I believe there are important lessons in having our kids play but not making it the central focus of their lives or the lives of the entire family. We still need to make space for family vacations, summer jobs, worship, academics, and yes, general leisure. I believe that one of the reasons that we struggled so much as a society when everything initially shut down due to COVID-19 was that we had been running ourselves ragged, and nowhere was this more true than in our overscheduled family lives.
Raising Forgiven Sinners, Good Humans
I want my kids to see morality as following Jesus’s example and not just acting as perfectly as possible. I want my kids to embrace the idea of “good trouble” and understand that doing the right thing isn’t always considered the socially appropriate thing. I don’t want them to believe that sacrificing for saying they are followers of Jesus is enough; I want them to be willing to sacrifice for being like Jesus. I want them to love mercy and walk humbly.
Building a New Bar
The Coronavirus Home Improvement Chronicles – Part 3 Truth be told, we were actually talking about moving. It wasn’t that […]
Then We Made a Bed
It was so good to sleep just a little closer to the ground on a solid bed with a pretty headboard behind it. A 10-year dream had finally come true.
It All Started With a Fan
We figured the handful of tasks that we brought home would keep us busy for a little while, something to distract us from the fact that we couldn’t take the family out of the house and all we had was our work, school, and fruitless attempts to keep us busy. We knew it was wishful thinking, but we optimistically believed we would be satisfied.
Helping Our City Kids Love the Outdoors
A regular scroll through my Facebook or Instagram accounts makes it seem like this is easy for us, but detaching from electronics and work and the outside world and forcing our kids (and us) into nature takes real effort. There are some weekends when I just want to hunker down inside and knock things off of my work and home to-do lists. There are days when I argue that it is too hot or too cold or too wet for us to face the elements. But I refuse to believe that our children have to grow up in the countryside to appreciate the world around them. We just have to make sure they are given the opportunities to see past the concrete.