Praying Blessings Over Your Family

Praying blessings over your family.  I've become a big believer in this.  I pray daily for my "house" and my "line."  My house being my current family and my line being those who are yet to come, yet to be born.  Those who will live after my time, who will carry on our family line.  

I am a big believer in prayer.  Not prayers of desperation, as the plane plummets out of the sky - although I would certainly be praying pretty hard if that were the case!  But I mean prayers for Godly direction for our family.  Prayers that we would hold close to the Lord, regardless of what life brings our way.

I pray for men who will love and care for their families, treasure their wives, have patience with their children and work hard to provide for them to the best of their ability.  That they will be honest in their business dealings and an example younger men.  I pray for women who will delight in the care of their families, not be prone to gossip or idleness, who will be blessed with healthy children who will come to know the Lord at an early age and love and serve Him all their lives.  Women who will be an example and a blessing to those younger than themselves.

I pray back to God what He's just taught me in my daily bible reading.  I pray about God and His character, thanking and praising Him for who He is and that He loves me.

If I'm honest, I'd have to admit prayer doesn't always come easily.  It's most certainly a discipline.  Although I find the more I pray, the more I find myself praying.  It becomes habit, I look forward to that time alone with the Lord.

For years I found it difficult to pray for any length of time, I'm very easily distracted.  Squirrel!  But now I type my prayers and I find it keeps me on track.  I rarely go back and re-read them, but when I do, I'm blessed by my own words, and it makes me happy to think that God was blessed while I prayed them.

When I was growing up I had a miserable old maiden Aunt.  She was as mean as the day is long.  As children we would run away when we heard her coming.  But as I got older, and saw her very rarely, which who are we kidding helped in my affection for her!  I came to value her, because each and every time I talked with her on the phone she told me she had prayed for me, each of my cousins, my parents and all my aunts and uncles by name that and every other morning.  And it made me feel wonderful to know that I had been held up before the Lord that day.

As I've gotten older and more intensional with my prayer life I've found that I very rarely pray for tangible things or try to manipulate a situation through divine intervention.  I pray over our family as a whole, for the things that the Lord promises to bless us with if we follow Him faithfully.  Faith, character, babies, leadership, selfless love.  The things that last far longer than a possible lucrative business contract or good weather for a special day.

My prayer life has become much richer this past year, now that I have more time, particularly in the morning.  Now that I'm an empty nester it doesn't matter if my mornings go on for 3 hours, which they often do by the time I've worked out and showered, in addition to breakfast and time with the Lord.  It's become my very favourite thing about empty nest.  The relaxed mornings.  

I feel that it's also our responsibility as we age, as we enter new phases of life and have more time to pray over those younger than us.  Who are busier than us.  Who are in the midst of new marriages and young or teenaged children.  Those who, although their faith is there, often don't get the time they'd like to spend with the Lord.  At least not formally, like I have time for now.

Ladies, whether you're a young mom or an empty nester don't under value prayer.  Try to find the time.  Drive to pick up the kids a little earlier and while you're parked outside the school waiting, carve out those few minutes alone with the Lord.  As you enter the phase of empty nest and begin to look for your new passions, your new daily schedules, choose to create a time of structured daily prayer.  It will bless you, it will bless your family and you're called to it.  

If you're looking for direction, regardless of your phase of life, look no further than Titus 2.  It outlines the kind of older woman I strive to be and the kind of younger women I pray my daughters will be.  

And as I post this, I've prayed that each of you who read it will find it useful and valuable.

Failure's Lessons

We want so badly to make sure everything goes well for our kids, that things are easy for them.  As babies we made sure they didn't fall, that they were safe and protected, and so it just continues.  They're our kids, we love them.

But hard as it is I believe we need to give them the opportunity to fail.  While they're young and the consequences are still so minor.  While they still have us there to help them pick up the pieces, or explain to them how they could have done things differently.

 I've learned some of my best lessons through failure.  Through those decisions, that upon remembrance, sting a little. Whether mistakes or missed opportunities, action or inaction, both have been equally instructive.

Having to reap the consequences of choices that didn't turn out as I had hoped, has taught me, through regret or hard experience, not to make the same mistakes twice.  

And although it's painful to allow, I've also learned that failure is an excellent teacher for our children.  

A failing grade, not making the first string, crying over a risky new hair cut.  There's no question that we know how their choices are going to turn out.  Whether they're 10 or 17, we've been there and we know that if they make decision A they'll end up with consequence B.  Or that if they choose not to make decision C they'll regret it.  

But having us tell them,  

or forbid them to try, 

teaches them nothing.  

On occasion we need to take the training wheels off and let them make decisions for themselves.  Let them fall.  Let them get scraped up a little and through the tears that come with it, learn how to ride on their own.

