Big Changes #2 ** Building Foundations

I couldn't find a picture to go with this post, so I just stuck this one in.  If you look really hard you can see our house.  And since I am going to write on 'foundations'...well, there's a slight correlation :-)

I think we are all aware of what would happen if you started to build a house on a faulty foundation.  When we had our Family Pow-Wow, this is the analogy we used to explain to the girls why we needed to make the changes we felt needed making.  With a bit of explanation, they all understood the idea.  We explained that, for our family, we had already been building on a faulty foundation.  That meant we needed to undo parts of our house (get rid of things or activities), and rebuild (add in appropriate things and activities).  Now, this sounds easy, but, as I told the girls, having to 'knock' out walls is hard work, time consuming and takes money.  It's a lot easier if you build it right the first time around.  So I explained that there was indeed going to be 'pain' involved, but that the end product would be *better* than what we had now. 

It was definitely painful for them when they realized all we were taking away.  There was no way to get around that.  Pulling down the walls, was the easy part, it is the rebuilding that is hard work.  But that hard work is now getting easier as we are all on board the family's goal wagon. 

So that was the pep talk we gave to our kids.  We gave them the illustration of the house foundation for them to understand better why we were doing what we were doing.  After that explanation we explained that our true foundation needed to be on Christ.  It goes much better to keep any spiritual talk on the positive.  I've noticed that it doesn't go well to make this *huge* connection from taking everything they know as life away from them to God's word.  I'm sure I am not explaining myself well here.  Basically it's kind of like making your child write out scriptures for an hour every time they were being punished.  They start to associate God's word with punishment.  So for this part of things we kept it simple.  A few verses were used to illustrate our point.  Some were:

“It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

– Matthew 4:3-4

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
-Matt. 6:33

And we talked about the idea of seeds and how they grow.  The concept of what you sow, is what you reap.  We talked about how we realized that we were sowing the wrong seed.  We don't know if we'll have time to put in a new crop (before our oldest two reach adulthood), but we certainly have to try, leaving the harvest in the Lord's hands. 

Along with the Pow-Wow meeting, Jeremiah and I have had other times where we have discussed our marriage.  I don't think there is a marriage out there that doesn't have problems at one time or another.  Some have more or bigger problems I suppose than others, but I am certain everyone has problems.  We are not the exception.  Our true foundation needs to start with Christ, then the next level would be a firm marriage.  This will be a work in progress, but for now we've made changes that we can live and work within.  Jeremiah just downloaded a bunch of sermons on marriage and family.  We plan on listening to one each night, or there abouts.

There is still much work to be done, but with our "Plan" and "Foundation" stages being addressed we are seeing a wonderful change in how we are addressing life.  It has been wonderful to have something to hold up to help make future decisions.  Is this activity going to help our family goals?  Is this movie going to promote our family goals/values? Etc.  The world has an agenda (known or not) and it is NOT for marriage, or for family.  Our children, and dare I say we adults, are being taught something by everything we do.  Everything.  We are always learning.  If we weren't then people wouldn't have to go to school to learn advertisement.  But they do, so they can learn how to affect the rest of us.  What we set before our eyes, WILL make a difference.  What we listen to, WILL affect us.  Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but it will eventually. 

Ok, enough of my rambling :-)  Flannery just made an awesome kefir smoothie for us.  I need to go make up some peanut butter pancakes for them now.  A real treat as we are gradually coming off gaps intro!!

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