How to Create a Vibrant Mom Village

Yesterday I shared how vital my mom village is to my effectiveness as a mom as well as to my sanity! Thank you for coming back to find out more about creating your own mom village.

I asked you to make a list of the ladies in your mom village. I hope you did. But if you didn’t, you can go ahead and do that right now.

I grew up in a village of only a few hundred people. From looking at our town and the villages around us, I saw that a village can either be great or terrible. The great villages look out for each other. When someone dies without insurance, the entire town pitches in with spaghetti suppers and walk-a-thons to raise money so the family can pay for a burial. When the basketball team plays, the entire town shows up to cheer the kids on. And when a new baby is born, the mom is overwhelmed with diapers, clothes, and homemade meals. These villages are robust and functional.

Other villages are different, though. These dysfunctional villages are full of conflict. People look out for their own kin but not those of outsiders. People are nice to your face, but they snipe behind your back. When businesses fail, instead of compassion, people self-righteously proclaim, “I told you so.”

What type of mom village are you building? Is your village functional or dysfunctional?

What does a functional mom village look like?

Outings

A functional mom village goes places together. It is fun to spend a morning at the park, but it is even more fun for moms and children alike when there are lots of people to push the swings or lots of kids to challenge on the monkey bars.

Taking your daughter to a concert is a great mom thing to do, but if you take a friend and her daughter along then you moms can share earplugs before the concert and Tylenol after.

Going on outings together also helps your daughters get to know other girls better. These friendships formed in the sandbox can last until the retirement home. How great would it be if you had a part in helping your daughter create a friend for life?

Suggestions

You may protest that you already have plenty of suggestions—all you need to do is to post a question on Facebook and people will crawl out of the woodwork to give you advice. The problem is that you can’t always trust the advice of your Facebook friends. They may not know your family situation like your mom village does. They may not know the nuances of your daughter’s personality. What worked great to get their child to stay away from drugs may be the entirely wrong approach for your child.

Your social media friends may not have God’s Word in mind when they give you advice either. According to Proverbs 1:7 knowledge comes from the fear of the Lord. If your friends don’t fear the Lord, then you need to double and triple check their advice. Stick to moms you can trust.

Prayers

Have you ever heard another mom pray for your child? I mean really pray. I mean not just pray for your child to feel better after an illness but to pray for your child to love God’s Word. To avoid temptation on the internet. To find friends that will call out the best in them. To find a spouse who loves the Lord first. To have a heart that breaks for their unsaved friends.

Your mom village needs to be praying those types of prayers for your child. If you have never prayed with a village, then it is time to invite some moms over and go to battle for each other’s kids. Yes, it may be awkward at first. Yes, you might not know what to say, but God promises in Matthew 18 that if two or more believers agree and ask God for something, He will do it for them. What a promise!

Support

You will have bad mom days. You will wonder why God would ever entrust irresponsible and irritable you with actual human beings to take care of. You will have days when you wonder what grievous sin you have committed to warrant God punishing you by giving you those little miscreants. You need the support of a mom village on those days.

Don’t hide out on those bad days and pretend everything is ok. Call another villager. Confess your frustrations and your worries. Be real with her, and accept her support. God may have readied her to be the balm your weary soul needs.

Remember that village I talked about earlier? They cheered their hometown team on. Cheer your mom friends on. You can see the despair on her face—let her know there is hope. You see her exhaustion in the bags under her eyes—take her kids to the park so she can take a nap. She is rejoicing that her daughter made the basketball team—bring her some basketball themed cookies to celebrate.

Challenges

It is so easy to go from activity to activity and from problem to problem as a mom and miss the big picture. It is time to purposefully enjoy your role as mom to a preteen or teenage daughter and to challenge your mom village to do the same. You can do that by joining the 4-4-4 Challenge: 4 weeks—4 hours—4 moms

The challenge: 4 moms meet once a week for 4 weeks to pray for their daughters. The moms also spend one hour per week one-on-one time with their daughters and text the group when they have completed their one-on-one time for the week. Sometime in the 4 weeks the moms and daughters go on an outing together. It is that easy.

Here are the steps to join the 4-4-4 Challenge

Step 1

Ask three other moms to join in the challenge with you. If you live in the same town, decide where you can meet together for the one hour each week you pray for each other’s daughters. If you live far away, determine the date and time for a Skype prayer session.

Step 2

Make sure you each have a copy of the mother/daughter devotional called Gathered Treasures. It contains 52 devotions for moms and daughters to read and discuss during your hour together each week. You can order Gathered Treasures HERE. The cost is low enough that you can grab a copy for yourself and for the friends you want in your 4s challenge. If you order before May 8 (Mother’s Day), you get a copy of “39 Out-of-the-Box Mother/Daughter Date Ideas” free.

What a great Mother’s Day present for those moms who would speak life into your girl through encouraging you!

Step 3

Let me know you are joining the challenge. Leave me your name and email so I can send you some encouragement and resources to use in your 4-4-4 Challenge.