Two years ago I felt inspired to teach my kids how to
celebrate the Lord. I’m talking about celebrating to a large degree, the way
the Jewish people celebrate the Lord with several day festivals, special foods
& dances. Jewish celebrations connect children and families to the story of
God; they celebrate to remember God
at work in their lives. Sounds seriously fun!! We could take one day as a
family to celebrate and remember the Lord in a way that would be meaningful to
each of us (from my 13 year old down to my 6 year old). Plus, I have an intense
personality and that sounded intensely awesome! Turns out it’s fun to create
your own family tradition from scratch. I put together a loose plan with
several options and then we see how things go as the day progresses, not
feeling the need to cram everything in! It’s a cozy day to enjoy God together.
I want it to be a true celebration: great food and dancing
(hahaha), something my kids talk about with a sparkle in their eye and want to
help plan! Spending time in worship and remembering what God did that year are
a general focus of the day. It’s been important that I not get too serious
about the whole thing. I try to give lots of choices. I want our kids to enjoy
God in a way that makes sense to them and is actually fun (why did I feel like
I needed to say that? Oh dear).
We normally start the day with “soaking”. Soaking is
basically focusing your heart and mind on God. You enjoy His nearness. You
meditate on His word. When we soak, we put on some worship music and we have
fun/relax/get creative with the Lord. Honestly, I did have to lose a little
religiousity to enjoy this with my kids but I’m telling you, kids have big
hearts. When you tell them “we’re going to spend time with God while we’re
building cool stuff with our legos! We can ask God for ideas, and come up with
ideas together with God and then build things”, they engage in it! What looks
just like play to us, childlike to us, can be powerful places of encounter. It
creates a familiarity with God’s closeness and how He can meet us in the midst
of anything. Yay God! For Mckenzie, my 11 year old, soaking might look like drawing
a God-inspired picture in a sketchbook. There are obviously lots of ways to be
creative. Even just reading the Bible or journaling. This year a new kids
worship CD had come out with a DVD and lots of fun dancing. We gave it to the
kids for Christmas and saved it for that day. The kids loved it and we had fun
worshipping together. The year before we had Travis pull out his guitar and the
kids picked songs they wanted to sing.
We’ve also had a lot of fun sitting around the table sipping
hot cocoa and reading through some of our favorite Bible stories, marveling at
how weird the stories are and how awesome God is. At some point in the
afternoon we like to watch a Bible story movie.
New for us this year, we decided it could be fun to each put
together a collaged canvas that would be a prophetic picture of our year. We
put on some worship music, found a relaxing spot and we each asked God for one
descriptive word for ourselves and a word for our family. With quiet worship
music on, I laid out a poster and we asked God to show us pictures in our
imaginations of what He wanted to do this year in our family. After about 10/15
minutes, we put all the family words into a cup, prayed over it and my husband,
Travis, pulled one word out. Hold on to your panties: the word isn’t very intense,
it’s “FUN”! “Fun” is God’s word for our year! It’s hard not to look forward to
a year with that word hanging around!
Next, we tried to find pictures in magazines that represented the
pictures drawn on the family poster during soaking. We each decorated our own
small canvas with our personal word and other symbolic/meaningful pictures. The
kids now have them up in their rooms. On the extra large canvas for our family
we have the word “fun” in the middle surrounded by all the other words (not
originally drawn from the cup) as well as meaningful pictures. It is far from
perfect but perfect for us! I love this because it hangs in our kitchen all
year, a reminder of the way God sees things and how He is at work in our
family.  |
| Abbie's word (9 yrs old): Brave |
 |
| Peter's word (6 yrs old): BIG |
I imagine as the kids grow, we’ll be able to include a few more things in our day. Here are some of my ideas we didn’t get to:
1. Picking a family memory verse for the year
2. Praying over the world map and seeing what God highlights
for us to pray into.
3. Brainstormed/planned service & giving for the year.
4. Picking out Bible verse promises we can each pray over
Emilie that year. (My daughter, Emilie, suffers from severe epilepsy and
significant developmental delay. We pray continuously for her total healing and
restoration).
5. Talking with God about family dreams &
desires/deciding on some impossible things we can all pray about together.
There are many options and lots of room for creativity. I’m
hoping to cover a few of those topics throughout the year on some of our family
nights. We plan to purchase a family journal to write down our yearly
remembrances, words, verses, etc. This will be precious in the future! I have
the past 2 years’ info written down, we plan on transferring it. (Inwardly, I
simultaneously laugh and cringe. I really think we’ll get to it!) I’m wondering
if we should purchase one for each of the kids so they have a copy as they
start their own families one day.
So there it is: something FUN to think about. It can be as
simple or complex as you make it. Such sweet memories and a super encouraging
way to start your year!
Whether or not this is your thing, may you be flooded with
creativity in the ways you help your kids connect with God! Thank you Jesus
that You LOVE showing up in our family life, You love opening Your world to us.
