Making Family Special

Our house is full this week.  We are blessed by a visit by Pete’s Aunt Betty, his cousin Katy and her two kids Kacie(9) and Kyle (5).  Each morning I have woken up to hearing the door chimes go off announcing that Kacie and Emily, our early wakers, are headed out with Lucky (the dog.)  It warms my heart to get out of bed and watch them from my window.  While Emily never, NEVER takes Lucky out in the morning without some serious begging on my behalf, she eagerly is sharing this duty with Kacie.  Watching them head down to the pond, pj clad, hand –in-hand is so beautiful to me.   They are cousins, and friends.

This has been a week to think about family.  With our recent move thousands of miles away from family, building relationships with any of our family is going to take effort, a lot of effort.  It was easy in Denver for my kids to go to Grandma’s house which was only a short walk from ours. It was easy to schedule sleepovers with cousins who lived 20 minutes away.  Now it is not so easy.  This week has reminded me that it is worth it though.  It is worth the planning, and the loud house brimming with kids, and used up frequent flyer miles. 

I treasure the fact that Betty and Katy were willing to pile two kids in the car and drive a LOT of hours from Florida to spend time with us.  The little kid days are flying by fast I realize as Kyle , who was just the baby, talks to me about baseball and John Deere, and Sarah has squeaked by both Aunt Betty and Aunt Katy (a fabulous accomplishment to her, while an inevitable to us!) 

I am reminded of two aunts that invested in Pete and I as kids.  Aunts that visited and made us grow up feeling special.  Funny, they both were named Aunt Sue.  Pete’s loved on him in a powerful way that kept his father’s memory alive and made him know a life bigger than he saw was actually his future, not just his dream.  She handed over her first computer to a kid, and let him take it apart just to put it back together again.  She loved him.

My Aunt Sue put a little ballet dancer on a plane to San Francisco to sit next to her in a balcony box of the Jaffe Ballet’s performance of the Nutcracker.  She took me backstage to meet the cast. She gave me a little red satin pair of pointe shoes to hang on my Christmas tree when I went back home.  I still hang them on my tree each year, probably my favorite ornament to hang. 

Having the cousins and aunts here this week, I am challenged to think how I can be that special aunt.  How can I pour into these kids and some special ones back in Denver.  I want them all to know that they are loved.  They are some truly special kiddos.  I know I am not doing a fabulous job at that right now.  I am challenged in that. 

But of course our God is so good. So providing.  I was blessed to be introduced to Katy’s friend Hope this week.  She blogs at TheFlourishing Tree.  She blogs on Monday’s about being an aunt.  An intentional, special aunt.  An Aunt Sue.  I can’t wait to keep reading her posts. 

Were you blessed by a special aunt or uncle growing up? Are you being that special aunt or uncle now?  I would love to hear how.   I would love some suggestions or inspiration. 

How We Worship with our Kids – The dreaded sermon time

When Pete and I started keeping our kids with us during church, I knew it was not really realistic at 8 and 5 (now 9 and 6) to be able to sit nicely, listen and learn something from the sermon.  I wasn’t worried about the praise portion of the service.  They love to sing.  I was mostly just worried about the sermon.  They don’t love to sit. It is just not in Emily's nature.  I knew I needed to figure out something for the girls to actively “DO”.  Instead of making the focus of my amateur “worship training program” a long list of things not to do during the sermon, I wanted to give the girls something they were supposed to do. 

(Now that I read my thoughts on this, I think it is possible that this idea came from dog training tv show I watch.  Well please don’t tell my girls that.  But it works!)

So my solution was church journals.   I have long been a sermon note taker.  If I visit a church and they have one of those fill in the blank sermon inserts, I am ridiculously happy.  For many years my sermon notes have been scratched out on the corners of bulletins, but then later thrown away.  When the girls started joining us for service, we all got journals. 

The girls were given a few options to do in their journals:

1.       Draw a picture of what you hear (for Emily,6)

2.       Copy part or all of the scripture reading

3.       Write down things you don’t understand

4.       Write down what you do understand (mostly for Sarah, 9)

After church, we get out our books to discuss what we wrote on the way to lunch or at lunch.  The motivation of knowing that you lead our family discussion when we are talking about what you wrote, has been Emily’s big motivation.  Being the little one, she loves to lead the conversation, and somewhere along the line she figured out that if she only wrote one or two things, her turn went by fast. 

