Monday mornings

Ah, Monday mornings.  My husband and kids gather their bags, their coats, and their wits as they pile out the door for high school.  It didn't used to be this way.  I homeschooled my kids for 12 years, all through the eighth grade.  We would spend our mornings, sometimes still in our jammies, gathered around a great pile of books, reading away our mornings.  We had regular Bibles, picture Bibles, Bible on CD, Bible story books, Bible games.  I'm telling you, we were getting holy.  We watched Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and anyone else we could find in a movie. We sang about Jesus, Zaccheus, Abraham, and all the angel songs we could get.
I filled them up with scripture, having them do their handwriting practice with the verse of the day. 

Now they are all teens.  I don't have (or make) the time I used to in schooling them to sit down and read scripture with them.  There's no copy work, no cute picture books.  For them, they have begun the hard process of living life within the boundaries we have established for them.  Sometimes they push those boundaries, sometimes we have to let them out a bit.  They are learning to live out the words of the Bible, that it's not just a book to read.   They learn more now, it seems, from watching us and how we react to things.  Are we being hypocrites?  Do we live by all those words I shoved into their heads?  Do we "walk the walk?"  Do we live the Gospel?  

My husband and I could be voted the most boring parents in the world.  We are here most Friday and Saturday nights, we go to church three times a week, (mostly), and we kiss in front of the kids.  He plays on the computer, I knit, or read.   My kids have discovered that their lives are pretty unique in their school, with an intact family, mom at home, and they eat meals at home, together.  They have friends that they bring home that have terrible hurt and pain, with broken families and broken hearts. The Bible lessons I hope I'm  teaching them now are not so much word for word, but action upon action.   Open your heart, open your doors, open you refrigerator. 

  
These things we should write on the bathroom walls....
Be careful , be vigilant, be discerning.  Be loving, be kind, be generous.  Be faithful, be loyal, be genuine.  Be truthful, be real, be strong.  Love the Father, follow Jesus, listen to the Holy Spirit.
When  you are the only one left, continue standing.



From What the Church Fathers Say About,,,Vol. I ed. by George Grube. Light and Life Pub., Minneapolis, MN; 1996.

by St. John Chrysostom (Golden Tongue) he lived in the 400's. not much has changed.

(speaking on raising boys) Like the creator of statues, do you give all your leisure to fashioning these wondrous statues for God. And , as you remove what is superfluous and add what is lacking, inspect them day by day, to see what good qualities nature has supplied, so that you will increase them, and what faults so that you will eradicate them.  And first of all, take the greatest care to banish licentious speech; for love of this above all frets the young.  Before he is of an age to try it, teach thy son to be sober and vigilant and to shorten sleep for the sake of prayer, and with every word and deed to set upon himself the seal of the faith. Regard thyself as a king ruling over a city, which is the soul of thy son.  For the soul is, in truth, a city.

Dianne, a sinner