It's Quiet

It's quiet here.  That can be a little unusual in our home.  Gracyn, sick, is sleeping on our bedroom floor.  Kaden, zonked out from the day has been fast asleep for an hour, and the big girls are reading quietly in their beds - without my prompting.  I love that.  I love it that they are interested in reading and find peace in it.  That was never my case as a child.  I have silently vowed to teach them a love for it.

It isn't unusual to get 45 books from the library (we max out our cards) one day and be ready to head back to the library 3 days later!  We have moved onto more challenging books but the girls are still finishing them long before our next scheduled library trip.  I am so thankful.  Praying it sticks.

Something else that we have wanted to instill in them is a love for God's word.  But how is that done? I didn't really love reading the Bible until I was in my late 20's.  Before then, reading it was like reading any other book.  It felt dull, boring, and lifeless.  Part of that was from a lack of understanding of the complexity, yet paradoxically, the simplicity of it.  But, there was a part of me that really longed for a love of it.  I wanted to know what I was reading and why it felt like there was purpose for it in my life.

So I began studying the Word.  I joined several Bible studies that focused on the Bible instead of a popular current book.  And I learned so much.  I learned so many things that I should've learned as a child... That somehow, someway I missed in Sunday School.  And the love for it that I longed for began to take shape.

It is my desire that my children don't have to wait so long to find value in God's word... I don't want them to read it as a checklist of their Christianly duty or out of fear.  I want them to know the Word as I began to, and with that knowledge will come a desire to be in it.

And already I am seeing growth.  It is not uncommon to hear moans and complaints as I close this Bible after breakfast.  Or to see them reading their own Bibles in bed just before lights out.  Or to hear them talking of trading Bibles because they have finished their own.  I am so thankful...  Praying it sticks.

For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures.   ~ Romans 15:4