This is Emily’s entry from a few weeks ago.  The sermon was on the 23^rd psalm.  She is currently in a phase of writing down words she doesn’t know.  This has led us into great lunch conversations. According to Emily, this list includes: examine, grief, renew, restore, rod, staff, transform, dwell, pursued, gratitude. 

This is Sarah’s entry from the same sermon.

Sarah tends to either write out the scripture if it is one she doesn’t know it.  But if it is familiar like this one, it is easier for her to follow the sermon and write down sermon points. 

I love that we have a running record of what we are learning each week.  I know it will be a treasure to look back at at the end of the year, or in years to come.  I hope if you’re looking for something active for your kids to do during worship this idea is helpful.  I would love to hear other ways you may be engaging your kids in your Sunday worship service. 

How We Worship With Our Kids: Part 1

I have received several e-mails and calls from friends saying they liked my Why We Worship With Our Kids post, but they would prefer a “How” posting. Today I thought I’d share three thoughts for before you head to church. Next week I'll write about what to do when you get there.

#1: Come to Jesus, my friends.

Now friends, we’re going to have a little Come to Jesus moment here. What I am going to say may not be so popular, but it’s what I really believe … so here goes.

Church is not about you. It’s true. Going to church is not an hour off for you. It is not about your peace and quiet. I know you may really desperately want that. You may actually need that. But church would not be that hour. It is actually about God. I know it’s not a popular belief these days, but’s it’s true.

We don’t go to church to pamper ourselves, it is not our day spa with free childcare. We go to worship God community. 

Sometime in the last few decades church has become this place where people want to be entertained and amused. They want their children babysat every time they walk in the door. You hear people saying things like, “I just don’t like the music at that church.” “That church just doesn’t do anything for me.” There is a near riot if childcare is not offered. The pilgrims didn’t say that. Our grandmothers didn’t say that. We need to develop a deep love of worship and the object of that worship. If we want our kids to care about worship, we need to start by personally caring about it. For we can’t lead our kids somewhere we don’t actually go.

We need to come to Jesus my friends. It's a good place to start.

#2:  There is a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Those of us who have lived in or loved the” little latitudes”, appreciate a little wisdom from Jimmy Buffet now and then.  Jimmy’s right of course, what happens Saturday night effects Sunday morning.  If you want to make Sunday morning successful, you have to be intentional on Saturday night.  Most of us don’t put our little kids to sleep at 11 pm on Sunday night and expect them to be perky and happy to go to school at 7 am on Monday.   We don’t have sleepovers on Wednesday.  It works the same way on Saturday night. We should be as intentional on Saturday night as we are on school nights.  Here are five ways to prepare on Saturday night for Sunday morning.   

1.       Make sure everyone gets 8-10 hours of sleep.  (plan those sleepover on Friday night)

2.       Tell the kids what the Sunday morning plan is. “We are going to Sunday school at 9, then church, then lunch.”

3.       Lay out church outfits.  If you are raising girls, you know the church outfit selection process is monumental!

4.       Lay out what you need for church… bibles, journals, tithes. 

5.       Have a breakfast plan to make sure everyone gets something to eat before you head out the door. 

#3:  Soccer is not for eating worms and church is not for eating cheerios. 

On Emily’s first ever day of soccer practice.  Her coach sat all the little girls down at a table to talk about why they come to soccer practice.  He had a big bowl of gummy worms.  He asked the girls, “Do we come to soccer practice to eat worms?”  NO!  They screamed.  He spent time talking about other things we don’t come to soccer to do – gymnastics, laying on the grass, eating snacks.  It was brilliant.  The girls never forgot that we go to soccer practice to practice soccer.

Looking around in any church one has to wonder what elementary age children think they come to church for.

 They might just think church is…

·         for eating cheerios

·         for coloring pictures

·         for playing on mom’s phone

·         for reading random books

·         for laying across pews

·         for crawling around on the floor.  

You may desire to have your kids meaningfully participating in worship, but if you head out the door Sunday morning armed with snacks and a library book, you’re sending your kids a pretty strong message of what your expectations of what they’ll be doing in church are.   Instead why not take Saturday night dinner to follow Emily’s coach’s example and throw a handful of gummy worms on the table.  Ask your kids if you’ll need them for church on Sunday.  Start up a conversation about what they are supposed to be doing during church.  They might just surprise you with their wisdom.