I realize that I have not done a good job of creating rituals for my family, other than burning us our with stuff to do for church. Not good.

I recently read this wonderful little book.  Real Love for Real Life written by Andi Ashworth.  I picked it up at a very awesome event, the Art Music Justice Tour with Charlie Peacock, Sara Groves, Derek Web and a few other musicians that i can not remember.  Anyway, Andi is the wife of Charlie Peacock. Her book was at his table and it spoke to me. I needed it.

It took me a while to get to it, like most things in my life that really deserve more attention. In it she speaks of the importance of making family traditions to show love to them. So often our house only consists of chaos. I feel like we are constantly saying to our kids, “we have to go do this for the church, so we can’t (fill in the blank here)”

I hate it.

How will my kids ever love God if they see Chris and I ignoring them for the church? It’s like that Arcade fire song that says “Working for the church while your family dies”

Today I made PBJ’s and put them in a nice basket and took them out to serve the kids and their friends and Chris while they played soccer in the back yard. I have don’t it a few times before, but never thought of it as a tradition until Juliana told me the other day that she liked when i did it. Maybe that can be a Saturday tradition. Not even expensive. But the love is there.

So many times we have just brushed over chances to have quality time with out kids because we were so busy. I feel so horrible about all the opportunities we have missed to love on our kids.