Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Filling our house and trees

What happened to Friday? The weekend? Monday? Tuesday? Hump day? Oh that's right. I had my post-op follow up and received the "all clear" to pick my Macaroon up. So instead of getting my post completed I have been dancing around with my baby and over doing all the chores that I've put off for recovery.  And have over done it! Taking that as a good excuse to sit down, sip some tea and work on this despite all the other busy I have to do.

Fruit of the Spirit:2

Contentions, out-burst of wrath, envy, jealousies....the Bible is pretty clear that this behavior is wrong. So how did I end up just calling that kind of behavior "melt downs" "cranky" and "disagreements"? At what point did I just sugar coat my bad behavior and justified it with "stress" "sleep deprivation" and "it's not fair"? I'm not sure, but what I am sure is it's not behavior I want to model for my children. And it is not a behavior I want to take root in them. And it's not who I want to be!

Love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 22-23) Don't you just read that and sigh. I can imagine me being this way, my children being this way and you know what, were not awful at it...were just not great. It's just lately I feel like these characteristics are being used to defuse the above mentioned not good ones more then they are overflowing in our life. So how are we changing that. How are we becoming a family that if filled with the Fruit of the Spirit? We are figuring that out as we go along on day at a time.

I started with reading Galatians 22-23 with my kids this week and we talked about how each tree bears it's own fruit. (My oldest has been learning about plants in preschool, so he really grasped on to this concept.) And that "love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" is the kind of fruit that God wants us to bear. Now this is were I love letting my children "lead" how were going to learn something. Pumpkin says to me "Mommy how do we be that kind of tree?" Oh, don't you just love that? So was born our first Fruit of the Spirit craft.


Our Home & Trees

 As you can see, the craft is pretty simple. I took my spectacular art skills and drew a house and let my oldest trace over my line with a marker. Traced our hands and forearms to make the trees and Pumpkin colored in the bark. Inside each frame of the window one of the fruits is written "joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" and on the door "love" with the description from 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7


Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7

This is how it works.


The House: Every time one of us catches our self exemplifying a fruit of the Spirit, with the goal of filling our home with all those good things. For example Punkin can show some "self-control" and "long suffering" when his little sister pulls apart his block tower and he can reward himself by placing a dot (we are using bingo dopers)  in the house.

The Trees: Each one for a member of our family. (Baby doesn't have his own yet.) Is for when someone else catches us exemplifying that behavior. For example my Honey can complement me on my "peace" when the kids are running a muck and the baby is crying and I'm not FREAKING OUT! Then I get to add a thumb print fruit to my tree.

The goal? Fill our life AKA tree and so much fruit that we are over flowing!!! If I can remember I will go back and write in on each dot or thumb print what fruit was shown so we can see what we are doing good at and what we still have to work on.

Next lesson, breaking down the fruits one by one. I think we will be starting and perhaps revising "self-control". It's one we can all work on in a variety of areas. Ahem, cookies anyone?

Got to buzz and catch my little pastries showing some good fruit!
-K






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