Broken Rules...

Serve Jesus as the Lord of our home,

Value honesty with ourselves and others,

Create a loving environment to nurture God-sized goals,

Support and cheer for each other,

Work through conflict,

Have fun, laugh a lot,

And reflect God’s glory to change the world.

This sounds great…at least we think it does…but it’s not always the reality. A few days ago, WW III almost broke out in public between the boys. I was still parking the car, but Leigh-Ann made her point very clear, that behavior would not be tolerated.

Fighting in public (and private 😊) is never ok. We have made this expectation explicitly clear and yet it still happens.

We expect respect and honesty and kindness and so many other good things…but those things can be difficult to quantify….So, we have specific rules such as “honor your parents”, “don’t lie” and certainly “don’t steal”. Another rule is that the best seats in the car are arranged by seniority. Unless they choose it (which they never do) you won’t find our oldest kids sitting behind the youngest ones.

It takes away the argument over who gets the best seat.

We have rules because we want to create a loving environment to nurture God-sized goals…we want to have fun and laugh a lot….we want to reflect God’s glory to change the world.

We have plenty of rules in our household. But the rules and keeping the rules never guarantee good relationships.

It is possible that our kids don’t lie, never fight, and always sit in the right seat…and still fail to create a loving environment…. still fail to support and cheer for one another…and still fail to have fun and laugh a lot.

The rules are meant to inform our relationship, however, if we keep the rules and fail in the relationship, we are missing the point.

Have a great weekend,

Troy