Goal #3- my relationship with my children!

My 3rd and final goal for 2012 is working on my relationships with each of my children. They are only children for such a short time. Just this morning at church I saw a young man, maybe 14 or 15 years old walk down the aisleway. I turned to Nathan and said "can you imagine when our boys are that age?", he smiled and said "I try not to"! LOL!!! We laughed over how it seems like yesterday that one of our nephews, Ryley, was 2 years old and he's now a strapping young man of 14. We have such a short time to gain our children's hearts and show them the ways of God before they are grown.

My list:

1.Pray for each of my children specifically. Ask them if there is something specific they would like me to pray about for them.

2. Pray with my children, teach them that prayer is sacred, prayer is meaningful and should be taken seriously. Teach them to pray for the things that God cares about. Lately we have been praying for the orphans all over the world.

3. Daily family Bible time

4. Learning hymns together. This has been interesting! LOL Without a piano or any other instrument to help them stay in key, it can get downright comical for the first few days of learning a new hymn. :)

5. One child a night helps me cook. My children LOVE to talk (can I get an amen??), so I know that we will have lots of conversation during dinner prep time.

6. Jayna and I have a Mama and Daughter journal. This is REALLY fun! It's a journal that we take turns writing in. My entries are usually something earth-shatteringly profound, while Jayna's are something along the lines of "can you remember to get pain reliever the next time we're at the store?" HAHA!! In all seriousness, she did use the journal before to share what was on her heart and as long as I get one of those kind of entries once in a while, I'll take it!!

7. One on one time! This one is not one that I'm good about AT ALL! I read an article in which the author decided that she would spend 10 minutes, 2 times a day in one on one time with her children. For some reason, I seem to rebel against the thought of "I HAVE to do this for x amount of time, x times a day", I would rather be someone spontaneous, but that's not really working for me, so I may implement the scheduled times and see how that goes.
One time that I do have scheduled is Sunday nights with Jayna after the other children are in bed. She and I will be going through Polished Cornerstones character curriculum from Doorposts every Sunday night. There are tons of fun things in there that you can pick and choose from to fit any age of girl.

8. Read books that encourage me to be the mother that God created me to be! Right now I'm reading Shepherding A Child's Heart and I could just underline the whole book. If you know me very well, you would know that for me to underline anything in a book is a big deal, I hate to mess up those pretty pages (I'm weird about some stuff, but that's for another day), but I have been underlining and underlining and underlining! It helps me when I want to tell Nathan about what I've been reading too.

9. Be an example!! "More is caught than taught" is such a true (and sobering) quote.

I know I will never be a perfect mother, but I can strive to be the best mother than I can be. I never want my children to doubt the love that I have for them, the importance of their lives or most importantly, the love that God has for them! To make an impact in their lives, I have to have a relationship with them that allows them to open their hearts to me and be a safe place for them. To do that, I have to make sure that I have their hearts.