Anderson MOPS: October Meeting Recap

The theme of this month's meeting was HOPE. This is a message that we all crave in a time of life when we can get discouraged and down on ourselves: Will things always be this hard? Will I ever feel like a good mom? Will I recover who I am after defining myself for so long as just "mom"? Can I rebound from the setbacks that life throws my way? From our devotional to our fabulous speaker, hope abounded in MOPS this month.

Craft: Fall Banners

We approached the craft table hoping that our finished product would look as lovely as the examples strung across the window. Judging by these photos, our hopes were realized.

Giveaways and Icebreaker

After giveaways from The Olive Shoe, The Fashion Shack, and Boulevard Lanes,

Tamara and Crystal led us in a mobile phone scavenger hunt. We had a chance to get up, mingle, and find out who spends their days playing Candy Crush.

Devotional

For the text of Korrie's moving devotional, please see the October Devotional post!

Speaker: Sharie King

Sharie began by speaking about the origins of her name- literally, her name mean "double grace". However, she said she never felt like a graceful person; she believed, when she was younger, that one could earn God's grace if only they went about being a Christian in the "right" way. Later, though, God helped her to learn the real meaning of the word "grace".

After the birth of her first son, Sharie suffered from postpartum depression. She felt like a bad mom, and she felt like she didn't have enough faith, and she was afraid to open her Bible because she worried that the words she read would condemn her even further. Her step-dad wrote a song about her at this time with the lyrics, "When you're dow at the bottom looking up to see the ground." That's how low she was.

But God taught her that no matter what, she was a part of His family, and He would love her and lift her up. Nothing she did wrong could sway Him or make Him want to give up on her. Similarly, that's how a mother feels about her children. Sharie told a story about doing homework with her older son. He became so frustrated that he gave up and went to his room, where he berated himself for how stupid he was, how he couldn't do anything right, and how his family was going to give him away. She likened her son's feelings at this time to the feelings she had when she suffered from postpartum.

Even Moses, she said, didn't do everything right the first time. Just like Moses we will make mistakes, but we need to keep trying, even when the going gets rough. We have to endure. We have to have hope that God will get us through it.