Being a dad is wild.
Every single day your little one does something new. Those new things often provoke joy, pride, laughter, and wonder. Still, other times the giant tornado stuffed in a toddler’s body brings thoughts of cuss words, confusion, frustration, and impatience. Truly, there is nothing like it.
This last week my daughter did something that made my wife and I BELLLLLLY-Laugh. Beni, my 19-month-old daughter, is my best bud. I work from home, so we spend a lot of time together, and I am constantly talking to her. But not like baby talk. Normal adult conversations. My wife does the same. We talk to our daughter with a full vocabulary. This full vocabulary includes a complete anatomically correct anatomy lesson. Beni knows where her ears, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, armpit, feet, and knees are, she knows where Jesus lives, and if you’re unlucky enough for her to request to see your button, she will bully you through gradually crescendoing repetition and pointing until you lift your shirt and show her your belly button.
In a less fun but more necessary because of the world we live in today rational, she also knows where her boobies and vulva are. (My wife taught her vulva because, honestly, IDK why, but I didn’t argue) She also knows that Daddy has a penis. So does Hogie, our dog. Don’t ask me how, but she put two and two together. It was one of those “We didn’t teach you that, but here we are with you yelling to us from across the family room that our French Bulldog has a penis.” lol.
With all of these words, Beni will oftentimes get caught in these little washing machine modes of just throwing any number of words that she is currently fixated on out in random order and on repeat. For example, we were driving to the gym the other day (subtle insertion of the fact that, yeah, I work out, what up)
HA
But she was in the backseat, and this was our dialogue
B:Dada
M:Yeah, Baby
B: Dada, Elmo.
M: Yeah, baby you have your elmo shoes on.
B: Dada.
M: Yeah, Baby
B: cookie, blue, hogie, elmo, jesus, momma, penis, cookie, vulva.
M:hahah excuse me?
B:DADA.. cookie, blue, hogie, elmo, jesus, momma, penis, cookie, vulva.
As if I was supposed to know what that sequence of words was supposed to mean. 🤔
Kids are WILD.
Later that day, Jes, Bean, and I were walking through Costco, restocking all the necessities. If you don’t have a Costco membership, what are you even doing?
Side note- A executive membership at Costco is $120 a year, but they give you 2% back at the end of the year. Last year they wrote me a check for $300 dollars. The membership is free, and they pay you to use it. Why don’t you have a Costco membership?
Anyways, we are walking through Costco, and I leave the cart to run into the dairy freezer and grab milk and butter. I came out and met my wife, who was wheezing with laughter because as I was walking up, she said, “ Look, Beni! What does Daddy have??” and at the top of her lungs, my daughter responded, “ Daddy has a Penis!”.
To anyone who was wondering in Costco what my genetic makeup was, guess no more!
Because my daughter proudly informed them 😵💫
Kids are wild, man.
But why do I tell you these stories?
A couple of reasons.
My daughter is adorable and perfect, and you’ll never tell me otherwise.
How often do we communicate with the people around us what the Lord is teaching us, like my toddler?
How often do we take things that we are shown about ourselves and regurgitate them on repeat? Even the things that are supposed to be just for you?
My daughter is learning all of her body parts. She is proud that she knows them, but some of the things she is learning are for her only. And other things about other people are to be kept quiet too.
Often times I am guilty of taking things meant for me given to me by the Lord and sharing them with others.
My daughter is also learning a bunch of new words about the world around her, and she often times just spouts them out without thinking, and it doesn’t make much sense. I am sure what she was yelling at me from the back of the car made perfect sense in her head, but if she would just sit with those words a little bit longer, then what she communicated to me would make a lot more sense.
I have been known to take words from the Lord and be so proud to share them that when they come out to others, they don’t quite make sense.
My daughter knows facts and truth. It is a fact that I have a penis, but her timing in sharing that truth was not appropriate for that situation because she misunderstood the whole meaning of what that sentence meant.
I wonder how often God shares revelation with us, and we are so excited about learning new things that we share it at the first chance that we get. When that situation may not call for the truth you have been trusted with is not fitting in that context.
This week was a weird week for me. I am really sorting through the questions of
Lord, I know your voice, but what you are telling me doesn’t make sense.
Lord, I feel like you have spoken to me about someone and for someone, but the timing doesn’t feel right.
Lord, you are teaching me new things; are they for me? Are they for my secret place lock box, or can I share the revelation with others? Because the Spirit of Revelation evolves from people sharing their revelation.
I didn’t grow up knowing about Holy Spirit. I would say I don’t have a whole lot of experience in communication with Him. I am learning, and often times I stumble through things that would be elementary to a relationship with years of time spent. But as Ben Rector says, “You can’t make old friends,” and I will learn to communicate better but only through time equity.
This week and I am going to guess a lot of weeks in the future, are around Holy Spirit.
My home is obsessed right now with intimacy with Holy Spirit, and everything we are consuming is in line with our hunger to know him more.
🎙️Weekly Podcast
I have been listening to a church down in Fort Worth pretty consistently for the last couple of weeks.
