Reconciliation

Reconciliation - the process of making consistent or compatible.
My wonderful, hard-working husband works the evening shift and so I lead devotion time with my children before bed. Some nights are quick and easy and they're off to bed in a flash. Tonight has not been such a night. But I am oh-so-thankful! The Lord showed Himself mighty tonight. Having absolutely nothing to do with the devotional book that we use this night, we spent over half an hour in reconciliation time. We go through the catechism using the devotional book mentioned here. I've been inconsistent in using this resource and have bounced around a bit but will keep it up for the sake of consistency for a while. If we don't find ourselves having further discussion on the material in the day's reading, we move into encouragement and reconciliation.


During encouragement time, each child is to look to the person beside him and encourage or compliment three or more attributes of that person. Most of the time there are giggles, great big smiles and even a little embarrassment. There are comments on talents, abilities, physical features and just lots of love going around during this time. Mom is included in this time. I am always interested to hear what they say about me. There is not a lot of hesitancy in the words of our little ones J


Next is reconciliation time. We take the down time to make anything right with someone anything for which we feel we need to ask forgiveness. It is becoming a more open and honest time. Sometimes, the other person has no idea that the offender has thought or felt the emotion or thought for which they are asking forgiveness. Other times, there was a clear and verbal/physical spat that will bring obvious acknowledgement. Again, Mom is not immune. I get frustrated, impatient, rude or otherwise unloving and must be reconciled as well.




It is the latter about which I am writing tonight. This was such a sweet time this evening as the Holy Spirit prompted an unusually wonderful number of confessions. Some even taking place years ago-thoughts that were never revealed, words murmured, hateful attitudes, and the list goes on. The tenderness in the hearts of my young ones was palpable and so precious to my heart this evening. I am so thankful that He has been faithful to help make our family more consistent and compatible. I have heard my children voice their recognition of wisdom brought about by discipline and teaching in their lives. I am sure that we are all coming into better focus as we head toward our family's vision of training up children who will love the Lord and serve Him alone. I will have to keep details among family since they are so close to our hearts and we must be painstakingly cautious with their trust. But I would encourage you, if you don't include these things in your family devotional time, that you are missing out on many, many blessings in your family.

Book Review: Training Hearts Teaching Minds

Our family does a family devotional each evening before bed.  We have all the children finished up with needs for the evening so that we can all pay attention.  We are usually all piled up on the couch together and my husband assigns who will be the reader each evening.   Others will be finding Scripture and reading along, but Dad will have told the child the night before if he/she will be the reader for the next night.  They get sooooo excited when it's their turn.  Even the 4 yr old "reads".  We just read it quietly and she follows, repeating aloud. 

This year, along with our academic books, we ordered Training Hearts, Teaching Minds, by Starr Meade, as our family devotional. It is based on the  Shorter Catechism.  I have never been a catechism-y kind of person.  But, this one got rave reviews so I thought I'd try it out.  Each week delves deeper into one question from the Catechism.  The question and answer are stated and each day's devotional message and appropriate Scriptures are divided up into short daily readings.  There are 107 weeks worth of devotions.

As we begin our devotional time, we review the previous questions and answers.  The children love this!  We call on a different child to give the answer to each question.  We are not down to exact wording and they  are doing very well at it.  Then, we go on to complete the day's reading and the Scripture passage(s) given and discuss how they relate and how we can relate it in our lives.  We pray together as a family, as well, before bed.  And Dad tells who will be the Bible reader on the next night. This is not some in depth theological debate time.  It is simply a time that we draw our family close together and share truths of God's Word.  Nothing fancy.

We love this tool!  It makes it almost too easy to get family devotionals started for your family.  I would enthusiastically recommend it.   And for 2 years' worth of devotionals for right around $10, it's quite the bargain as well.  I think the ages of comprehension for our family are closer to the 8 and up range, but we have our younger ones learn to sit in on teaching and hear the Word.  It's good for them--Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ ( Romans 10:17)! 

Doorposts Plants/Cornerstones Co-Ed Version

I do just love all of the Doorposts materials that I own.  For a while now, I have wondered how I will go about doing all these activities with the girls and all of the other activities with the boys.  And so,  I have put it off.  I felt a little discouraged and totally avoided these resources on my bookshelf.  Oh, I would take them off occasionally with renewed inspiration that I could do it.  It wasn't until recently that I pulled them off the shelf with a  sparkle in my eye.  I had was gonna put a twist on it..and get 'er done!  Thus, we have  (drum roll) Doorposts Co-ed edition!!  There are a few things that will be gender specific, but many things are studies that are appropriate for both ladies and gentlemen .  My idea is to take the items aimed specifically at the girls and use those ideas during our weekly 'girl date' and make suggestions to my wonderful husband on those specific things for the guys to chatter about while they do...whatever they do.

This week, we've been working on prayer.  I have noticed that many of the activities that are in both books are similar, if not the same.  There are definitely a few differences, but nothing that can't be tweaked.
So, here's what I did for:
Day 1:
(this all takes place around our table at some randomly chose, inspirational time of day)
Looked up several Scriptures and discussed prayer.  Talked about prayer as a means of building a relationship.  Deep discussions here.   And, we took to the model prayer to learn what the Bible says about it.  During this portion, children are coloring a page from here.  We practice learning the Lord's Prayer several times.  We create a prayer chart to keep track of requests and their dates as well as answers and their dates. It's not fancy..really.  When we went through a few of the things that were important to them to pray about, we posted it on the fridge.  It is easily visible so that we will not forget it.  The older children copied the Scripture that they looked up and read aloud earlier.  We prayed..for our family, the requests on the chart, and whatever came to mind at the moment.

Day 2:
(this takes place in our living room on the sofa..nothing formal...children are not necessarily sitting up straight)
We read a few more of the Scriptures listed to find out new things that the Bible says about prayer, along with their discussions about what that means. More discussion on prayer being the backbone of building a relationship with God.  It's all very spontaneous...no lesson plans. Just going with whatever comes up and the revelation that comes at the moment through the Word and the Holy Spirit.  We read through a prayer from a book of prayers.  I used The Power of a Praying Parent to pray a prayer of protection over my children.  They were enthusiastic to hear specific things, word-for-word from the Scripture for them. During the course of this time, we reveiwed the Lord's Prayer 2 or 3 times, as that is what we are working on memorizing for our Scripture memory this week.  We did not get around to the copywork , but each child should copy the Scripture that they were assigned to look up and read aloud at the beginning.  I'm ok with not getting every single box checked off..what I'm really aiming for is understanding.  And lastly, one child prayed for the things on our list we made on day1 as well as for further prayer requests mentioned.