Encouragement Takes the Sting Out of Life
All of us need encouragement. We need somebody to believe in us. To reassure and reinforce us. To help us pick up the pieces and go on. To fuel our flame of determination as we face the odds against us.
Living harmoniously as a family is an ongoing, intentional journey. The beginning of that journey is marked by great anticipation and genuine excitement. A bride and groom have high hopes and great dreams as they start out life together. However, as in all journeys, unexpected challenges pop up, including the arrival of children, which requires the couple to cultivate valuable parenting skills—without a handbook! At each age, from preschool through elementary school, each child requires his or her parents to make adjustments along the way to keep the relationships harmonious. Just about the time parents get their arms around all of that, the teenage years arrive! This stretching and complicated time calls for even more adjustments and a greater willingness to change if the parents hope to sustain harmony in the home. Then, after all that adapting, a new set of challenges arrives—the children reach adulthood, with minds of their own. Can there still be mutual respect and meaningful relationships in the family? Can harmony continue between parents and their grown-up kids? Absolutely! The question is, how?
All of us need encouragement. We need somebody to believe in us. To reassure and reinforce us. To help us pick up the pieces and go on. To fuel our flame of determination as we face the odds against us.
Your prayer together is an act of surrender to the God who is there, the God who cares for you and responds to you. Let me try to convince you to start with my top 10 benefits of praying together.
When done well, one’s family becomes a sacred shelter of consistency and connection in a world of flux and change. At its best, home develops into the safe place where we can always go and be accepted for who we are.
If joy depended on our circumstances, we’d have had an awful year. But we haven’t.
Christmas should be simple but there’s such a hype about it I’m exhausted before December hits. This year I want to avoid being stuck in a loop of stress and a bad attitude. I want to skip Christmas.
Some of the most important memories we’re making with our children and grandchildren stem directly from our attitudes and actions toward them.
Have you ever met someone whose life seems to be a never-ending string of amazing, marvellous, wonderful, and awesome? Do you feel like punching them?
Though I can’t ask Dad for money or call him collect, I can pay tribute to him with a poem loosely adapted from that glorious ode to the perfect wife and mother that I first read when I was 13. This is my take on the Proverbs 31 Guy.
Every parent of a special needs child has more questions than answers. But our Heavenly Father understands and promises His presence. And there’s no question about that.
Since our Lord is sovereign, not only are our times in His hands, so are all our possessions and all the people we love. Releasing our rights to Him includes the deliberate releasing of our grip on everything and everyone.