My personal retreat

A few weeks ago it just dawned on me (just?), that I really, really need to re-evaluate life - particularly how I relate to my family.  Since I had never wanted to be married or have kids, I feel like I approach my family a lot based on my singleness habits and views.  It's often a "when I'm done with my thing then I'll help you with your thing" mentality or just not seeing the big picture of marriage and parenting.  So this Saturday Caleb let me take a big chunk of the day to have a personal retreat - to get away from the house, pray and concentrate on a family vision and goals for the year. It was very refreshing and clarifying to put my thoughts on paper too.  So here is some of what I hashed out.

***Commercial:  If don't want to read my reflections, scroll to the bottom for more pictures of the kids playing with Daddy while I was on my retreat.

A while ago, I followed a link from the blog The Better Mom where the blogger chose a "word of the year" for her vision for her family.  (I just now found out that this is actually quite popular to do even in secular circles.)  Anyway, I had never heard of doing that, it sounded like an interesting concept and I thought I'd give it a whirl.  So my word for the year is "REFUGE." This is based off Psalms 73:28 (context verses 21-28) and Psalm 63.  How does this apply?
            * May Caleb and I seek refuge in God during trials and daily life.
            * May we long for Him, seek Him, and take comfort in the shadow of His wings.
            * May the kids, Caleb and others feel safe, comforted and encouraged in our home environment.
            * May we be willing to seek help (refuge) from friends, family and our church.
            * May we long to share our refuge (Christ and salvation) with others.

Next, I pondered kids and ministry.  When we have littles it is hard to GO do ministry due to naps, bedtime, etc.  But there are actually quite a number of things we can do IN the house.  I made a list ranging from hosting Bible studies to inviting neighbor kids over to taking someone a meal to reading missionary stories to the kids, and many things in between.

Then I made a list of personal goals for 2014.  Some things like turn to God first and love Him more, develop kids' hearts for Christ (not Pharisaical obedience), be the first to acknowledge my faults and seek forgiveness, give grace to C and kids.  Also, things like laugh more with Caleb, read and play more with kids, keep up on baby books, accept free babysitting, and have people over for meals every once in a while.

I made a list (yes, I love lists and charts!) of my skills that I can invest in the family.  For example, my creativity, artistic bent can be shown in sewing, kids crafts, home decor, landscaping, cooking.  My skill of organization can be shown in meal planning, cleaning, planning vacations, setting up pantry/kitchen.  Try to think outside the box of how your skills can be used!

Then on to the kiddos.  I made a chart (!) depicting each child's strengths, weaknesses, love language and learning style.  I found that they are often related to each other!  For example, Titus' love language is physical touch, he is a tactile learner.  His strengths are hugs/kisses, analytical, helpful, and focussed.  His weaknesses are hitting, throwing, greed and stubbornness. I'm not saying these aren't in all kids, because they often are, but are much stronger in T than in Kale'a.  Kale'a is quality time and an auditory learner.  She loves to sing, talk stories, imaginative, play with others, is kind and considerate.  She yells, whines, complains and very independent.  See the correlations? 

Also, I made goals for each kid based on spiritual, motor skills and educational developments.  Each child has different fruit of the spirit to work on.  As they get older more responsibility can be given to them.  They should sort and put away laundry, walk a straight line, help with some cleaning, etc.  Titus should learn to color a basic area and Kale'a learn to color within the lines and connect dots.  If Ryker starts walking at the end of the year he can learn to throw away his diapers.  Titus should learn to count, Kale'a to recognize letters.  I took a few paragraphs expounding each of these 3 areas.

Lastly, I wrote a list of action items.  I may need to buy some things to help with the kids learning and find a children's song book.  I should make a bank for teaching earning/money, make meal plans and chore chart.  Yesterday, Caleb helped me clean off all the kitchen counters!  The goal was to organize the main counter but we ended up doing a thorough cleaning and rearranging, noting some items that might make the counter less messy (key holder, shelf, etc).  And if possible, I need to take 15 minutes at the beginning of each day to plan out the day - thus saving time wandering and being unproductive.

So to sum up, it was a great personal retreat!  I read parts of several books, made my lists and prayed a lot.  Caleb was very encouraged that I was encouraged and wanted to concentrate more on the family!  He greatly supports doing this regularly!  I encourage each woman, married or single, with or without kids, to do this at least once a year!  If you need me to watch your kids for a day so you can get away, I will do it!  :)

Some resources - "Shopping For Time" by Carolyn Mahaney, "Age Appropriate Chore List" and "Home Management Training Checklist" by raisingarrows.net, "The Way They Learn" by Cynthia tobias

Going to play in the rain. Not sure why he's crying.

Daddy M.F.B. (master fort builder)