquisitive nine year old, an animal-loving six year old (with the dirtiest belly laugh you’ve ever heard!), and a sunny and affectionate four year old.
We decided to start this blog in 2015, after a challenging season in our married lives. In the space of 7 months, we experienced the heartbreak of two miscarriages; the anxiety of a third pregnancy with all the extra scans, exhaustion and worry that brings; the difficulty of entering the tantrumming-toddler years for the first time; the stress of a house move to a new town; and the thrill and challenge of launching and leading a brand new church plant. Phew!
What became clearer than ever to us during this time was our desperate need for the comfort and strength of the gospel to sustain us.
The gospel is good news. It really is!
It’s good news that one day brokenness and suffering will be over, when grief and pain seem overwhelming.
It’s good news of acceptance by God in the midst of a messy life, when the pressure’s on to put on a perfect-parent front.
It’s good news of forgiveness when we lose our temper with each other or with our children.
It’s good news of a new power from the Holy Spirit to help us to be patient again when our children disobey us.
It’s good news that applies in the here and now, in the intricacies and mess of life. It’s good news in the highs and the lows, in the joys and the struggles.
The gospel is good news!
That’s why we’re writing this blog.
We want to create space to think about how the gospel applies to our parenting, and how we can be sharing it with our children. This isn’t a “Christian parenting” blog with a new system for how to raise better behaved kids. Quite the opposite! We want to explore how the gospel of grace frees us from bondage to parenting law (whatever our particular brand – attachment parenting, strict routines, organic diet or simply impressing other parents), and how we might go about communicating this gospel to our children. Let’s be honest, the law is exhausting and unattainable! But grace frees us to parent our kids with honesty, joy and humour. We want to explore how that works in practice.
“Run, parent, run, the law commands
But gives us neither feet nor hands.
Far better news the gospel brings:
It bids us fly and gives us wings.”
[John Bunyan – with a little modification]
Enjoy basking in the warm sunshine of the gospel with us…
Scott and Cathy
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