On January 29th we will stand in front of hundreds of people and dedicate our lives to teaching Colleen about God which will (hopefully) eventually lead to her accepting Christ as her savior. This little girl is the reason I am breaking all of my comfort levels with church and diving in head first. For us to be able to fulfill this promise we are making to God, ourselves, and the congregation of the church, we are going to have to make some changes in our home.
While our home is a loving one it is not necessarily a God honoring home (which I need to teach myself how TO BE God honoring). As I tried to explain to my husband, just because you are a good person does not mean that you are honoring God; it IS possible for a person to be a good person and not be a Christian. So while currently we teach not to lie, cheat, steal etc, we do not teach that we do this because it is God’s will. We do not currently pray either and honestly I don’t even know if there is a procedure to prayer or if you just wing it. When I talked to Mark about our dedication we would be making to pray with our children I had to ask him “do you pray?” I told him that if I didn’t know if he prayed or not then how would our children ever learn how to do it – I think he finally understood my point of how we had to change our ways.
Not only do we need to start outwardly showing our faith we need to watch ourselves with our actions in other areas. Perhaps over time everything will mesh together and it won’t have to be a conscious effort but in the mean time I have a few things I need to correct in my life. I know that I need to watch what I say. I tend to have a sailor’s vocabulary sometimes and I really need to cut that out completely. I don’t want my daughter to one day come up and repeat one of the words I have used. When I use one of those words, I know the image I portray is disrespectful and that is not who I am. I tend to have a hot temper which does not teach my children anything positive and I don’t want them to repeat my mistakes. While I can come up with a whole list of things he needs to watch, he has to decide that on his own (ie: his nasty stuff) but I need to be more respectful to my husband so my daughter will learn how to treat her husband positively.
I made the first of MANY steps to accomplish my overall goal by spending almost an hour on Monday sending out emails to everyone imaginary at the church asking for guidance, trying to find a small group to join, registering for classes etc. I would be a lot more comfortable if I could find someone to hold my hand and just TELL me what I need to do. I was thankful that at least one person responded back for a small group and we went last night. It was a little more comforting to know that the leader of the small group is one of the pastors of the church, whom I’m sure, is very accustomed to answering a lot of questions once I figure out what questions to ask.
All in all I am on my way to being able to lead the way so my daughter will have a good understanding and love for God as he loves her.
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