Journey On at Home

This past weekend was super busy.  It started out on Friday night hanging out with our friends the Yanceys.  That's always enjoyable except for the fact that I always watch Elizabeth with her kids and feel like a complete failure as a parent.  I am never amazed at her patience with them (they are 2 years and almost 1 year) and the way she incorporates learning about Jesus.  I'm sure Elizabeth would laugh to hear me say that and would be the first to tell you she is by no means the perfect parent, but dang, she sets the bar pretty high.  Or perhaps, it just seems high because I'm so far below it???

So, with that fresh on my mind, I was convicted to attend a parenting conference my church was putting on.  I signed up a week or so ago before my weekend got so busy.  Then by Friday night, I had decided something just had to go and it would have to be the conference.  But when I was leaving her house Friday night, Elizabeth said she was going and God really started working on me about going Saturday.

And boy am I glad I did!

Started out with a little worship which always gets me in the right frame of mind.  And then we went to break out sessions.  It was only 8:30-12:00 so it didn't take up my whole day and the sessions were SO good.  Basically it all centered around making our HOME the center of Christian influence and not just sitting back and trusting the church (and school, in our case) to do the job.

In one of our breakouts, the question was asked about who influenced you most in the faith.  Most of the people mentioned their parents or grandparents.  And they gave examples of waking up in the mornings and finding their mom or dad praying together or reading the Bible.  And I sat there wondering...in 25 years, when Jenna is asked this question, will she be able to say that??  If she were asked now, "How do you know your mom and dad love Jesus?", would she be able to give any concrete examples or just say, "They always went to church on Sunday morning."  I want to leave her with a legacy of faith.

And y'all, right now, I'm failing pretty miserably at it.  I'm not going to go into detail about how badly I'm failing, but trust me...I'm nowhere NEAR where I need to be in my spiritual/prayer life or my personal walk with God.

I noticed though that in the past several weeks, I have started to study the book, "Spiritual Parenting" during my Wednesday night class.  I have attended the Empowered to Connect seminar AND I attended this Journey On @ Home conference.  Think God might be trying to get my attention???  HELLOOOOO!!!!????  I'm about to bring a 1 year old into my home who has been institutionalized for the whole year she's been on this earth!  Perhaps now is the time to start taking some steps to become the parent God designed me to be.

I hope to share with you soon some of the changes we are making around here...but until then, just pray for me as I make these changes.  Change is always hard.  Especially where conviction is involved.

And as I learned this weekend...wherever you are right now...that is a GREAT starting place.  Won't you join me in starting to make YOUR home the center of Godly influence? 

Journey on.