They are a church that is very much postured in such a way that the Holy Spirit leads their services and their worship.
The podcast this week is a lesson taught last year by their worship pastor.
She goes in on the idols that we have made in our life who are not Jesus.
The worship song that opens the video has a line that goes like this
“Every other god is an idol who cannot see and cannot hear. There is one true Living God.”
The message convicted me to do some introspection of the things that I give importance to in my life and honestly assess where they sit in comparison to the Lord in terms of position of priority within my heart.
I watched it on Youtube.
We have been getting rocked by this house in my house the last couple of weeks. I would recommend going and listening to their last few teachings.
🙌🏼 Weekly Worship
This week’s song has been one that I have been stuck on for a while now. It’s on my prayer list, and I often find myself hoping that it comes on through shuffle. I could probably just start there, but what’s the fun in that?
Elevation rhythm is cool.
Listen Here!
🔽🔽🔽
📚 Weekly Book
This week’s book is a book from the Bible.
I realized this. I often distract myself with extracurricular reading. I seek other people’s writing to teach me things that the Lord has taught them through their quiet time; instead of seeking the Lord’s face on my own.
How much greater is the lesson learned taught from the Teacher himself as opposed to a summary of the lesson regurgitated eloquently by someone else?
The Bible is alive and living, and I have spent a lot of time in the minor prophets the last couple of weeks but have also jumped around the gospels. Right now, I am sitting in neither, but I am reading through the Corinthians and Acts. I am not lying when I say I am obsessed with learning as much as I can about Holy Spirit.
My book suggestion this week goes like this. I suggest you sit down with the Lord and ask him to guide you to a book in the Bible that He wants to teach you out of, and then You pray that the Holy Spirit would give you understanding and revelation through the text.
💪🏼 Weekly Challenge
Discipline breeds discipline in the same way that lack of self-control breeds lack of self-control.
I believe that we have the choice to feed one or the other. We can not grow both. They can not co-exist. Self-discipline is not something that comes overnight but through constant re-posturing and repositioning of your heart. The practice of recognizing an area of lack of self-control and repenting, and addressing the situation in itself is discipline.
My challenge this week is one that I am working through in my own life. If we are honest yall, a majority of the weekly challenges are going to be that. They are going to be an invitation to you to join me in something I believe the Lord is leading me to refinement in because that is what this whole project is. It is an admission of the fact that I am not there. I don’t even know where there is, but I am in the process, and I am trying. I am trying every day to look more like Jesus while living in a world that is doing its best to make that difficult.
My challenge this week would be to look at your life and identify areas in your life that need attention in the discipline aspect.
Thought life.
Finances.
Health. Both Mental and Physical.
Prayer life.
There is no place that the Holy Spirit can not fortify.
🙏🏼 Weekly Prayer
This week I am praying for a community of men who will pray for each other.
Living a life defined by prayer is hard, but you do not have to do it alone.
A couple of months back, I broke down to my wife in frustration. I didn’t think that people prayed for us. I was overwhelmed by the fact that I felt as if I was praying for all of these different people in my prayer journal and going to war for the people that I loved, but I didn’t honestly know if people were praying for us.
Now, that sounds silly, but let me tell you that having prayer warriors in your corner is imperative. It is vital.
In the book of Daniel, we read all about… Daniel, hahah, and his friends. It’s also the book with the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the furnace. But outside of that story, the Lord showed me something cool. In Chapter 1, the author makes a point to emphasize how qualified these men were. Verse 1:17 says that they were 10 times more qualified than any other.
In Chapter 2, Daniel is given the task of interpreting a dream for the king, an impossible task with death as the penalty for the inability to complete it. Despite his aptitude and his ability, in verse 2:17, Daniel goes to his friends and asks them to petition the Lord on his behalf, and two verses later, we are told that the Lord answers and gives Daniel the dream’s interpretation.
Later in the book, in chapter 6, Daniel is faced with another impossible situation. He is to be thrown in a den of lions. The king was tricked by his advisors into implementing a law that would force his hand in levying it upon Daniel. The king carries out the sentence and throws Daniel in the den, but in 6:17-18, it says that he leaves Daniel with a parting blessing and then proceeds to go home and fast all night for him.
The Lord showed me three things in this book that I had missed before, and it was for the exact time that I was hoping people were praying for us.
You need to ask people to pray for you.
I had never intentionally invited anyone in my life to help go to war for the burdens in my life. I always felt that if anything, it was a burden for me to ask my friends to help. It is not. It is an honor.
People don’t know what to petition the Lord for on your behalf unless you share with them what you need prayer for.
People that you would never expect to be praying for you already are.
My prayer this week is that you would invite people into your battle with you. That you would be vulnerable enough to share the hard things you need to be prayed for and that you would trust that you are loved in such a way that there are already people on your battlefield going to war on your behalf.
I hope that this week’s edition of the Weekly Weapons Newsletter was beneficial to you in one way or another.
As this thing evolves, I would LOVE feedback or just responses.
You can email me at mitchparsonscreative@gmail.com
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Until next time.
PEACE✌🏻