The 40 Days of Prayer (kinda)
So, our church has begun a 40 day prayer journey. We were all given prayer guides and encouraged to pray about the same things. It started well, on the first day.
The other days.....let's just say that we've missed a couple, 4 to be exact. It's not that we've been mentally shirking the thought of praying, but I haven't put an emphasis to have us pray as a family.
The first night we did it, it was awesome. We were really encouraged and both said that we'd love to have our family do this once the kids got here. And that it'd be great if we could get it as a habit. That way it would be something the kids would always do.
Maybe it's that I tend to take on big challenges and projects often and only get about 1/4 of them done. At any rate, we have started going through a John Piper book called Taste and See. About a week ago, I told Katie that I'd like to have us go out and choose a book together that we could use as a family devotional. That went VERY quickly and has been a nice addition to our evenings. Even when we are dog tired we've still been going through that.
New habits and routines can be difficult to start, and sometimes it takes a few attempts to get them going, but patience and creativity always win in the end. The life lesson here is that once we have the kids home, we're going to have to learn how to parent them, tailoring strategies to each child. We'll need to learn not to beat ourselves up when something doesn't work but press on towards a new solution.
Hopefully by then, we'll have the family prayer thing figured out.
The other days.....let's just say that we've missed a couple, 4 to be exact. It's not that we've been mentally shirking the thought of praying, but I haven't put an emphasis to have us pray as a family.
The first night we did it, it was awesome. We were really encouraged and both said that we'd love to have our family do this once the kids got here. And that it'd be great if we could get it as a habit. That way it would be something the kids would always do.
Maybe it's that I tend to take on big challenges and projects often and only get about 1/4 of them done. At any rate, we have started going through a John Piper book called Taste and See. About a week ago, I told Katie that I'd like to have us go out and choose a book together that we could use as a family devotional. That went VERY quickly and has been a nice addition to our evenings. Even when we are dog tired we've still been going through that.
New habits and routines can be difficult to start, and sometimes it takes a few attempts to get them going, but patience and creativity always win in the end. The life lesson here is that once we have the kids home, we're going to have to learn how to parent them, tailoring strategies to each child. We'll need to learn not to beat ourselves up when something doesn't work but press on towards a new solution.
Hopefully by then, we'll have the family prayer thing figured out.
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