We as parents sometimes forget the big picture.  As full time mothers our world is wrapped up in teams, projects, recitals and they become as important to us as they are to our kids, which is a good thing!  But when put in the context of a possible life lesson, they're inconsequential.  Of course I'm not advocating being irresponsible, I'm not telling you not to instruct or discipline your kids towards responsible behaviour.  I'm just saying, that on occasion, allowing them to fail benefits them, even if it's at something that might embarrass you or reflect on you.  

No one likes theirs to be the child who lets people down.  The one whose assignment hasn't been turned in.  The one that's late for the game because he didn't get his equipment together before hand.  But let him be.  If you feel that this is a teachable moment. Let him be.  And then let him suffer the consequences.  Don't offer excuses for him.  Don't stand there looking even more disgusted than his coach or teacher to prove that it wasn't your fault.  Just back off and let the chips fall where they may.  

Don't let your pride interfere with what failure can to teach your child.

Because no matter how tenderly you coddle them while they're home, they'll still leave one day, and then they'll be late for work not school, they'll be trying to sweet talk a police officer not their parent.

Swallow your pride.  Set aside your own need to make sure everything goes smoothly and on occasion, after some gentle prodding, leave them alone.  Let them fail.  And then let them learn the lessons that come from it.  In the long run, you'll be doing them a favour.

Christmas With Grown Kids

Now call me crass, or accuse me of taking the magic out of it, but I tell our older kids the Christmas budget.  They know what we spend on them.  

It's equal for each of them, so they can ask for one big gift or several small gifts it doesn't matter, it's all fair and they're all welcome to ask for the money to be spent on whatever gifts they're hoping to receive.  

This was particularly helpful when the boys married into our family.  They were shy about asking for things.  It wasn't until I had my daughter explain to her husband that it's actually easier for me when they do.  Then I know I'm getting them things they like and I don't waste time wandering around crowded malls waiting for inspiration to strike.  By telling them the budget that was set for gifts it did away with any awkwardness of knowing "how much" to ask for.

I encourage the kids to "over ask" so there are more items on their wish lists than the budget allows, in case something is unavailable.  I also like the idea that they don't know which of the items they've listed they'll be getting, so there is still a bit of surprise on Christmas morning.

We've never come right out and said it, but it's understood that they're not to ask for the money itself, as Christmas morning and gift opening has always been a big, fun part of our Christmas day.  My husband loves to give gifts and the joy of it has been passed on to the rest of us.

Some people choose to cut back on gifts as their kids get older either because of the pressure to increase their budget to accommodate their kids' maturing tastes in gifts or because they don't think it's a big deal now that the kids are older.  But my feeling is, who doesn't like to get a gift?!  Especially on Christmas morning.   And by telling your grown or growing kids the budget they can choose for themselves what to ask for without putting pressure on you for expensive "grown up" gifts.

It works well for us, I thought it might for you too.  

Related posts:

Christmas Organization, Part I,  Planning Your Gift List

Christmas Organization Part II, Gift Ideas

Christmas Organization Part III, Family Wish Lists

Christmas Organization Part IV, Shopping Day

Christmas Organization Part V, Organizing Your December

Christmas Organization Part VI, The Home Stretch

Where Did All The Men Go?

It seems to me that there aren't any men on TV anymore.  There are guys.  There are dudes.  There are sorry little wimps who fearfully do exactly what their wives tells them to.  There are philanderers, and there are blissful, blithering idiots who stumble haply through their days.  But where are the men?

Where are the men who get up early everyday and put in a hard days work to provide for their families?  Where are the men who put their wives' and children's needs before their own?  The men who lovingly listen and comfort their wives as they cry over a hard day.  Who sit happily around the kitchen table at night, enjoying the company of their family over dinner.  The men who command obedience from their teenagers out of simple respect.

This is a man.  

This is the kind of man who makes women swoon.

Where did he go?  

I'll tell you where.  We sent him away.

About 60 years ago we told men we didn't need them.  And although they resisted at first, they have, over the years, been whipped into submission and obsolescence.

Don't open our doors.  Don't buy us dinner.  Don't provide for our family.  We can do that ourselves thank you very much!

But now we're complaining.  Where did all the "good ones" go?  

Why are the male youths of today so disenfranchised?  So violent?  Why aren't they more motivated?

Why would they be?!!!

What is our culture asking of them?  Offering them?

Gone are the days when young men were told to get a good job, a wife, buy a house, start a family.  Instead they're allowed, encouraged to remain adolescents until they're in their 30's and then, even when they marry, are rarely allowed to sit in a position of authority.

If we want men to come back, we have to let them come back.  Let them?!  After 60 years of belittling them, we should humbly beg them!  Celebrate their masculinity.  Respect and affirm them.

