"Common Ground": my little corner of the blogosphere where I talk (a lot-wink) about the things that matter most to me: My relationship with my Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ, homeschooling, adoption, homemaking, parenting, "spousing." (yeah, yeah....I know that's not a word.....I made it up-it’s my blog-I can do things like that! Ha!)

Since my life isn’t all that different from yours, hopefully we can find some COMMON GROUND & learn from each other. Please share your thoughts!

Through the Lords’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.

They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness!
Lam. 3: 22 & 23

Click on pics to see us up close & personal! :)


Monday, March 21, 2011

My Home.....a HAVEN? I sure hope so!

I often struggle w/ priorities. Please tell me you do, too.

One suggestion I found the other day while surfin’ the net, was to ask yourself a series of questions to find out what you value.

I found a re-occurring theme to my answers:

I want a home that’s a HAVEN: any place of shelter and safety; refuge
In today's world, this seems critical to me......

Right now, there are many areas I fall short of creating this for my family:
~A lack of predictability to our schedule, & my expectations for my kids.
~A lack of predicting/meeting my family’s needs in a timely fashion (ie. “WHAT?!? It’s 4:30 pm?! How did that happen? Now, what on EARTH can I feed this family?!?)

But, the biggest hindrance to this seems to be sibling rivalry.

So, one thing I am trying is to be way more PRO-active in TEACHING them how to get along. One way we’ve accomplished this lately, is by me actually PLAYING w/ them. We have also been attempting to JUST HAVE FUN! How about an impromptu picnic now that the weather’s a bit warmer?


(See them out in the field behind our house?)

Got any ideas that have worked in your family?

The words to this old hymn keep running through my head:


"Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?
The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.

Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed?
To do the will of Jesus--this is rest.

Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round?
On Jesus' bosom naught but calm is found.

Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away?
In Jesus' keeping we are safe, and they.

Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown?
Jesus we know, and He is on the throne."


2 comments:

Andrea said...

Hey Friend -

Not that I have concrete answers but I can tell you what we do occasionally.

We have a 'standard' that if a child is struggling with "X" then we work, hard, on the opposite of "X".

For instance, Chase & Trey have been battling lately. Nick-picking. Antonizing each other, etc. overall, setting a bad example for their younger siblings and those they were around when they behaved this way.

Given that, we sat them down and explained that they were having issues controlling their speach, problems honoring others (be it a sibling or not) so we were going to focus on KINDNESS since they, apparently, had forgotten what that looked like between the two of them.

We also set the standard that "IF you would not say that, do that, or act that way while you were assisting at at Tae Kwon Do class, let alone behaving in such ways in front of their TKD masters.

It seems they need very picture-type of explanation to understand what they are doing wrong.

Just my two cents....

I promise you aren't the only one dealing with sibling rivalry!!!

Andrea

Kim & Dave said...

I like the "picture" idea, Andrea. We sure do see different behavior at church, for instance-at least w/ our girls. N is still kinda young-he acts about the same no matter where we are! I think reminding them of how they behave there, might make it clearer to them how they should behave everywhere!

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