Missing Ingredient

Allyson and I have been weighted down with a mutual desire to not only govern our house well but to help others do the same with theirs. At this point we are gathering wisdom and resources to better assist ourselves and others in this important task. In a world where the concept of home and certainly the concept of family is being challenged, we desire to establish and run our household in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Home is where the heart is.
Our consuming thoughts really do focus on parenting. We consider the fallenness of our world. How 37% of children are born without a father in the home, how 50% of all marriages end up in divorce. How the homes that do have two parents are merely drifting along. We dwell on what the Lord would have us do considering these things: Homeschooling, child training, divorce and remarriage counseling.
Just today we were both having a very difficult time with the children. They were being ‘kids’ and we were finding ourselves to be overwhelmed by the noise, the chaos, the delayed obedience. At one point, far into the day, I expressed my frustration to Allyson and she admitted that it was the same with her. Thankfully we were on very good terms with each other at the time, but nevertheless we found ourselves overwhelmed with the lack of peace, order and joy within our home. Allyson suggested that we pray, and I responded by saying “what a humbling shot, huh?, to be so ‘on top of things’ with child training and then finding ourselves in trouble” She laughed in shame and we immediately convened the children. We sat in a circle on the floor holding hands and we confessed our sins to our children.
“Hannah and Lauren,
Mama and papa want to confess something to you. We have not been very consistent with you today and we are very sorry. We have allowed ourselves to get frustrated and irritated and instead of spanking you when we should have, we yelled at you instead. Mama and Papa want us to have a happy home. We love you with all our hearts and we want to obey Jesus most of all. We know what we ‘ought’ to do most of the time, but we have left out the most important ingredient of all: prayer.” We then proceeded to confess our utter need for the Lord to be our wisdom, our strength, and our peace. We admitted our inadequacies and we acknowledged our dependence upon Him.
Such a pleasant turnaround.