Day 5

My challenge began 5 days ago... to reestablish our family prayer time and to make it more meaningful.  That night I was hit with a horrible flu.  I was lying in bed while my husband was trying to round the troops up for bed.  I knew I could not skip the very first night of my challenge, so I called them all in to our bedroom pray.  We calmed down a child upset because he was given an "open" banana instead of a "closed" one, then tried to keep another child earth bound.  All was quiet and for the most part calm, and my husband prayed.  We have continued praying together before bed since then.  My personal prayer really suffered - the only thing I could really mutter for 3 days was "Jesus, help me."  Seriously, I don't remember being so sick.  I am feeling great now and am so thankful!  (so is my husband!)  It is really amazing what happens when mom is out of commission for a few days.  Saturday afternoon, the Thursday night dishes were still on the table!  I was so out of it to even try to round up help and get them to clean up.  Anyway - all is under control now, and I am so thankful!  Now, to get our prayers to become more meaningful.  I plan to start our curriculum in the next couple of nights and begin keeping a family prayer journal.  I am thinking of having the older kids write down our family's prayers.  It will be fun to look back on it and see God at work!

Family Prayer

How is family prayer time in your household?  Does it hold an important part of your day?  Is it a priority?  Is is meaningful?  Not in my home right now. I usually think of family prayer time as before going to bed.  I don't know what we have done wrong, but most nights bedtime is all out exhausting.  By the time I have put kids to bed for the 14th time, delivered disciplined to children who refuse to settle in quietly in their beds, I just want to say "goodnight, I love you, see you in the morning."  I don't feel like going through the battle of getting them to sit still and be quiet so we can now pray together.  I just want to get to my "list" of things to do so I can get to bed.  Can't you love your bed as much as I do?!  Well, enough of the excuses!  It is time to start now, and allow prayer time together be something they remember as a priority!  Teaching them the powerful, effective tool of prayer is something I need to do!  There is an old post that I wrote called "The 21 -day challenge".  It has been shown to take 21 days to establish a habit.  I am committing to 21 days of praying together as a family.  We are going to go through the curriculum "Why do we pray?", found here: http://www.impressiveparenting.com/  and begin keeping a journal of our prayers together.  Now I need to pray for a time that we can sit together and do this without it being a wrestling match to get little ones to sit still and be quiet!  It will be good training for them!  You may have other areas you would like to commit to along with me.  If you have meaningful, family prayer times - share them with me as an inspiration.  If you struggle - will you commit with me?  Let's impress on our children a walk with God through prayer and may we grow closer to our Father in heaven.

Back to Blogging

A few things have changed since I have typed anything here.  It was put on my heart to get back to blogging.  I came across a blog from a gal with 5 kids under 5.  If she can find the time, I will try too!  So to catch you up a bit we have another addition to our family.  Little baby Sammy (Samuel Peter) joined our family 1 year ago tomorrow!  The last couple years have been an amazing adventure.  We moved to the Canistota, SD area almost 4 years ago now.  After loving country life and the community here we were excited to find a more permanent home.  We were put through a trial last year that the Lord saw us through.  Here's a quick rundown:  8 1/2 months pregnant, discovering bed bugs in our home, doing about a million loads of laundry, getting rid of all beds, couches, and cleaning everything else, living in our camper for 5 days while they fumagated our home.  Oh, then finding out Baby flipped and I was in need of a C-section - what!?  I had two more weeks to get things cleaned, organized and put back in order before he came!  Not this time... Baby Sammy had to come out as his heart rate was low w/ the cord around his neck.  The Lord's peace came over me on the operating table as I continued to say Phil. 4:6-7 over and over and the shaking finally stopped.  A baby taken out of you with no feeling is nothing like a natural birth.  It was difficult, but still a joy to have this healthy baby boy next to me.  So coming home barely able to move, an infant, 4 other children needing care, with all clothes and blankets in big garbage sacks in the basement going through the process of debugging is a bit overwhelming.  This is when full dependance on the Lord comes in.  It is no longer mom going to get everything done.  But help stepped in and God's love was so overwhelmingly shown me.  I didn't have to cook for a month - literally!  I had people coming over to clean, help with the kids, besides all the food. Oh yes, I fogot to mention that shortly before this we acquired sheep and a puppy!  What a fun, crazy, exciting, exhausting time...
Psalm 34:19  "A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all."  The Lord was with us and saw us through.  My everyday difficulties don't seem that big when I remember life a year ago.