The Blessing...

There are so many things that I want to give my family. I want them to know the love of Christ. I want them to be happy, safe, loved, accepted, and to have a personal relationship with Christ. Most of all, I desire them to be so full of "Him" that when the world pokes in them holes of humanity, they can never be drained. This will come from intentional choices where I decide, every day, to unconditionally love and accept them and build a relationship of deep trust and safety that fills their love banks.

How can I possibly ever accomplish this? It will be a life long job that I gladly accept. It is nothing just a one time event. It is a day long, year long, life long pursuit. There is a book that teaches how to do this that God has been telling me to read for over a year. It took a loving, Godly woman to give me the book to make it happen (thank you, Becky!). The book is The BLESSING [revised & updated] by John Trent, PH.D. and Gary Smalley. The cover says it is about "giving the gift of unconditional love and acceptance". I received it on a Wednesday and am so hungry to learn, it is Sunday and I am on page 101. Granted some of the pages I have had to reread because I dozed off from late night "after the kids go to bed" reading.

I feel led to share some of the things that I am learning as I take this journey. Maybe someone has gone this way before me that can offer up advice or maybe you just need the extra push like I did. Either way, please feel free to take this journey with me of learning how to bless your family. You can bless your children, your spouse, and even your parents. I was not directly given the blessing by my parents, but I want to learn how to bless them to heal the wounds of the yesteryears. I am determined to "reverse the curse" into a beautiful "blessed" relationship. I want to bless my husband so that he knows how much I love him and cherish him. I desire to bless my three children because if I love them with every ounce of my being, how much Christ must love them even more. They deserve to know this love, to have this relationship that will carry them into full futures. I don't want them looking to the world for their worth. They are so much more than the world could tell me.

There are five specific ways they talk about to bless your relationship: meaningful touch, a spoken message, attaching high value, picturing a special future, and an active commitment. I will write about these over the next weeks starting with Part I: Why Is The Blessing So Important?. If you would like to check out their website, join the challenge, or just learn more about how to "reverse the curse" and find blessing in your life, please just click The Blessing Challenge.

"I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life or death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants." (Deut.  30:19 NASB)

in Him,