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Top Ten List: Practices I Promise You Won’t Regret Starting This Year

As we start off the New Year, I’m thinking about some habits and choices that  I want to do or already have done in years past — choices that have the power to really enhance my relationships and life for the better! I want to share ten of these practices in the form of one of my very favorite things: A LIST!

  1. Sponsor a child or sign up for monthly giving! I highly recommend the following ministries: worldvision.org, compassion.com, empowerhaititogether.org, embracinghopeethiopia.com, lifesongfororphans.org, ijm.org, and persecution.com
  2. Work to memorize Scripture! Aim for one chapter or one really meaningful passage, or verses about a particular issue with which you struggle.
  3. Ask God whom to put on a daily prayer list. As you pray for them, send a card sometimes to encourage or at the end of the year, let them know you prayed for them all year!
  4. Read aloud a devotional or inspirational biography at dinner or bedtime or before school at least once a week as a family.
  5. Make a change in your diet, even if it is to only add one beneficial food and remove one harmful food for the year. And can I squeeze into #5 to exercise at least 15-30 minutes per day?
  6. Put on your calendar a quarterly, if not monthly, ladies’ night/men’s night or coffee date with a friend! No one is going to do this for you; make it happen!
  7. Plan 12 dates with your spouse if you are married. Even if they are “couch dates”, write down the ideas and put them in a jar to pull out or put on your calendar once a month. Get the sitter a month in advance. We can do this, y’all! When we are old, we’ll be sorry that we didn’t…It’s good for the kids to see us date, too!
  8. Live in community, inter-generationally! Seek out relationships with older and younger people; write down the story and advice of at least one older person this year and seek to serve them this year.
  9. Pow-Wow! Give the closest people in your life a chance to share their heart daily, in two categories. Ask them what was great about their day, and listen (this is their Wow!) Ask them what was difficult and what they’d like to sort through, and listen (this is their Pow!) You can do this with friends, roommates, spouses, and definitely kids and teens. I do this as I put my kids to bed each night and if I “forget”, they do not. 😉
  10. Plan a day or weekend anywhere from 2 to 12 times a year where you get away from people and re-think schedules, goals, relationships, health, etc. Read, watch inspiring movies, be quiet, journal, be in nature, and let God renew your mind, heart, soul, and strength in solitude.

We are responsible to take care of ourselves (mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually)…our immediate family, our marriages, our kids that won’t be kids for long…the least of these among us, close by and around the world…the elderly…but we get busy and sometimes just live on autopilot! Whatever your choices are this year, let them be YOUR CHOICES. Whatever you spend your time on, whatever you commit yourself to do, let it be thought out and deliberate. What you decide today is a little bit who you are tomorrow. 🙂

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Respecting Our Kids (Intro)

Wow, my thoughts about this topic are completely commandeering my morning. If I sound especially passionate in my writing today it’s because God is digging deep in the garden of my heart…and because of my spiritual gifts of teaching and encouraging, I feel like I have to share.

First of all, my ideas of parenting changed completely through attending an Empowered to Connect seminar in April 2015 and then continuing to study and practice their teaching all summer. This training is specifically for parents and caretakers of children from hard places, whether that’s a foster care situation, trauma at an early age, or adoption. It’s for families who are raising kids who have experienced loss at a time they needed attachment and someone they could trust the most. But as I listened and as I have learned this summer, I have grown to believe this way of relating is for EVERYONE! It has revolutionized my home and now is revolutionizing my heart, affecting every relationship, beyond my children…and the real key to it all is respect. Yes, love, of course. But one of the ways love is shown is through the multi-faceted concept of respect.

Every person wants to feel respected, like they matter, like they are an equal, and like their voice is worthy of being heard. Every person needs to be able to share how they are feeling without fear of punishment. Every person deserves this and innately desires this, because we’re made in the image of God and by the hands of God! Whether we struggle at times with this concept of self image or not, something inside of us is always pushing us to know we are special and precious.

Is it possible that we teach our kids they are fearfully and wonderfully made, as Psalm 139 tells us, and expect them to grow up to have a great self-esteem, but then talk to them on a daily basis like we would talk to no other human being on this planet? I say every child needs respect whether they come from hard places or not, whether they’re fragile in the area of feeling like they belong or not, because it doesn’t matter how steady and strong your foundation is, none of us appreciate a lack of respect being shown to us and when there is a lack of respect we struggle to respond correctly in that moment. When the cashier says in an exhausted, sarcastic tone, “Are you gonna swipe your card or what?” When your spouse says, “I know I told you I would do this, but I did this instead…I’ll do your thing later.” When the person you were in a fender bender with yells, “What is wrong with you?” The three attitudes behind these examples…I have had them all with my children at times and that makes me sad.

It is possible to raise children with respect without them thinking they are in control and equal in regard to running the household. Here’s the good news: They don’t want to be in control and they don’t want to run the household. They simply want their ideas and words to be listened to, their feelings and desires considered, and to be spoken to and treated with unconditional positive regard.

This week I’ll be sharing blogs about this topic and will give examples of how we can change disrespectful habits into life giving, connecting interactions with our kids. I hope I can relay to you how imperfect I am at this, yet how much reward I already am receiving — I can see it in their eyes.

Being respected is being loved.