Leading Our Kids Toward Jesus: A 30 Day Challenge
"It's just so hard."
The theme resounded with our entire mom's group yesterday morning.
"It's just so hard."
"It's all I can do to get dinner in his tummy, his teeth brushed, and his pajamas on every night. We are all just so tired after a long day. We either seem to run out of time or energy to help him grow spiritually, or we forget altogether. I never thought I'd say that. Before he was born, I would have told you his spiritual growth would be the most important thing on our list every day!"
The more she spoke, the more we all realized it still actually was the most important thing to her, it just simply wasn't on her list. She checked off the picture of shoes, the one of the toothbrush and the one of feeding the dog every morning with him before they left for preschool. "Maybe we just need to add a picture of a bible or someone praying to the checklist?" she said.
Another mom laughed as she chimed in, "We already do that! My daughter will go pick up her bible and read a few words to check it off, but it's not really a meaningful encounter with God."
As we went around the circle we quickly realized we were all in the same boat. While we desperately wanted to help our toddlers and preschoolers grow closer to God, we had almost no practical tools to do so. It was the same across the board-whether we were exhausted at the end of the day from the challenges of being a stay at home mom, or worn out from the pace of being a working mom. None of us felt like we were hitting the ball out of the park.
"There are so many ways I want to show Jesus to my daughter," I shared, "but in the busy-ness and information overload of the typical week, I start to feel overwhelmed and don't get to it at all. I wonder if I'd do better if I simplified a bit and just took it one day at a time- maybe even just focusing on one characteristic of Jesus each day and setting a simple goal."
That began the journey we are about to embark on: 30 Days of Leading our Kids Toward Jesus. They asked me to blog about it so we could trek through it together and I agreed- I loved the idea of extra accountability. No promises on how the blog will turn out or how long each post will be. Some may include thoughts on a particular part of the character of Christ and how I'm striving to embody that to my daughter that day. Others might simply have links to resources of great authors who have already written on this topic - no need to reinvent the wheel. And on the days where I'm running out of time, I'll simply post the characteristic I chose and would love for you to chime in with comments about how you think we could try to display this to our kids. I hope this will be more of a "group project" than anything else!
So here's to parenting our kids toward Jesus over the next 30 days!
The theme resounded with our entire mom's group yesterday morning.
"It's just so hard."
"It's all I can do to get dinner in his tummy, his teeth brushed, and his pajamas on every night. We are all just so tired after a long day. We either seem to run out of time or energy to help him grow spiritually, or we forget altogether. I never thought I'd say that. Before he was born, I would have told you his spiritual growth would be the most important thing on our list every day!"
The more she spoke, the more we all realized it still actually was the most important thing to her, it just simply wasn't on her list. She checked off the picture of shoes, the one of the toothbrush and the one of feeding the dog every morning with him before they left for preschool. "Maybe we just need to add a picture of a bible or someone praying to the checklist?" she said.
Another mom laughed as she chimed in, "We already do that! My daughter will go pick up her bible and read a few words to check it off, but it's not really a meaningful encounter with God."
As we went around the circle we quickly realized we were all in the same boat. While we desperately wanted to help our toddlers and preschoolers grow closer to God, we had almost no practical tools to do so. It was the same across the board-whether we were exhausted at the end of the day from the challenges of being a stay at home mom, or worn out from the pace of being a working mom. None of us felt like we were hitting the ball out of the park.
"There are so many ways I want to show Jesus to my daughter," I shared, "but in the busy-ness and information overload of the typical week, I start to feel overwhelmed and don't get to it at all. I wonder if I'd do better if I simplified a bit and just took it one day at a time- maybe even just focusing on one characteristic of Jesus each day and setting a simple goal."
That began the journey we are about to embark on: 30 Days of Leading our Kids Toward Jesus. They asked me to blog about it so we could trek through it together and I agreed- I loved the idea of extra accountability. No promises on how the blog will turn out or how long each post will be. Some may include thoughts on a particular part of the character of Christ and how I'm striving to embody that to my daughter that day. Others might simply have links to resources of great authors who have already written on this topic - no need to reinvent the wheel. And on the days where I'm running out of time, I'll simply post the characteristic I chose and would love for you to chime in with comments about how you think we could try to display this to our kids. I hope this will be more of a "group project" than anything else!
So here's to parenting our kids toward Jesus over the next 30 days!
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