The male role has been so maligned over the past few generations I'm surprised they even bother with us women anymore.  

But they do.  And do you know why?  

Because it's innate.  It's in their nature.  They love us.  They love their children.  They want nothing more than to hold us, to care for us, to protect and provide for us.  And if we would just stop telling them that, that makes them male chauvinist pigs, that we don't need them and that we can do it all ourselves, they would!

Giving men a position of authority in our homes might seem like a double edged sword.  It allows us the security of provision and protection.  It alleviates half the load of running a home and family, of feeling that we need to contribute financially rather than focusing our energies on the raising of our children.  Yet it also requires us to consider them.  Their authority.  It requires us to 

let 

them 

lead.

Yet what have we gained from pushing them behind us?  Long work days followed by evenings full of household chores.  Men who are more willing to walk away from their families.  Women, heartbroken at leaving their children to go back to work.  Exhaustion.  Messy homes and take out dinners.

If we want men back, we have to be women.  We have to celebrate who we are in contrast to who men are.  We both have valuable roles to play, valuable things to offer in the making of a home and a family.  We have to let men fulfill their role as men.  As the head of the home.  Yes, I said it.  The head of the home.  The one who ultimately bears the weight and consequences of the choices made.  The one on whom the financial burden rests.  And the one who has to answer for his leadership of his family before God.

We've been told that this is oppressive, that we should want more.

Well I for one, think being a woman, who is loved and cared for by a faithful, respectful man, free to invest in raising my children and running our home, is more!  

I for one, love my role as wife and mother.  Love and appreciate that my husband has cherished, respected and provided for our family for the past 23 years.  I've thrived under his tender leadership.

I for one, like men.  I miss men.  I wish they would come back...

Related posts:

For My Valentine

Daddy's Little Girl

Learning To Speak Man

The Sacred

What are you willing to do to defend that which you consider sacred?

Is there even a place for the sacred these days?

Our marriages break up and we move on.

Our kids take drugs and we feel helpless.

Abortion.  Abuse.  Apathy.

Loss of faith.  Watered down faith.  The worship of sport on Sunday mornings instead of the worship of our Creator.

Recently in the news the Islamic world was up in arms, rioting in protest, over a web video released by an American, which disrespected Mohammed.

My first thought was, 'Why, aren't Christians picketing South Park?'  Where Jesus is often portrayed as a fool.  Mocked.

When did we stop fighting for what we believe in?  

Was it when the good life got too good?  Do we not want to rock the boat?  Are we too busy clinging to what's left of the "American Dream", to worry what culture at large is cramming down our throats each night between commercial breaks while we sit there, willingly anesthetized by the increasingly devolving plot lines?

Have we given up on trying to live in a world we can feel good about and retreated to our individual homes to try to at least control the culture between our own four walls?

Is this okay?

Is the hand the rocks the cradle the hand that rules the world?  

I don't know.  But while my girls were home I chose to live by that adage.  I felt that if I could bring up two individuals who believed in what I held sacred, what we, as a couple believed to our cores, that we were in our own way fighting against the gilded slippery slope of culture's loss of faith in anything lasting longer than a sound bite.

That within our own family at least, we could live out the sacred.  The pure.  Devout in what we were espousing as true and right.  Worthy of defending, worthy of ostracizing ourselves over, worthy of changing schools over.

As each new generation comes of age, how will they be tempered by what they're immersed in?  Their own politics, wars, movies, interpretations of faith.  What are we modelling?  How are we living?  What do we revere within our homes?  How will what is going on around our children, as they grow into adults, affect how they observe and live out their convictions?

Will our children grow up viewing everything as temporal?  Believing that everything is affected by times and culture.  Will they feel that certain convictions are simply quaint old fashioned notions?  Perhaps even long for the beliefs of the past, but feel that they're not possible, not realistic, in a modern world, a modern culture.

In my heart, mind and soul I believe that, that is not the case.  Yes, culture and all that makes it up affects how we live, think, dress and entertain ourselves.  But it doesn't change the sacred.  It doesn't change the eternal.  And it doesn't change people's soul longings for what is good, true and right.   It doesn't change what we know to be wrong or that little voice that convicts us.  And it shouldn't change that which we're willing to stand up and declare as immoveable, unchangeable and sacred.

We shouldn't, amidst feast or famine, blessings or longings, joy or mourning be moveable.  Some things are eternal.  Some things are sacred.  Some things are the cornerstone on which one's life can be built and neither public policy nor public opinion can change them.

The sacred is real, and no amount of amusing ourselves into passive delirium will change that.

People often casually declare what they'd "die" for.  But what are you willing to live for?  What are you willing to get up each and every morning and build your life around?  Your home around?  What will the legacy of your family line be built upon?

Define what you're willing to live for.  And unapologetically defend it to the ground.